Iceland Did Not Suck

I just got back from the trip of a lifetime, so you probably won’t feel all that sorry for me, despite the fact that I am waking up every day at 4 a.m.  I toss and turn for 45 minutes or so–just long enough to really start annoying the spouse–then drag myself out of bed and stare at the wall, waiting for the kids to wake up.  They have jet lag, too, so this doesn’t take nearly as long as one might hope.

Though cranky and somewhat incoherent, I do manage to muddle around somewhat successfully until about 4 p.m, at which point I give up and let the kids watch Project Runway reruns ad nauseum.  Meanwhile, I push myself to multitask; I try to think about dinner magically appearing while simultaneously staring at the wall.

In a burst of inspiration, I have decided to try to use the extra comatose hours I now have each day to do a little writing.  Staring at a blank computer screen is not that much of a stretch.

Let’s start with Iceland, then.

As you may have gathered from my post title, going there did not suck, and someday I will wow you with amazing stories about the days and nights I spent in Reykjavik and beyond.  At the moment, though, I am still mourning my departure.  In fact, in order to pry myself out of that country I had to make a list of the things I would NOT miss, which is all I am prepared to share at the moment.

THINGS I WILL NOT MISS ABOUT ICELAND

1.  The midnight sun is unbelievably awesome but no love will be lost on the 4 a.m. sun.  Reykjavik is nestled much closer to the North Pole than anywhere I have ever visited, and I was eagerly awaiting the impossibly long days.  But, I did not fully comprehend that there would be no darkness at all, or how that would feel.  The sun sets and sets for hours and hours, burning across the horizon line; teasing.  There is a buzz of anticipation, like when you throw something up in the air, and you don’t see or hear it hit the ground.  You keep looking, stomach in a lurch.   Likewise, I kept waiting for the moment when a breath of shadow would bring relief and the capacity to sleep.  I had a sleep mask.  I had melatonin.  I had ambien, but even when I dozed off, I simply could not continue to do so for a reasonable number of hours when all visual indications were counterintuitive.  With my temporal clues turned on end, I was actually widest awake at all the wrong times.  Of course, now that I am home, I am still a mess.  It gets dark here, but I still lie wide awake, waiting for the sun to finally drift out of the Icelandic sky.

2.  Taking a shower at our apartment in Reykjavik.  Iceland has about 130 volcanoes.  Consequently, they use the hot water and steam from geothermal hot springs to heat homes and generate power.  There is absolutely no need for water heaters.  That is fantastically green and fabulous, and there are some marvelous side effects:  the pools, geysers, steaming landscape, and all.  Meanwhile, the hot water from the tap smells overwhelmingly like sulphur.  Imagine taking a shower in that.  Steamy, rotten-eggy nastiness, streaming over your head.  Possible upside: whence emerging from the bathroom after a lengthy spell, no one is quite sure if you have taken a particularly malodorous dump or merely washed your hair.

3.  Vegetables?  What vegetables?  There is very little that grows in Iceland.  No trees, for example.  Or nearly none.  This is the source of  the only Icelandic joke, according to the internet.  (i.e., “what do you do if you are lost in the forest in Iceland?” Stand up.)  Visualize stark, stoic, volcanic peaks rising sharply out of lava fields like Scandinavian relatives.  Throw in some glaciers.  In the other direction, fjords, the ocean.  There are sheep–lots of sheep–and a multitude of mullet-sporting horses, but no foliage.  A chocolate bar is therefore less expensive–not cheap!–and much easier to find than an apple, for example.  I spent $3 on a half-rotten onion.  One dinner at a lovely, well-regarded, jaw-droppingly expensive restaurant, I was initially thrilled to find a single mangy-looking strawberry garnishing my plate.  It tasted like dust.

Ah, the memories.

As the rest of the world is starting to stir, the remaining list items will have to wait for another day.

The Party

A few weeks ago, my youngest turned seven.  Normally, I have a conniption before hosting birthday parties, but Josie had decided months in advance to have a cooking party.  I had plenty of time to track down aprons, chef hats, and mini-rolling pins.  I ordered cookie cutters, too, to flesh out the goodie bags.  Even the menu was decided well in advance:  pizza and chocolate soufflés.  This shindig was going to be a breeze.

I asked my husband that morning, “Should I be worried about something?  Because I’m not.”  He just shrugged at me, confused.  He doesn’t worry about kid parties.

Cherubic guests arrived, smiling shyly.

Suddenly I realized I had skipped lunch while cleaning house.  There was no way my celiac-self would survive a house full of pizza without eating something.  While the girls chatted politely, I rummaged in the freezer and found a chunk of a gluten-free pizza crust, about the size of a single, large slice.  I topped it and tossed it in the oven.  All was well.

Then we started cooking with the girls.  Holy crap.

I have repressed most of that pizza-making extravaganza, but I do vaguely recall a boatload of whining and yelling and hogging cheese.  Leon and I finally shoved the pizzas in the oven and began to deal with the aftermath left in the wake of ten small chefs.

Suddenly a new guest arrived.  I got all of the ingredients out again and helped her make a pizza while Leon took care of criers and looked for bandaids.  We sort of forgot about the pizzas in the oven.

“It’s burnt!” one child announced with disdain.  I looked down at her pizza and had to admit it was pretty unappetizing.  Man.  I asked a few kids if they would share.  As expected, they would not.  I sighed and took the sullen child back to the kitchen.  I got out all of the ingredients for a third time, and we made her another pizza.  This time, I set two timers.

She moped at the table, so I got out extra tasty things to share around and keep her busy. The chorus of whining and yelling for drink, napkin, new cup, a different seat, went on relentlessly.

“Do you want to eat now?” my husband asked.

I laughed, a little maniacally.  “Are you kidding?”  I asked.  “Now is the time to maintain vigilance.”  I looked longingly at my little nub of gluten free pizza, though.  Someday we would be united.

Finally, late girl and sullen girl’s pizzas were ready.  They looked perfect.  Late girl was full from snacking, though, and ran off to play.  Sullen girl wanted the pieces cut a certain way.  A fresh napkin.  More to drink.  Then she called me over.  “I forgot I can’t eat pizza,” she said.  I stared at her.  I may have narrowed my eyes a little.  I picked up her plate and inserted it directly into the compost while maintaining stern eye contact.  “Go play,” I ordered. It was the nicest thing I could think of to say.

What followed was another round of herding cats in order to whip up the soufflés and get them in the oven.

I accidentally said yes when Josie asked to open a couple of presents.  I really meant to wait until after dessert, but who knew when that would be done, anyway?  The girls crowded around her and fought to see first, to grab card, to foist gift.  I was losing track of who gave what.  At this point, the party was actually supposed to be over, but who was going to leave before soufflé?

Parents started to arrive.  Leon had quaffed our last two beers trying to survive the party, so he sent me to retrieve the magnum of scotch from the living room.  Mostly to be funny, I think, but we got a few takers and then one of the dads went on a beer run.  It was a mercy mission.  The chaos continued.

I found myself completely overcome for a minute.  I took a swig from a giant wine glass and stared blankly out the window until I realized a parent was standing directly on the other side of it, frowning at me and gesturing toward the door.  I wonder how long she’d been there.  By this time, it was so loud we couldn’t hear ourselves think, so no one had heard her pounding.

I wish this had been a parent I knew better.  Instead, it was basically a stranger, eyeing the gigantic bottle of scotch on the kitchen counter, empty beer bottles, dirty dishes piled to oblivion.  Feisty folks were talking smack about annoying children and teetering marriages.  I felt like the whole scene was a neon sign reading:  “We’d have looked after your kid if we weren’t so busy getting soused.”

In the living room, things were much worse.  Inappropriate songs–think ‘Teenage Dreams’ and ‘Love Game’–were blaring while my oldest was sashaying around in what looked like hot pants, a bra, and thigh high black boots.  It was actually her swim suit and a pair of my boots, I swear, but it looked terribly risqué.  To add to the effect, she was sporting Jackie O-type sunglasses and an eight-foot stuffed snake wrapped around her like a boa.  I don’t know where she learned her moves, either, but I was glad all of the dads were in the kitchen.  Meanwhile, a critical mass of the younger girls had shoved all of the furniture out of the way and were beating each other to a pulp with every single pillow in the house.  Half were screaming in delirium, half pain, with a couple of criers here and there.

The unknown mom sank onto the stairs while I hunted around for her kid and her belongings.  “I know she’s here somewhere,” I reassured her. When I finally got them out the door, I turned to the folks in the kitchen and gestured toward the living room.  “Don’t even think of going in there,” I advised firmly, refilling my glass.

“Party’s over!”  Leon yelled.  “If your parents aren’t here, you can wait on the curb.”

No one paid any mind–except the adult guests, who laughed.  Frankly, I was only 50% sure that Leon was joking.

About this time, I decided I absolutely must eat before becoming completely delirious.  I looked at the stovetop, from which my pizza had beckoned all evening.  Empty.  I looked at Leon.  “Where’s my pizza?”

He shrugged.  “Where’d you put it?”  So helpful.

Then I noticed the dish towel over his arm.  I turned to look at the sink and saw a tower of dirty dishes under the running faucet, and three or four levels down I found my pizza slice, literally swimming in the run off.  I took a long swig from my glass.  I punched Leon half-heartedly and stared at the soggy remains.  Then I reached in, shook it off, and put it back in the oven to dry.

An hour or two later, when we finally had a moment of silence, I ate that thing, too.  It wasn’t so bad.  Next year we’ll order out, though.  Happy Birthday, Josie!

How I ruined my kids’ chances of becoming President by microwaving their food in plastic containers before I knew better (plus a million other parenting mistakes)

Parenting was always hard work.

Except, perhaps, in Betty Draper’s world, where you hired someone to cook, clean, and raise your kids while you mooned about in your house dress.

That Mad Men model of parenting never appealed to me, though.  I like being involved–hearing what my kids are thinking, helping them solve problems, exploring the world together.  I’m certainly not advocating for a hands-off experience.  Still, when did parenting become so fraught with pressure and competition?  When did my goal to raise happy, healthy children devolve into sheer panic that my children will never achieve their full potential because I failed to be the perfect parent.  I admit:

a) I didn’t wait list my children for a competitive nursery school before they were born.

b) Those eighteen-dollar, über green metal sippy cups from Switzerland that I gave my toddlers contained bisphenol A.

c)  I’m monolingual.  Mostly.

e)  I avoid PTA meetings like the plague.

f) The robotics workshops for 3rd graders were completely booked up before I figured out how to log onto the registration site.

What’s going on here?

Am I really stressing out that my kids’ summer day camp might not be academically rigorous enough?  Do I really believe that a single parenting misstep will impede their potential progress forever?

Worst of all, I worry about their school.  Why is that?  The basics are completely covered, and my kids are doing well.  They have amazing gardening, art, dance, and computer classes.  They have science fairs, field trips, carnivals, committed teachers and parents.  Yet, whenever I talk with parents of children at other schools, I feel my blood pressure start to rise.  I get school envy.  Your kid’s class has launched a website?  They are learning Italian?  They went on a field trip to China?  I am driving myself crazy.  I keep losing sight of what is important here.  These are kids.  They are learning.  They are creative.  They are happy and growing confident.

At the end of the day, isn’t it more important to teach them to think for themselves and enjoy life?  Isn’t that a greater gift than a childhood resume cooked up by parents hell-bent on making sure their child has no leisure time whatsoever?  Play is important, too. Extended periods of unstructured time formed the basis of my childhood, and those were the times that I could choose my direction of inquiry; I could develop as the author of my own creative world.

Last year, I was weirdly elated when I dropped my girls off at a camp I like to call:  “Lord of the Flies.”  It’s just a hundred kids running amok, loosely supervised by pre-teens sporting color-coded bandanas.  Campers are singing inane and vaguely inappropriate songs, making endless lanyards, and building forts out of fallen branches.

I think it’s fabulous when children are immersed in another language, taken on a trip, introduced to science, opera, and history.  We seek those opportunities and seize them when we can.  But in the meantime, let’s not forget to take some time to play and enjoy each other’s company.  Life is good.

My cat is the reincarnation of Chuck Berry.

I heard Chuck Berry is actually still alive somewhere, but I don’t think that interferes with what follows.

For those who are unaware, Mr. Berry is also known as “Johnny B. Bad.”  I’m sure Google could enlighten you regarding the scandals which surround him.  Please proceed with caution, though.  I am already feeling a wee bit apologetic for what I am about to divulge.

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Elsie found me at the SPCA.  The minute I walked into her room, she shimmied up me, licked my cheek, and unzipped my fleece with her teeth.  It was unsettling but charming, and I didn’t say no.

As I was filling out the adoption paperwork, a volunteer went to pack her up.  He returned 20 minutes later, wild-eyed and disheveled, and shoved the cardboard carrier at me. “Whatever you do,” he said breathlessly, “DO NOT OPEN THE BOX UNTIL YOU GET HOME.”

In hindsight, we should have tossed her in the trunk, but I foolishly sat with the carrier on my lap the whole way home.  Elsie promptly destroyed my favorite sweater by clawing at me through the air holes, and sensing her anxiety, I tried to yelp as soothingly as possible.  Next she pressed her face into the side of the box with such force she made a hole.  Rather than let her escape, I pressed the carrier against me while she eviscerated my torso.  Frankly, I was afraid she would jump the driver and we would all die.

Now settled, Elsie likes to leap out of nowhere to attack innocent children.  She steals stuffed animals and rips their eyes out.  She has taken over the loveseat, and will defend it by any means necessary.  Do not even lean against that thing.  She swipes bacon and roast chicken off my plate if my attention wanders for even a nanosecond.  She perches on my shoulder when I sit down at the computer.  If I don’t start fawning immediately, she digs her front claws into whatever bare flesh she can find and dangles her rear down until it hits the keyboard and ruins something important.

When my children have playdates, it is not uncommon for the visitors to express terror and frustration.  “Can you please move your cat?”  tiny voices ask me.  “She is staring at me in a scary way.”  I totally understand.

Still, she has a number of more endearing qualities.  She quacks, for example, which is entertaining.  She plays fetch.  She sleeps curled around my neck like a scarf.  She cleans my eyebrows, kneads my neck, purrs in my ear.  And, she loooooves me.  She follows me about the house, outside, even down to the corner, and holds a vigil for me when I go beyond that.  When I drive up, she runs out into the middle of the street and lies down in oncoming traffic.  She REFUSES TO MOVE, too, until I also walk into traffic and scratch her belly.  So far, drivers have thankfully noticed and stopped in the nick of time, but they stare at the black fuzzy blob blocking their way.  ‘Is that your cat?’ they ask, staring incredulously.  Not really.  I’m her person.

Elsie was the temporary name assigned by the shelter, and we tried hard to rename her. Nothing stuck.  She does have quite a few nicknames, however, including “Buttwig.”  Here’s where the ghost of Chuck Berry emerges.

When everyone is away or asleep, I generally do not close the bathroom door.  I think ventilation can be your friend in there, and the bathroom window is essentially broken.  In the event of an emergency, I could probably pry it open, but I would need a good 10 minutes to wrestle the thing shut before the hinges give out completely and I behead one of the neighbors.  I’ve heard they frown on that sort of thing.

Trouble is, now that Elsie has moved in, she likes to hang out wherever I am–especially in the bathroom.  Specifically, she likes to squeeze behind me on the seat and settle in. Buttwig.  She licks my buttocks.  Gross.

If I forget and complain about it, my spouse will suggest gallantly: “why don’t you just close the f*cking door?”  That makes sense, of course, except that’s the sort of thing I would need to remember to do BEFORE I sit down.  Also, it’s difficult to pry her off once she’s settled.  Have you ever tried to pick up a clawed creature from behind your back?

I now have to flush before I stand up, too, or that cat will try and climb into the soiled toilet.  What is that about?

I also tend to leave the door open when I shower to help with condensation issues (c.f. broken window).  Elsie will hop on the side of the tub and stare at me with a spooky intensity that makes me blush.  If she leaves, it is only to go and take a dump outside the door, so we can both marvel at the deadly aroma emitted by kitten poo.  The she will return to befoul my fluffy white towel and stare at me some more.

Perhaps there is a reasonable explanation for her odd behavior, but I can’t think what it might be.

The bizarre thing is that when I occasionally lock her in the basement or outside for the night–usually by accident–I find I miss that crazy cat.  Where is my scarf, I wonder.

A neighbor saw me today, wrestling gigantic things out of the trunk.  He offered to help, for which I was very grateful.  As we lugged boxes into the house he noticed Elsie.  “Um.”  Long pause.  “Is that YOUR cat?” he finally asked.  I was a little embarrassed to say yes.  “She seems very sweet,” he said, “but completely crazy.”  Agreed.

Ill-advised Double Features

Long, long ago, when I was allowed near the remote now and then…

It was possible to rent movies, but a person had to actually walk to the store to do so.  I lived in a funkier part of town then, one with decent public transportation, cheap, interesting restaurants, and a movie Mecca called Leather Tongue Video.  That place had just about anything you could imagine–from the craptastic to the inscrutable and obscure.

Every Tuesday, the painfully hip folks at Leather Tongue offered a double feature deal. They rubber-banded two VHS tapes together and you could rent them both for the price of one.  The catch was, you had to take them both.  I probably only made it there once on a Tuesday–I also had a regular paying job and a life in those days– but I will never forget the first pairing I randomly picked up:  Joe Piscopo Live and Misery.

I didn’t rent them, of course.  Is it really necessary to see if you can survive those two back to back?  I went home empty-handed, opened a few beers, and spent the entire evening making up equally hilarious pairings with a pile of my beloved housemates.  It was one of those magical times when you laugh so hard you weep and hiccough, and the next morning your abs are mysteriously sore.

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A couple of days ago, I had the good fortune to see a few of those former housemates, and it was delightful to hang out once again.  An hour or two in, I mentioned the doomed double feature night.  “Remember?”  I asked them.  “I want to write about those mythic double features in my blog, but I can’t for the life of me recall any of our inspired pairings.  Help me brainstorm a few to get me going on the post.”

They looked at me blankly as we sat in silence for an awkward couple of minutes.

“I think it was really about the beer,” one woman finally offered.

Damn!  Is that why I used to think I was funnier?

Now that we are on a cleanse, pregnant, ill, gluten-free, living in the suburbs, and/or trying to keep the wee ones regular, it’s rare to see us really let loose.  It’s not like grown-ups are always boring or even necessarily sober, and parenting itself can be goofy delirium on a fairly regular basis.  Still, I have some mighty fond memories from a time when everyone was single-ish, childless, and too broke to go out.  We all just lurked on the sofa and amused ourselves night after night.

So here I am sitting here at a coffee house chain, sucking down a lame-ass decaf latte and racking my brain for a couple of decently ridiculous double features, to no avail.

Dead Ringers with episodes of Saved by the Bell?

Bigger, Longer, and Uncut with Yentl?

Ugh.

Maybe you’ll have better luck.  Ping me if you do.

Question: Has The Sierra Club been infiltrated by demented idiots?

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed to find out the answer was no.

It’s not that I was keen to skewer the Sierra Club; rather, I was excited to post my irate rantings.

A week or so ago, I read an article blasting a plan set forth by local environmental groups that would supposedly destroy the urban forests of San Francisco.  I wrote a delightfully incendiary post forthwith.  I love to write when I am enraged, and I was quite pleased with the piece, despite its somewhat bombastic tone.

Then, a couple of level-headed folks suggested I seek other sources to double-check my facts before posting.  I suppose I should be grateful.

Said plan had been somewhat fictionalized and largely misconstrued by the author of the article.  Mt. Davidson is not, as I thought, on the chopping block of demented idiots.

Beyond a general concern for the planet, I have a selfish interest in the upkeep of our city’s forests:  I head up Mt. Davidson several times a week.  In fact, it is one of the great joys of living in the stupid fog zone.  Minutes from my door I can be in the forest, at the foot of it, completely oblivious to everything except trees and forget-me-nots.  It is lush, teeming with birds, and from the top, one can see for miles.  Such a walk is perfect for clearing the head, for remembering that in spite of the madness of everyday life, we are just wee beings on this incredible planet.  It makes me think about that painting by Caspar David Friedrich:  Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog

Actually, when I picture this painting in my head, the artist’s self-portrait is on a much smaller scale.

****

Of course I am relieved that evil infiltrators are not, in fact, masquerading as environmentalists while plotting to clear cut this mount.  I would be seriously aggrieved to lose my weekly constitution.  I’ll just have to find something else to make me mad as hell and inspire an engaging post.

The Milk of Magnesia Incident

You may have wondered why new parents no longer socialize with others.  Why do they only hang out with other parents?  It’s really not what you think.  New parents don’t believe they are better than you.  They are not tired of you or your random anecdotes.  They are simply constantly talking about poop, and have thoughtfully excluded you from the conversation.

No one tells you this as they coo over your swelling belly, and, later, over the squeaky drooler in the stroller.  No one talks about this at the baby shower, or in the pregnancy books, or at the obstetrician’s office.  No one.  My only inkling came from a wine-tasting event I once attended with a whole pile of new moms.  Three glasses into the evening, a woman I barely knew suddenly turned to me and shrieked, “I didn’t know that my whole life would revolve around FECAL MATTER!  I NEVER would have signed on for this job!”

I should have listened.

Hundreds of crap-tastrophes preceded The Milk of Magnesia Incident, of course, and many, many followed.  I have blowout stories.  I have double blowout stories. I have stories of Leila eating and excreting pachinko balls.  I have seen poop ingested.  I have seen it laid on the table on Easter.  I have power-hosed a screaming infant at a gas station in mid-winter, to the shock and dismay of the public at large. I have also had to yank half-digested seaweed salad from Josephine’s nether parts.  Even now that the girls are six and eight years old, few days go by without a reference to excrement, but the day I am about to describe was the one that nearly broke me.

Come to think of it, this was the same day I got my belly stuck in a play structure trying to rescue tiny Leila, who was teetering precariously 15 feet above the concrete.

I was seven or eight months pregnant and quite sick.  I was also completely exhausted from running after a non-napping toddler while lugging a six-pound parasite in my uterus.    In a moment of desperation, I did what politically correct parents are never supposed to do.  I plopped that kid in front of the television.

“Please let mama lay down for twenty minutes or she is going to fall apart!”

Leila looked at me oddly, but she must have known how serious I was, because she readily acquiesced.  I headed upstairs.  “Whatever happens, whatever you need, it can all wait for TWENTY MINUTES,” I said repeatedly.  I closed the door and lay down.  What followed were the most amazingly peaceful three minutes of my life as a parent.

Then Leila started to call to me.  “Mama…” she whimpered.

I played dead.

“Mama.”

Silence.

“Mama!”

I refused to cave in.

After she called for a minute or two longer, I heard her footsteps on the stairs, and I broke into a feverish sweat.

The door slid open, and I continued to feign sleep, even as her little feet slapped closer and closer to the bed.  Lord knows how long I would have lain there like a corpse, but Leila said, very quietly, “Mama…something happened,” in a way that induced real terror.

I opened one eye.  “Where are your pants?” I wanted to know.

“Uh oh,” she said.  This was not good.

I noticed smudgy little footprints from Leila to the top of the stairs and, as I discovered, all the way down them and across to the couch, where her pants lay in a gooey pile.

I suddenly flashed back to a conversation I had had with my spouse a couple of days earlier, when we discovered that two teaspoons of Milk of Magnesia miraculously cured our constipated kid.  Now I wondered if, perhaps, after he said, “That works well,” did he then continue to put two teaspoons of it in EVERY SINGLE TIME HE FILLED HER SIPPY CUP?  Why, yes he did.  And at the time, Leila drank about a half gallon a day.

“Stay right here, honey,” I said.  “Mama is going to clean this up, and then we’ll give you a bath.”  Instead, she walked back through the mountain of poopy goop and continued to follow me as I went to get old towels and Pine Sol.  “No, no, Leila.  STAY RIGHT HERE FOR A MINUTE.”

“Mama!”  Even as she said it, I knew what was happening.  The second bout was starting before I had had the chance to win the first round.

“Sweetheart, STAY RIGHT HERE AND I WILL GET MORE TOWELS!”  Splat, splat, splat, she followed me wherever I went.  I have no idea what I said right then, but I am certain it was nothing to be proud of.

She tried, I’ll give her that.  But as soon as I would get a load in the washer, or disinfect another room of the house, one more travesty would occur and she would forget, running anxiously about, spraying and tracking poop like some raccoon with dysentery.  I bathed her and got her into clean clothes multiple times, but in desperation she would pry them off and leave large, runny deposits in any available nook or cranny.

The whole ordeal was simply foul, but the nadir was scraping the residual solids from the sides of the washing machine while hearing Round IV or V happening in the background. My hands were raw from disinfectant for days, and I was terrified to walk barefoot or eat anything brown.  Plus, everything smelled a bit funky.  Everything.

I’m sure I could have handled the incident more gracefully, and I probably could have done something to avoid the unending fountain of diarrhea from spewing over the entire house.  You might even have a few suggestions, but go ahead and keep them to yourself.  We don’t allow Milk of Magnesia in the house anymore.  If the kids are backed up, we give them a glass of water and a pat on the back.  That will have to suffice.

Learning to have an opinion

I’m not trying to sound pathetic when I say this, but when you are the mother of small children it is so much easier if you have no needs or desires.

Babies can be very sweet, and they can also be ridiculously helpless and demanding.  Any ideas you might have about the purpose of evenings or weekends–or NIGHTS, for that matter–are best left repressed.  Just go with the flow.  If baby is hungry, baby gets fed.  If baby needs a fresh diaper, by gum she gets it.

If you are at the playground and the bathrooms are locked you simply do not need to go to the bathroom.

If you are at the zoo and everyone is happy, then it does not matter that you forgot to eat breakfast.  And lunch.  Or that the only snacks you brought are teething biscuits and boobs.  You just wait until you can pry your child away from the lemurs.  It’s not like you’re going to die.

On the weekend, you dump the baby with the spouse and race to lay in groceries and supplies for the week.  Who knows when you might next escape unchaperoned.  It is so much more bearable to drop a small fortune on pre-landfill when no one is screaming or battling diarrhea in your orbit.

If your infant does not nap or tolerate being set down, any serious business just has to wait for the spouse to return.  And if he happens to be in Japan like mine often was, you’re just fucked.

Around this time, a friend asked me if I had seen the movie Kill Bill.  I laughed maniacally in her face.

“I’m on house arrest,” I explained.

She looked at me quizzically.  “It’s out on dvd now,” she countered.

“I know,” I sighed.  “It’s just that–”  I cut myself short.  How could I explain that even if I did manage to get the kid to sleep without dozing off myself, I was still going to have to get up two or three or five times during the night.  I wasn’t about to squander the opportunity to restore my sanity on 111 minutes of choreographed violence.  Chances are, if something was published, released, sung, built, or exploded between 2003 and 2008 I’ve never heard of it.  You can ask, though, and I’ll do my best not to get huffy.

Now that the girls are six and eight, I am realizing that I have completely forgotten how to figure out what I would actually like to be doing.  Not only is my spouse willing and able to step in, the girls can amuse themselves for an hour or so, yet I can’t decide how to spend my precious sixty minutes.  Occasionally I figure it out at the end of the day, when it’s too late.  Oh, yeah.  It would have felt great to write and exercise, but I spent the whole day playing with the dollhouse and schlepping the kids around town.  If I set clear goals, I could squeeze in dolls and exercise, right?

Lookout world.  I’m thinking about formulating an opinion.

Another love letter to New York


There are a few things I truly dislike about New York, and I encountered most of them between 5:30 and 8:00 a.m. the day I arrived.   Stubbornly anti-cab, I spent the bulk of that 150 minutes on frigid platforms, awaiting imaginary trains, and–much later–pressed into a rush-hour train car with my great piles of luggage, sandwiched firmly between Freakishly Annoying Man and Mr. Clearly Shat Himself.  It is difficult for me to remember now, days later, but I had been so tired and hungry and cold that it seemed better to stay on that godforsaken train than battle the crowds and wait for the next one.

But then I suddenly emerged in sunny Brooklyn, around the corner from my old apartment.  I am wearing my scarf and ready for an adventure.

I love this place more than is really possible.

Being here is just as much about being in the past as in the present, and if I close my eyes, I am right back there in Central Park on the last day of my first year of teaching.  The Neville Brothers are there, too, and a lovely police officer asking us to please move a bit farther away so he won’t have to look into our coolers and confiscate our revelry.

My dear friend Alan is there, around the corner, throwing the key out the window and waiting for me to walk up.  He has a new mix tape, a new book, and a new way to look at the world today.

I am riding the train to work in the morning, darting off to throw up in the garbage cans and race back to reclaim my seat–a subway miracle.  I am wandering around the west village again, wondering why they keep reorganizing it so I can never find Arthur’s Tavern.  I am running late, running for trains, running out of steam, running amok.

I am meeting acquaintances for drinks, unfamiliar with bars with no signage at all–only really there if you know where to look.  I am ordering the wrong thing, I am wearing the wrong thing, I am likely saying the wrong thing, but it is ok because there is room for everyone.

Things have changed, of course.  It’s no longer MY city.  I can no longer eat bagels, and the Kentile Floor sign refuses to light up.  But the city is still full, magical, and heart-stopping. There are flirty barista boys and Indian restaurants so bedazzled it is impossible to stand up.  There are secret notes written on tickets; there is King Kong; there is the most exquisite pair of shoes I have ever laid eyes on.  There is Alan Rickman just yards away, and row after row of Brownstones, huddled together against the elements.  And there is a cafe playing an album I haven’t heard in so many years, resurfacing things long unfelt and unthought, seemingly forgotten.  It is all still here.

I remember why I moved.  I do.  New York can be a desolate and unfriendly place, even soulless.  A person has to expend so much energy looking out for herself that little remains to offer others.

Once safely nestled back on the West Coast, however, only the stardust lingers.

Oh, to go back.  I can’t wait.

Aim low kid.

In days of yore, I studied life drawing at a little studio with an engraved brass plate on the door reading:  ‘entree des artistes.’  My teacher was crotchety and demanding, fussing in equal amounts about cake crumbs and his bad back.  He was wonderful, actually; I miss that place like crazy.

It was in crotchety man’s drawing class that I became acquainted with a guy named Doug.

Doug was a profoundly talented artist with an adoring posse, a portfolio filled with exceptional drawings, and a model or two clamoring to sleep with him at all times.  He was also a bit of an asshole.  I loved drawing next to him–peering over his shoulder for inspiration and hoping his muse might take an interest in me–but at break-time I tried to steer clear of him.  His self-absorbed ruminations and general lack of interest in anything I said or did were off-putting. Mainly, though, I wanted to avoid hearing about the challenges of maintaining dreads when you have soft, golden hair.  You have to get beeswax!  Oh, the daily ratting, teasing struggle of it all!  It was more than I could bear.  I never suspected that Doug would teach me anything of value about life outside the studio, let alone the secret to New Year’s resolutions.

Then one January evening, years ago, I found myself stuck next to him in the line for the bathroom.  After an uncomfortable silence, I finally asked him what I ask everyone at that time of year.  “Did you make any resolutions?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “Less motherfucker and more jive turkey.”

Brilliant, really.

Here was a guy who obviously had plenty of room for improvement, merely planning on swearing a bit less.  I responded enthusiastically–perhaps embarrassingly so–but Doug was nonplussed.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Last year my goal was to learn how to cook fish.”  Herein lies Doug’s secret to meaningful New Year’s resolutions:  HE SETS VERY SPECIFIC GOALS HE CAN ACHIEVE.

For years I had been making resolutions like,  “Read all the books I’ve been meaning to read,” “Exercise five times a week,” and “Find balance.”  These were resolutions I had proven myself to be incapable of achieving.  Setting the same elusive goals year after year was only making me feel inadequate and frustrated.  How exactly was that helpful?

Shortly after our conversation, I threw out “achieve harmony between life and work” and wrote down the following:  “#1:  In the middle of every day I will sit down quietly for 20 minutes.  Maybe I will eat.  #2:  If I have been working for 12 hours, I will leave work immediately WITHOUT bringing any work home.”  Most of my friends found these resolutions to be terribly pathetic, but I found them revolutionary.  I had put on paper two tiny steps toward carving space in the day for myself, thereby greatly improving my daily life.  With a few minor exceptions–an art show, finals, major deadlines–I can sustain these goals and turn my attention to other areas that I would like to address.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I am not saying to set your sights low for work or love.  Not at all.  But resolutions are most often about the habits and patterns of thought we hold that serve as obstacles to our health, happiness, and sense of well-being.  Setting reasonable, achievable, and sustainable goals requires a substantial shift in mindset.  I no longer consider myself a project, or some sort of approximation of the person I would like to become.  Instead, how liberating to consider oneself a decent person, doing what decent people do:  learning from last year’s experiences and working to make the coming year even better.

In the process of writing this post, I heard about Silvi Alcivar, who had always wanted to be a writer–even called herself a writer–but could not make herself write regularly as she thought a writer should.  She decided to set a goal of writing THREE MINUTES a day.  Now she she meets people all over and has very focused, intense conversations.  Then she writes them tiny, mind-blowing, three-minute poems.  I got a little weepy watching her video, but that is not surprising, I suppose.  I cried at a Keds’ commercial once.  Check Silvi out now at The Poetry Store.

In the meantime, you may be hoping that I’m planning a year with less motherfucker as well, but I have other small fish to fry.  Sorry, mom.