Jasper & Finlay

Senna

2012-01-29T18:19:00.002-05:00

A recent documentary pick of Tim's told the story of a
gorgeous, affable, and smart young Brazilian man who was a champion racecar
driver. I had never heard of him, but the movie pulls you in to his story
easily. It brought back several memories: one of visiting a racetrack in
Illinois, guests of our good friend who got us tickets because of his
transportation engineering contacts.

As far as racetracks and races go, this
one was hardly the glamorous formula one genre track associated with bombshells
like Senna and Shumacher; it was a simple oval and the race was an "open-wheel"
formula one-ish race. But sitting in the seats, hearing all the engines rev at
once, deafening, pelvis-humming, awe-inspiring...magic, pure magic. It inspired
a drive to be good at something.

The other memory is of being 11 and sent to spend a weekend
with one of dad's closest friends at the time: Danni Dawson (a woman),
well-known portrait artist of the DC area. I loved Danni...she always supplied
pizza and taught me that an artist's studio needed to be a space for not
talking and "don't put a box around your artwork". She meant
literally, as I had the tendency to border all of my artwork with a box. Not
sure why. I knew then I wasn't made, really, for visual art but I loved the
smell of turpentine and I loved being around people who were really good at
something. One weekend at Danni's left me in the care of a mutual friend of
hers and my dad's...a former racecar driver (don't panic, it's not that story
thank god). He took me to his old stomping ground track where he was
test-driving some wickedly beautiful porsche. A seat was placed in the car to
house me and in I went. The lap around that track went by fast and I seemed to
know then I was getting a tour of something I would be unlikely to see again. I
don't know how dangerous that was...probably less dangerous than driving to the
store, but whatever, it was thrilling, it was fun.

So back to this documentary. It was amazing to watch and I
won't say too much more for fear of giving anything away. One of the things I
look forward to about, hopefully, having some amount of disposable income is
having a date night with my husband in Monaco some year and splurging on good
seats at the Indie 500 for my dad. There is something so damned cool about the
sound of engines and the sight of the cars turning their wheels back and forth
to get them warmed up, followed by the deafening roar of the official start.

Sometimes as a parent your recollections of your own
childhood become terrifying near-miss cautionary scenarios of things you avow
never to allow your own children. The bittersweetness of these memories lies in
the fact that some of these adventures, looking back on them, were just that:
adventures. Like the "hikes" I would go on by myself, around age 6 or
7, around the unclaimed underbrush of our housing complex. I spent hours by
myself, and with equally young friends, trolling a local church parking lot
where I once found a $100 bill, tried to trade my Barbie for a "bullet
man", and opened a mystery barrel only to find it teeming with spiders,
sending me screaming for my life running the 100 yards back to home.

My almost 4 and almost 6 aged boys will never be allowed
such freedom. Times have changed. But they will no doubt forge their own
adventures despite me and they will have their own stories for their own
children. And you know, if someone were to offer them a ride around the track
(properly strapped in, with me watching, okay), I just might not say no to
that.

creative juices, like lavendar-watermelon-lime

2011-09-24T14:22:00.004-04:00

Of late I have been aching to get back into some sort of creative groove. It’s been harder than it seemed in my head. I grew up with “creativity” being a very non-ambiguous, if under-valued, force in my life. My single dad was a working artist and while I look back on those times now thinking, “Jesus, why didn’t you at least try for a day-job that would get us health insurance and a working vehicle?”, creativity did pay the bills. I aspired to also be a working artist, but channeling an entirely different medium: my Gemini “gift” of communication. I was an actor. Not ac-tress. That sounds like waitress, which I was, and which just stung too much. So yeah, actor (classically trained no less, NYU, Strasberg studio). I never called myself a waitress, I always said, “I wait tables”. Language matters.

I spent 7 years thinking I would be a professional actor. And maybe a writer too, but my attempts at dramatic writing all ended miserably, involving horrible characters whose driving force seemed to be bizarre behavior and a fascination with death. Bad, so bad. The lucky break was not on my side and I hated the idea of “selling” myself. I hated meetings with prospective agents and managers, hated making phone calls, hated all that shit. A creepy prospective manager once told me that I should get different photographs because he “saw me in ball gowns” as I’m sitting there in my leather jacket holding my motorcycle helmet. Really?? The only thing I liked was acting and I was slowly realizing that was only a small part of the game. In retrospect, my best bet for making it at acting would have been staying in New York where I actually had an agent and was auditioning. But after graduating from NYU, New York was seriously on my nerves and I moved west. Then I got sick of L.A and moved mid-west, where the relative ease of life allowed a creative metamorphosis in the form of song-writing and performing.

Looking back on this time, I marvel at some of the creative ideas I thought might fly: snowboard-wear designer, pillow designer…I guess that’s about it. But before laughing at my naïveté about “just deciding” to manufacture a new line of snowboard clothing for girls, realize that I successfully produced a pretty kick-ass logo and company name and got one of my bar regulars to invest $500 in making a jacket prototype. Oh, and I did supposedly have a partner at the time, who was going to be the “maker” of the things I designed. But she turned out to be, shall we say, less than stable and I returned the start-up fund when I realized this was going to be a lot harder than it seemed in my head.

True creativity got put on the back-burner when I entered grad school in 2001. Despite just finishing a pretty cool 10 song recording (all 10 written by me in a post-breakup flurry of song prolifery), my band (Pal) disintegrated. I couldn’t keep up with it all. I’m happy to write that the other 2 members of the band are still rocking somewhere, but grad school really kicked my creative ass. I didn’t know I was signing on for 9 years of advanced education, but I guess I really wanted a doctorate bad. I told myself that academic writing was creative….usually sounding a bit defensive as I said it. Now I am done with the doctorate and trying to pick up the creative threads that were once mine. I did buy fabric for the pillows, I am finishing this blog today, and I have tuned the guitar. The last song I wrote is still unfinished, like a clock telling what time it was when the quake hit. I am determined to get it done and then start on the great American lost-girl country record. Because it sounds so easy in my head.

summer

2011-08-02T13:40:00.002-04:00

Summer:

The last time I can remember being bored was summer of 2003, after moving to an apartment complex in Kalamazoo to begin doctoral study. We picked the place because it was the least hideous of the many places we looked at, had the feel of a ‘70’s ski chalet, and a 3rd floor balcony that overlooked a small pond. It was also rampant with raccoons that would climb to your balcony to harass your cats and hiss at you when you lifted the garbage lids. Tim wasn’t ready to leave his job in Chicago, so he dropped me off one weekend and there I was-alone in a new, much smaller, town. I didn’t know it then, but the population of the town drops by about half every summer when the students leave. It’s now one of the things I love most about living here, but then it was quite a shock to my Chicago senses. I distinctly remember measuring out the days in August until classes started. One day my social highlight was going to the local DMV to get my license. I didn’t have a dog then, so mainly it was me and the cats watching the squirrels out my window. I volunteered to be part of a research project mentoring undergrads to fill some time but my subject never called back. I was bored.

Then the stress that accompanies doctoral study started and only recently ebbed. Add motherhood, home ownership, paid work, and relationship maintenance to the mix and I have felt for about the past 8 years like I have been running for a train that is just about to leave the station. I sometimes find myself dreaming of the bored periods of my life: August 2003 and those times in summer as a kid when all your friends seemed to be gone and all the library books in the world couldn’t replace them.

I am working on slowing my life down…letting the damned train go if it needs to go. There will always be another one. But summer only seems to speed itself up. In April I start counting down until the U-hauls and station wagons come to take the students and their stuff away away away. I think to myself, “there is so much summer ahead of me right now, so much time….” and then (seriously, it happens like that) and then it’s flipping August and I start counting down the days until the U-hauls return and cars start peeling up and down the dorm rows.

Jasper starts kindergarten in about a month and Finlay will start preschool. I am not sad about this as I write it, because I know they are so ready, so eager for what lies ahead. I also know that summers will now always be quick blinks of time when I try to hold on to days when the temperature is so perfect I can’t tell where the air and my skin meet. I know that when you try to hold on to things too tightly you only end up pinching yourself.

Dear Diary

2011-05-15T17:15:00.002-04:00

The upside of moving as much as we have in the past 6 months is coming to grips with how much journaling I’ve done over the course of my life. I don’t know how I’ve managed to keep the stacks of notebooks, some in the form of official “journals”, some sketch books covered with very deliberate collage now cracking off the page, some plain composition books. One day my children will be burdened with this mess, but it may give them a little glimpse of who I was. Or I suppose they could all get damp and disintegrate in a nursing home basement somewhere. It’s all okay with me, it’s life I’ve already lived. It’s funny, but I always end up getting sucked into some past chapter of my life and I am reminded that I got through some tough shit. And that I like myself and am not afraid to admit it, which is no small feat. My first journals start around age 15. I remember this time in my life so well…adolescence really doesn’t seem that far away to me and I think it’s what helps me work with younger people now. We say our children won’t get away with anything (I can, literally, smell a cigarette a half mile away if the breeze is right) but we all know they will find the weak spots. But a night with my journals just might remind me that I was once an angst-ridden, impatient, hormone-addled teenager. And that I survived. And that these reminders will help ease the pain that is coming.

1985:

Life here with the parents really sucks BIG TIME. A while ago (July 8th to be exact) I went to see Black Flag with Sean and as usual went to his house afterwards. I told Dad I was staying over at Beth’s for the evening. Well, Roxy Doxy just happened to run into Beth at the Orioles game. Dad wasn’t pleased. I kept lying to him, making up all these stories just to keep Sean’s name out of it and of course the bastard knew the real story all along. Ever since my life has been quite desperate. My thoughts are filled with leaving this place. That’s really all I want-is to move out on my own. All I want in life really is to have Sean and my freedom. Freedom seems more important now though. Anyway, I’m going to a show tonight in Baltimore (Be home by one Dad says-God I wish I didn’t have a parent sometimes).

Home

2011-04-20T13:07:00.003-04:00

It’s hard to fully explain what just happened. At times it felt like I was preparing for a huge wedding and after the invitations had all been engraved, hand-addressed, sent, the chairs and tents ordered, the venue paid for, the band booked, the dress altered….well, it felt like the train was leaving the station whether I was on it or not. That being said, I felt like not leaving was an option only rooted in fear and I couldn’t let myself do that either. So in the end, we cleaned, painted, boxed, organized, and pulled up shop in Kalamazoo heading into the dead of a long grey winter in Cleveland. Then, in the face of multiple epiphanies, and after going through the 20-step process of registering our vehicles in Ohio, we turned around for home. This was probably the hardest 3.5 months of my life ending with the stress of having to go back for a second mammogram/ultrasound (you’re kidding, right??) and taking my “no pressure, it’s only $500 and YOUR LIFE” licensing exam. But there were many beautiful moments too; I had a great job and we had great neighbors and it was very hard to say good-bye. I now look back on photos taken at the Shaker Heights Nature Center and the kids do look like they were having a really good time. Kids can always teach us a thing or two about adjustment and resilience. And the adults sometimes have to make decisions that are so not clear…you hope for the best and hope you can pick up the pieces if you *f* up.

Walking back into our empty, clean house was such a good feeling. We are now home. We have settled back into a life of good friends, spotting the buds popping through, and watching the cardinals build a nest in the tall bushes that separate our house from the neighbors’. I am starting on the list that I began in my head about what I want to change about my life:

*I want to cook more, buy a crock-pot, replace the crappy toaster, experiment with soup
*read more fiction, read anything that isn’t a psychology textbook
*start the great American novel, no scratch that, write songs again.
*make stuff…start with the cushion covers
*prairie grass
*go places I haven’t been
*do more things in the community
*spend more time with people I like

I’m happy to report I am on my way….and hello from home.

Moving 2

2010-11-13T09:29:00.003-05:00

I think this blog could be devoted just to the process of moving. Next to birthing babies and defending dissertations, I'm convinced this is something other people also need support around. This week's adventure included getting rejected by some apparently neurotic home-owners because our dog is "too big". I sent them a photo of Siouxsie so they would see what a little delight of a dog she is and I guess it backfired. Looking back on it, I did think the photo made her look bigger than she is. She can curl herself into the size of a large donut when she's on your lap, but in full standing position she looks almost like an official dog. I guess they didn't want an official dog. So we are taking a bright 2 bedroom apartment (it's the lower floor of a 3 flat) in Shaker Heights. The landlord seems reasonable (other than the Bush/Cheney bumper sticker...wait till he sees our Democrats are for the people bumper sticker) and agreed to give us a 9 month lease. Houses there are plentiful and cheap so I'm actually ready to start this whole process over again next summer.

Today I fill out this lease and write a big-ass check. I also notarize my licensure application and write another huge-ass check. Tomorrow will also likely involve writing a huge-ass check.

Today I also thank our big dog because I think she may have dodged a bullet for us.

Moving

2010-11-05T21:35:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I feel like my life has become a series of flaming hoops to jump through, each hoop I successfully pass only seeming to lead to another before I can breathe or celebrate. I really want to take some time and relax but it is not to be right now. We are moving. For the first time in six years and now with 2 children and a house to sell, we are packing up and moving east to Cleveland. It doesn’t help that I am also, amidst the fury of paint and boxes, studying for my licensure exam.

It’s for a very good cause, I found a job I have faith I will love and seriously learn from. The area where we intend to live (Shaker Heights) is amazingly beautiful, pretty affordable, and has a great school system. But right now this whole process feels crazy and sometimes even like the wrong thing to do. Like when I see our newly painted bedroom all in white and it looks so beautiful to me; like I can’t wait to spend another 6 years in it. And I want to cry for a second. Then this turns to hope that someone else will feel the same way and will pay us money for this house. We cannot stay here. We must go.

I know I will find myself in our new town. I know my kids will soon be running down some Shaker Heights street with new friends and maybe Tim and I will be going to some restaurant that makes us happy to be there. I know….

For now, I order some sweaters for the new job and Tim tries to find us a place to live because, perfect or not, we are going. In this life you have to take some risks and this feels like the riskiest thing I have done yet.

Pizza

2010-10-02T14:11:00.001-04:00

As I decompress from doctoral study I find myself slowly filling in the cracks of my life; places that simply had to be sacrificed to 24-hours-in-a-day limitations. Which brings me to the subject of pizza.

Pizza-the dish that almost every American can relate to in some way, connecting to memories of where you have had the best, worst, who with, what kind, etc. I have met so few people who don’t like pizza they stick out in my mind as bizarre anomalies akin to those who don’t like animals or music. There was the younger brother of my best friend when I was 6. She was Dutch and her mother was a lanky blonde woman who was going back to law school and left her dad for another man. I have a distinct memory of driving the fender of my bike through her dad’s legs on the sidewalk, briefcase and limbs flailing. I don’t think that was a good year for him. Jaime Versteegen’s little brother was a weird kid who didn’t like pizza and wasn’t allowed to watch the 3 Stooges because of the “violence”, both of which forever etched his unfortunate-ness into my brain.

I have always loved pizza. My first memory of making the discernment of the best pizza was a place called Pop’s Pizza in Montgomery County, MD. My dad would take me there about once a month as a kid and I don’t ever remember anyone else ever coming with us. I remember what made this pizza so awesome was that the crust tasted like beer. Or what beer smelled like. Looking back on it, I don’t know if they really put beer in the dough or if I was just tasting what real dough, made with yeast, tasted like. Later in life I would come to appreciate the brick oven pizzas of John’s in NYC and the slew of good Italian restaurants I worked in-where I learned to like anchovies and a raw egg cooked onto a quatro staggione.

My dad had a beat-up cookbook of recipes from Europe (I have NO idea where he got this as he has never been particularly interested in cooking) and on the cover was this incredible photo of pizza with what looked like twisted up pieces of bacon on top. I became so intrigued with this photo that I pestered my dad to buy the ingredients listed to make such a thing and we began making homemade pizza. It was almost as good as Pop’s because the dough was so beautifully yeast-laden. I discovered a joy/obsession with dough. Kneading bread dough is probably on my top 5 list of favorite things to do. You might not have guessed that about me. The sight of a delicate bubble of freshly risen dough makes me almost giddy, but not as giddy as smashing it down with my fist. This is probably why as a kid I couldn’t get enough of In the Night Kitchen. In that book, Max lived out one of my greatest fantasies.

I continued to make versions of pizza throughout my adulthood, experimenting with dough recipes and ingredients. My husband who has always been an excellent gift-giver, bought me Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess because I was deeply intrigued by Nigella and her cooking show. Nigella inspires me to drizzle myself in chocolate and then bacon whereas Paula Dean makes me want to live on a raw foods compound to scrub myself on the inside. Tim and I settled on the dough recipe in Nigella’s book (a very good one) but then his mother bought us a bread machine which makes a perfect batch of dough ever y time (and I get to knead it at the end). I used the bread machine maybe twice since the babies came; for a good 4 years it collected dust on the bottom shelf of our basement storage. During that time we settled for eating whatever frozen pizza happened to be on sale. It hurts a little to even write that. But no more. The pizza drought was ended when, inspired by the visit of a good friend, I brought the bread machine upstairs, cleaned it, and produced a perfect specimen topped with zucchini, onions, and bacon (cut into bits, not twisted). It felt like I was home again. Later that we drank red wine around a fire outside and talked about Chicago.

The bread machine is now on weekly duty and it feels really good to pass the frozen pizzas at the grocery store. I dream of a time we will have a yard with a brick oven. One day. One day.

Finished

2010-09-10T13:16:00.003-04:00

It’s done. I am officially and for the first time in 10 years no longer a student. I never thought I would go back to being a student after completing a neat, contained 4 year stint at NYU and graduating in 1991. But there I found myself in Chicago, taking a single “psych 101” course at DePaul, trying to figure out something to do with my life if “rock star” didn’t work out. And I was pretty sure it wouldn’t given my bad attitude about living out of a van.

The last few details of ph.d-dom were pretty excruciating. Even after writing, defending, and revising a 330 page dissertation, I then had to format it to within an inch of my life. Which confirmed that I will never be hired as an executive assistant, receptionist, or office worker of any kind because I would not pass the Microsoft Word test. Humbling. In the end, the nice formatting lady in the grad college told me to just send her the few pages that still weren’t working and she would fix it for me. Oh sweet joy, now give me my degree. Please and thank you. I literally waited by the computer for it to show up on my transcript and when it did, little angels descended from the ceiling to fly around my head for a few moments. Then it dawned on me that I am now over-educated and under-employed. Then came a brief existential crisis where I doubted all of my choices up to this point. Then I filled out my first on-line form where I got to check the “Dr.” box instead of the “Ms.” Box and I thought, Yes. It was all worth it just for this moment right here.

It’s been all of about 2 weeks now and I think it’s settling in a bit. The creative dry patches are slowly coming back to life in the form of crayon drawings, raspberry popsicles, banana chocolate chip cake with chocolate cream-cheese frosting, and housepainting. Getting back to writing something other than a dissertation is close on the heels of housepainting, but I’m trying to take it slow to avoid cramping. I may soon pick up the guitar again, if only to begin learning the roster of songs I’m picking out for my brother-in-law’s wedding. Surprise, Nick! Wait to you hear my kick-ass version of Close to You.

Movie Review: The September Issue

2010-06-16T14:49:00.000-04:00

Tim tells me that he’s placed a documentary in our Netflix “instant watch” queue; something about Vogue and fashion and September. I listen vaguely, uh-huh. Sounds good. I do love fashion, and kind of always have. I started reading Vogue cover-to-cover around age 11 when an old girlfriend of my dad’s, a cool but crazy woman who hand-made coats out of leather and sold them in her Baltimore boutique, would give me old stacks of them. Carol Alt and Kim Alexis were the models of the day and although I was genetically built like them, I didn’t know it and I didn’t have their wardrobes. We didn’t have much money for clothes so I would dream of the fantastical collections that one day I would make enough money to buy. When I hit puberty and developed powerful new feelings for members of Duran Duran, I equally admired their European girlfriends and plastered pictures of the band and their models all over my bedroom. A wonderfully androgenous, teen-angst fueled, sexy, time.

So this movie is a documentary of the making of the biggest Vogue issue of the year, the September issue. The thickest one, weighing a good 3-5 pounds. For lovers of fashion, holding one in your hands, with a good cup of coffee and a few hours to kill is like nirvana. Well, it was like nirvana, until I became a therapist specializing in eating disorders and developing serious questions about the ethics of articles about models who complain about being called “fat” as a size 4. No seriously, a SIZE 4. You get how absolutely fucked up that is. Even a fashion-loving feminist has to draw a line somewhere. And after motherhood, articles like that are akin to someone saying, “This fabulous new coat is made out of babies”.

Yet with nary a pause, I got completely sucked in to this documentary and found myself entranced with the two centrally featured women, Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington. Anna is world-renowned for being an icy bitch (this was supposedly the Meryl Streep character in The Devil Wears Prada) but in watching her, I didn’t think, “bitch” at all really. Her indifference to politeness and pleasantry was about as offensive as a jungle cat’s; you could just tell it wasn’t her nature and frankly, it didn’t seem malicious. Anna had been in fashion forever and like many of those unintimidated by fashion, seemed more comfortable in uniform than being swept by trends (I think she wore the same necklace every day she was filmed and her hair has been the same impeccable bobbed-bang look forever). Grace Coddington was like Anna’s equally formidable polar opposite, but one who also wore a uniform: baggy black dress and crazy frizzed out red hair. All artistic emotion and sweetness, the most famous stylist in fashion who creates amazing photographs and then paces back and forth watching Anna slash through them at editing time. You see these two incredible women play off each other, one all emotion and fire, the other cool and reserved but not necessarily unkind. Both clearly very brilliant. The amazing thing about watching this is that neither of these women seemed bogged down by what is sold in their magazine. Anna clearly prefers a thin aesthetic but has no evidence of plastic surgery and wore her wrinkles (often shown at close range) with quiet dignity. She looked like she truly didn’t care if you caught a close up of her neck waddle. Grace looked as though she couldn’t be bothered with clothes at all, being so attentive to them on others.

Occasionally I still like to sit back with a fashion magazine. My values have changed for sure. I’ll likely never spend that much on clothes or shoes again knowing how many kids a $500 pair of sandals could feed, but it’s fun to look. I only wish Vogue could capture some of the spirit of the two women most responsible for their September issue. Because skinny, air-brushed women going on and on about how they’ve come to accept their size 4 curves just isn’t that sexy.

Art of the Day/Birthing a Dissertation

2010-05-02T14:22:00.003-04:00

Mark Ryden, an old favorite. Creator of eerie images oddly soothing for being simultaneously so disturbing. Seems fitting for the moment.

Love this one. I can relate on so many levels.

The lesson I am working most on lately is about relinquishing control and making things less hard for myself. This lesson keeps making itself relevant in a variety of areas. But the biggest one has to be the journey that has been finishing this 370 page document that is my dissertation and approaching the finish line to this 7-year journey. It is a scary time, a frustrating time, a crazy-making, but character-building time. The beautiful backdrop to this time is a welcome time of 70-80 degree days, the explosion of flowers and good smells that is spring in Michigan, and the ever-increasing vocabulary of my 2 and almost-4 year old boys. They are the blonde reality-checks of my life.

The dissertation metaphor that continues to make the most sense is that of giving birth. Rather than 9 months of gestation, it's 3+ years, but like the labor process, the last part is really what counts. The early part of labor was (at least for me) pretty easy. "Hey, this isn't so bad..." Followed by transition which was more like "What the hell???" and now I'm in the pushing stage, "What do you mean, BREATHE??" But in order for this baby to be birthed, that is exactly what I am trying to do, b-r-e-a-t-h-e....let go, let it come.

More to follow.

The poetry of 3 year olds

2010-03-25T21:15:00.002-04:00

The abstract beauty of the almost-4-year-old mind. This is a recent bedtime masterpiece:

Mom: Do you know how much I love you?

Jasper: good.

Mom:I love you more than kittens.

Jasper: You love me more than pie.

Mom: I love you more than the sun.

Jasper: You love me more than pink.

Mom: I love you more than dolphins.

Jasper: You love me more than sausage.

Mom: I love you more than cupcakes.

Jasper: You love me more than jets.

Mom: I love you more than porcupine babies.

Jasper: You love me more than eyes.

Mom: Yes, I love you more than eyes.

Sick

2010-03-01T14:40:00.002-05:00

A couple weeks ago we were roused around 4am by our older kid's mournful tears as we found him in a pile of throw-up in his bed. So sadly, he announced, "I barfed". We then brought him into our bed where he continued barfing and didn't stop until around 10am. Nothing tugs at you like your kid, so obviously miserable, pleading with you, "why do I keep barfing?" You think to yourself, you're barfing because every damned kid you've been in contact with over the past month has come down with the gastrointestinal plague and this is your turn. But what I say, dumbly, is, "you got a bug, honey", which panics him, "I swallowed a bug??" After the illness wanes, I get a sore throat that won't go away and find myself shivering in my coat at work as I tell people, "I'm not sick". But I know, I know. I peel myself out of bed the next morning to go to my university's health clinic where I am, 2 hours of waiting later, diagnosed with strep.

I suspected strep because roughly 20 years earlier I'd experienced an existential bout of the illness. The kind of illness experience we all have, the ones we carry with us long after the antibiotics have worked. I had just broken up with my boyfriend and he had moved out of our Brooklyn apartment. I was weeks away from trekking out on my own to San Fransisco and all my things were in boxes. I had another week left of my waitressing job, a week to make some extra money and tie together some loose ends. Then at work I get a headache and the next morning I'm feverish and can barely swallow. I call in to work: I won't be in today, or ever again. The boyfriend had taken the lamps so what I remember of that time is shivering alone with little food, the apartment shadowy and stark. A friend brings me soup at some point. Finally I go to the NYU clinic, the only place I could think of as a newly graduated student where I am diagnosed with strep. I remember the antibiotics working so fast and feeling so stupid for not getting them earlier.

This time I am not stupid, I go right away. And right away they work and I feel better. I am a mother now. I know how to cup my hands under my kid to collect maximum barfage. I know how to put a cold compress on his head to soothe him. And thankfully I have plenty of light, a good man who tells me to go back to bed, icecream in the freezer, and a badass t.v. Not bad, 20 years later, not bad.

My First Surgery

2010-02-06T13:10:00.003-05:00

I knew Finlay was a different kid than what we were used to pretty immediately. He is so different from his big brother and yet when they sit together, in profile, they are almost identical (just looking at their heads). Finlay has battled ear infections in a way Jasper never did. They linger, resistant to antibiotic and are accompanied by fluid coming out of every other orifice at high rates. Poor kid is clear for a week then back to the snot factory. Allergy testing came back completely negative. So after his latest bout of month-long infection requiring antibiotic shots in both legs (poor kid), I figured it's time to take a look at this ear tube thing. In my mind I pictured little tubes coming out of each ear, getting caught on clothing and hooking him on door knobs. Not so: to my pleasant surprise they are invisible and the size of an earring backing. Several long trips to the Ear Nose Throat people culminated in his surgery yesterday. Tubes, adnoids, and something in the nose called the terbinates.

So on we go to Bronson Hospital where Finlay's story began, in a different building. As far as hospitals go, I like Bronson. I have spent more time there over my 2 pregnancies than any other healthcare place so I feel comfortable there. We go to the 2nd floor outpatient surgery place. 4 years earlier I regularly came to this place, where Partners in Women's Health used to be, a floor below. The first time I saw tiny little Jasper up on a screen and later had to drink a disgusting orange soda and have my blood sugar measured. But I digress....here we are for a very different reason. Finlay isn't as cranky as we thought he'd be without eating and he is very intrigued with their rolling ball in a plastic maze toy. We go back and get him into the cutest yellow pajamas that tie in the back I've ever seen. I can't believe we didn't bring a camera. They have wagons and he pulls one around the clinic. Then it's time for his relaxation medicine that makes going to the O.R much more palatable and forgettable. Within minutes he slows down, then becomes loopy and giggly. Like a college kid getting high for the first time, except he's not yet 2. He looks at us like "you're funny", then practices his words, "momma", "maaaama" "mamahhhh". Then he looks at you like he's seeing you for the first time and says "hi!". Oh my sweet sweet boy. A nice male nurse carries him in his arms off to the O.R and I surprise myself by not crying. Tim reads an NME all about Oasis and I read my WMU's guide to formatting your dissertation while repeatedly asking Tim, "what's so funny?"

Before long we go to meet our boy who isn't digging the nurse offering him a popsicle. He wants to be held by us. We hold him and let him do whatever he pleases to an orange sherbert which means smearing it all over himself saying, "mmm!" Then he does the same to a raspberry yoghurt. By the evening he's eating and wanting to climb on his crib and grab Jasper's toys; all pretty normal. Today he's a little cough-y and there's flecks of dried blood in his ears from the surgery, but he's doing well. We take him to the local children's museum and he can't get enough.

I hope this was all the right thing to do. I hope this alleviates the constant runny noses and enflamed ear drums. It's one of the many parental crossroads I'm sure we'll come to: will this help him or mess him up? Will this solve the problem or create more? In the end you make a choice and cross your fingers.

been awhile

2010-01-15T21:25:00.003-05:00

I think I'm ready to come out of my blogging pout. I admit it; it's been a pout. I'm thinking about how to write this delicately because it was the trigger, but it's hard writing about what you know. What I know is family, work, what's on t.v, what I'm reading. I know I need to expand this world soon, but this is what I've got right now. I don't write about work and my sphere is getting smaller; I will no longer be writing about the parts of family that involve my marriage. I've been told the material "isn't funny" and "isn't flattering". I disagree with half of that, but no matter, I do believe in fairness and if you don't want to be written about, you don't. Damn, glad I'm not a stand up comic. I'd be lost. Or single. Maybe both.

So I haven't posted since November 21st, almost 2 months ago. Highlights since that time have included:

*buying way too many toys for our children and watching the chaos

*throwing a kick ass dance party for our favorite people on New Years Eve

*acting as human sled dogs propelling our kids around a self-made sledding race track

*looking forward to my first girls' weekend away; Miami; this Mother's Day

*buying my first bathing suit in 5 years

*sending the kids back to daycare; they remember their friends and Finlay now runs into his room

*Finlay getting scheduled for ear tube and adnoid surgery (soon)

*no longer being a 1 car family

*new t.v

*recognizing that I will read anything by Joyce Carol Oates even if it's bad

*managing existential angst about the future

*new season of Project Runway sneaking up on me while I'm still trying to figure out who won the last one.

which brings us up to now.

Nice to be back. Kisses, T.

Men Are From Dairy Women Are From Produce

2009-11-21T23:07:00.003-05:00

Tim and I mesh pretty well on most things. Over the past 9 years of our marriage I have discovered just a few teensy areas in which we are destined to clash: *how I rate his driving skill, *whether or not he is ever drunk (I learned this early on as I hoisted him out the door at Danny's just in time for him to barf over the railing in front), and *grocery shopping generally.

On the few occasions I have relinquished control over the grocery domain I end up feeling like Veruca Salt on Christmas morning: these are the wrong kind of apples!! Chocolate mousse yoghurt AGAIN? Did you not remember from the last time you bought this that I hate it?? $20 worth of English biscuits?! You're going to need to get a better paying job if you're going to keep buying Jaffa cakes.

I recognize it in myself immediately and vow never to send him grocery shopping again as I mumble, "sorry, it's just that these apples are always mealy and I can't eat mealy apples but I suppose I can....." and he looks at me like "are you still talking?" So we do pretty well with sticking to our assigned tasks in this relationship but once in awhile worlds collide. My plans of getting to the grocery store for unencumbered shopping on Saturday morning are dashed by having to lug both kids into the doctor for suspected pink eye that turns out to be duo sinus infections leaking out of their eyes. We decide to hit my least favorite grocery store right after because Tim needs to go to work (just for the day, no big changes) and we have no milk at home. We decide on a "divide and conquer" strategy with each of us taking a kid and a cart. Finlay is in one of his moods and I hear the screaming from across the store. We reconvene in the produce section where I unload half his cart to replace the items with their correct counterparts. For example, although I can only tolerate orange juice that isn't from concentrate, Meijer brand OJ tastes funny to me; like they're using oranges from some grove next to a dirty parking lot. I hoist the 2 cartons of OJ out of the cart. "What's wrong with those?" "You know I hate Meijer brand orange juice" Why?" "Because it tastes bad" "But you used to like it" "I know, that was then, this is now, get with the program". And with that Jasper and I speed away to fix the problem.

I'm sure some of you are sensing a problem relinquishing control over some small domaign of my life. You would not be wrong. We could analyze the hidden meanings in my grocery shopping behavior all day. Or we could just have a glass of the right orange juice and put our feet up.

7 Stages of a Lay-off

2009-11-15T12:17:00.003-05:00

It's no big secret: Michigan is a scary place to be right now if you want to say, work in exchange for money. Michigan can be scary for other reasons too, but I'm not going to go on some big tirade about guns and KKK membership. And truthfully, I don't know that much about Michigan for someone who's lived here 6 years. My life has been consumed by writing lengthy papers, house renovation, and babies: all in the neatly contained little haven that can be Kalamazoo. I've seen snippets of Grand Rapids' Christian conservatism, bought my fair share of Burberry at the Michigan City outlets in better times, and I've heard about life in Detroit, mainly through a blog I read, but I am admittedly isolated. One thing is for sure, though: the worst state economy in the nation is hitting almost every person we know here and a few weeks ago set up shop in our house.

We saw it coming, though. Tim's work at a what was once a mid-sized architecture firm started dwindling about a year ago. It dwindled and dwindled and Tim survived about 9 rounds of layoffs that included friends who had been hired before him. That kind of constant change does take a toll on the psyche so when his little meeting finally came, it was met with a bit of relief. There was even a brief time when I was going through my daycare meltdowns that we plotted on how he could either get laid off or fired. *Bring in a Barbie Dreamhouse and try passing it off as the new project model! *Start talking about your new Satanic Church membership! *Just start crying and pleading, "Fire me now, just fi-eerrrr meee now pleeeease". But in the end all we had to do was wait. Tim came home (extra cheerful I must say) and told me as I was taking tater-tots out of the oven. I must say I wasn't expecting it on this day and had to lean over for a second to catch my breath.

Ironically, with Tim's unemployment and no daycare, we are ahead financially. No daycare. That's the stomach-churner bit in all this. Just when they were getting used to it, we have to pull them out. The teachers send them off sadly with photos and cards and "hope you'll come back and visit's". I try to keep seeing the silver linings: I can now see the boys at lunch and Tim can have some time with them before we send them into the vortex of public education.

This past week I think the reality of it all is settling in. Tim is actually looking kind of like I used to when I was home with them all day. Like, "what do you mean you want to take your work pants off? I'm tired, take this kids NOW!". No, in all fairness it's more like, honey do you think you could keep an eye out for the kids while you're watching the Simpsons and I'm all like, bring me my beer and sandwhich! Pay back is kind of a bitch. Now I know how he feels working all day to come home and barely get a moment to pee. Now he knows how it feels to watch the clock praying 5 o'clock comes faster, faster....and once again we settle into the newness.

Oh and my stages of a lay-off theory goes like this:

stage 1 is either: "finally" OR "holy crap, are you f-ing serious??"

stage 2 is either: "this is going to be so great" OR "what the hell are we going to do?" or a mixture of both.

stage 3 is universal: "I'll bet they call next week to ask me back"

stage 4 is also universal: "Is the phone working?"

stage 5: "I guess this is it"

stage 6: who the hell is Marvin?"

stage 7: get started on your draft of the great American novel.

I Think He's Going to be Like Me

2009-10-29T22:26:00.002-04:00

For the thousandth time I make the mistake of believing that what tastes irrisistably good to me will also appeal to my 3 year old. This has failed more times than I can count, but I still I try. Jasper is horrible at dinner. He is fairly game at breakfast and lunch, but at dinner the only thing he will eat most nights are goldfish crackers and peanut butter. I guess I just think that the night I serve this as his actual dinner I will just have to turn in my parental membership card. So tonight I think I'm going to get away with giving him the half of the Zingerman's Surprise sandwhich I bought at lunch (roasted chicken w/ smoked ghouda and roasted peppers on sourdough bread). He immediately hates it and asks for "regular bread", enraged. Tim starts trying to convince him that what he has is great if he would just try it. I remember that as a kid I thought sourdough bread was sent from the devil. So I actually empathize and offer him a hotdog.

Here's a snippet of dialogue from tonight's dinner table:

Jasper: Don't even look at me!

Mommy: Excuse me??

Jasper: No, excuse ME!

The kid is starting to develop verbal inflection, a sense of humor, and a moodiness that I know is going to rival whatever I think I've got going. I am beginning to look at him with a wonder that isn't just about how damned cute he is.

Tim and I collectively look away so he doesn't see our laughter. I turn back and say, so...and he says: "SO!"

Lest you think we're going to be those parents who laugh at every rude, obnoxious thing our kid does, do not fear. I know enough about behavioral shaping to know there are times we have to hold firm. That also happened tonight. Jasper bit Tim on the thumbnail as he was flossing. This lost him his bedtime stories and that did not go over well AT ALL. But we held firm, gave him a hug, and told him he can try again tomorrow. My lovely, moody, funny little boy.

Muffins and Haircuts

2009-10-17T22:04:00.003-04:00

Last week we went to the kids' daycare/preschool fundraising auction/potluck. I know, a lot to take in. This whole fulltime school thing or daycare thing, whatever you want to call it, is new to me so stuff like this is pretty foreign. But I've got to say, so far so fabulous. First of all, I'm not one for following recipe rules. Sometimes the results of my inner culinary rebel are disastrous but most of the time things work out just fine. Like with the Amish stuff. I cut down on the sugar and substituted a kid's container of applesauce for 1/2 the oil. I also decided on muffins instead of putting everything in a bread pan. Worked out great. And 4 new enemies were rewarded hee hee. And I felt an odd sense of satisfaction bringing not only a main dish but desert as well. I know what it was: smugness.
My hopes weren't high for the silent auction. For all my confidence in other areas I carry around a bit of the "I never win anything" attitude sometimes. But this was really really easy. One of the moms works at a salon and talked fellow salon workers to donate a bunch of services like cuts and color. I've admired her from a distance: she has really stylish, short, blonde, hair. So that's a good sign. Everyone else must've really liked their hair because no one was bidding on this stuff. So I won! Now, things still have the potential to go pear-shaped, but I'm excited. I've forgone professional hair color for 2 years now and it's starting to affect me psychologically. There is the hope of something better out there now. Something new, something that could turn it all around...this is what a good cut and color can do for you.
So fingers crossed!
Here's to new muffin recipes, new haircuts, new prospects.

Amish Enemy Bread

2009-10-04T11:41:00.002-04:00

At arm's length, Tim thrusts a ziplock baggie at me saying, "Here, this is from Kelly at work. It looks like a bag of sick." He then proceeds to withdraw the bag and mock-vomit into it repeatedly. Hoooaaahhhhhhmmmmaaaa pause mmmwaaahhh hooooaaaaaa pause, waaaaa.
Nice, I say.
He says, "it's some kind of friendship bread, here's the instructions. Oh, and she told me to tell you it's on its fifth day". I then tell him the real story: Sit down, honey. This isn't what it says it is. The Amish have a long history of dealing swiftly with their enemies by baking them ENEMY bread. You see, this bread will attack its recipients both physically and psychologically. The first emotion it instills is fear, then disgust, then regret and guilt. This bag will sit on the enemy's kitchen counter and not only make them feel physically sick when they look at it, but it will psychically haunt them if they don't follow the instructions as directed.
"But I thought the Amish were peaceful and kind"
I used to think that too. Back home in Maryland we would make regular trips up to Amish country to buy impossibly good apple pie and roasted chickens. Then I found out why the applie pie was so good: they drug it. Whatever drugs they confisgate off the teenagers coming back from the devil's playground and all that, well they don't believe in throwing anything away. They're crafty. Some of this is just too hard to swallow. Look at these ingredients, Tim: cups of sugar, a package of vanilla pudding mix, and a CUP of canola oil. They want you to die slowly from coronary disease. Or just get really fat.
"So Kelly doesn't want to be my friend?" No, she likes you fine, she doesn't want to be MY friend. In fact, this is an old Amish trick used to oust someone. Maybe she's got a thing for you. He thinks about this, "Hmmm...you may be on to something there" But I've got a plan, I'm going to follow these instructions and make the enemy bread, then give it right on back. I'm Teflon, you're glue, everything rolls off me and sticks to you!
Tim asks, "So are you going to eat it?" Hell yeah! It's got vanilla pudding in it!

Bedtime

2009-09-13T14:09:00.003-04:00

Things have changed around here a bit lately. There’s been laughter, tears, temper tantrums, denial, bargaining, and now perhaps some surrender and acceptance. The first few weeks of a return to fulltime work schedule were hell, mainly all to do with missing them and Finlay’s hard nighttime adjustment. But he’s come around and I know there’s lots about his new environment that is really good for him. Jasper hasn’t really skipped a beat although he’s sassing a bit more now, but I knew that was coming. He’s also taken to some weird baby talk that I can’t figure out whether he’s copying somebody from school or one of the Yo Gabba Gabba characters. All of a sudden his perfect R’s have become Ahs, which drives me absolutely banana ape-shit. Like “here” has morphed into “hee-ah” and there into “they-ah”. I think now he’s doing it for the “let’s see Mommy and Daddy’s heads collectively explode” reaction. I’m trying to put it on extinction. For the first time I want to kill the baby-talk characters on kid’s shows. Do they know what they’re inspiring??

So the good news is I really like what I’m doing and who I’m doing it with. I mean, I know the year is young, but I also know from being around enough psychology doctoral interns that horror stories can come early, fast, and often. I have my own office with its own window, we are given decent autonomy, and my training director brings in dark chocolate daily as one of the staples of working. I mean, in lieu of getting paid decent money, but hey, it could be worse. Much, much worse.

What else has changed is that the approximately 2.5 hours I get with my children every workday now count in a whole new way. And I’m much more sensitive to people making judgments about fulltime working mothers not being affected by the challenges of motherhood. Cos here’s the thing: I’ve seen fulltime stay-at-home moms get so overwhelmed they’re pretty checked out w/ their kids. And when I stayed at home all day most days I found myself sometimes literally standing at the window waiting for Tim to come home so I could be relieved. That’s all gone now. My time away from work is for my children. At least for now, I’m not really up for anything that doesn’t involve them. I know that will change, but it’s where I’m at. Bedtime now holds a sacred place in my schedule. Finlay and Jasper have had their baths and Finlay is so tired he drifts in my arms. We have a ritual. After diaper and bedtime clothes, I put on Bedtime w/ the Beatles (the best soothing lullaby music ever) and hold him on my shoulder while I try to remember the words to Norwegian Wood. We dance around the room like that and he waves at the mirror. Then I put him down in his crib, tuck in his blankets, kiss his stuffed sheep that he loves, tuck it in next to him, and let him hold my fingers for awhile. Tim and I take turns helping Jasper finish up his bath and he picks a book for each of us to read him. Mornings, we have breakfast together and I sacrifice mascara-time so I can get one more hug in on the driveway.

I do miss the stretches of hours where I had to think of stuff to do so we wouldn’t all go crazy. And I know that things will find their own balance and maybe, without noticing, that is just what is happening now.

Escape Is Easier Than Longing

2009-08-22T14:37:00.001-04:00

So I now have a whole new respect for the working-outside-the-home-all-day-Monday-through-Friday mother. This week began my year-long clinical internship, an essential piece to finally finishing this PhD and getting a “Dr” in front of my name. And in truth, it’s a cushy gig as far as internships go. This week we got to start at 9am (instead of 8am), got long lunches, and were sent home early. And I really like my fellow interns and I really like what I’m doing and I plastered my office with my beloved Yoshitomo Nara postcards. And I can walk to work and come home to a friendly dog for lunch.

But I wasn’t prepared for how much I would miss our days together. Finlay and Jasper are both taking to their new daycare really well and it’s a great place and everything will be okay in the end but today I feel so much tension and sadness in my neck that I fear even my massage-master friend won’t be able to coax it all out (good thing we get regular massage included in our insurance packages). I mean, I just feel it all right there (I’m pointing to the left side of my neck and shoulder). Finlay has had a harder time this week than Jasper. The first few days he screamed, “Dada!” over and over as I left. In my mind, I’m hearing, “you’re a horrible mother and I wish you were dada because dada would never leeeeeaaave meeeee”. Apparently this goes on only a few minutes and then he grabs an Elmo doll and has breakfast. But it hurts, it hurts. By Friday this got better. When I see him at the end of the day he runs to me and hugs me which feels so great, but then until bedtime seems to just want to punch me in the face which really doesn’t. And every night this week he’s punished us both by waking at 2 or 3am and screaming like a wounded banshee. I know this will pass (well, either it passes or we take turns sleeping in the back of our tiny VW) and I know that he’s also teething, but right now it feels like my semblance of stabilized world has been hit by a toddler-throwing poop storm.

I realize that my want of an escape after 9 straight kid-hours are no match for my want of return after 9 hours without them.

Saving a Camera

2009-08-16T15:43:00.002-04:00

So the camera miraculously has survived it's brush w/ the deadly hands of a toddler. I've learned a lot since then. If your camera gets immersed in a body of water, retrieve it as quickly as possible and resist the urge to turn it on to see if it still works. If you do, it's bound not to (although truthfully, this is exactly what I did). You should take the battery and memory card out, open all compartments, shove some dessicant in it (the packets that come in sneakers or new purses) and leave it alone for 2 days. If it still doesn't work at that point, online advice suggests you smack it really hard against something. What do you have to lose?

I think our next camera will be the one I recently saw advertised during tennis. It shows young children being given digital cameras at a playground. They smash them, push them down slides, ride bikes over them, and drop them in water. And the camera is supposed to handle all this without difficulty. Until our children can afford to replace expensive digital equipment, that is the camera for us. And for lots of other parents apparently.

This is why we can't have nice things.

2009-08-09T21:37:00.002-04:00

When Finlay broke the windshield a couple weeks ago Tim said, "I'm keeping a list of things they will owe me one day and this is going on it". Today, sadly, I think our digital camera may be an addition to Finlay's tab. In all honesty, it should really go on my own damned tab because I saw this one coming. Today was a humid, hot squelcher of a day and when we finished complaining to each other about all we have to do and all the time we don't have to do it in we unleashed the kids in the back garden where they promptly went straight for the tiny pool of water in the sandbox cover. In another 5 minutes Tim let them run around naked and the sight was too cute to miss, so I go get the camera to catch it. I do love my little boo, Finlay, but he is the 16-month old you cannot really take your eyes off for a second. I know, I know, all toddlers bla bla but some are more bent on destruction than others and this is my kid. I set the camera down on the chair for just a wee second and think, boy I'll have to remember to get that because I'll bet Finlay might throw it into the water and well, 2 minutes later I scream and rescue the camera after one dunking. It's drying now...I'm not supposed to touch it. Fingers crossed but my hopes are not high.
Jasper owes me one pair of cheap sunglasses. Someone in Isla Mujeres owes me one pair of very expensive sunglasses.
Finlay owes me new glass for my wedding present concert poster, a new front windshield, a new section of floor where he gouged it with a kitchen untensil, and possibly a new camera. Okay, I'll split the camera with him.

Good Day

2009-07-26T20:59:00.003-04:00

thank god the occasional knock-you-on-your-ass-make-you-want-to-curl-up-in-a-tiny-ball-rocking-back and forth-repeating "calm blue ocean" days are few and tempered by days ending w/ Jasper's long legs struggling for space on my lap as I read McDuff and Harry McClary. Two books about Scottish terriers oddly enough, 1 white 1 black. Finlay has become generally a little calmer and has a high pitched squeal of delight that never fails to make me mentally squeal w/ my own delight and Jasper, fresh out of a bath, eyelashes so long they (literally, seriously) touch his eye brows, saying "can I snuggle w/ you, mommy?" well all is right in the world.

And the day before "bad day" was a really "good day", spent at the uspeakably gorgeous Meijer Gardens. If only it wasn't an hour trip up into Reform Christianity country (Grand Rapids), but alas....there is an amazing children's garden there w/ a little recreation of the great lakes, tiered, w/ little plastic boats waiting to be launched into the blue.

The windshield does need to be replaced...the crack is snaking westward. My plans for professional haircolor postponed: hello medium ash brown, how's it going? But tonight it's okay, it's all okay.

Bad Day

2009-07-21T20:11:00.003-04:00

There's no accompanying photo to document the shitty kitty day this has been but if anyone wants to see the cracked windshield come on over. For some reason, I don't remember days like this pre-kids. I mean, I know I had some bad ones but I think when you can curl up alone on your couch w/ a half a Sara Lee chocolate cake and stay up till 4 am watching the twilight zone and the banana splits it really helps dull the edges. Parenting has brought me the greatest highs I've ever known bla bla, but damn it has some lows too. The first thing I've noticed post-cherubic blonde boys is that my hormones haven't been quiiiiiite the same. But it's a hard one to figure out b/c a "holy crap I'm cranky" day for me used to mean I shut my office door and grabbed my best friend to go out for an extra long lunch of Thai food. So maybe things are the same it just seems like a cruel joke that on the day I feel most like doing demo work w/ a steel-toed boot, it should begin w/ all the fruit in the freshly stocked fruit bowl being systematically bitten and returned to said bowl. But fruit is relatively cheap. I think what makes days like these so compounded is that I don't want to yell and I don't want to snap and I don't want to be impatient....I mean the moment I catch myself sounding like one of "those" moms I feel sick inside. Sick because I recognize how I've judged so many other moms and b/c I know I am judging myself and all I really want is a little 4 day vacation in the Virgin Islands.

The day ebbs and flows...I breathe, I get some work done at home, they go back to their nice daycare lady who was on vacation for 2.5 weeks. She tells me Finlay hit another kid w/ a firetruck. Tim has soccer tonight so I will be handling bedtime, but I'm feeling refreshed. Then we get home and in the time it takes to unstrap them from the carseats and unload the bags, Finlay has crawled to the front seat (no big deal we think), where he does a little bounce move and thuds his head on the windshield. I wait for the delayed-reaction cry but he doesn't even pause. Then I gasp, there is a toddler head-sized crack in the glass. We check his head for a mark, a bruise, anything...but there is nothing. A $320 mishap.

Bedtime sends me over the edge. Jasper continually tests me in the way that all 3 year olds know how to do and barks critiques at me as I read Slinky Malinky. He's pissed that I refused to read Stanley Bagshaw, an endless book about a soccer game. I read it the night before and it went on so long my voice hurt. And I used to sing. A lot. By the end I feel like some teenaged ingenue getting a dramatic reaming by Coppola. My lip quivers and my voice shakes..."Read it slower!" "No, Faster!" "With more feeling this time!!" I go downstairs and have a good cry while watching the end of Jeopardy.

In 4 more weeks they go to fulltime daycare. I go back to a fulltime work schedule. I don't know how this will change us but days like this take away some of the fear. I think the change might do us all a lot of good. And a 4 day vacation in the Virgin Islands wouldn't hurt...

Some Bugs Are Better Than Other Bugs

2009-06-30T20:18:00.004-04:00

Yesterday the weirdest thing happened. As I was in the throes of my morning "if we don't get out of the house right this minute I'm going to pull my own head off" moment I hear a rhythmic buzzing. I'm herding: Finlay is strapped into the car but Jasper is squatting over the garden path clearly fascinated, saying "look at the bug, Mommy! look at the bug". I look down to see a sad sight: A large dragonfly is unceremoniously flailing on its back, its wings buzzing in distress. It's large and I don't automatically go to right it with my hands although I'm generally not afraid of bugs. I look at it more, we look at it...and while I'm entranced and thinking of how to right it Jasper takes his foot and makes a stepping motion towards it. Involuntarily and as a complete surprise to myself I scream. Then I say, "what is wrong with you?!" Yeah, that one surprised me. Where did that come from? What parental cave of things you vow will never come out of your mouth did that come from? Not knowing what to do, I send Jasper to stand by the car for a time out...and I need some time to think for a second. I go back to the dragonfly. It's still in the same shape, so I find a stick and turn it over but it doesn't fly. I go back to Jasper and explain that he made Mommy sad when he went to step on the dragonfly and how would he feel if someone tried to squash him? Blah Blah. Then I think how confusing and elitist this all is. Just a half hour earlier he'd witnessed me go get a towel, twirl it, and yelp with delight when I nailed the housefly off the window. So that bug is less valuable than the dragonfly? Well, yes, I guess that bug is less valuable than the dragonfly. Hmmm? What classist caste system am I teaching him? Jasper climbs into his seat and I go to get the rest of our stuff for the zoo. I come back out and Jasper is saying, "Finlay pulled the tail off, Finlay pulled the tail off!" What masochistic dragonfly is this? Why would it drag its destroyed body into a car where 2 boys are occupying the same space? I asked Jasper if he went to get the bug and bring it into the car and, being the unsavvy 3 year old that he is, he says "yes". Damn!, the poor thing really is missing the tail now, but which of them did it I'll never know. Sadly I pull the half-dragonfly out of the car. I don't have the stomach to step on it but hope that the car wheel may put it out of its misery. I recall other mothers of boys (and girls) talking about the "killing things" phase. Developmentally normal, I know. I just hope it passes fast.

SILTY or GURLY?

2009-06-20T20:07:00.001-04:00

I talk about emotions for a living. I am a therapist, specializing in a type of therapy geared specifically towards emotion dysregulation (fancy word for emotions making your world a big pit of poo). I love what I do but there are times when I am not dealing so well w/ emotions myself where I waiver between gratitude for my profession and feeling like knowledge isn't power, it's pesky.

So there's 5 major emotional foodgroups: Fear/anxiety, joy/love, anger, sadness/misery, and guilt/shame. There's thousands of descriptors for emotions but generally these are the big umbrellas.

I have discovered, however, that a particular costellation of events in my life brings out in me a "new" emotional combo: the mixing together of irritation and guilt. I haven't decided whether this emotion should be called "ilty" or "gurly" (guilty and surly)...oh, and I also get sad. So maybe "silty"? Yeah, silty. What brings this unique emotion onto my affective landscape? Well, it's this weird combination of house renovation and family.

We are in the process of gutting our 1924 single bathroom so for about 10 days I went without a working shower and for about 6 days a working toilet. Luckily we have a very lovely neighbor but I just don't do well w/ that kind of upheaval. The first day is okay, then my mood heads rapidly south. My dad, in an amazing display of generosity and kindness drove 10 hours from Baltimore to work 12 hour days for 10 days straight putting in a great expanse (or so it seems now) of gorgeous porcelain tile. He is an artist (the real kind...the museum kind) and so his tile work is of the artesinal kind. But god damn, family is always so complicated, isn't it? I've noticed that my dad brings out the subtly disapproving school marm in me. I buy his requisite chardonnay, but notice that I leave it all in the basement. I wish I didn't know what "passive aggressive" meant. I wonder if my kids will one day have this relationship w/ me. I wonder how and when I'll embarrass them. I see the scene so clearly: I go visit one of my sons in some city...he puts me up in the living room...I get to have dinner w/ the new girlfriend...I hate her....I die alone....the end.

Every time I see my dad I start thinking about the clock. How much longer do we have together? How much longer can you do this (insert whichever situation I am worried about where he is concerned), Dad? How much, how much....I think to myself that I have to let it go, have to let go of this idea that I can save him or anybody. We can only save ourselves...we may get help, but....so anyway. I get irritated...here's what my thought bubble says: "jesus christ, do you seriously not know how to work a microwave...seriously...you HAVE one at HOME!), I get guilty..."one day you will wish you offered him a glass of chardonnay...one day he'll be gone and there will be an empty hole in your life forever".

I vow to Tim and shake my fists at sunset on the hillside that we will buy a condo next time...a condo w/ concrete floors so help me GOD!

And family is...well they are who they are. And we love them the best we can.

The Nose: Part II

2009-06-09T20:05:00.002-04:00

I would like to share a funny addendum to a previous entry, The Nose. For tonight's dinner I made what I thought was a particularly yummy batch of macaroni and cheese with just a few bits of broccoli snuck in. Jasper didn't mind the broccoli too much but did start wailing two bites in, complaining loudly, "Smells like bottle" and then more specifically, "Smells like Finlay's bottle!" Tim looked at me perplexed. What the f* is he talking about he asks me with his eyes. I laugh...I had mixed in about 3 tablespoons of sourcream into the macaroni for what I thought was added deliciousness. But no, apparently, the sour cream smelled like, well...sour cream.

The Nose strikes again.

Three

2009-06-07T21:19:00.003-04:00

My grandmother is holding my hand at the outskirts of some parking lot. She says, "I'm so glad you're three now..." It's one of my earliest memories and one I hold dear because I clearly recall her adoration and she would be healthy for such a short time thereafter. I wonder what Jasper will recall from this time in his life. He is turning into such a little individual...his own sense of humor, his own preferences for the order of things, a willfulness that still has a flair of comedy about it. Not to say that he doesn't drive me crazy sometimes, but I struggle with holding firm when I am staring at "L" shaped fingers pushed up in the air rhythmically saying, "DON'T Sing!" or "DON'T dance". I gave him a time out at our local Lowes a few weeks ago because he wouldn't stop messing with the flowers and I had asked very clearly several times. I made him stand by the bike rack while I turned my back to him and waited for Tim to come out with the water softener salt and our other child. I breathed, daydreamed a second, and turned around to see Jasper standing with arms crossed and glaring at me, but standing perfectly still and respectful of the seriousness that is the time out. He looked so damned cute I giggled, but choked it back and asked him if he understood why he got the time out.

Jasper turns 3 this Wednesday but we celebrated with an all-out dance party this weekend the likes of which Tim and I have never known for our own birthdays. Weeks of preparation and planning, days of getting the house together, hours of cooking including 3 (hey!) batches of buttercream frosting one of which didn't make it. I even made goodie bags.

The 3 (hey!) hours before a party begins are the hardest. You curse the idea that ever was "party" and you vow never to put yourself in this kind of predicament again so help you God but then you remember that once people start showing up and having a good time that everything falls into place and it's a good thing you cleaned the chocolate milk stains from behind Jasper's bed: it was all worth it.
oh and Jasper got a mountain of amazing things that he has been completely loving. That made it pretty cool too. Here's to the wonder of being three.

for grandma and grandpa

2009-06-02T13:58:00.006-04:00

tim gets the closest I've ever seen to teary-eyed watching Jasper w/last year's birthday bike that he now loves and wants to ride all the time. Jasper seems to have an uncanny ability for getting the bike around obstacles on our deck and much to my chagrin, Tim has already built small ramps that Jasper navigates w/ scary ease. Yes, he does have a helmet...thank god for helmets.Ah Finlay....our little dive-bombing go-getter. Despite my tone, I really am appreciative that in many ways, their worlds do revolve around Dada...I know I couldn't do this job alone.

Book Review of the Week: The Photograph

2009-05-31T21:14:00.002-04:00

I should have known this wasn't a good pick for me when I saw that it was a "Today's Book Club" selection but I needed a book to read and pulled it at random from a neighbor's shelf. I have a rule about giving up on books I don't like because life is too short to read bad fiction but I admit I slogged through more of this one than I should have. The title refers to a photograph found by the husband of a woman who has died. He discovers from said photograph that she has had an affair w/ her brother-in-law and sets off to find out who knew about this, why she did it...and well...that's about it as far as I can tell. I mainly hate books that repeat things again and again, like the author is just trying way too hard to get a certain point across. In this case it was that the affair woman was very very pretty. This is explained numerous times by every single character in the book. Another main flaw is that none of the characters in this book are likable or dimensional in a way that makes you even interested in them...not one. So the bottom line is I would have had a better time reading the Twilight series.

The last book that sucked me in was Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. What was yours?

tray leftover recipes

2009-05-26T13:28:00.002-04:00

I've come to realize that about 1/4 of my daily food intake now comes in the form of the disgarded and rejected tray remnants left by my children. If you had told me 9 years ago, as I perused our local Diesel to buy $200 jeans w/ my stylish husband and then share a steak salad at the cafe next door that I would one day be lunching on headless dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets off of plastic highchair tray, well I just would have thought you were being hilarious...and crazy. I mean, at least let the nuggets have heads. But here we are, 9 years of graduate school and 2 beautiful children later.
I hate wasting food and we don't compost. So: on any given day I may find myself lunching on cheese cut to resemble french fries, sliced green pepper, and semi-soggy goldfish crackers. I eat more peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches cut into small squares than any 39-year woman should (but I never tire of them). The other day I did hit gold, however, and thought I should share. As I eyed the piece of banana left on Finlay's tray...looking like a miniature version of a seal carcass abandoned by a great white...I thought, I'll bet if I sliced that down the middle, inserted chocolate chips, and put it in the microwave it would be good. Let me tell you how good: The banana cooked to a sort of bubbly consistency that masked the bite marks, the chocolate melted perfectly, and with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, well all I can say is I was feeling pretty redeemed from my recent cake disasters.
And I have come to enjoy my headless nuggets...when I can get them.

The Nose

2009-05-21T11:22:00.002-04:00

We have come to realize that Jasper has inherited his mother's talent for smelling things. Mostly this is amazing and amusing but sometimes it can be embarrassing.

I don't recall how old I was when I realized that I had a talent for describing smells. My first recollection of said talent was being about 8 years old on the "Maid of the Mist" to view Niagara Falls and distinctly noticing that the wet cabin smelled of damp tortilla chips and feet. I knew I didn't like this smell. I did however like the smell of gymnasiums and car garages. Paging Dr. Freud? Oh wait, I guess that's me now. Hmmm....I have no clue.

This talent carried me through my food serving career where I was told by a notoriously asshole but famous chef that I was good at wine describing because I picked out the jammy flavor of a pinot noir when everyone else just said fruity. We had hilarious competitions to see who could sell the most viogner by describing it as "colonial". You would be surprised how many people bought that.

Before Jasper had words for smells, we noticed that he would smell everything, EVERYTHING, before tasting it. Smart boy if you ask me. Then Tim was gutted w/ laughter one night when out of the blue Jasper announced after "someone" (won't name names) farted, "smells like eggs!". He has graduated to pronouncing that fruit punch smells like lollipops, that my tamale smells like tortilla chips (which should I think be it's own category on a global smell wheel), that sunscreen smells like outside, that the nice older lady who said hello smells like Sally (his nice older daycare lady), that a wine cork smells like Baba (his wine loving grandfather), and that the bathroom on any given day smells like poop. I recently caught him sniffing the pant leg of a friend and yanked him away before he could make any pronouncements. It might have been lollipop or sour dumpster. You just don't know what you're going to get.

Go!

2009-05-01T21:44:00.005-04:00

One day I would like to do a study on first words and future personality. Jasper's first word was "ball". While there may one day be a more abstract interpretation related to the meaning of spheres, for now it makes sense that Jasper loves all things ball. He loves tiny balls, gargantuan yoga balls, shiny European footballs and destroyed garage sale soccer balls. He even loves balls made from disgarded painting tape. His heart is pure. He can differentiate a rugby ball from an American football and a baseball from a cricket ball. Recently he found a ball at a friend's house and she told him "That's a softball!" and he said, "No, it's hard". Balls can be confusing. Finlay's word is "go". Except when sleeping, Finlay always seems to be moving and climbing. We often find him balanced on three toes atop Jasper's potty going for a finger hold on the wet sink. We're regularly informed at doctor's appointments what a squirmy, strong baby he is. We're like "yeah, we know, we live with this every day". Diaper changes are a hoot. When Finlay spots a chink in the armor (the baby gate left open) he makes a break for it and chants "go, go, go, go!" all the way up the stairs. Occasionally I let him climb with me following behind and he does this every time. When Jasper follows behind (getting up only slightly faster), Finlay cheers him with "go, go, go, go!" They really do love each other. As long as Finlay stays away from the balls.

Catless

2009-04-11T12:57:00.001-04:00

From the time I was 11 years old my life has been anchored to cats. When I moved into my father’s D.C apartment, I knew I was joining his life with Sylvia, a whip-smart cat he’d started feeding from the porch of an apartment he got in his early twenties. Sylvia was the smartest cat I’d ever met and she had the distinctive appearance of looking like a moth had landed on her face. She stayed in our lives until I was away at NYU, dying the way most old cats do, of slow kidney failure. While at NYU, I took in twin sister kittens, Ophelia and Fred. They were born in my ex-roommate’s dorm room and snuck quietly out in my coat to warn the mice out of my Brooklyn apartment. When my boyfriend and I split, I took them both to San Francisco and then Los Angeles where they survived a psychotic roommate and a big earthquake respectively. Ophelia was such a warm, friendly cat she was cat-napped not once but twice. The first time we found an old man several doors down was keeping her in his cigar-smelling lightless apartment (a friend spotted her in his window and he gave her back saying nothing). The second time I actually received a kind of ransom phone call where I found myself promising all my gold jewelry, which I actually handed over when she was driven up to my apartment. She wasn’t allowed outside anymore after that. When we moved to Chicago, Ophelia also survived the loss of 2 inches of tail in a heavy backdoor. I was gutted when a year and a half later she started throwing up clear foam and stopped eating and drinking. 600 dollars of tests later they told me her kidneys were failing and that I could keep her alive maybe years longer by inserting 12 gauge needles under her back fur to keep her hydrated. I did that once before realizing this was a very bad plan and took her miserable body back to the vet where I wept over her like I was at the Wailing Wall. Fred seemed lonely and depressed without her sister and soon I answered an ad in the Chicago Reader for kittens. I was told there was only one left, the only female in the litter. “I’ll be right there”, I told the woman and arrived to meet the feistiest little kitten riding on the back of an adolescent male. I was told she was very pushy and would meow for hours until she got let out of whatever confinement she was in. I fell in love instantly and brought home my little Grau. Fred took to her immediately and responded to her pushiness with a fat paw holding her down. Grau was indeed a diva, and her persistent nightly yowling only really got on my nerves once sleeping babies (and my own sleeplessness) came into the picture. Fred died shortly after Jasper was born. We intended to adopt a companion cat for Grau and came home with a tiny black puppy. She did not find this amusing and they did not turn out to be the friends we’d hoped for but Grau eventually tolerated Siouxsie and would occasionally sit near her on the couch. We thought we’d have at least another year of her hating the dog but early in the week she threw up clear foam and I knew. She stopped eating and drinking and started spending time alone in odd places like the back of Tim’s closet. I watched her for signs of pain and debated when I should make the call to the vet. I made the call yesterday for an appointment today. Last night at 2am she started meowing plaintively and I kicked myself for waiting so long. Sobbing, I ask Tim to pull her out of the closet so she’s not alone. She can’t move so we lay her on a towel on a cushion and bring her into bed with us. Our bed, under our covers was her favorite place to sleep. We softly pet her throughout the night and I tell her it’s going to be okay. This seems to help. I wake every hour to check her and at 6:45 Tim tells me she’s gone.
For the first time I can remember I am catless. I am unanchored to the animal who was with me before marriage, before kids. She is gone. No more meowing for my yoghurt, or ice cream, or steak. I realize I better decide on a belief system about death so I have some way of explaining it to Jasper. I’ve decided that I believe in “as if” heaven. I believe my life is better if I operate as if heaven exists and hey, if I’m pleasantly surprised, that will be great. I see heaven as all the people and all the animals I’ve loved waiting for me. I tell Jasper Grau has gone to kitty cat heaven to be with all good cats like Sylvia, Ophelia, and Fred. He says “She’s going to be with all the good Graus?” and I say, yes, “All the good Graus”.

Squirrel Cupcakes

2009-04-05T21:13:00.005-04:00

There are things that we carry about ourselves like jackets in case it gets too cold. For a time I carried the prospect that I might, if I lived near the mountains and devoted 8 hours a day to practice, become a professional snowboarder. I have let this go. I have even let go of the notion that I am a good snowboarder. I am okay. I will probably always be just okay. On the occasion of our 2nd son's 1st birthday, I have let go of the notion that I can bake a good cake from scratch like they do on the food network cake competition shows. I have even let go of the notion that I can bake an edible cake from scratch. Now, I'm not quite ready to let it go completely because I do think my oven is partially to blame. All I can say is that both Jasper and Finlay have now experienced on their 1st birthdays baking disasters so complete that last minute purchases of baked goods from grocery stores were necessary. Very embarrassing for someone who, until last week, actually thought that my backup career was going to be making wedding cakes. That's right, wedding cakes. I have to say, however, that I make a damned good cake batter. I mean, up until the point of putting the pans in the oven, things always look really good. It's all I can do to keep myself from sucking down half of it before it hits the cake pan. For Finlay's birthday I thought I was stepping it down a bit by settling on cupcakes. I even bought a new cupcake pan and special birthday cupcake wrappers. Imagine my dismay when out of the oven I pull flat, hard, burnt on the bottom....squirrel cupcakes. Jasper can see the hard little cakes sitting on a plate on the counter. "Are those cupcakes?" He askes hopefully. "Those are special squirrel cupcakes that Mommy made just for them....later you want to help me put them on the fence for the squirrels?" He is fascinated and of course, agrees that yes, he does want to help. I ease each cupcake on the barbed fence top that separates our deck from WMU property. Finlay digs into his blue-iced, fairly perfect, Sam's Club cupcake the way all 1st birthday boys should. He sucks his sugary fingers greedily and smashes the cake bits good. Two days after the party, after the cupcakes have been eaten and offered to the squirrels respectively, I see a squirrel with something huge in it's mouth. I watch it take it up to the trees and think with triumph, it's eating my cupcakes, it's eating my cupcakes! The special SQUIRREL cupcakes. I grab the camera. I zoom in...wait, what the hell is that? That is not a special squirrel cupcake. That is a fucking bagel.

Goodbye Baby

2009-03-17T12:51:00.004-04:00

Finlay's birthday is coming in a few weeks and I have been thinking about how I am about to exit the world of all things baby. It is gratifying, exciting, and sad. Just as Jasper made his own transition from babydom to toddlerdom in summer of 2006 we decided to go on this crazy ride one more time and my focus became chasing the newly walking legs while knowing that another baby was percolating and would be ours the following spring. So it really has been 3 years of an all-consuming babydom around here and I feel it ebbing. Finlay now regularly takes 5 or 6 steps and I'm pretty sure he's saying "yeah" and "go". He can climb on to Jasper's bed, the swivel chair, almost the couch. He still looks so much younger than Jasper did to me at this age but I know he is leaving babydom behind. We switched him to his front facing carseat (okay, 2 weeks earlier than allowed but damn, we can't close the snaps on the bucket seat now, which has got to be less safe). I paid my $10 to rent a 6 foot table at a local "mom-to-mom" sale to sell off some of the piles of baby things we have accumulated over the past 3 years and there was some definite sadness as I looked over my table-sea of onesies and sold them off for .50 a piece. There were quite a few pregnant ladies waddling around the elementary school gym and I didn't envy them, but I did feel a heavy nostalgia. A first-time about-to-pop pregnant woman came by several times w/ her mom and I explained the benefits of the papasan vibrating seat to her. I can't believe Jasper and Finlay were once so tiny in it's little reclined cushion. For a few bucks I practically gave it to her and watched her waddle away w/ it tucked under her arm. I wonder if the lullaby tunes it plays will make her cry too.

Celebrities I Have Served

2009-03-01T13:39:00.003-05:00

I was thinking the other day about my time in restaurants. I have generally good memories of all those years spent in them, some short stints, some longer, and a beautiful ending of my career in food making the most money I've ever made in my life on a New Year's Eve, 2000. Better than that, making some amazing friends who continue to blow our minds w/ their creativity and warmth. We may buy whatever wine is on sale at the grocery store but when we go to chicago we get to step out of existence as struggling grad-school impaired parents of 2 and drink and eat the best stuff around. But I digress...this is a mental tour of some of my experiences serving celebrities. My first restaurant job in NYC was at a famous place (I didn't know it then) called Da Silvano and my job was to look pretty, sit in a corner, and add the waiter's checks for them. They told me I could come early before my shift and eat w/ the crew but back then I didn't know what tira misu was and thought most of the food highly weird. How times have changed. I remember Cindy Lauper, David Byrne, and the famous designer, Zoran, whom they all hated b/c he would come in as they were closing. I got into trouble one night for gushing to some poet who came in that I was a big fan. "Can't you see they were fighting all night?!", the skinny manager w/ big hair hissed at me. Then I worked at a little vegetarian restaurant called Village Natural. We attracted some highly neurotic people who demanded their fresh-pressed beet, carrot, and celery juice be served 7 minutes (not 5, not 6) before their macrobiotic sampler plate. One day, at a table near the front, I came across Chrissie Hynde sitting w/ KD Lang and 2 members of the B-52's (not the chicks, 2 males I didn't recognize). I think they were all in town for a charity performance. This was 1990. Chrissie asked me about the stuffed tofu and I told her I had no problem finishing it and she looked me up and down and said "well if YOU can I can". Don't mess w/ Chrissie. KD seemed shy and spoke to the dudes kind of sarcastic like "she just explained what seitan is, dumb ass". Gillian Anderson came in regularly but this was way before she was famous. She had long curly blonde hair and wore a leather jacket. She also came in w/ her girlfriend (as in lover, not a girl who is a friend), but I suppose that's another story. She was very quiet and ended up working briefly for our sister restaurant. Then I saw her in a Roy Roger's commercial and the rest is history. Ally Sheedy came in w/ Dennis Christopher (remember him, the star from Breaking Away) who was unrecognizable partly b/c he wasn't cute anymore and party b/c he was a huge tool. I think they were in an off off off Broadway play together. Kim Gordon came in w/ Lydia Lunch. The only thing I could work my nerve up to asking her was "when are you guys playing next?". Actually, I've spotted Kim Gordon in almost every major city I've lived in. Fixing her lipstick in a bathroom in D.C (they were playing a show), walking w/ a friend and her baby at Century City mall in L.A.

From New York I moved to San Francisco where I worked for a popular Italian restaurant on Union St. called Prego. The spaghetti sauce wasn't invented when they opened or I'm sure they would have picked a different name. There I waited on Mike Myers (filming I Married an Ax Murderer), Matt Dillon (who I also served at the cash register at Tower Records in New York), and Jonathon Frakes (star trek t.v captain) w/ his wife, Genie Francis. All perfectly nice as memory serves.

When I got to L.A, the celebrities really poured in. It was such a regular occurance no one noticed much and at one restaurant (Orso) you were basically trained to give lacklustre, blase service (I was semi-reprimanded for asking someone how their food was, "we assume it's good, we don't need to ask them". At Orso my God it was a smorgasbord...Al Pacino, Fay Dunaway eating w/ Roddy McDowell, Ashley Judd, Michael Stipe, and Tom Cruise (I do remember feeling a bit intimidated as a 6 feet tall Nicole Kidman walked through the restaurant to join him). Tom was not a tall man but did not seem to have a Napolean complex...he used the pay phone to call an assistant to order the plates we used. Nicole called the risotto "yummy" and all seemed happy between them. Tom had to come hunt us down for his bill, as it was lunch time and we were done serving and busy eating. At Orso, this was considered A-okay. We collectively gave him a look that said, "you're going to make one of us get up now, aren't you?" At Pinot Bistro I waited on Andy Garcia who was dining w/ his amazingly (and refreshingly) normal looking wife. He didn't know what risotto was and seemed to have a really hard time w/ my explanation. "It's like Italian rice, but creamy..." "like rice?" "yeah, kind of like rice, but cooked so it's kind of creamy" "it's like rice?" "yes, dude, it's LIKE RICE". But he was generally nice. Like rice. And I will always associate him w/ risotto.

Notable dicks were Mike Farrell (from Mash) who was such an ass-hole on Christmas Eve I still can not watch him on Mash. I have to turn the channel or I start getting flashbacks. Wink Martindale tipped 10%. I regularly waited on Mike Richards whom I distinctly remember as weird...like I wasn't surprised when the whole racist rampage thing happened.
The nicest celebrity was Steven Webber who came into Orso w/ his British MTV-host girlfriend. Very friendly and funny and I remember the girlfriend was so unassuming she didn't even cover her blemishes w/ makeup. So rare in L.A.

Chicago had it's share too though it was rarely me who was waiting on them. At Marche, where I bartended, I saw Stevie Wonder and Michael Jordon, known for ordering $300 bottles of wine. They called Scotty Pippen "no tippen Pippen". This is why you should always take care of the people who are serving you food. They will talk about you later if you don't.

Ugly Soup Contest

2009-02-24T21:41:00.003-05:00

For some 12 years of my adult life I paid rent and bills by waiting tables in restaurants in Baltimore, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. My first restaurant job was as a hostess in my local Baltimore-suburb Chi-Chi's. I had to wear a polyester orange long ruffled skirt and white peasant blouse that I turned grey from washing w/ all my black clothes. I was sent home one night and told to buy some bleach. From there I graduated to waiting tables at my local Pizza Hut where I regularly got stiffed by the girls I pissed off in high school. I did learn, however, that the basic skills required to serve someone their deep pan sausage and pepperoni were the same required to serve artichoke consomme. It's all about staying cool under pressure and managing difficult personalities.

Over the years I watched a slew of amazing, creative (and crazy) chefs make soup. I would watch them assemble the most basic ingrediants in giant pots, simmer them, sift them through cone shaped strainers and sometimes whiz them w/ giant hand-blenders always ending up w/ some magnificent concoction. I was falsely led to believe that making soup is easy and have tried again and again to nonchalantly (like I know what I'm doing) throw some ingredients in a pot, simmer it, whir it, strain it, and end up w/ something beautiful. It rarely turns out this way. My latest failing involved cooking the chicken carcass left over from the rotisserie chicken we bought (that part can't be wrong). I added onions, salt, and carrots (looks okay, smells great), then make the mistake of adding some radicchio (I was short on vegetables and it was on hand). The soup turned mauve. I figure it still must taste good so I add some pasta that boils down to look intestine-shaped. This is some seriously ugly soup. I now realize I have a talent for making ugly soup. This particular soup did not make up for its looks w/ taste, but I ate about half of it. My kids wouldn't touch it.

So of others, I invite you to join this quest and share your recipes for ugly soup. The winner of the ugly soup contest will be rewarded w/ ugly cake.

Know When to Walk Away

2009-02-13T21:32:00.002-05:00

For a time with Jasper, I labored over whether he loved me. I know, crazy, but motherhood does these things to you. At times I ached over it, asking Tim again and again, "do you think he loves me?" and then, "tell me how you know". Jasper was always the kind of baby who instantly pushed away from you when you'd hold him and then he went through a period that really hurt, he appeared to prefer Tim to me. He'd cry incessantly at the door when Tim left and I had moments of weeping and feeling like a complete failure as a mother. Here's a sampling of some of the crazy thoughts that have peeked their little heads into my big head: *Thank god we're having another baby so at least one will love me, *How many mistakes do you get to make before they hate you? and *What if they gang up on me and try to take over? I do think hormones played a tiny role in some of these thoughts and they usually hold court for a day maybe every other month. Today is that day. When Finlay was born he was so soothed by the breast and so hungry all the time that I got a little nervous. What if he loves me too much? What if he wants to live in my basement when he's 40 and never has a significant relationship because who would date someone living in their parents basement? Then he turned into a little Jasper, pushing pushing away as soon as you pick him up. Or smacking you hard in the face, that's fun too. I yearn for the time he settles into my shoulder and just let's himself be held.

I remind myself that Jasper has turned cuddly and affectionate and now regularly snuggles against me to read or watch t.v. He looks for me and asks about me when I'm not around and cries when I leave once in awhile. I know he loves me.

When Tim gets home today I'm in a funk...I've been smacked in the face multiple times, have lost my temper a couple, and am feeling generally unloved. I tell myself to walk away, just walk away, and take some time. I do...I take a bath and it is nice. I do feel much better when it's done. But there is that impulse to keep going back to my baby...do you love me now? How about now? Crazy, I know. After they're in bed I ask Tim, "do you think Finlay loves me?" He says, "We're not going though this again, it's just like Jasper." To which I reply, "How do you know he loves me?"

Crying at the Movies

2009-02-08T13:42:00.003-05:00

It's a good weekend for babysitting, some friends sit for us friday so we can go to a party and our neighbor spontaneously offers to sit for us saturday so we can go see a movie. Saturday I'm tired but I can't remember the last movie I saw in the theater (probably the last Batman). I want to see Coraline but the times are wrong. We decide on Slumdog Millionaire at the Portage Mall Theater. Not our favorite place and it's crowded and Tim is complaining about the ruts in the parking lot and how crowded it is and we almost go home b/c of how crowded it is, but he says everyone is probably seeing other movies. It's a strange night, the theater isn't that crowded but it starts off w/ a teen (I think) boy tripping up the stairs on the the other side of the theater, spilling everything he's holding. His friend yells at him saying, "You fucking got me wet, man!". The kids says, "sorry", picks himself up, and heads back down the stairs. I want to cry, go give him a hug, and smack his friend for being such a dick. I'm feeling emotional, I'm feeling like what if that was Jasper or Finlay one day...I'm feeling like I did in the hospital after Jasper was born, full of a powerful, protective love that hurts.

But here we are, ready to see the movie that EVERYONE is talking about. The triumphant CELEBRATION of life, the BUOYANT triumph of the heart, the OSCAR pick, the blah....visions of the smiling cast on red carpets, YAY, YAY, YAY...how could it be wrong?

Well, I won't tell you exactly how wrong it turned out to be. The simplest explanation is that I thought it was going to be 90% yay and 10% wow that's rough. It was the other way around. I guess I just wasn't prepared. I wanted to start crying almost from the beginning, but don't start until about a quarter of the way through. I say to Tim I want to go home and I can tell he is exasperated so I change my mind and sit through the rest. There's just a lot of children getting hurt in lots of ways lots of times. I'm not sure what's wrong w/ me, maybe nothing...I guess for me movies have turned into places of refuge and I want to have fun at them. Lose myself in some way. I can't do that crying about babies being tossed around like trash although I know no babies were harmed in the making of that movie. And obviously movies like slumdog shine some light on the fucked up places in this world where children are systematically (not just individually) abused. Okay!

For now I suppose I will blame hormones (it is that time) and maybe get out a little more.

5 Moves Ahead

2009-02-03T20:09:00.002-05:00

Both kids were sick today, runny noses and the return of Finlays hacking cough, prompting the return of the "breathing treatments". Good thing we kept the nebulizer and a supply of albuterol. Today I pushed the element of time too far and at 2:30pm, the time when they are supposed to be delivered to Aunt Sally's (our nice in-home daycare grandma who leaves her smell on the boys until bathtime), I am still analyzing my data, the boys are still in bed, and I am still wearing sweatpants. I have to dress myself, change diapers, get drinks, get them into carseats, deliver them across town, and get 1/2 back across town for my 3:00 appointment. I get Jasper's pants down, put him on the potty, get Finlay's diaper changed, slap on some blush and my shirt. I pick Finlay up out of his crib and he projectiles his bottle all over me. Luckily not on himself, so no change needed there. I whip off my shirt, leave the puddle on his floor, and literally wipe the white goo off my hair w/ a wash cloth. I get new shirt and pants, Jasper off the potty, pull the pants up, get downstairs. I am telling Jasper to MOVE much less nicely than usual, but something's gotta give. I sweep Jasper into his carseat and apologize for being so rushed and crabby. He says, "Mommy needs a time out" and I laugh. It's true. I worry for a few secs about why Finlay vomited, replaying the medicine and his tendency to vomit if we give a bottle too soon after. I throw the kids at Sally, forgetting to explain Finlay's scream-inducing diaper rash and the mysterious egg-white looking bits in his poo. I'm sure she figured it out. I race back down Westnedge at just over 30 b/c there's a cop and they ticket like crazy on Westnedge. I hit every red light. And I make it at 3:01. I look like hell, my growing out bangs pulled into the dorkiest barrette. I replay what I just got done in 30 minutes and forgive myself.

Memories of Paris

2009-02-01T20:50:00.004-05:00

My junior year of drama study at NYU was spent living dirt poor in Paris getting schooled in yoga-inspired comedia-del-arte (I can't even pretend to spell this anymore) and other forms of experimental theatre that would have made my Strasberg teachers yak into their imaginery coffee cups. It was a hard but good year. Lots of personal growth and becoming relatively fluent in pepe le pew's native tongue.

But the lasting impression of my year abroad was how I survived on almost no money. I mean the NYU years were lean, no doubt, but I learned how to pay rent in full and on time every month by waiting tables. This option was not really available to me in Paris and I had to squeak by on the $300 a month I earned cleaning and organizing the studio we worked in as work study. I know I am dating myself here, but this was 1989, we didn't have computers or internet. I couldn't hustle anything on E-bay. I wrote poetry during this year and typed it on a borrowed typewriter.

The first roommate I had there was a crazy anorexic ex-ballet dancer from New York City. Her nutritionist told her to drink olive oil and she smoked like a fiend. We didn't get along and I ended up moving in w/ 2 non-NYU roommates in what was called a "gorbi" (french slang for shit hole). We used a toilet in the hallway and a 1 gallon shower in the kitchen. I cut all my hair off b/c of that shower. Over the year I lived w/ 3 different, amazingly decent, male roommates. I had good luck in this area. One was studying at the Cordon Bleu and brought home boxes of the most exquisite pastries made in class. One night it was chocolate croissants, still warm. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror in my room, chocolate dribbled down the side of my lip like blood on a vampire in a movie poster.

But the sweetest roommate was Damien, a 19-year old English boy (he was 6 feet tall, blue-eyed, and blonde but looked about 11). He looked like a member of a boys' choir, skinny but cherubic. Much like my Jasper come to think of it. Ah, sweet, innocent Damien. One night I convinced him that I could make us cookies in the bunsen-burner oven (we risked explosion every time we used it) if he went down the street to the nearest alimentaire for some aluminum foil. We had no money but the stash of centimes left behind by a former gorbi resident. A centime is like a fifth of a penny in worth and size. Damien took this sac of centimes, gave them to the disgruntled Arab shop owner, and damned if he didn't come back w/ the foil. The mental image of this angel-boy counting out centimes never failed to make me laugh. I like to think he learned something from the experience too. I did make the horrible cookies, no comparison to the Californian's pastries. I sometimes wonder how life turned out for Damien. Hopefully paying for his aluminum foil w/ larger currency now.

T.V Review of the Week: The Return of Battlestar Galactica

2009-01-16T21:24:00.003-05:00

I wish I was her.

I can't remember when Tim mentioned that the remake of the horrible 80's show, Battlestar Galactica was actually highly kick-ass. I remember not believing him and not being a particular sci-fi fan, had little urge to investigate. Then he brought home the movie-length first episode and 1st season on DVD and next thing I knew I was saying "frack" instead of "fuck" and wondering about Cylon sex. Tim bought the DVD of Season 3 and we saved it just for our hospital stay when Finlay was born. I have such fond memories of ordering as much carrot cake and jello as I wanted and nursing my new babe to the sounds of exploding battleships. Season 4 started soon after we brought him home and things got tougher then. It's a bit blurry now, but by 10:00pm on fridays we were usually so exhausted and shell-shocked we couldn't stay awake for the show. Then it disappeared. Well now it's back! Season 4.5, the final one, starts January 16th, which is TO-NIGHT...in fact, right now. I haven't been this excited about friday night t.v since Donny and Marie was on. You see, this is symbolic...it's back, I'm back...we're back. You live w/ a newborn awhile and you sort of forget what life was like pre-newborn. Things that are different now: my metabolism is higher, I like vinegar less, my skin is more blemishy but w/ some new wrinkles, and we have 2 new roommates.

So we'll see how this season turns out, but right now I have to figure out who the 5th Cylon is.

How to Pamper Your Baby or Dumbest Article Ever Written

2009-01-14T13:16:00.002-05:00

When Jasper was born I fell for a subscription offer for Parents Magazine (we call it "Scarenting" magazine because it's main purpose is either to make you very very frightened or very very angry, 2 emotions very closely linked). It cost like $5 for 5 years. How could I resist? So now every month I get to stare into the face of some toddler wearing clothes that cost more than mine and who is not nearly as cute as my own toddler. I'm just saying.
So a headline catches my eye this month...it's How to Pamper Your Baby. What the fuck?, I think to myself. Aren't babies pampered enough? Don't they get like 9 months of deluxe warm seawater spa therapy? My 2nd got that PLUS an additional half hour in the birthing tub/spa. Then there's the suckling on demand, the lotions, the cuddles, the PAMPERS....how much more pampering do they need? What dumb ass wrote this? Probably the same dumb ass who wrote the article on cloth diapers and came to the conclusion that G-diapers worked better than the furniture-wipe kind you hold w/ safety pins. Really?? You don't say?
The article turns out to be on the importance of putting protective salve on baby's face before going outside in winter and treating diaper rash. So yes, I suppose, good to know. Don't leave your baby out in the cold and if you do, lotion him up good. Check.

There's so many things to think about and critique yourself on when you have kids...mittens are the bane of my existence and during Jasper's first winter they actually brought me to tears as I tried jamming them on his sqirmy hands while he's in the Baby Bjorn so we can get out out out of the walls closing in on us.....these days I'm more relaxed. I don't even put a coat on Finlay (no panic...I bundle his car seat w/ a blanket and sometimes let Jasper sit on top of him in the stroller, it all works out) and Jasper kind of gets the concept of the thumb hole. So to all the parents out there who sometimes feel crazy and cranky: You could be the parents in New Jersey who recently lost custody of their Nazi-named kids. Yep....they named their kids Adolph Hitler, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation, and Honszlynn Himler.

So let's give ourselves a little pat on the back for avoiding that parenting mistake and hey, remember that babies don't need the pampering...WE do!

Cloth Diapering 601

2009-01-03T14:00:00.002-05:00

Whenever the subject of cloth diapering comes up I turn into that which I try (I really do) not to be: I start going OFF on what I know and practically rip a diaper off my own child to demonstrate how EASY they are and what the right fold is and how for GOD's sake, the bummis superwhisper wrap snap diaper covers are the best and worship meeeeee for I am beautiful and knowledgable about all things diaper.....!!!!! If I actually paid attention to the other person I might actually see them cower and this wouldn't make me feel bad until much much later.

This entry is inspired by one of my oldest friends (Hi, Leigh!) who lives in Maine and is hopefully due to have a new son in her arms any day now. On her blog she asked about G diapers and I wanted to call her just to prevent her from buying anything G-diaper related. Then it dawned on me that I have a blog of my own and blogs are like opinions...everyone has one (okay, not really) and I get to have MINE. Here is my system and where I buy from:

When Jasper was born, being the academic freak that I am, I did a lot of research on cloth diapering since the thought of loading landfills w/ tons of baby dipes made me actually queasy. I knew nothing about them but quickly learned there are 3 main types:

1. All-in-ones: I've never used them but hear from some they're great. But they are expensive (will cost about $200 to get enough to last you 2 days w/ a newborn) and bulky to dry. Since it was summer for me, the thought of loading my dryer full of big diapers did not appeal to me. Neither did the cost.

2. Pocket diapers. These kind of make no sense to me but they are like all-in-ones but w/ an insert to catch more pee or poop. The reason they make no sense is that they're not cheap either and you still have to wash the whole thing every time (you don't just take out the insert).

3. Prefolds...ahh, my favorite. These are very high grade cotton thick diapers that you fold and stick in a variety of diaper covers. If there is just a pee, you can use the cover again. They wash easily and are dry in 40 minutes. They are cheap and last forever.

Here is my system:

I use 2 kinds of covers: the bummi superwhisper wrap SNAP kind and the prowrap velcro kind. The velcro seemed to work better on a newborn, the snaps for later but I use both. The bummis are $11 a piece and the prowraps you can get for $5 (if you get the 2nds from the company) or about $8 from a diaper website. I have about 10 covers in rotation and I wash diapers every other day.

I use the highest grade prefolds I can find...but they're basically the same. It's a rectangular piece of cotton which you wash (they say 3 times but once works for me) before using and it takes the natural oil out and expands it in thickness about 3x and shrinks it in size a bit.

My fold is very basic: looking at the rectangle the long way, I fold up about 4 inches and then in 3rds so you have a skinny strip that is thicker at the botton. I lay this in the diaper, lay the baby down on it, then fold up the whole thing and snap/velcro. You make sure there is no cloth sticking out and everything is tucked up. They hold pretty well but once in awhile baby has a blow out which no kind of diaper can completely protect you from (for full disclosure we do use disposable at night). It's just a part of life but generally we have few leaks. I don't use any accessory cloth-diaper snappy things but my friend used those for her girl and a much more complex folding system (girls, by the way, can pee a diaper like no boy I've ever met...go girls!) Once baby is older and producing more solid, toxic poop, I use the greatest diaper accessory ever invented, the Imse Vimse disposable diaper liner. They flush (without "stirring" as in the G diaper asinine instructions). These motherfucking things rock. R-O-C-K, I tell you. We have never had an issue w/ flushing AND if it's just a pee you can actually wash them, dry them, and use them again. This we also do w/ wipes (Sam's Club generic are my fave), we just leave them in the diaper in the wash and reuse them for cat barf clean up.

Laundry: We do absolutely nothing fancy and as overloaded as my life can feel, laundry is not an issue. I keep the diapers in a basic trash can w/ removable pail. I don't soak them in anything, they just stay there. Yes, they do smell after awhile which is why I do a load every other day (and it's probably best not to have them sitting in pee for more than 2 days). I use a basic detergent like Tide (you can't use anything w/ oils like many natural detergents) and very little of it. I put some white vinegar in the bleach compartment and add an extra rinse. The cycle I use takes 72 minutes and hot/cold water. We do have a decent front-loader and the diapers are very very clean every time. I never bleach (what's the point?) but in the summer I stick them out in the sun once in awhile which naturally bleaches them and makes me look a bit hillbilly.

My favorite source for supplies:

http://www.babycottonbottoms.com/on_sale.htm

followed by:

http://www.nickisdiapers.com/

Okay, I feel better now. This is my system. Take from it what you want, discard the rest.

Do not get me started on water birth or I'll never get this dissertation written.

love,

Tory

A Good Tree

2008-12-26T13:21:00.003-05:00

Last year I just wanted Christmas to go away. Winter was sucking, I was pregnant, we had no kitchen, and I was exhausted from chasing a toddler around. Tim wasn't quite as crabby, but he wasn't fighting it. My visiting father, who loves Christmas, insisted on getting into the spirit of things and strung lights for us and brought in a largish twig which he balanced in a winter boot and ornamented w/ pink twinkle lights. We did melt a bit, but the ice did not. Anway, that's all in the past. This Christmas we have a kitchen and two blonde-haired, blue-eyed boys who are baby polar bear cute. Or at least we think so. There are still many struggles but we are so thankful.
But we weren't going to do a tree this year. Finlay is pulling up onto everything and Tim thought it would surely end in disaster. Our ceiling is laden w/ strung lights from our disco party and our outside tree still has Dad's lights from last year, so we definitely felt like we were doing our part. I was okay w/ no Christmas tree. But a few days ago as I was sitting in my Baltic office (I have the cold corner of the house) transcribing interviews for my dissertation, I see it. Just across the fence that separates our house from WMU's property, a tree. A scraggly, but upright pine tree that might pass for a weed but might also pass for a Christmas tree, depending on the angle. I think to myself, "Perfect!"...we can say we're pulling up a weed instead of cutting down a majestic tree and the branches look like they might even hold a few ornaments. I send Tim off to cut it down and before I know it, there it sits in a pile of snow by the back door. We excavate all the toys out of the baby-pen and there it is placed. We have like 5 Christmas ornaments saved from various moves in a box in the basement. Tim rigs some shims to hold the skinny tree in the stand, gets on the ornaments, and steals a string of lights from our ceiling. Here's the gooey part; the part that is the best Christmas cliche ever; the part where you really do start to see things through your child's eyes as if they are new again. Jasper comes downstairs and sees the tree. His eyes grow wide and he makes the sound reserved for only those things that inspire wonder, "Oooooohhh". He names the things he sees on the tree, "hot air balloon!, crown!, icecicle! octopus!". Then he looks at us and declares, "That's a good tree."

holiday play list

2008-12-23T14:12:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago we got together with some other families and did a CD exchange where everyone made 10 copies of their own mixed "tape" and gave them out/collected others. We also did the same with toys for the kids. It was a blast, especially since we have some creative over-achievers who made CD covers rivaling anything 23-envelope ever did for 4AD. All I can say is thank God I didn't just shove some blank CD's in a grocery bag; the shame would have been unbearable. Our playlist was started by me who got a bizarre idea for a theme involving using only bands/artists beginning w/ B and C....why? Really not sure...a way to be obsessive while also setting limits? That sounds good. We realized 5 minutes before going to the party that I'd only used half the CD space so Tim finished off the set, keeping to the theme of course.
I don't have the time to figure out how to link songs to MP3 files or anything fancy like that, but here is the playlist.
Things that cheer up this long and so far pretty snowy and Baltic winter are listening to good music loud, putting up as many Christmas lights as your sockets can stand, and chocolate. Tim has since made his own break dance playlist but I will let him share that on his own.
Metal Heart-Cat Power
Dry the Rain-The Beta Band
Suspended from Class-Camera Obscura
Western Star-Frank Black
Sly Curl-Cinerama
Driving on 9-The Breeders
Bittersweet Bundle of Misery-Graham Coxon
Coffee and T.V-Blur
Another Sunny Day-Belle and Sebastian
Harmony-Clinic
Like Eating Glass-Bloc Party
Dreaming of You-The Coral
Be Gone-British Sea Power
Cell Phone’s Dead-Beck
Unforgettable Season-Cut Copy
Misery is a Butterfly-Blonde Redhead
Off the Hook-CSS
Road to Joy-Bright Eyes

Catalytic Converter Coils for Christmas

2008-12-12T12:37:00.003-05:00

These past few weeks have been kind of crazy. Let me tell you about them. We hosted some friends for Thanksgiving dinner and threw a genuine dance party that same weekend. We had a good friend from Chicago come visit with his girlfriend (both poets, very calming) and cleaned parts of the house we'd never seen before. The beer bottles are still under the deck table, now covered by snow and ice. After the thaw we will cash them in. Then work got pretty stressful and I developed a cold. No biggie, nothing Advil cold and sinus can't handle, but of course, I promptly pass it on to my kids. There is a sad unavoidability to that fact that I've come to accept. My face is in their faces all day and Michigan kids get 6-12 colds a year anyway, so what can you do? But Finlay is now on his 3rd ear infection, which he has gotten w/ every cold. That's what sucks. He is miserable for a night and we have to drop what we're doing to get him to the doctor where (this time) he was poked w/ superantibiotics and given a thick antiobiotic syrup to take every day for 9 days. I do worry about all the antibiotic in him but a baby w/ an ear infection is no fun, no fun at all. Then we get word that Tim's dad slipped on ice and broke his leg. As a working helicoper pilot who fills every other waking moment w/ projects requiring the use of legs we are fraught w/ worry but hear he is recovering well after getting his leg pinned back in. We walk very carefully over our path now...very carefully. Work gets even more stressful but it's tempered by news of my interviews (I had my first yesterday and several more on the books). Tim goes away for a business trip and Finlay picks that night to throw his biggest wobbly in months resulting in me crying in a rolled up ball position for some minutes. Eventually he goes down for sleep but I am so mentally and physically exhausted I don't know what to do w/ myself. The next day I'm playing w/ him, holding him upside down and I see he is getting his 2 top teeth in at the same time. Then the car starts chugging yesterday and some light in the shape of an engine starts flashing at me. I get the car home, have Tim test it, and we discover from our manual and the smell that our catalytic converter is shot. The book tells us we shouldn't drive it anymore AT ALL. We have 2 kids to get to daycare and I have 5 appointments to see. These are the times when having 1 car doesn't make you feel environmentally conscious or thrifty or whatever you come up w/ to support it...you feel stupid. And poor. I felt like climbing some hill at sunset and holding my fists in the air and swearing that I won't be a graduate student much longer. I did have some serious feeling-sorry-for-myself thoughts, but it didn't take me long to snap back to the fact that despite the daily struggles just to break even, we are eating, we are housed, and our kids have colds, not cancer.
We make a call and borrow a good neighbor's old Toyota beater (thank God one thing we didn't scrimp on was car seats...top of the line racing quality w/ 300 degree head protection...if the seats don't fall out of the car bottom, seriously). We get the kids to Aunt Sally's and Tim and I go to put in some work hours. We could really use a vacation but we made due w/ holding each other tight and laughing our asses off while watching the Office and the 11th installment of Sharpe's War.
Sometimes it hits me that having kids this small makes some things much harder. I can walk 2 or 3 miles in freezing temperatures to get to work but I can't walk 4 miles uphill w/ my toddler and baby to daycare. But then I think about all the ways my life is easier w/ them...they are free therapy every day. Other than the infrequent wobblies, I have 2 very happy, very funny, very beautiful boys.
We deal w/ the surly dealership guys who won't look us in the eye when we bring the car in and miraculously the car is fixed today. We replaced 4 catalytic converter coils, covered by our warranty but after a $200 deductable.
Tim says, "honey, I hope you really like these catalytic converter coils because this is your Christmas present."
And it dawns on us how well we know each other and how much we truly do love each other. Without realizing it, we'd gotten each other the very same gift.

T.V Review of the Week: The Shield Finale

2008-11-26T12:11:00.000-05:00

Okay, so if you haven't seen it and you are a fan and want to be surprised STOP READING.

I love T.V, let me just get that straight immediately. I watch less of it now than I used to but without kids I am fully capable of killing 13 hours watching a Twilight Zone marathon. This is what I usually did every January 1st, when God knows why, there always seems to be a Twilight Zone marathon happening. This would usually spur me to say I'm going to watch less T.V as a resolution, but kids and doctoral study have kind of taken care of that for me. The Shield is a show that Tim and I got into before the kids. Since we don't have HBO or any of the fancy channels, we take what good t.v we can get and this show has produced some really good t.v. Good t.v is when the show cuts to commercial and Tim and I look at each other and I say wide-eyed, "AWWW Damn!!!!" Like, do you f-ing believe he just did that to that guy?? Sadly, my work schedule and some of my work content has made me much less tolerant of the "awww damn" moments and I usually leave the room to fake-search for peanut butter and then rush back in 2 minutes later demanding an exact play-by-play from Tim. And I mean EXACT. This irritates Tim to no end but I don't care. Last night was the season finale of the Shield of which I missed half because I was out buying baby formula and celery. I came in just in time to see Shane off himself and then his wife and dead son laying on their bed. I thought Tim was actually going to cry. We didn't say awww damn and we both felt very very sad. We knew it was coming, but what I didn't see coming is this: why get us to like a character who does bad things, but we have come to love anyway and then send his life into a complete CRAP HOLE at the last moment? Why? Why build us up, take us along, get us all into it and then dump us on the side of the road like a big bag of dirty diapers? Why? What did we do to deserve this? Love Vic Mackey is all. And it's not fair.

I wanted the Shield to end with Vic and the last living member of the stike team riding off into some sunset, just after giving his kids a big hug. And Lem comes back because he only died from that grenade in a dream....yeah, that's it...it was a dream and then Shane is forgiven and they all get back together and hired by The Wire in Baltimore. The End.

samples

2008-11-23T08:28:00.001-05:00

Yesterday we took part in our triweekly (sometimes biweekly when we can't live without parmesan cheese in bulk) trip down the longest and ugliest strip mall belt in the U.S.A (not actual fact, it just seems like it has to be), Westnedge Avenue, to the final destination that is the mega-store, Sam's Club. Nothing makes me feel more like a regular American than shopping at the super-sized club store. The one I have to pull out our membership card for (which has the ugliest black and white photo of me on record, pregnant, queasy, and tired). Tim's work sponsors employee membership and the percs of said work being scarce, I will take what we get, even if it means shopping vicariously at Wal Mart. And truth be told, I've come to enjoy our Sam's Club excursions. Here's why: our historically underweight child is guaranteed to eat at least 600 calories worth of samples. The first ones appear as we approach the bakery...ooh...what do they have? Portabello-marinated pork loin! Jasper graps the toothpick out of my hand and smells it, then commands me to blow on it. I say, "see, it's cool, try it". He grabs it like a starved farm cat and starts chowing. I start eyeing where the next sample station is while grabbing a log of goat cheese. The sparkling cider isn't ready yet the man tells me w/ what my psychological spidey-sense detects as fear in his voice. It's like he expects me to reach over and start drinking it out of the bottle. Not today, dude...on to the next. We hit the hot wings and this is not a hit. Not only are they actually too hot, once we blow on them enough and feed it to Jasper, he reacts like we are torturing him (they are too spicy). Sorry, sorry, let's move on to...jumbo shrimp cocktail! The nice lady tells me they are still frozen but she doesn't want to stand in our way...I take a bite and crunching ice literally flies out of my mouth. I say to Tim, "I'm eating frozen shrimp at Sam's Club" and he says, "that's sad". But when I pass the shrimp on to Jasper, he mows through it they way a hungry sea bird would. I stop him from eating the shell. Then he eats 2 meat balls and 2 slices of a rolled up sandwhich appetizer. I am in heaven just watching him. We wait in the extra long line for the desert sampler. He sucks down the eggnog which I tell him is milkshake and polishes it off w/ a cookie and mini eclair. He leaves the coffee-cream filled puff and pumpkin cheesecake. So for now, I will pay the Karmic debt I incur by supporting Wal Mart in some other way (by owning a 5 year old VW? By being a 6th year doctoral student?) and look ahead for the next chafing dish.

bye bye Jesus

2008-11-16T10:09:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago we passed the point in Jasper's existence where we had true freedom of speech. We passed the point of saying to each other, "we're going to have to stop saying that" and moving into "did you hear what he just said?" There just came this day when Jasper said with complete clarity, "Fuck!" and we knew that what little bastion of our world that had not yet been completely folded into the omelette of parenthood was about to go bye-bye. Bye bye Jesus, Jesus Christ, and DEFINITELY Jesus Fucking Christ (only reserved for seriously unholy moments like losing the car keys when you're running late...sorry Christians).

I have the tinsiest bit of a potty mouth and I admit that my favorite word is "fuck". It's such a good word and I try not to use it too often much for the same reason I only have 2 cups of coffee per day. It packs a bigger zing when the doses are measured. When you don't often use the word, "fuck", it definitely grabs people's attention when you do. I like fuck best as an adjective ("fucking cat!" and "what a fucking tool bag" and my favorite "they are so fucked") but it also works nicely as a noun ("don't be such a fuck!"). I like fuck least as a verb except in the imperative form, "fuck me!" stated like "shut up!" I do not like fuck to describe sex. The only word I like to describe sex is sex. The only thing worse to describe sex than fucking is "making love". Eeeewwwww....like many gen-x'ers, I just get visions of creepy 70's parents and illustrations of hairy armpits and sucking toes from the book guaranteed to make any adolescent never want to take their clothes off again, The Joy of Sex. At least it wasn't titled, "The Joy of Making Love", but oddly I wouldn't have minded it as "The Joy of Fucking" if they would at least shave once in awhile.

But I digress. Like many toddlers, Jasper has an uncanny ability to read my frustration and to hear what I mumble. I learned this when I would stomp around the house looking for the list of things we need to leave said house and have him watch me steadily and say, "oh crap!" Now he seems to know which words are likely to make us pause and look at each other accusingly. For a while we had an agreement that "fuck" would be replaced by "cookie" but we have fallen off our game on that one. I'm sure Jasper just got confused by conversations that went something like this:

Tim: So this huge fucking...

Tory: cookie!

Tim: So this huge cookie douche...

Tory: Tim!

Tim: what? He doesn't know what a douche is.

Tory: He's going to start saying it anyway. Especially now. Do you want people to wonder where he learned the word, "douche?"

Tim: Anyway, this cookie guy steps on my cookie foot and it's really sore now.

Tory: be more cookie careful please, we need you walking.

We're trying. Bye bye Jesus and Fuck and Crap. Bye bye shit, damn, and God damn. Hello cookie, poopy, darn it, and Gosh. Yes, I've started to say, "gosh" and even occasionally, "gosh damnit"

I'm talking about grapes, bitch.

2008-11-11T12:57:00.000-05:00

This is why I don't share my blog with distant family. The other day Jasper said something that seemed so funny to me I just had to share it. It was one of those moments as a parent where you realize a shift has happened in your child and their verbal skills are advancing and they are putting new words together and every day feels like you're meeting a slightly different kid. Yesterday was one of those days. Jasper was mumbling to himself about something and I tuned in enough to hear "grapes". It sounds something like, bla gah mmmm mmm grapes bla gah, largely because he says all this while doing the heavy metal finger suck (see pic). We have no grapes currently, but I did have a grape lollipop the other day, giving him the cherry as he requested. As I am often prone to do, I ask him, "what are you talking about?" and clear as a bell he takes his fingers out and says to me, "I'm talking about grapes". Oh, okay. Well, sweetie, we have no grapes, but would you like...(rest is much more boring).
No, he didn't add "bitch" at the end, although it would have been funny (and yes, he would have gotten a time out and explanation of why that's not cool and it would still have been funny). I just thought it sounded better.

Art of the Day/Holiday Parade

2008-11-08T14:00:00.000-05:00

Memphis
William Eggleston, 1969
Today was Jasper and Finlay's first holiday parade. We went because Tim's work made brunch for the staff and we could watch safe and warm from the large windows overlooking Michigan Ave. and sometimes it's important to just play along. This is not the holiday parade of Macy's fame, not like in the movies. Well, maybe like in the movies, if the setting is a town where high school marching bands are the highlight and people take turns oohing over the candy-cane striped drum sticks. Not to disparage...I was the one oohing and we could never tolerate a parade as grandly scaled as those in the big towns. This one was nice and manageable and had not one, but two Garfield floats. And a fake Hannah Montana lipsynching to promote Jaqua Realtors. You don't have that in New York. New York would have the real Hannah Montana, which is much much worse.

Finlay loved the straight-shot corridors of this clean architectural office, using the carpet stripes like race lanes. He is crawling now and we will soon have to send the sharp-edged Eames coffee table to the basement. The table is perfect height for braining him as he lurches towards a ball. Jasper loved watching the exposed alligator (elevator) ride up and down, planting his damp toddler hands on all the glass surfaces he could find. Their own fault for inviting toddlers. Tim also made the executive decision to bring Siouxsie, our dog. She was actually very well behaved and unlike our toddler, did not poop inside even once. Jasper, on the other hand, created a stinky-pants cloud, prompting me to send Tim with him to the bathroom just as the parade started. He smelled no better on return and I assumed Tim had dropped some kind of ball on this one, but no (sorry, honey), Jasper had simply pooped again. Which brings our holiday parade to a happy close.

Bye bye snowman.

Thanksgivings

2008-11-05T22:11:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking some on gratitude lately. Mainly because I have been lacking it and I am often enlightened by the things I discuss as a therapist and recently I reflected that being grateful is more like an ongoing process than a state of being (sounds good, doesn't it?). By that I mean that gratitude rarely settles on us like a blanket and stays, but rather acts like blankets in real life, sometimes landing on the floor, other times hogged by a husband or greedy cat. It hit me last week, after sending out the inch thick packets of internship applications that I felt not much satisfaction or happiness with this feat. Too many "what ifs" about things coming next, too many things to worry about. The election dawned and I felt true excitement about the prospect of Obama making things right in the world. But I had worry too. I mistakenly believed because the first 2 elections I voted in resulted in a democratic president that I had some kind of magical control and that there was no way in hell Bush could win twice. When he did it left me a bit numb. No threats to leave the country or anything dramatic...just pure bewilderment. This time around I spent $30 on an Obama T-shirt, which is quite an investment, and took comfort in my gaggle of fiercely democratic friends. It seemed everyone was making calls or canvassing neighborhoods. Like I said, I did buy a t-shirt. So I was a bit surprised when my Scottish husband, who can not vote, showed more enthusiasm about the win than I felt inside. I'm just so damned tired and the baby has to breathe medicine through an inhaler this week, and my feet sometimes hurt, and my hair is bad. Tim stayed up to watch the acceptance speech and was strangely jazzed about it in the morning. It was contagious. We took a walk in the sun today and I let the warm air surround me and I let myself feel happy about this election win. Sometimes that's what we have to do, just let ourselves feel happy. I do got hope. And my next hair cut is going to change things, I can feel it.

Halloween Inferiority Complex NOS 962.12

2008-10-30T15:15:00.000-04:00

It's happening...Halloween eve and I am a complete Halloween costume failure. Yes, I was thinking of ideas 2 months ago, even looking them up online and yes, I did buy materials 3 weeks ago and yes, I have ideas, but I'm panicking. We have costumes that we already debuted at a party so we, of course, have to burn them (wearing the same thing twice? what is this..prison?!) This is becoming a syndrome. I get so worked up about my favorite holiday that by the time it is actually at my doorstep I'm burned out. I will pull it together, I swear. My dad is coming to town tonight and we have big big Halloween plans that include my favorite staple of midwestern living: the corn maze. I'm so excited for my dad to see how Finlay has changed...he says dadada now, especially when he's angry. He's huge, I couldn't fasten the bottom of his car seat buckle today and am going to have to start putting him in greased and naked. And his beloved Jasper is a talking, semi-reasoning little human now. I am bound to this holiday for the next 15 years or more (I hope) through parties to come, costumes to be sewn, curses thrown, avowals to never make anything by hand again in my life, and then acceptance of what is and immersion in the black and orange glory of it all. Oh, and stuffing great gobs of my kids' chocolate in my face while I can still explain we're collecting people's old medicine door to door.

My fear of the scary movie/Happy Halloween

2008-10-25T21:56:00.000-04:00

I can handle snakes (literally, I mean, I don't seek them out but they don't bother me) and even spiders, considered good luck around our house. Unless I think fangs are going to sink into my baby, I am at peace w/ arachnids. What am I trying to say? I guess that I'm not a particularly jumpy or spooked character except when it comes to scary movies. As a kid I would actually pay money to go see movies guaranteed to traumatize me for, well it appears life because I still have memories of images from friday the 13th and how I lost sleep for years. I recall being scared shitless by commercials for the Shining and some movie about bat swarms (another animal I now love). I suppose it didn't help that a loving but crazy paternal uncle helped raise me for a time and had no f-ing clue what was appropriate for an 8 year old child to see and actually took me to see the Dear Hunter in the theater despite an evil look from the ticket taker. My other paternal uncle was in on that one. But I was also dragged to a litany of B and C grade horror movies including, if memory is correct, one about giant rats called Food of the Gods, one about people going rabid starring ex-porn star Marilyn Chambers called..wait for it...Rabid, and one where Roger Daltry either performs or is the recipient of a trachiotomy called The Legacy. Years later he took me to see a movie called Visiting Hours that freaked me out so badly I stayed in the bathroom for the last half of the movie. Now, my uncle Chris was a good guy...went on to have 2 fine sons and all is pretty well. But I realize now, much to my husband's dismay, that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is kind of my limit on scary. I mention tonight, let's snuggle and watch a scary movie. He says, "really??!" I say, "sure!" thinking we'll catch the Corpse Bride on the Disney Channel. He pops in the latest George Romero from Netflix. I'm like, "what is this?...Romero? We're eating...you know I can't watch this.." And on it goes...I'm so jumpy I can't even watch the set-up scenes and he, being the good partner he is, takes it out immediately. He mumbles "p*@*@" under his breath and I can't blame him. He's right. I truly envy those of you who can watch a movie like The Strangers. I want to...I really do. So my plan is to wait until it comes out on T.V and watch the edited version. I love the idea of the scary movie, just not the reality I suppose.

why I like silence

2008-10-18T23:17:00.000-04:00

There is this time of the evening when the kids are in bed and it "takes" meaning they fall into dreamy, silent slumber right away. You can hear Jasper's Beatles lullaby cd playing and not much else. There is a discernable absence of sound that feels lovely. Not that I don't love the sound of my children, especially their laughter and squeals (I mean, goo...only the most miserable of parents for reasons of disposition or migraine or hangover doesn't appreciate their kids laughing), but the sweet spot in the evening when all falls quiet is sublime. Then I sink my ass into the couch and turn on the Rachel Zoe project. Does she smoke 3 packs a day?? Because man, if she doesn't, she sure looks like she does.

Ode to our friends

2008-10-09T12:39:00.000-04:00

Hokusai, Mary Heilmann, 2004.

We just got back from a little trip to our favorite city and 2nd hometown, Chicago. I lived in Chicago longer than I ever lived anywhere in my life and I suppose that is one of the reasons it will always feel like home to me. Tim lived there a long while too and, of course, we met, fell in love, and married there. A Tuesday at City Hall, reception at Dunkin Donuts and Tizi Melloul respectively. Goo. Before this psychology jag, I worked in many many restaurants and still feel a hum-like buzz watching waitstaff hustle. I got good at the hustle and I miss it. Now we pack the toddler, baby, double stroller, and a good supply of diapers up in our GTI and make the familiar 2.5 hour journey south and around. When we get there we are swept back into the pulse of the city like we never left (okay, so we don't recognize Division St. anymore and Jesus Christ would you look at Damen Avenue now...ho-ly shit?!). The best part is, we get swept back into our friendships and our friends kick ass. We are a hard-working ilk and I realize we gravitate towards the same. Our friends have all had their share of knocks but they get back up and back to it and they are all doing some amazing things. I got inspired...I got some mental health back and I got inspired. We stayed with John and Kelly in their cool Wicker Park condo and really did pretty well w/ 7 of us (they have a 5-month old boy whom Finlay got on great with). John's bluesy-metal band, Stone Lightening Band, just sold a song to the show, Sons of Anarchy. Yeah! He played us his recent music video and it was awesome. Kelly's sister gave Kelly and I the red-carpet treatment at her and her husband's bar, The Violet Hour. I felt pretty again just sitting there. I've gotten Spartan after 5 years of doctoral study and it all fell away as we imbibed cocktails so exquisite, so decadant that even if we were paying, it would have all been worth it. I highly recommend this experience...this place is not pretentious, it is their world and you are just a visitor, so enjoy.

Take that, Darwin!

2008-09-29T22:32:00.000-04:00

It's happening...the time of year when I start to obsess about all things Halloween and how cool my spawn will look as, as...and here is where the problems start. I started thinking about costumes in July. "Finlay would make a good Yoda, don't you think?" I say this to the man who slept with his Millenium Falcon and still hasn't gotten over the fact his mother burned all his star wars crap in a Scottish bonfire. He says, "if she only realized how much that crap was worth!" This is why he will bring home Meijer bags of the stuff bought at some garage sale...to make up for the bonfire. It's like a hole inside him. He glances at the computer screen with the costume. To show a reaction would be encouraging me so he glances and walks away. He does not believe looking at costumes in July is healthy. I've looked at hundreds now and rejected them all for a variety of reasons but time is running out. A couple months ago Tim taught Jasper to respond to the following question, "who's your favorite movie star?" with the answer, "Chuck Norris". "And why do we like Chuck Norris?" "Mustache!" So I'm thinking, how can this go wrong? "Honey, what does Chuck Norris wear?" "He wears black" "Do you think you could do me this itty bitty favor and look for a black karate kit for a 2 year old?" The wheels turn...I think I have him hooked. But then he starts looking and finds out more than he ever wanted to know about his onetime hero, Chuck. Apparently Chuck has gone all Christian right-wing crazy creationist. Or was he always like that? Who the hell knows but I can see Tim looking sad at the computer. And I knew Jasper would never keep a fake mustache on his face. Back to the drawing board.

I fought in a war...

2008-09-23T21:33:00.000-04:00

I didn't really, but sometimes it feels like I did. It's a crazy analogy, but I can't help thinking of the stories one hears about people surviving battle having a hard time adjusting to life after it's quiet. I worry that will be me. There's so much about parenting that feels like survival but mixed with the most intense joy imagineable. That's what natural childbirth was like, especially the first time around. I wasn't exactly sure I was going to make it and then I did and I felt high and here's this gorgeous octopus, wait, what is that...alien? no, my baby, my beautiful baby. Finlay's birth was much easier, but I kept waiting for craziness that never came. He was born in a warm tub and barely cried. That would come. And here we are, almost 6 months later. I catch Jasper and Finlay looking and laughing at each other, saying something with their eyes that I will never really get: we are brothers, we speak a secret language. I'm comforted that one day they will speak that secret language about me, maybe to complain, probably so, but they will have each other and it will be okay, as long as I'm included somehow. I'm sad that this incredibly hard, intense, but magical period of babydom is waning. Finlay is still a baby, yes, but I have only days until a tooth announces itself, only days until I can't put him down and have him actually stay. He is weened and I already can't quite remember what it feels like to nurse and I really can't remember what pregnancy was like although I was for 18 months and the 2nd 9 were lonnnng. I have fantasized about the time when they'll both be in school and I may get a day when I will have the house all to myself. And it will be so quiet. For some reason, at this moment, that seems like the scariest thing in the world.

speed racer/collage of the day

2008-09-20T21:19:00.000-04:00

Mannerist Concern, John Ashberry 2008.

it is Saturday night, the kids are sleeping (pixies and beatles lullabies soothing them to dreams of cupcake oceans and million ounce bottles), the dog is walked, the house is wrecked. We sit exhausted on the couch w/ Siouxsie laying happy between us. It's the point in the weekend when I have to work hard not to panic (so much didn't get done today...so much to do tomorrow then the weekend will be over and Monday again). Tim's netflix selection for the evening is Speed Racer (ostensibly chosen for me, as it's not an obscure 70's film involving a heist of some kind or something remotely violent, which I have oddly lost all tolerance for...it's kind of problematic, as I do want to see serious films like Hotel Ruanda and No Country for Old Men but I just...can't). So thanks, honey. The movie has been on 5 minutes and I hate it. It doesn't even vaguely resemble the Speed Racer I grew up with, the one I had a crush on. And John Goodman has some seriously creepy eyes in this movie. I used to watch Speed Racer every day after school, fantasizing both about being him and marrying him. Speed Racer was followed by a show called Kimba the White Lion, which I remember being lame. Yet I watched...okay, this movie blows serious chunks. I would actually rather work on my 500-word autobiographical essay for internship...the one that the next 2 years of my life hinges on. That's saying something. Or perhaps I should just lay my head down and rest my weary eyes and get ready for Sunday.

I wish this was my bathtub/art of the day

2008-09-15T13:16:00.001-04:00

Mississippi Bucket” (2008) by Alexander Arrechea

I love baths and loving them as I do, this art piece looks like a scrumptious place to take one...enough room for the 4 of us. As it stands now, I am in awe of my husband's ability to manage a baby and a toddler and himself in a tub not much bigger than a regular bucket. I am less brave, I will bathe with one or the other, but rarely both. Tim has the bedtime routine down...on the eves I am home to witness it, I hear swishing, sloshing, jumping, sliding, and all manner of other noises that make me cringe with fear and wonder. When I peak upstairs I see Finlay happily kicking his baby flippers in the suds and Jasper saying that the frog is "on the lily pad". When I ask "what's he on?" he calmly says "l-i-l-y p-a-d" like I'm stupid. I try not to miss opportunities to bathe with my babes, they are the times I know are cotton-candy sweet and are around for just as long. A stray toddler foot is manageable for now, but one look at these kids tells me we have a short time before only the mississippi bucket will hold our lanky dogs.

herding cats

2008-09-13T22:11:00.000-04:00

Herding cats actually doesn't sound that hard to me...I've had a few over the course of my life and I've found that none of them can resist the liquid you pour out of the tuna can. Getting your toddler and infant to sleep through the night at the same time, now that's some shit. We got cocky...we got smug...we talked behind the backs of those who said, "they just won't sleep". Payback is sour and bitter. Okay, I admit to some lingering smugness as I've heard horror stories that made me wonder how some babies survive...I mean, even if the parents have the patience of saints, they still have to drive cars and operate other forms of machinery around their babies. But here we are, not having slept a night through since March 28th. Jasper has up until this point been an almost perfect sleeper...he naps like clockwork and has been known to escort Tim to his bedroom door, telling him "all done". He goes to bed at 6:30-7 and generally sleeps until 7. I know. Finlay wasn't so easy w/ the early sleeping. Nothing too unusual for an infant, we had just become acustomed to getting sleep. But Finlay has turned into a good sleeper like his brother, happy and smiling until he's not, then it's time for sleepy-sleeps. Not a lot of complications. Finlay has slept the night through the past 2 nights. YAY! Jasper has not...he's taken to waking at 4:30am screaming. He wants a story, he wants the door open, he wants the door open wider, he wants the Beatles....being a cognitive behavioral therapist, I feel myself cringe when when Tim goes in all soft-voiced and reasoning...I'm thinking, we are reinforcing, we are reinforcing...actually, Tim is reinforcing, Tim is reinforcing. If he would sleep in our bed I would be as tempted as any other parent to alllow it, but he doesn't...he repeatedly kicks us in our navels. I know that if it continues we're going to have to get seriously behavioral, but I'm hoping it passes as swiftly as it came. So if I can get a night's sleep, getting both of them to stay down, quiet, and dozing all night long then herding cats will seem as easy as the Monday New York Times crossword.

Books, Songs, Words....

2008-09-10T20:55:00.000-04:00

This is the book I am reading, recommended by my friend Kirsten. I am very picky about my fiction, it comes to me so rarely as I am usually reading huge amounts of small-printed, eye-squinching academic psych stuff. Not that I don't love that stuff too. I will drop a book faster than a poop-covered stick handed to me poop-end first by a toddler if it's not A: well written and B: kick ass.

This book is about a kick-ass chick on the run from the creepy twin brothers of the husband she did a bad bad thing to. I don't know who this Gil Adamson lady is (embarrassing, I thought she was a "he" until I checked out the jacket photo) but she seems to know an awful lot about running through the wilderness, horses, and coal-mining. She uses great words like "mote" and "runnell". If you've had a baby recently (or even not so recently) there is a part that will make you cry. I haven't gotten to the end yet, but I am hooked. This book satisfies A. and B. requirements.

2 songs of the day: tie between Weddingpresent's Brassneck and Devo's Whip It. And a distant 3rd: Wheels on the Bus. Jasper is great at singing the choruses: Whip it Good!

Boys and Balls

2008-09-09T15:06:00.000-04:00

Before I had a baby I had very little preconception of what it would actually be like. What thoughts I did have were mainly about how I would braid my little girl's hair and not send her to school with safety-scissors-cut bangs the way mine were. I never had a mom (no tears, I had plenty of people who cared, they just couldn't cut bangs) so in my mind, I was sure to have a girl and I would put lots of things in her carefully brushed hair and I would pay someone nice to cut it...someone not in Kalamazoo (previous post). I thought the sonogram tech was kidding when she said she saw a penis. She labelled it "gender" w/ an arrow and I resisted the impulse to explain to her that gender is a larely sociologic construct and can't be found on a sonogram. But whatever. Along came our beautiful boy-baby, Jasper. Jasper's first word was "Ball" and like many boys, I hear, he sure does like them. All kinds, all shapes, all sizes..1, 2, sometimes 3 at a time...bouncing, catching, kicking, sleeping with, hugging...He has an amazing capability of spotting a lone camoflouged ball at 500 yards. I've learned not to question him when he announces "BALL!" and just to keep my over-taxed eyes on the task of finding it. He loves soccer (sorry, football...but this gets confusing b/c he also likes American football) and has quite a kick as this video will attest to. He can drop kick now w/ pretty decent accuracy and we're working on keeping this out of the way of our collection of Ming vases. Who knows how long this will last or if he will indeed play for England one day as Tim hopes. But for now, I can almost always count on having something he will want to do for 10 minutes with mom.

Want to see something gross?

2008-09-07T15:27:00.000-04:00

I ask my husband this the other night knowing full well that he would say yes. I say this to him and see the wheels turn in his head, the inventory of body parts that might be involved in said grossness. He comes into the bathroom and looks disappointed as I indicate it is my hair that has elicited the descriptor of "gross". I demonstrate, holding a section of newly washed and combed hair for him. I slide the blade of a scissor along the hair and hold it for him under the light..."see that?" I watch his face change w/ interest..."what?" "That...look, see that, along the edge? It's build up". I slide the blade across a piece of clean toilet paper to really show him. There is a small amount of green-brown substance...like clay? like dirt? There's thankfully too little of it to really examine. This past year has not been a good hair year. I haven't found a decent hairdresser in Kalamazoo who lasts more than one haircut before moving to New York, California, or worse, Grand Rapids. And I keep switching salons thinking that I'm going to come across the new Vidal Sassoon who only charges $50 for a cut and color. It hasn't happened. My budget for hair care has seriously dwindled since being in my 9th year of post-baccalaureate study and having 2 babies. The worst part is that I feel compelled to lie about my bad hair, telling each person who touches it some bullshit story about how I went out of town and let a stranger cut/color it. It's sad when they start asking questions like, "what was going on w/ this person?" and "are they okay now?" So the last girl who cut my hair, she's actually really nice and she didn't do a bad job. She showed me for the first time that I indeed have "build up". Kalamazoo water and years of various coloring product I suppose. She didn't seem so grossed out by it and said, "I've seen much worse". I am both fascinated and repelled as she shows me the scissor blade and now every time I wash my hair I check to see if it's still there. It is. She tells me there's special shampoos and some "treatment" I have neither the patience nor the funds for. And of course, she has no idea how much my husband loves the thrill of seeing "something gross".

will make you want to nap

2008-09-05T17:29:00.000-04:00

this morning I found Jasper lounging in his old chair, pulled out now for his baby brother. He digs being wrapped in a blanket and sitting w/ his thoughts. He will use the oddest things for blankets including Finlay's playmat. Sometimes we find him on the big, rotating chair in his room curled up w/ his blanket. I usually find him like this right before we're about to leave for a crazy playgroup. I guess it's his mellow time. If it didn't happen right as I've gotten myself geared up for playgroup I would sit w/ him and fall asleep. Of course, this would cramp his style.

where did summer go?

2008-09-04T12:57:00.000-04:00

I know I've said this before, well, who hasn't, but this one seems different. I kinda knew it would. Finlay arrived just as the first sign of warmth after a winter that made us feel like our house was the Overlook Hotel. Tim came into my office, where I'm hard at work on a "dissertation" only to find pages and pages of "I'm losing my fucking mind, I'm losing my fucking mind". Luckily, the axes were hard to find in the basement and we have no walk-in coolers. Finlay was coddled in blankets and footed baby-suits for only a few weeks before blessed summer arrived and he could survive in a onesie. Today I looked in vain for Finlay's feaux jean-jacket w/ hoodie that his aunt Jo bought him. Not finding it, he got wrapped in a white hoodie and Jasper's old Zutano leggings w/ monkeys and mysterious knee dirt that never came clean. It's raining and cool and the students are back in the dorms at WMU. As much as we love the strange but lovely desolation the comes w/ their departure and having the campus just for ourselves, it's comforting to have the lights come on in the dorm windows at night and hearing the odd "go Broncos". Some of the leaves are even turning. It's okay, though. I'm no longer pregnant and we've found a couple friends within walking distance. And Tim got rid of our axes.