The Conversationalist

"do not pee on the trampoline!"
"do not eat your books!"
"do not drink from the Windex bottle!"
"step away from the window!"
"pick up everything in the driveway you chucked out the window!"
"i don't care if you're not clean; get out of the bath!"
"pick it up put it on do it now eat it drink it wash it find it"

When I feel somewhat antisocial, and avoid my phone or my cell phone or anything other than email and carrier pigeon, it's because I am quite sure that I have lost the ability to speak in more than short phrases. Short phrases that sound like bark-y commands. I worry that my inarticulateness has reached alarming heights and that I might sound something like this: "i am hearing you speak" or "you are fine are you not?" or "i do like to dine with grownups!" or "drink cold beer with me!" or "your problem sounds problematic! tell me more!"

In typical Sunday morning fashion, today I read the New York Times and by "read" I mean to say that I perused the Styles section, the Book Review, Arts and Leisure and the Week in Review. I do actually read the OpEds (mostly to find out what will piss off my husband later), but the rest, I just kind of glance through. The Styles section makes me feel unchic. The Book Review reminds me that I spend much of my time thinking about so many insignificant things. The Arts and Leisure pages make me wonder if reality teevee is either arty or leisurely. And the Week in Review? Good God, if that doesn't just seal the deal on my lurking sense of mental malaise: I understand well only three quarters of it, if I'm lucky.

The whole process is a languorous exercise in hopeful futility. A kind "if she reads it, it will come", the "it" being some awesome sense of self-knowledge that I am smart and thoughtful after all and have not completely wasted every dime and nickel spent on my elite New England university education. Naturally, a thirty minute sit-down with a newspaper does not do it.

Lest you think I am wallowing far too long in my puddle of pity, I know I have not (wasted my education entirely): monkeys in fact cannot raise children, at least half-clean children who can speak English, and I, my friends, am no monkey. I am a college educated with honors monkey living the suburban American dream, yo, who once owned her own business but chose to sell it (for like a dollar fifty or something) when the baby raising conflicted with the late night drinking with rock stars. Or kinda rock stars or coulda woulda shoulda been rock stars. Needless to say, I made the choice and I don't regret it much, except for the lack of articulateness that seems to be part of the package.

Come to think of it, most of that overly-hyped education pretty much only taught me pseudo-interesting facts about culture and music and history and a little anthropology. I took a course called "Reading the Romantic Novel" and another on "Socialist Thought in 1930s Film and Literature" (I will never look at Frank Capra the same way again) (or Danielle Steele for that matter). I wrote my thesis on contemporary music and youth cultures, which made me something of genius in my mind: hip hop, riot grrls, and Nirvana made up the chapters and I think the concluding paragraph (100 pages later) included some line like "being asked to wear a different concert t-shirt is akin to being asked to change political parties or sexual identity". Helloooooo? Brilliant.

I think my father was right when he said that a college education is just something that makes you more interesting at cocktail parties. (That, and an ability to drink large quantities without passing out.) So maybe reading the New York Times every Sunday, or the Washington Post, or the Boston Globe, or the LA Times, or the Atlanta Journal Constitution, or the Chicago Tribune, or the Wall Street Journal or whatever the hell else it is that smart and thoughtful people read only serves the same function: to make a person sound interesting and knowledgeable instead of actually being interesting and knowledgeable.

I suppose this is serious wishful thinking on my part as I know that deep thinkers do read (and comprehend what they read) as a regular practice. I, however, rely on my Sunday peruse. And who knows? Maybe the peruse will be enough to make me speak out loud tomorrow in more eloquent ways.

I might say something like "i read the paper!" or "gas is expensive!" or "do not think I am this stupid all the time!" which I guess in some ways is better than "please leave a message after the beep" and is definitely a step up from "do not pee on the trampoline."

Me + David Sedaris

When I am not the crazy screaming lady in the car, I am the crazy laughing lady. I am the one hunched over the steering wheel in stomach-aching hysterics, the one nearly spitting iced coffee out her nose because a big ha-ha caught her off guard. I blame this entire ridiculous behavior on David Sedaris, to whom I am officially addicted and by whom I wish to be adopted and without whom I cannot travel if the traveling will take longer than two hours. Which, as it turns out, it always does for me.

The three short drunk people, when not vomiting or fighting, are either sleeping, day dreaming, or drawing ("You are drawer," said the GFYO to B, "I am an artist") and pretty much know enough to leave me alone. Especially after hour two. And traffic. And getting lost. Again. So, I am peacefully, joyfully left to the engage in a tete-a-tete with my beloved David.

He speaks to me via the ipod through the car speakers in his high-pitched sorta whine and I am entranced like a snake on acid to a charmer with more acid. When the voice announces "This audio book is brought to you by Audible.com...", I am like putty in his freakishly funny hands, a devotee, a groupie. A crazy lady laughing in her car.

Sometimes, I notice other drivers noticing me ("Is that woman crying? or laughing?" "Is she alone in there?" "Is she on drugs?" "Does she need drugs?") and so I mouth the words to something (like "I love octopus too") over my shoulder as if I am engaged in some really funny funny conversation with some funny funny person in the back seat. This generally assures the gawker I am normal or maybe they can read lips and speed off for other reasons but either way, I am free to indulge again.

I have to turn it down pretty low because David is a potty mouth like me, which isn't so big of a problem; it's the lengthy paragraphs on pot smoking or sex-crazed cabbies that I would prefer the Three Short Drunk People did not hear. So, turn it down I do, and then I just kind of hope for the best. Because really no matter how not PG-13 these stories can get, there is always a sweet almost lovely finish to them all, a moral to the story that you wish you had been smart enough to foresee and one you really wouldn't mind your kids hearing after all.

Once, on a yet another 6 hour long road trip, before any babies were born, the Stud and I were surely the talk of other travelers. We were open-mouthed wailing with laughter, tears in our eyes, fanning ourselves with Dunkin Donuts napkins and just about peeing each others pants. It was Sedaris' "Holidays on Ice" and we were listening to it on the way down to I think what must have been the first or second Christmas since my parents' split up. My dad would be there, as in, in the same house, at the same table, which was fucked up in all sorts of ways, and to say that I was just one nervous tic from a full-blown panic attack would be putting it mildly. But David Sedaris and his dissertation on being a Macy's elf and his impression of said elf channeling Cher (or was it Barbra Streisand?) pretty much saved Christmas for me that year. I just imagined my dad as that elf, or maybe David Sedaris as the elf but with my dad's face, shot-gunned a couple cold ones on arrival and ho-ho-ho. Merry Christmas.

David Sedaris' other books have saved countless other road-trips as well, ones that would be long because of insanely bored children or insanely bad drivers or just because what waited at the other end was more awkwardness or weirdness or sadness or bad news. And this new book, "When You Are Engulfed in Flames," saved this ride too.

Maybe I got lost once or twice because I was too busy howling at David's mother-in-law being eaten by worms, but so be it. I needed to write something to everyone on the Cousin Cancer update list that wouldn't be horribly disappointing (another round of arsenic is needed) or depressing (the numbers aren't going down) and I needed to laugh my ass off to come up with something accurate yet uplifting. Which I haven't yet, but I'll channel my beloved gay 50 year old BFF, and I know it'll work out.

Road Trip Curse

6 hours in the car when it should have been 4. Vomit. Traffic. A weird kinda tornado thing.

I am cursed with sucky travel, no?

But we made it and Spud ensued.

Honeysuckle

The japanese honeysuckle is in massive bloom tonight, maybe from all the rain we had today, like buckets and bathtubs of rain. I cranked open all the windows and now the house smells almost sticky sweet and like summer, I guess.

It was 8 kids of bedlam today and tonight: my three, my friend's two, plus two more short people. Pizza and popcorn and lemon ices. A movie watched in a half-assed kind of way (which is not at all) and tag. And gymnastics on the couch. (Poor couch.) R's friend, a sweet little 7 year old boy, came for a sleep over, his first ever. Which made the Giant Four Year Old more spazzy than normal. Oh the joy! A boy is in my house! thought he. Too bad they tried to ditch him most of the night.

Bedtime was easy, believe it or not, once I threatened GFYO with a life deprived of water guns, birthday parties, cupcakes, cereal bars, hockey sticks and Curious George (yes, I pulled out the big guns). It finally got quiet around 9pm.

It is now 10:15. About 30 minutes ago, that sweet little 7 year old boy wandered downstairs clutching his well-loved bear and trying very, very hard not to cry. He missed his mom; it's just that she snuggles with me, he said. We called her. She came. He put on his flip flops and he and teddy were out the door.

Maybe the honeysuckle is making me high or something, but it was all I could do to not cry myself. It was so stinkin' cute and made me feel all mom-like, comforting somebody's else's kid and making him laugh when I knew he felt sort of like a loser and sort of scared to death. And my own daughter, wrapped in a blanket bed-headed already, standing at the top of the stairs telling him it was okay and see ya later before sleepwalking down the hall to my bed (where her brother and sister were already snoring) just about put me over the sugary top.

I could go sleep in another bed tonight, in the Curious George sleeping bag I confiscated earlier if I wanted, but I won't. It's just that, even though I'll get kicked in the gut about fifty thousand times between now and the morning -- it's just that they snuggle with me too. So, little friend of R's, I get it.

A Quiz

Do you know where this famous song comes from? Who wrote it? What its roots are?

(I do.) But my husband didn't and my sister didn't. So help solve a family "bet" and let us know, do you?

PS: No googling allowed to be all smarty pants. 'Cause that's cheating. And also if you get the right answer, I might get the GFYO to dance to the song of your choice.

PSS: And if that makes no sense to you, scroll down.

Queen of Clean

I spent the weekend cleaning. (There was dancing too -- see below-- but yo, mostly cleaning.)

Not like tidying cleaning, but like washing the window screens cleaning. Thankfully (for me), this happens maybe twice a year (maybe three times) and usually at the beginning of the school year and at the end. Mostly, it has to do with paper management.

When the school year starts, I get all Super Mom with my charts and my bins and my hooks and my extremely organized arts and crafts supplies. (The smell of new pencils, newly sharpened new pencils, fills me with the kind of nostalgic joy I reserve for little else besides new corduroy pants and cinnamon toast.) I clean out every clothes drawer with manic ecstasy, leaving heaps of piles to give away or to throw away or to give back to whomever they belong to. I clean out all the toys (an exercise that has gotten easier over the years, since our collection has shrunk to blocks and cars and board games with a few action figures thrown in). I clean out the mud room and move the worn out flips flops and useless, broken goggles to make way for sneakers and cleats and wind breakers. And those charts I mentioned? Oh, good Lord, have I made some decent charts in my life: picture-coded when they couldn't read, with words when they could, with all sorts of goals and rules and schedules for the morning and the after school and the bedtime.

It lasts maybe two weeks. Give or take, but two weeks is a decent estimate of how long I can handle my perfection.

Still, it's a ritual of wishful fantasy and a girl's gotta dream.

At the end of the school year, it's another kind of unload, another kind of fantasy clean. The backpacks come home clogged with a year's worth of papers and work books and projects to add to the year's worth we already have at home -- on bulletin boards, in files, on book shelves, shoved into Home Management Systems. The sneakers are beyond stink, the cleats are done for a few months, and all the sleds and snow goggles and ski helmets -- out and about though it hasn't snowed in months -- are taking up valuable space. There is too much stuff around here! And the car is a literal wasteland of waste! And I think my foot just stuck to the floor! And I can't see through the dusty window screens anymore and OH.MY.GOD! We need to clean this friggin' house! RIGHT! NOW!

My back hurts. My hair hurts. In an effort to vaccuum ever square inch, I flung the cord in a furious fury and smacked myself in the eye with the plug. I think it's swelling now, but I'm okay. Really.

I can report, however one-eyed, that the new tilty windows work when you want to clean them but that one also feels a little like Mrs. Cleaver when doing so. I can report that every piece of clothing that is not on a body is clean and folded (though not yet put away) and that the fridge has been cleared of any science experiments growing within. I also can report that that I have successfully culled worthwhile works of art and/or scholarly achievement from those destined for the recycling bin. (And I did this at a Roadrunner pace because God forbid anyone see me actually toss something they spent like what? nine minutes creating.)

But I did find this pinned to the cork beneath the certificates of award, A+ papers, invitations by Oprah to attend the next Brilliant and Amazing Kids show other stuff:




and hello? I think that's a fairy tale I can believe in.

So He Thinks He Can Dance

So I decided this was a cleaning weekend (more on this later) and while upstairs folding, the Stud and kids were busy working on the downstairs. Umm... Not so much.

Please note the shaving cream on the face (huh? wha?) and notice how the Stud is not so much unaware but completely unaffected by it (too busy reading right-wing propaganda I'm sure). And also notice how the Stud busts a subtle little move of his own.

Like father like son, yo.

God Says Yes

Roar, sang Helen Reddy, when I was a little kid, and she sang it a lot it on my little AM radio. So, when I wasn't a Rhinestone Cowboy, I was pretty much just practicing to be all invincible like Helen.

Which as it turns out is pretty much impossible to be all the time -- and thankfully so, I think. Sometimes you need to curl up into a ball on the couch with a blanket, unplug the phones, unhook the keyboard. Sleep. Cry. Give up a little.

When my cousin got sick, I had to remind her that we are not polite when we are kicking the ass out of cancer. We are also not polite when our kids are sick or need help, or we are seriously crazy or sleep-deprived from dealing with a sick or sad kid or parent or dog or friend. We are not polite when we see something dangerous or evil or wrong with the little or big world we live in (like aimeepalooza had to do with the n-word hurling kid at the park). We do not apologize for doing whatever it is we need to do to make ourselves, or the people around us, or hells yeah, even our own stinkin' country better. We do what we need to do.

I've been thinking all morning how I really hope that's what Carolyn Online is doing right now. She and her husband and her family are grieving today. I don't even know what her voice sounds like (though I think I can hear it sometimes in the words she writes) and I don't live nearby and even if I did, I know there is really very little I could do.

Except maybe to tell her that I hope she does whatever she needs to do for herself and for her husband and kids without apologizing for any of it. I hope she says no thanks and yes thanks to offers of help or food or whatever without feeling guilty. I hope she doesn't worry about saying (or writing) the right thing or saying (or writing) nothing at all.

A week or so ago, I found this little scrap of paper at the bookstore with a poem typed on it. My cousin's mom and I and the Giant Four Year Old were getting through a rainy day by lurking through the children's books, which is always a fun thing to do, but especially on a rainy day and especially when you're waiting for results of a bone marrow biopsy. I'm not sure why I even picked up the little piece of paper, or why I kept the scrap in my pocket, and then in my bag, and then in the one of those little compartments in my car. But I did, and here it is:


And since it's probably hard to read, I'll retype it:

God Says Yes To Me by Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I am telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

I'm glad I kept that typed down scrap. I'm glad I found it and glad I saved it. And now I'm passing it on to you.

He's Sexy (and So Smaht)

Giant Four Year Old: can little kids have boyfriends?

Me: no, i don't think so.

GFYO: well that little girl up the street keeps saying i'm her boyfriend.

Me: well, she probably just means you are a boy who is her friend.

GFYO: i am a little kid and i do not have a girlfriend.

Me: but you have lots of friends who are girls.

GFYO: not really. but i am all sexy.

Me: Giant Four Year Old! please don't say sexy so much!

GFYO: but it is not a bad word like--

Me: like nothing. It is not a bad word but it's not really a good word for a giant four year old to be saying.

GFYO (thoughtfully): well, i'll just tell YOU i am sexy. SEXXXXY!

Me: PLEASE! No more!

GFYO: sexxy sexxy sexy sex!

Me: GIANT FOUR YEAR OLD! enough! (mumbled to self) where does he get this shit?!

GFYO: shiiiiiiiiit!

Me: NO!

GFYO: mama, you're my boyfriend.

Me: yes i am. now eat your lunch.

Election Night

Small town style.

Neighborhood BFF and me plus our six children and a spare spent the afternoon shifting kids from one house to another -- I got the 4 month old baby boy for TWO WHOLE HOURS (love that non-verbal blue-eyed dude) -- and voted and shuttled kids to tennis with stop offs to the liquor store and the grocery. Summer approaches and the rules are just so far out the window, it's not even funny. We co-mingled the food we had and served dinner (at 7:30!!) for seven al fresco and un-corked the bottle and the beers.

And awaited results of today's big vote on the override we've been supporting for the schools.

(This Small Town is cheap, yo. CHEAP. Like Yankee cheap and insufferably so. The boiler in the middle school worked for your grandparents? That's awesome, but, dudes, that was FIVE THOUSAND years ago. Time for a new one, a 20 million dollar new one no doubt, but c'mon....)

The six kids and the spare (she being a bussed-in kid from the city hosted by my neighbor and who is now a part of both our families) were in freakin' hog heaven: trampoline at 7 PM? yes. Ice cream bars though you barely ate dinner? Yes to that too.

Because it's election night, kids, and we've got a bottle of wine and a six pack and we've staked "vote yes" lawn signs in lawns all over the Small Town and yapped our yappers to anyone who would listen and emailed anyone who's spam filters would allow and so -- yeah. Go for it: trampoline, ice cream, no bed time EVER. IT'S ELECTION NIGHT DUDES!


******

We won.

And Then I Told Some Truth

If there is any substitute for love, it’s memory.
Joseph Brodsky

This is not the story I planned on telling. (But Carolyn Online inspired me.)

In the version I meant to tell, the growing up was like literature. There was Johnny Cash and oil paint, the Philippines and California, stretched canvases everywhere and Mexican tile to lie on in the sun. There was money but it wasn’t gaudy. It was old-school money: beat up Fords, cranky houses, everyday antiques, new ambition. We were big-boned and athletic, not debutante material, and the parents were proud of that. Our dining room table was gigantic, an epic table, and it was filled with curries and pork rolatini, gazpacho and beets: hippy food cooked by people who traveled the world. We hunkered down and shouted out answers to my father’s questions about, you name it: current events, geography, physics, religion, politics.

Then we moved. Home.

Salty neighbors shot off cannons at holidays or birthdays or just because.


Aunts and uncles arrived by boat with gin and tonics in old mayonnaise jars. Ghost stories were plentiful. Once when the house was split in half by rain – by that I mean, it was literally raining in the front yard and not in the back – our grandmother yanked out foul weather gear to put over our bathing suits and we switched back and forth between the clothes, running like crazy people between the two halves. We would stand one arm in, one leg out, half wet, half dry.

There was alcoholism but it was shushed until it caught up with us. There were secrets about mortgage loans and communists and there was furniture pettiness but that caught up with us too. Always lurking there was the truth, but my mother had a huge laugh, they danced together in the kitchen, he smoked cigars, and they never yelled.



It was good.

A memoir loads itself with facts of the heart and the head, and it never looks back: it is faithful in its telling. I don’t know that I can write a memoir. For me, the facts of my life have shifted and become, at best, just sanded down bits of maybe memory and maybe truth.

What I do know is that one day -- that one day being six months after I married the Stud -- my father, after a nothing fight about cigar smoking in the house, told my mother he was leaving. She said, “To the store?” He said, “No, forever.” A few years after that, he copped to an affair.

And that's when I knew that dullness reigns. Not everyday dullness like dishes and gutters, but that true tragedies are rare. Most of us come undone in regular ways. And for my family, even us, we all lived up to the statistics about divorce and adultery, death and cash flow, estate planning and drug addiction. I’ve read this story a hundred times.

But then....

One night in my living room, my father confessed again: to post-traumatic nightmares, scars from bullet holes, briefcases full of cash, and a bargain with the government of St. Croix. After that, that one night when my husband and I couldn’t even whisper in our bedrooms because our hearts were so loud and furious and chattering, the story became something else.

So, I think there are two ways to tell a story. And it’s not just the difference between a lie and a truth. I doubt there has been a good story ever told that was only about black and white. Ancient fights and heartbreaks and tragedies are by definition fuzzy and confused and awkward looking back.

As he tells it, my dad was optioned by the government, sanctioned by the state, and trained as a Bad Boy. It doesn’t mesh with my version of our lives, or my mother’s version. So what I knew, I don’t know: it’s my anti-memoir. And it has nothing to do with the truth. Maybe.

But, oh.my.God. I just wrote some of it down. Scary. And scared.

You love me still, anyway? Right? Right?

Ghost in the Graveyard

The girls come home from school, cockeyed pony tails and dirty shirts, and barely say hello. They dump the back packs on the ground, tell me about some kindergarten kid who swallowed a penny, announce there's no homework ALL WEEK and scramble out the door.

Hi. Bye.

It's good. I'm not complaining. It's not even sunny today and they are long gone. I can hear their voices if I leave the door open, but otherwise it's quiet. The Giant Four Year old is in hot pursuit from the minute they bust through the doors and it amazes me how quickly he can find and put on his shoes when he really wants to. (I knew it!) Sometimes they trick him into coming back home ("mom's calling you! she has candy!") and he still falls for it, but most of the time, they let him tag along which is why he is now an excellent chalk drawer, fort builder, show maker, story teller, snack stealer.

He's done with school already -- which is a cruel joke really, pre-school ending almost two weeks before regular school -- but B and R have three more days. Soccer's done. Jump rope "class" is done. The ocean is still freezing and the boat isn't in the water yet. That one week of camp doesn't start until late July so summer, you know, looms.

It was so much more daunting a few years ago, when it was me vs. them 24 hours a day. I've almost forgotten what it's like to drag three kids around town, changing diapers on the back seat, nursing a baby outside a dressing room while trying to keep two others from unwrapping packs of socks or Dora underpants. I used to tie a net across the deck so they wouldn't wander off. Now, I wonder if the back yard and the woods and the freedom of it and tag and ghost in the graveyard will stop amusing them long enough to come home.

Then I remember that I have all the food and the band aids so I figure I'll see 'em soon enough.

My Dad is A Highwayman

This is for you Dad.

Dinner Party

I have two choices (thanks to Carolyn Online): to tell the story how it was or how I remember it.

There is the version that has me blonde and red-cheeked, a rowdy upstart in a crowd of maniacal heavy drinkers and yarn spinners.

There is the version where the parents are outsider-insiders on a fast track, globetrotting, telling political jokes and throwing long dinner parties with unusual food.

No matter the story I tell, it's just an IDEA of what happened. It's just a fantasy of what was.

It is my anti-memoir. And it's coming.

In the meantime, here's the table for the dinner party I had tonight:



It was pretty, but please note how your girl stayed true to herself --



Can you find it?

Dear Editor

The newspaper in this small town is truly a must-read each week. I've read a lot of small town papers but this one seriously takes the "are you serious?" prize. It's thoroughly Yankee, in that insider-y, kinda distant kind of way. The police blotter is laugh out loud funny (most of the time) as if the person who writes it is in on the joke. The columnist with the pseudonym (though pretty much everybody knows who she is) spends paragraphs describing the cars of drivers she feels have violated some ethical or legal code, lists all the errant yard sale signs that people have forgotten to take down, and is consistently irritated by misbehaved children in public places like restaurants or sidewalks. She hates cell phones and SUVs, not for environmental concerns, but just because she hates them. And the people who have them.

But the Letters to the Editor are serious important reading and sometimes all that anyone reads. Which makes sense really, because pretty much all you need to gauge the heartbeat of the town is what's in those letters. And right now, it's sheer venom.

The nastiness has reached brave new heights. The personal attacks and the name calling are so vicious that I'm sure I'm not the only one who has shook the paper out and thought, "oh no they did NOT." But they did, and they do. Like weekly. Like for paragraphs and paragraphs. About an ousted Head of School, about the construction plans of a local business, about the trash someone left in someone else's barrel.

We take our history seriously here which might explain why this underbelly of American democracy and culture thrives so well in the newspaper (and at Town Meetings and Zoning Meetings and Historic Commission meetings). Everybody's gotta an opinion and everybody's right. And I like that to some extent and I get it too, but the meanness and the dog-with-a-bone mentality and the public-ness of it all seems more like embarrassing shenanigans right now. And it's depressing really.

Last year when things got similarly cranked up, I wrote an op-ed in which I reminded letter-writers and smear-campaigners that while passion and commitment are commendable, they lose their good intentions when ugliness erupts. And I reminded them that despite their so-called concern for the community, children were watching and in a lot of cases reading and how, ewww, bullying, dudes! We don't do that.

And it's completely shocking to me that NO ONE LISTENED TO MY SHEER BRILLIANCE but instead IGNORED MY RIGHTEOUS REASONING and CHOSE NOT TO FOLLOW ME INTO THE SUNSET OF PEACE AND HARMONY.

But I digress.

Tonight after coaching soccer, and pulling a muscle trying to out-cool myself, and in which not one but both daughters cried, and then later the Giant Four Year old (good times), I sat down on the porch in a lump of aching aches and crabbiness and cracked a beer (sweet relief). The garden looked pretty awesome, which it better after three hours of weeding its sorry ass, and I got a wee thoughtful.

A flicker flickered to my right. A hovering, fidgeting tiny little fast thing. And because of all the doom and gloom around these parts, I thought "great! now we've got hellish cicadas! end times cometh."

But it was not a noisy flying bug. It was a humming bird. A humming bird! In my garden!

I am not a bird watcher. I know blue jays and cardinals and pigeons and doves and sea gulls and that's about it. But I am pretty damn sure, that sweet, hovering, wing-flapping, nectar-drinking bird was of the humming variety, and either way, I don't really care. It was a good omen, at least I'm taking it that way, so I recycled the newspaper and I moved on.

Lightning Storm

My nephew, who is almost a teenager, shot this.

He rules.

His taste in music is thanks to me. Just sayin'.

Acid Trip or Four?

While sitting around eating lunch today, the Giant Four Year Old says: "what makes my brain work?"

I say: "huh, what? what makes your brain work?"

He says: "no, I mean, what makes ME work?"

I think man, this kid is a seriously deep thinker, and then I say: "well, your brain does I guess. your brain makes you work."

He says: "oh. really? I thought it was the little white men in the black hats."

Um, what? The little white men? In the black hats?

Does he mean something like this:



Maybe he meant to say "the black man in the black hat":



Or, "the white man in the black hat":



(Shudder.)

And then I thought, and I was thinking fast -- because seriously, what the fuck -- I thought, I hope to God it is not this little man



who is operating with his tiny cohorts somewhere inside my kid's skull. Because that's just taking this whole inane comment to a whole other freakishly scary level that I am not sure I can handle. At all.

He pushed his yogurt away, licked his lips, hopped off the chair and attempted to tell me a knock knock joke which went like this:

Knock Knock?
Who's there? I say (half-assed because I am too busy obsessing about the tiny white men).
Mom.
Yeah, I say.

No, he says.

Wait? what? I say. (Tiny white men. In black hats. In son's head.)

Knock, knock?
Who's there?
Mom.
Yes! What? What do you want? I thought you were telling a joke. (Black hats. Little men. In head)

I am dumbass, he says. You say, Mom who?

Oh. Mom who?

Mom, you are CRAZY!

And then I tell him are you calling me crazy? you're the one with little white men in black hats inside your head! isn't this all a little pot calling the kettle names? that's a good one!

Hot House

When I left on Friday to spend the weekend with my mom and two sisters (no kids, no husbands), I left wearing jeans, a fleece hoodie, a fleece jacket, socks and clogs. I came home -- after nearly dying in a freak side-ways raining electrical storm that had me seeking cover in some random mall in some random town -- in filthy white shorts and a (borrowed) t-shirt drenched in sweat. It's hot, yo.

Despite the never ending whining about the sudden swelter, we ladies had some excellent lady time. We hiked to see a waterfall. It was scary but beautiful. We saw graffiti from 1867 carved into granite. We visited small town tag sales and Church fundraisers. We ate highbrow (jicama, soft shell crabs, "mock" ravioli) and lowbrow (hot dogs, curly fries, milkshakes). We traded jewelry. We slept late.

I learned that when telling funny stories it seems to be a prerequisite in my family to stand up and act out said story. With voices. Everyone did it. We are nothing if not good standing-up story tellers and I also think they we all probably lie a little too for the sake of the thing.

When my babies were born, I remember waking up the next morning and after figuring out where I was and what had happened, I felt a lurch like it was Christmas morning when I was six. I'd feel that same way for weeks, when in the blurry haze of being dragged yet again out of sleep, I would suddenly become conscious with the knowing: i have a baby! and the baby is mine! and the baby is cute!

No matter how shitty and ugly the day or night before may have been, I still feel that way when I see their puffy, sleepy faces first thing in the morning. It doesn't last long, I admit, because if they're awake and I'm awake it means the race is on to get out the door on time. And some kind of nonsense usually starts and something is lost or doesn't fit right and I need coffee and a hairbrush and holy crap, what do you mean you can't find your homework?

But the point is, when I wake up some place without them waking me up, which has happened what? maybe a dozen times over the last 8 years, I'm reminded of that feeling or I guess that lack of feeling and as great as it is to go away and be all kidless and fancy-free, it is always good to come home.

But it's hot, yo. The fort got smashed up again which probably was to be expected because you know what they say about crime and heat waves. And even the garden is hot and the flowers are lying down like they're just too weary to stretch up. Annie delivered brussel sprouts and cantaloupe and red bell peppers to put in the ground, but the thought of digging in dirt just seemed too... sweaty. But I swear that I will in the morning. Right now, I'm just pleased to have put a dinner on the table that did not involve the stove or the oven or heat of any kind. And I'm just glad to be sitting here very.slowly.typing so that I don't start sweating again.

I bought this for $2 from some awesome broad selling plants from her garden (one was marked "do you remember Mrs. Jeffert's hollyhocks?") and I think it is my new prized possession:

Liveblogging Swingtown (Kinda)

So the Stud and me grew up in The Ice Storm. The movie was shot at my school for fuck's sake and when we watched it, we were sure we saw houses forts we got drunk in recognized. The one thing we knew for sure: our parents never attended any key parties. (Eww, gross, shut up.)

And now comes this new teevee version of the most salacious parts of an excellent movie, Swingtown, and sure enough we two were front and center. And it went like this:

*******

The Stud is all, I think everyone lives in Swingtown and I'm all wha? what the fuck Stud? and he's all, no it happens and I'm all, in your dreams dude and then he refers me to some "facts" written in Boston Magazine and i'm all, Duuuuude. Be serious. Must I remind you again and again ad guy that sex above puppies and babies sells just about everything. Must I do everything around here?

And then he says, let's watch the stupid show.

Which we do.

*******

Sort of. Because I am yapping too much throughout it and he has to leave at 5 in the morning and is pretty much just waiting to go to bed.

*******

But anyhoo, he says you are on crack if you don't think this goes on here and I say wha? HERE? and he's all listen dude don't be naive and you've heard the rumors. I get all feminsta and I say, that's just a bunch of mean girls being mean. And he thinks about that for a minute, maybe 30 seconds, before he says, you might be right about that.

********

And then I say or he says -- honestly, I'm not sure what happened first -- but one of us says: our parents never ever did this shit -- right? -- and they never ever wore those clothes.

********

He says it does happen anyway, everywhere. And I repeat that he just wishes it did and he shakes his head at me like I am so so so immature. And I say, I am NOT immature and I have totally watched the WE Channel and Oprah and know people swing, duh, but it's not like it's rampant and taking over the whole Small Town and what the freakin' fuck are you even talking about?

And he says, I have to get up at 5 in the morning.

*********
*********

And I'm all WAIT?! Do you know something I don't know?

And he says NO! I thought you knew something I didn't know!

(Which is funny, really, because generally he thinks there is little I know that he doesn't...)

To which I say, No! No! NO! I do Not. Know. Anything.

And then I say, I think you are kinda pervy.*

And then the Stud says, I gotta go to bed.**


* which i didn't really say

** which he really did

Can't We All Just Get Along?

The gang warfare in my 'hood has reached epic status. Naturally, it's over turf and more specifically, the shanties headquarters forts the roving gangs have built in the woods behind my house.

Like most gangs, these gangs are divided by personal identity: The Girls and The Boys. The rules of the gangs are fluid however, and occasionally younger brothers align with The Girls and younger sisters throw gang signs alongside The Boys. There are drive-bys of the two-wheeled variety and insults are hurled. Today I heard actual swear words including "BS" (used out of context and in initial form) and "jerk" and the inexplicable "P-ass." (Maybe it was Pee-Ass.)

(I am assuming the Giant Four Year Old with the potty mouth said the s-word but I cannot confirm. He is loyal to the gang above all, even when he has no.fucking.clue what is going on.) (Again, with the s-word. Shit.)

The shacks trash piles forts are architecturally, aesthetically and in every other way different. The Girls have a sofa, a lounge area, a gymnastics bar (I shit you not), an entrance way that is paved and (seriously) a picket fence. The Boys have a blue tarp thrown over a rope tied between two trees with a moldy carpet remnant inside. They did however "plant" a discarded arbor vitae near the entrance because they are nothing if not dudes proud of their "lawn."

The Boys performed a sneak attack (during homework) and thoroughly trashed The Girls home away from home Barbie Dream House fort. Crying ensued. And I do not mean of the tattooed-beneath-the-eye variety. I was busy reading the local newspaper smoking cooking a nutritious meal when the Homies busted in the back door requesting a conference with The Don Mom.

"THEY CALLED US BABBBIIIIES!" "THEY SAID WE WOULD RUN HOME TO OUR MOMMYYYYY!"

I glanced up from the paper stove and said, "Well, um, hate to be all obvious, but aren't you?"

Sniffle. "WELLLLLL.... THE BOYS RUINED EVERYTHINGGGGGG!"

And I then I did something that proves we will never, in fact, all get along.

I said, "Go back out there and kick their asses claim your territory, tell The Boys to step off, and rebuild, little women, rebuild!"

And Goddamn if that gang, The Girls and their little mascot, did not beat back The Boys and send them scootering home. And how did they do it? They talked them to death. They rationalized. They explained what was fair and what was not fair. They referred to Gang Warfares of the past, like the way distant past, like ones The Boys could not.even.remember. They talked about feelings. They probably had pie-charts and Power Point back there for all I know. They ostensibly bored The Boys into defeat.

But peace came back to the 'Hood. And rebuilding efforts commenced. And all I could think was maybe it's too bad we won't have a woman for president.

More Proof of My Parenting Genius

1) Handed Oldest Daughter wadded up cash ($13 worth) for upcoming field trip. "What?" she objects, "All singles? Really?"

2) Giant Four Year old said "fuckin" then apologized for saying the "S" word.

3) Second daughter asks for new sneakers. I go into full rant about how "i am not buying any more shoes for anyone ever; i am not in the business, missus, of buying you new stuff whenever you want it; why oh why is there always something wrong with your shoes; do you see any money in my wallet; that's right! there is NONE; and how is it possible that TWELVE granola bars could have been eaten in two days; I am never buying granola bars for anyone ever; what in God's name could be the matter with your shoes?"

Second daughter, completely un-moved by Mommy's meltdown, says, "Well, there is giant hole in the bottom and so my feet are always wet."

Oh.

New shoes for you then. Now who wants to give Mommy a big hug?!

Me Vs. New York Times

The following is from the New York Times, in which Nick Denton said that "four or five years ago, no one was thinking about women", and after which the author wrote:

“And what are (editors note: women) readers interested in? This week, it was wedding trains big enough to require their own ZIP codes, shoes that cost as much as cars and loving loutish men who do a poor job of loving them back. Jezebel live-blogged the public premiere of “Sex and the City,” (in flip-flops no less, how very 2.0), Journal Women looked at the implications of combining cleavage and pinstripes, Glam went wall-to-wall with “Shoes and the City,” Shine had video interviews with the franchise’s four principals. SheZoom had a five-part deconstruction teasing apart the ethos of the show. Some sites sat out the hype, with The XX Factor preferring to focus on the tidy pleasures of a “Daily Show” spoof of the show and Divine Caroline, a West Coast site, focused on issues closer to home and office, such as, “Why do guys think it’s appropriate to adjust themselves in public?”

Um. What? No, I really wasn't a part of ANY of that. Didn't read anything like that. Didn't think anything like that. Not at least on my internet. The article continued:

I realize we are all, like it or not, having a moment with “Sex and the City,” (editors note: we ALL are? I mean, I want very much to see the movie with my grrlfriend but I really don't think we are ALL having a moment) no more or less frivolous than the Super Bowl. It’s just odd that while there has been a significant advance in sites by and for women, much of what is being produced replicates, rather than revolutionizes, the template set down by women’s magazines for decades (note to self: do they say shit fuck sucks hate and bullshit in Redbook?)."

“The lack of evolution is disappointing to me,” said Caterina Fake, one of the founders of Flickr.com. “Back in 1996, it was going to be this brave new world where women were finally going to take control of their stories, and to me, it is often more a crushing sameness (editors note: no sir? same? I see miles of differences between us broads every day but with the same kind of crazy different shit that makes us like each other anyway: I don't think that constitutes sameness).”

After so many years of being on the wrong end of what (male) media executives choose to dish up, women have taken matters into their own able hands. So far, it’s a shallow (editors note: really? shallow?) revolution, but one that carries deep implications. (Editors note: Oh, I'll show you implications.)"

This article was written by David Carr of the New York Times. His name implies that he is a man. I only point that out to, um... point out that he is a man and also to say that he has no fucking idea what women are really talking about. His one eyeball is filled with his lame and naive idea of women because of women sites including

IVillage, (ivillage.com), the mother of all mothers’ sites, continues to rumble along, with Glam (glam.com), a federation of gossipy blog sites in hot pursuit. SheZoom (shezoom.com) began offering a video portal this year, Slate has a subsite called The XX Factor (slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor), Yahoo grabbed magazine veteran Brandon Holley (Elle Girl, Jane) to produce Shine (shine.yahoo.com), Nick Denton’s Jezebel (jezebel.com) found immediate traction, PopSugar (popsugar.com) took the celebrity route to a girl’s heart.

Let me be the one to show Mr. Carr the way to a girl's heart: fuck you brother.

I think the reason most of us write or read on the big bad internet is because corporate America has failed us in so many, many ways (and also because we like putting fingers to keyboard). We don't see our selves on news stands or on TV, and please correct me if I am wrong, but we don't see ourselves on IVillage or other we've-researched-it-so-you'll- like-it sites like that.

I see myself here. And sometimes you come along.

So, Mr. Carr, if you want to know what women are really thinking and talking about please, next time, ask me. Because I got, what is it -- go see "WHAT TO WHEN NOT WEEDING" sidebar -- um, well, a big BUNCH of lady friends who are seriously not thinking about shoes.