"He's tasting victory. I'll bet it tastes good, like salt-water taffy or a Chunky." - Cleveland Brown, "The Family Guy"

One of my closest friends from college got married last weekend. As soon as I found out I was pregnant and due only three weeks after her wedding, I called her and told her very regretfully that I could not come to the wedding. The ceremony was taking place an hour or so outside L.A., entailing a bus trip from the airport to the resort. I would be coming alone, thirty-seven weeks pregnant, and staying about an hour from the nearest hospital. The airlines will not permit you to fly after 36 weeks, and my OB absolutely forbade it. Lauren was incredibly cool about it – she didn’t even take me up on my offer to name the child after her : ) For her honeymoon, she and Frank are taking the QEII cruise to England. I hope they had an awesome time, and I cannot wait to see pics. I haven’t met her husband but he seems like a terrific guy - and one of the biggest benefits of the match is that he is NOT in show business. Lauren’s very successful in her field, and very ambitious and driven, and it’s good for us/those theatre types to have civilians to offset the tension and artificially-created stress of theatre/TV life.

So having said all that, at one point in the drive to the shore last Saturday there was a part of me that was so incredibly grateful that I was not 1) flying to L.A. at all, and 2) flying from L.A. to Philly on September 11. I felt like a worm not to be at her wedding, but there you have it, my honest feelings about the whole plane thing. I am a bad friend.

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Dan likes to listen to music while he drives; I adore driving by myself so I can revel in the silence. However, driving to the beach, he put in Ziggy Stardust. I have never listened to the whole album – I enjoyed it. And, as a big fan of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, it also became very clear to me where John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask took their inspiration. Pretty cool.

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Jude spent much of the ride to the beach coloring – books, paper, Mimi. He spent much of the ride home dropping handfuls of crayons down the far side of his carseat until his brother finally noticed that his crayon choices were getting slimmer and slimmer. By the way, I am in love with these new crayons that I bought for the boys.

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The Smiths had a very cool clock, the top half of which was a normal clock and the bottom half, a tide clock. (The background was a map of the coast of NJ – my brother and I finally found out where the heck our parents had been taking us to the beach all those years – this itsy bitty little beach called Whale Beach just south of Strathmere. Why we didn’t just go to Ocean City like every other South Jerseyite, I do not know.) Anyway, the tide clock fascinated Simon, and Dan spent some time explaining ebbing, flowing, and the moon’s effects on the tides to him. Si spent most of the rest of the week saying things like, “It’s fibbering – um, febbing - now but soon it will be flowing.” Or, “It’s low tide. That means soon it will be fibbing.”

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Si got way too much sun on Monday – we were all having such a good time building the sand structure of the century that we spent three hours on the beach. So Tuesday he felt a little grumpy and warm and not so well. We did not go to the beach that day. But the next morning, after lots of water and some sleep, he said to me, “Mama, I still feel a bit yesterdayish.” What I longed to say was that I spend most of my life feeling a bit yesterdayish. But isn’t that a great turn of phrase? How handy can that description be? I love it.

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My weirdo older brother has been promising for weeks that he was coming down to the shore (about a 45-minute drive for him) on Wednesday. Wednesday came and went – three calls to his cell, no response. He never showed up. I got nervous enough that I called his work Thursday morning, and he had indeed been at work the previous night. Oh good, so at least we know he’s alive. I spent most of the first half of the week listening to the two boys be excited that Uncle Curt was coming on Wednesday, and then a lot of Wednesday fielding questions like, “When is Uncle Curt coming? Will he be here by lunch/nap/dinner/tomorrow morning?” By Thursday morning, I was furious. My mother used to turn her phone off because she couldn’t be bothered answering it, and after a week or so of listening to it ring and ring, I would eventually get concerned and call one of her neighbors to go check up on her – invariably she was just fine. This whole experience was so reminiscent of that that it made me physically ill.

I was angry at my brother most for disappointing his two nephews. He did finally call Friday morning (I admit I was still angry and did not answer my cell when I saw the caller ID) and left this message: “Um, it’s Friday morning. I guess I will catch up with you later.” Asshole. Obviously I am still furious. I am even contemplating not calling him when the new baby arrives. I am soooo pissed at him right now.

The mental instability/illness factor in my family runs high – the difference between us is that I have gotten help and am on meds; my little brother admits he’s a bit unstable and has a wonderful wife who is a terrific influence on him; Curt just acts like it’s normal to be totally anti-social and not give a shit about anyone other than himself.

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With Lincoln we have a man whose depression spurred him, painfully, to examine the core of his soul; whose hard work to stay alive helped him develop crucial skills and capacities, even as his depression lingered hauntingly; and whose inimitable character took great strength from the piercing insights of depression, the creative response to it, and a spirit of humble determination forges over decades of deep suffering and earnest longing.
[Shenk, Joshua Wolf. Oct 2005. “Lincoln’s Great Depression.” The Atlantic Monthly 296 (3): 52-68.]

Dan read this on vacation and handed it to me to help me understand how he feels (“just not as grandiose,” he said) about his struggles with his depressive issues. Which made me feel like a shallow depressive – heck, when I am in the depths, all I feel is stupid and useless and burdensome. I don’t see it as honing the steel of my soul or developing my character; I just feel guilty and worried and dumb. And weak that I feel that I need pharmaceuticals to help me live a halfway normal life.

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Snippets:

I have discovered the glories of Celestial Seasonings Lemon Ice cold-brew tea. I love iced tea but it takes time to make a decent pitcher. Now you just pour water over these tea bags and ten minutes later you have perfectly delicious iced tea.

I am all over James’ saltwater taffy, as opposed to the standard South Jersey Fralinger’s. I bought three boxes and ate two over the course of the past week. Mostly because there is NOT a preponderance of peanut butter taffies in each box of James’ like there is in the Fralinger’s. Peanut butter saltwater taffy is revolting. I realize I’ve mentioned this before, but I feel very strongly about my saltwater taffy.

In Lancaster we asked the hotel clerk for a restaurant recommendation – she directed us to the Plain and Fancy Farm, “the ultimate Amish experience.” Yes, well, ultimate in the sense of what the Amish lifestyle would be like if Disney got a hold of them. We didn’t even turn off the car, we just U-turned and found a different place to eat. When we walked in and saw three tables full of Amish and Mennonites (the locals, in other words), we figured we’d found the right place. We had.

Dan ditched The Sparrow: he said he was fifty pages in and didn’t care to find out what happened. There is no way I could give him a plot synopsis, the book is too complex. And I was really disappointed that he didn’t like it; I still think if he’d stuck with it, he would. Oh well. Maybe I am deluding myself and it’s not all that great of a book? Sigh.

The INXS finale is tonight. It must be JD or all will have been in vain.

I totally love Stewie from The Family Guy. What do you think of the name Stewart if the baby is a boy? Hmmm…

Simon has developed this irritating new tic: he's only clearing his throat but it really sounds like he's trying not to spew all over himself. It makes *me* want to sympathy-puke, thank God the morning sickness is long over. But it is driving me INSANE.

Did I mention my little brother (who is a kick-ass chess player) taught Simon to play chess this week? It started out as, “OK, Si, now this is a leetle queenie-weenie. She only wants to move a little itsy bit each time, so…” until two hours later, it was, “All right, you just took my rook. I am now going to check your queen, except…oh, I can’t do that. Shit. Let me think…”