The problem with cats is that they get the exact same look on their face whether they see a moth or an axe-murderer. ~Paula Poundstone

One five-year-old who wants to sit on any body part but the one designed for it; one two-year-old who wants to lie on the floor in the vet’s office and who insists on bringing Mimi everywhere but then wants me to carry her, and who needed a nap an hour ago; one baby who won’t sleep in the car and wants badly to poop and go to sleep but can’t seem to do either; one pissed-off cat jammed in a carrier; one mama heading for a nervous breakdown. I am so having a drink tonight, nursing be damned. Maybe some rum will make the kid sleep.

We left Em at the vet. She needs X-rays. They thought maybe she’d dislocated her hip. Then they thought maybe she cracked her knee. Maybe it’s just a strain. They won’t know without an X-ray, for which they must sedate her. Here’s an idea: screw the cat and sedate me instead. They’ll call before five so I can come pick her up. Yep, load the whole crew back into the car and go get the cat. Stupid cat. Stupid vet. Stupid me.

Update: the cat has a bruised knee and a fractured pelvis. These injuries, probably due to being sideswiped by a car (shame it didn’t finish her off…oops, did I say that out loud?), will heal on their own, given time. She will have trouble with stairs for a while (did I mention the litter box is in the basement?) And I have to get some sort of painkillers from the vet to give her. So in addition to dealing with administering Zantac twice a day, Omnicef antibiotic once a day, and Nyastatin after every feeding, to Terce, my HUMAN infant, I now have to jam PAINKILLERS down my CAT’S throat.

Life is so not fair – I should be the one getting painkillers.

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I cannot read Wickett’s Remedy. I just can’t do it.I tried, I swear. The little annotations must be read, says my OCD, and they are annoying and uninteresting and useless. They disrupt the flow of the story. So there.

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Primo told his preschool teacher this morning that the pilgrims came to America on the “Cauliflower.” He also told her that, while she might think that he was just thankful for her as a teacher, he was thankful for the teachers at his old school too. Yep, he’s a charmer, that one.

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A baby was baptized at church yesterday. I managed to hear most of the ceremony before Terce woke up and I had to carry him out and feed him. It strikes me that the Episcopalian ceremony is incredibly similar to the Catholic one. We discussed baptizing first the baby, and then the two older boys. We realized we need godparents for them. Then I realized I needed to be baptized as well, if it came to that. I am not sure I am that invested yet. We shall see. I wonder if the grandparents will mind that it’s Episcopal instead of Catholic? Will they attend the service? Some of Dan’s family threatened to not come to our wedding because it was in a Methodist church; do the same rules go for christenings? Inquiring minds want to know…

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We call this one “American Gothic.”



What, I can’t hear you, I have a pacifier in my ear!

Catching Up with Gina (Rather than with Depeche Mode)

Exercise! Vigorous! Before work! I feel like a yapping terrier, and I'm not sure when/if the high will wear off. I adjusted my work hours slightly so I can exercise in the morning without having to wake up before the crack of dawn. Yay me!

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So Saturday? I was getting ready to go to a party at a friend's that I'd been looking forward to all week. I took a shower, shaved my legs, blah, blah, blah . . . and then I attempted to get dressed. This lead to a combination nervous breakdown/panic attack/pity party. I cried, threw clothes that didn't fit or looked terrible, and generally indulged in childish antics the likes of which I haven't seen since Teddy was two. (Ted was at his dad's, which gave me the freedom to freak out like that. It was kind of nice.)

I put on my fat-lady pajamas, ate some Peppridge Farm cookies, and went to bed with a book. I'm not proud of myself, but it wasn't all for naught. Did you see up there what I did this morning? Cardio and weights! Weights, people!

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I finally finished The Alienist, which I liked very much. It reminded me a little of The Silence of the Lambs, especially in certain parts, tied in with an old-timey-Sherlock-Holmes-but-in-New-York sort of feel. That Caleb Carr isn't the handsomest guy in the world, though. The author photo on the book flap made me laugh out loud; the Steve Perry circa "Oh, Sherry" look is a killer, especially when you throw in a resemblance to Stephen King. Wow.

I also read two books for school yesterday, Nory Ryan's Song and Meet Molly: An American Girl. Nory Ryan's Song is set in 1850s Ireland and made me cry. And the American Girl book? As much as I wanted to loath it for its ties to the American Girl Money-Making Machine . . . it wasn't bad. The writing was fine. It was light on actual history, but factual. And considering this is a book for girls in kindergarten or first grade, I won't complain too much about the lightness. In all, it was more than tolerable.

*****

And now, we dance. Okay, no we don't. We work. Or at least I do. For a while.

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

Emmy the cat was missing. She didn’t show up to eat or to miaow annoyingly and plaintively to be let out then let in, then out, then in, ad infinitum. I know I am on record as saying I really wouldn’t care if she got hit by a car, but then I started to feel guilty. Is it wrong to love Seppie and not his sister? At any rate, I found her last night around midnight, just late enough to prevent me from doing one single thing until this morning – she was curled up under my bed, where she’d apparently been all day, and she was dragging her right rear leg. It appears to be unbroken, but she can’t put any weight on it. Fortunately, not more than two weeks ago, I asked for vet recommendations on the neighborhood email list and was inundated with responses. So off to the vet we go, hopefully as soon as possible, and I hope it won’t cost too much to fix. I may like my animals but I have no intention of spending hundreds of dollars on this cat. Just so you know. (I have had cats whom I would have spent that much money on, no question. But with three kids, sorry…and keep in mind you’re dealing with the woman who wouldn’t even spring for a an aquarium and bubbler for the goldfish…)

I’ll keep you posted. And let me tell you, if Emmy was miserable and unlovable before, she’s in pain now and is even more so. Seppie has nearly had his head bitten off several times now. I am hoping it’s an easy repair, for her sake and for mine.

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My exercise log per Mistress Mary’s instructions:
Tuesday – walked 1-1/2 miles
Wednesday – walked 1-1/4 miles
Thursday – walked with the boys and played some soccer/kick the ball around the backyard. Also, for God knows what reason, vacuumed all the carpets downstairs and then washed the hardwood floors and two levels of our oak staircase. Trust me, this is exercise; I broke a sweat.
Saturday – walked forty-five minutes, roughly two miles


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My father-in-law’s birthday is Thursday. I am pleased to be making his cake for him. But I have never worked with butter cream icing before, and that’s what I have to use since I am the only family member that prefers whipped cream icing. This ought to be an adventure. I am planning to make a chocolate sheet cake, split it, fill it with strawberry or raspberry cream filling, and ice it with vanilla butter cream icing. (I may even – gasp, heresy – use a cake mix as I do not have a whole lot of luck with chocolate cakes being moist, from scratch. Which is weird since I can bake pretty much anything else with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back.)

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I am reading nothing. I haven’t even picked up The Thorn Birds all weekend. I barely glanced at the newspaper. I am sick (sore throat, hurting ears, runny nose), I’m not sleeping much because Terce is having intestinal issues, and I am facing a week without Dan at home. He has some big, prestigious thingey on at the office, and plans early mornings and late nights every night this week. So I am essentially it this week. Pray for my children : ) Or me. Your pick.

How I long to fall just a little bit, to dance out of the lines and stray from the light...

In a nutshell: I love Dar Williams. It is simply that simple.

But here are the details:

Dar’s opener was a band called Girlyman. Now, I admit, while sitting at the bar next door to the Byham gulping down a Bacardi-and-coke, no lime, I toyed with the idea of having another drink and blowing off the opening act. I am glad I didn’t. Girlyman started off with a kick-ass rendition of Paul Simon’s “Never Been Lonely” and got even more interesting from there.

Girlyman is three people – Doris, who has a pure, clear soprano voice that just gets you in your bones; Nate, who is very funny (I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out if he was wearing makeup and I am pretty sure he was. It suited his slightly pudgy yet devilish looks); and Ty, who I immediately became entranced with. I do tend to like those androgynous, small, dark girls: Ty (she’s the one on the right), Sarah Siplak playing a man in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” heck, even the coffeeperson at the local coffee shop, Erin – small, thin, dark, boyish. I suppose if I were to be a lesbian, I’d be the girly one? Funny thing is, I like my men thin and dark, too, but tall. Anyhoo...

Dar opened with her version of “Comfortably Numb.” She did a number of songs from her new album, “My Better Self,” which I bought last night. The song “Beautiful Enemy” is what convinced me to buy it then and there. She sang two of my three favorites – “Mercy of the Fallen” and “Iowa” both of which just ROCKED. Unusually so, as most people are probably familiar with Dar as a folk artist, but she had a full band last night, and both songs just blew me away. She also sang “Alleluia” and “Beauty of the Rain” and “The Babysitter” and a haunting, goosebump-inducing version of “The One Who Knows.”

The crowd was a fairly typical Dar crowd – in other words, lots and lots of lesbians, a smattering of kids. Crunchy folk. And I must say that last night, in one room, was the largest collection of the homeliest people I have ever seen. I am not talking just not gorgeous, or interestingly ugly – I am talking in-your-face plain homeliness. It was astounding for its depth and breadth. Everywhere you turned, there was another. I don’t claim to be a beauty or anything close to it, but wow. Just wow. It was like the Western Pennsylvania Home for Homely People had sponsored a field trip. ("Everybody got their permission slips? Good. Now, everyone got their paper bags? ... oh, damn.")

The Byham is an intimate venue with good acoustics, but there was no dancing. And especially Girlyman required dancing. As usual, it astounded me how out of an entire auditorium of people, I am the only one jiggling and leg-shaking and head-bobbing to the rhythm. Maybe everyone else took their Ritalin before the show.

After the show I skedaddled home to another night of feeding the Terce-monster, and being spit up on more in one night than in the past six weeks combined. Oh, and an incredibly vivid dream involving Thom Yorke, Radiohead on tour, and me.

When I am king, you will be first against the wall.

I love Mimi Smartypants. Today's “Decaf grande products-of-conception mocha!” is wonderful. I spit tea out my nose.

I also particularly enjoyed Sueeeus’s “consumption receptacle” turn of phrase in her show-and-tell. You all are brilliant writers. Or at least you make me laugh. Same thing.

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I would like to direct your attention to our exciting new feature, the photo homage to our lovely Mimi, on the left sidebar. Mimi was mine as a child, I am responsible for her lovely coiffure, and Segundo discovered her during our move last year. It was love at first sight. (Perhaps we should have the boy's eyes checked...)

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I am LOVING Thorn Birds so much that I do not want it to end, although I know where this “Meggie has a son who she absolutely adores more than anyone in the world except his father, who just happens to be a cardinal in the Roman Catholic church” plotline is heading.

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I am rereading old “Brain, Child” mags. Very entertaining. Reassuring to realize I am not the only conflicted mother.

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I dig polar writing. Fiction, nonfiction, doesn’t matter. And not that I have any interest in exploring the Arctic/Antarctic. I just want to sit on my ass here with a hot mug of tea in my hand and read about other people freezing their asses off. This sentence alone from the above site is enough to make me trust this reviewer: “He wrote like a thesaurus suffering an attack of hysterics in an abattoir, but is still thoroughly readable and enjoyable.” Isn’t that just terrific? I mean, how could you not want to read something this person thinks is good? And apparently, for the complete bibliography of Antarctic works, see this web page: http://www.antarctic-circle.org/fauno.htm. Cool. In so many senses of the word. Ha.
What have I read in this realm? Hmm…Andrea Barrett’s The Voyage of the Narwhal. Ice Blink (botulism killed the radio star…erm, Franklin’s expedition). South. Endurance. Of course I also heartily enjoy survival writings like Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea and its source material, Owen Chase’s The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex so perhaps I am just hopelessly warped. You decide.

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I am vindicated. Jennifer Aniston does indeed rock! Number Seven, people. (Our diaper backpack, purchased when Primo was on his way, is monogrammed not with our last name or his name, but with “Kid A.” Because he was, after all, Kid A. And it’s a terrific album.)

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Yesterday the boys and I met Sarah Louise at the coffee shop for hot chocolate and donuts – in other words, yes, I fed my boys sugar, sugar, and fat for lunch yesterday.
Because it was Veterans’ Day, the public schools were off, and there were two little girls- maybe nine or ten – sitting in one of the big armchairs, reading. One was reading Judy Blume’s Are You There, God, It’s Me, Margaret, a classic, and I will bet every woman could tell you when she read it – I was thirteen and was NOT supposed to read it.
The other was reading Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, one of my all-time favorite books. I said, “Excuse me, but …you’re reading Bridge to Terabithia…I love that book. I sobbed and sobbed reading it but I love it.” The girl’s eyes lit up. “I love it too. You cried when Leslie dies, right? Me too!” I love that two people twenty-plus years apart in age can bond over a book.

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Phrases I never expected to hear in a Thomas video:
“An angry farmer was telling Mavis just what she could do with her train…”

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Survey from Jess at Garish and Tweed:

First fictional character who made you swoon?
- Nicholas Nickleby, due in great part to Roger Rees in the miniseries - but I did read the book

First fictional character you were SURE you'd meet someday and become friends with?
- Mary Lennox, from The Secret Garden

First book you cried over?
- Bridge to Terabithia

First book you stayed up all night to read?
- Pride and Prejudice

Book you give most often as a gift?
- Ursula Hegi’s Stones from the River

I take the liberty of posting Gina’s answers, from Jess’s comment section:

1. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but Christopher Dollanganger, from Flowers in the Attic. I was *way* too young when I read these books, but OH how I loved him.
2. Harriet the Spy
3. Bridge to Terabithia
4. The Outsiders
5. Naked - David Sedaris

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I see Dar Williams tonight at the Byham. I am so excited! She hasdn't been here since a few months after Primo was born, so...2001. I feel I have been VERY patient...

Find yourself a cup of tea; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things. ~Saki

This green mug with the yellow stegosauruses (stegosauri?) was a flea market purchase more than 10 years ago. I saw it, I wanted it (like just about everything else at the flea market, I couldn’t articulate exactly why), but at that point in my life I was perpetually broke enough to dissuade myself from spending the dollar. My friend Lauren bought it on the spot and handed it to me. Every time I use it, the cheery colors and the perky dinos make my day just a bit brighter, and I think of Lauren (who now lives way too far away for my taste and whom I don’t see nearly often enough), and thinking of my dear, funny, smart, caring, and wonderful friend also makes me smile.




This mug with its square-ish handle I found when I was clearing out my parents’ house. My dad worked for RCA, but not as anything more exciting than a bookkeeper, so I have no idea what a Trident translator is – I just think the mug is way cool, it reminds me of my long-deceased dad, and I dig the funky handle, the heft of the mug, and its wide mouth.
(My dad had a mug we got him for one Father’s Day - a nice weighty white mug with its printed “#1 Dad” long ago worn all the way off. I wish I had kept it instead of putting it in the Goodwill box when we were getting rid of stuff. Stupid me.)




This dark blue mug we got as some sort of freebie when we renewed our ACLU membership. I like how heavy it is, I like the color, and I like the quote on it:
"The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave." - Thomas Jefferson
- it reminds me almost every morning how important it is to develop my social conscience and that working to preserve our rights and civil liberties is necessary. Sort of like how the prayer of St. Francis tucked into the side of my dresser mirror helps remind me everyday to try harder to be a kinder, gentler, more loving person.



But my favorite – for no reason other than it is the perfect size and shape and weight - is my ancient Philadelphia Flyers mug. It does serve to remind me of my South Jersey roots, of which I am proud (have you ever met a Jersey girl who wasn’t *proud* to be a Jersey girl? Bruce sings it for us, you know).

So much for all the sentimentality, it all comes down to which mug holds my tea best, which one comforts me most when I wrap my hands around its soothing, rounded warmth.



Friday Show-and-Tell, courtesy of Blackbird

I have an affection for a great city. I feel safe in the neighbourhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of the streets. ~ Longfellow

Houses like these abound in my neighborhood. And they can be had for a (relative) song.



Some of them are in terrific shape; some of them need work. Some of them were carved up into rental units and are being restored to single-family homes.



Some of them were owned by old people who did not have the money or ability to keep them up.



Some of them used to be crack houses. (When my neighbors gutted their first floor, they found spent syringes and crack vials under the floorboards.) We got incredibly lucky, when my year-and-a-half of real estate trolling, greatly taxing my agent’s patience, paid off and we found our big old house – and it was the bargain of the century. It does need work but the infrastructure is pretty solid and it still has most of its original mantels, moldings, and leaded glass, not to mention a fabulous staircase and plenty of bathrooms.

We are within easy walking distance of a beautiful 500-acre city park, with several playgrounds, a public swimming pool, tennis courts, trails, and a reservoir at the top of it all.



The uncovered reservoir is a mile around so if I run up to the park, around the res, and back down, I can get in a healthy workout. The entrance to the park was refurbed this year; it sports a multi-pool fountain, surrounded by benches, and lovely flower beds full of tulips, daffodils, lilies, and other glorious flora spring and summer.



The park backs onto the city zoo - you can sometimes hear the lions roaring, or catch sight of a stray peacock wandering the hills the encircle the park. There are always runners, walkers, cyclists, skaters…sometimes people practicing tai chi…lots of kids and moms.

















Primo’s preschool is half a block away, in the church we have recently started attending. St. Andrew’s is very community-oriented and sponsors all kinds of groups, among them AA, OA, the community council, and Meals on Wheels; in addition to offering various music recitals and lectures open to the public. It’s a lovely old stone church with beautifully-maintained stained glass and woodwork, and a pretty churchyard full of trees and flowers.



The neighborhood coffee shop is one of my favorite places.



We know most of the staff – they give my boys cookies and extra whipped cream on their hot chocolates. I send them a Christmas photo-card of the boys; it is on the shop fridge. The owner is active in the community, hosting debate-watching parties, forums with elected officials, and Q-and-A sessions with political candidates. They maintain a rotating art show featuring mostly local artists; I purchased a delicate and wonderful watercolor gelee print there last year as Dan’s anniversary gift. I am a regular there, and it’s nice to see the other regulars. I run into other moms, friends from school and church, neighbors; it’s easy to strike up conversation with random strangers there – it’s a very friendly place. And the coffee and food are good.

There are funky apartment buildings.



There's a little “main street” with a convenience store, a auto shop, a bakery/cooking store, an Indian restaurant, a pizza place (worst pizza I have ever had, like ketchup on matzoh, but still…), a high-end French restaurant, and a community center type place where I take yoga classes.

There’s a neighborhood listserv, for event announcement, want ads, community awareness, and public safety issues. There’s a house tour every fall, a harvest festival, weekly guided walks on the trails in the park.

The Union Project is the restoration of an old church building smack in the middle of the neighborhood, run by a group of young Mennonites. They offer stained glass restoration classes - a clever way to raise money and get the dozens of original windows rebuilt fairly cheaply, selling Christmas trees at the holidays, hosting several church groups and community organizations. They plan another coffee shop and offices and meeting rooms in the space when it’s ready. It will serve as an anchor in the neighborhood and I believe the activity will also serve as a check on some of the less savory activities occurring on that corner right now.

I enjoy the people: my next-door neighbor who will call from the grocery store to see if I need any of the “sale” bananas; the teenager who lives right up the street who watches my kids; the crazy guy who lives on the corner with his crazier sister and can be found on any given morning throwing tennis balls at the stop sign and who shovels the snow out of his backyard in the winter; the 90-year-old man who lives across the street and who goes out walking every single morning (rumor has it that even at age 90, he employs an escort service now and again…ahem…); our priest who lives down the street and walks by every morning, lunchtime, and evening; the super-organized woman who lives down the alley, who just had her fourth baby and home-schools the other three; the delightfully loony couple we met on the house tour and who spent several hours at our house one evening drinking beer and discussing religion.

I’ve gotten to know other moms I see out walking with their children, I say hello almost daily to a friendly daycare caravan of kids whose caretaker always jokes about the number of charges I am herding, I have met lots of dogs, out with their owners: Vishnu, who frequently sports a fruit-sticker bindi and whose owner plays with the symphony; Alex and Magic, who walk with a former prof of mine who always stops to chat and let the boys pet her dogs; Ginger, a Shih Tzu I met for the first time yesterday when her owner stopped to admire the baby. There’s also a neighborhood cat, Socks, who lounges by day in the churchyard and some nights sits on my back porch and yowls at Emmy.

People here are socially aware and active, they watch out for their neighbors and keep an eye on the street activity. They run the political gamut. They vote.



There are students, families with kids, lots of professors, musicians and artists, people who have lived here for fifty years and people who just moved in. We all are excited by the vibrancy and potential of the neighborhood.

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them. ~Bill Vaughn

I went for a long walk this morning, Terce in the Snugli. I wished I had brought the camera with me as I seemed to see lots of things I wanted to share….because my life is so enthralling…

I first walked up to the polling station and voted. I voted for the Green Party mayoral candidate because I just could not bring myself to vote for the Democratic candidate who is sure to win in a landslide, perpetuating the political machine that has been running and ruining the city for years. As far as judges go – anybody but Tom Flaherty, who has never actually practiced law, is not recommended by the PA bar, and is running solely on name recognition for judge. Kathryn Hens-Greco is my favored judge candidate, and I went to vote really just to vote for her.

My parents never would tell me who they voted for, I never understood that. If you are voting for someone, you should have good reasons, and probably good reasons for who you are not voting for, so why not be open about it? I didn’t understand it then and I don’t understand it now.

I ran into my mailman while I was out walking. He will be retiring soon and I will miss him. He’s such a nice cheerful guy and I adore getting mail anyway. I love paper and envelopes and stamps, recognizing someone’s handwriting, opening a package, even if I know what’s in it. The potential of the catalogs, the efficiency of paying bills – it’s all encompassed in the daily mail and I love it.

I passed several gingko trees on my way from the polling station to the coffee shop (skim mocha latte, no whip). Who thought these were good city trees? They reek, and the little ball thingeys squish underfoot and make the sidewalk and your shoes all slimy. My brother told me the city of New York is plagued with them as well. They must grow well under city conditions. Sorta like the cockroaches of the tree world, I guess.

Dan is tired of living in the city. He wants to move, to someplace where there are no renters, where there are no loud car radios, where there is not trash in the street. I want to stay here – I love the excitement and the potential of renovating our beautiful old house, of being part of rejuvenating and revitalizing this beautiful and vibrant neighborhood. I love walking to the coffee shop, to the bakery, to the little convenience store. I love that I can walk Primo to preschool. I love that I run into people that I know, even if only to say hello to, everywhere I walk around here. I love looking at other people’s old houses they are renovating and seeing what they are doing. I love being involved in the community, trying to make it a better, cleaner, safer place, making a difference however small. I am nervous about the public schools, yes; I get tired of having to ask people to turn down their radios, yes. However, I love the life here and I don’t ever want to move. But we might have to, solely for Dan’s sanity. It may turn out to be the single biggest sacrifice I make in my married life, to leave this house and neighborhood I adore for the quiet and cleanliness - the stultification and sterility - of the suburbs.

Philip Pullman is Redeemed (For Me, Anyway)

I just finished Philip Pullman’s I Was a Rat!, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. I mentioned a while ago that I gave up on The Scarecrow and His Servant, because I just couldn’t feel the love, but I highly recommend this one to anyone who’s got a 2-4th grade reader to buy or borrow books for. [Note: This isn't in line with His Dark Materials--it is clearly for younger readers.]

The book tells the story of a boy who turns up at the house of a childless old couple, lost and proclaiming that until three weeks ago, he was a rat. He is clueless about how to behave like a human, and makes many terrible (and quite humorous) mistakes on the road to learning how to be a good boy. (Good, here, in both the sense of being a convincing example of a boy and in behaving properly.) It turns out that the boy, who comes to be called Roger, was one of the rats a certain fairy godmother turned into a footman; he ran off to play soccer while waiting for the ball to end, and missed his chance to be turned back into a rat.

Roger’s story is furthered along by excerpts from the local paper, The Daily Scourge, where Pullman’s wit and opinions are clear to cynics in training and the adults who love them.

This is going into my book talk for Resources for Children for sure. Two thumbs up!

Springer, Anyone?

Thanks for all the kindness, you guys. The wedding was harder on me than I thought it should have been, so I was sort of reeling there for a while. I’m better now.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how so many of the people I know—certainly myself included—are mere fractions of vestiges of good taste away from being guests on Springer. I think, in fact, that most of us would make for better entertainment than many of the typical guests, because our appearances and speech are so deceiving.

R, for example, is a gorgeous blonde who runs a very successful business. She kills in business suits and has mastered the pinned-up hair that says, “I am more than capable of kicking your ass, but DAMN: I’m sexy, too.” She’s all kinds of crafty, and regularly makes elaborate trick-or-treat bags and party stuff. She organized crafts tables at her own wedding, for crying out loud, so all the kids there would have something fun to do.

And yet she’s literally dying. She gets through the day by snacking on various prescription drugs and longing to be able to sleep. She can’t drive anymore, because of the drugs, but when she did drive, she kept a tambourine in the front seat, on which she would beat to keep from screaming profanities at other drivers. And her family is the horrid bunch or loonies I reported on earlier.

R looks like the perfect combination of successful businesswoman, wife and mother, but she’s filled with rage and fear, and would probably make Jerry Springer cry if he pushed her too far.

I’m much R’s polar opposite. I look like an uber-feminist with soft, Mother Nature sorts of edges. I take my boy rafting and can change a tire. I can bring home the bacon and/or tofu, and fry it up in a pan. I’m dealing with a full-time job, six credits a semester toward my MLIS, and single motherhood. I’m capable and caring and everyone seems to think I’m very grounded and trustworthy and reliable. And yet, I married a gay man, thinking I was lucky to be marrying my best friend, and then spent ten years wondering what was wrong with me, and why my husband didn’t want to have sex. I can’t face a confrontation without crying and automatically taking the blame for whatever is the problem. Because no one can convince me that I don’t suck. Issues? Oh, I’ve got spades. I’d be the Springer guest with her face in her hands, sobbing.

There are more, of course, just within my own family. Put us all in a room together, and we look like a respectable bunch of women with various talents, passions, skills, and interests. Put our psyches in a room, however, and we’re little more than piles of cellulite, smoking cigarettes and quivering with rage. Our mascara is running while we cry and bash one another over the head with our wedding albums.

Or is that just me?

When you have a patient with lists, you have a patient with migraine.

And here all this time I thought it was OCD.

I did something today I have only done twice before in our 12-year relationship – I called Dan at work and asked him to come home a little early. A blinding migraine developed sometime between lunchtime and naptime, with none of the usual triggers – too much chocolate, red wine, or certain cheeses, or stress – identifiable. The two older boys were trying to be very good but I just could not function. When Dan got home, I crawled into bed with a pillow over my head and a cold pack on my temples and wished for death – or at least sleep. Because I am nursing Terce, I still can’t take any Imitrex but managed to swallow three extra-strength Tylenol and a very strong cup of tea before passing out. And now here I am, at ten-thirty, wide-awake and in that manic post-headache phase. My body hates me. So does my brain.

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Literary snippets:

I started reading Anne Roiphe’s Marriage: A Fine Predicament and suffice it to say that I am pleased I only paid a dollar for it from the clearance table at Half-Price Books. She’s not, in my humble opinion, a particularly adept writer. (Also, I had her confused with Katie Roiphe, of The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism fame; does anyone know, are they related?)

The cruise ship that fended off pirates made me think of Robert Girardi’s inventive book The Pirate’s Daughter. It also brings to mind one of my favorite non-fiction writers, William Langewiesche, whose piece on modern-day piracy in The Atlantic Monthly I was unable to put down. I now most definitely plan to buy his collection of articles about piracy and the high seas, The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime. (Incidentally, he also wrote an article about the Columbia tragedy, “Columbia’s Last Flight” - see below.)

I want The New Garden Paradise. My admiration for Dominique Browning, editor of House and Garden, is well-documented. I think this will be a Christmas present to myself.

I am finally buying Michael Lee West’s quirky and wonderfully readable Consuming Passions, as I have been called upon to produce some sort of sweet potato dish for Thanksgiving, and no one eats the traditional canned-sweets-with-marshmallow-topping crap anyway, so I am going to make the most delicious sweet potato dish I have ever had, from this book. (There is also a killer chocolate sheet cake recipe; I remember it well because Dan loved it because of its overtones of cinnamon and fudge-like but not-too-sweet frosting.)

Jonathan Harr’s The Last Painting came out October 25 – I must request it from the library.

Runner’s World has a feature article on heroes this month, one of whom is Willie McCool, one of the astronauts who died in the Columbia space shuttle accident. The guy was really – amazing is the wrong word – he was just clearly a stand-up guy. What an inspirational story. He seemed like someone you would be pleased and proud to have in your life.

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Dan and I attended a friend’s 35th birthday party last night. I went to undergrad with Deb but she has since run screaming away from the theatre world (where she was an incredibly successful stage manager), like anyone with any brains, and successfully reinvented herself as a family doctor. She is one of my oldest, and over the past several years become one of my closest, friends.

At her gatherings, I am generally one of very few medical professionals in attendance (Didja like that medical humor? Huh? Didja?); also one of very few Gentiles (I really should learn some rudimentary Hebrew, it would make certain moments at these gatherings much more comfortable for me and then I’d also be able to understand what Deb’s saying when she reprimands her kids…).

Dan almost never goes to my friends’ parties with me (for a variety of reasons, not least of which is because I think most of my friends either annoy or bore him – undeservedly if I may say so, because *I* think my friends are interesting and fun). At any rate, Dan went with me this time – and not only that, but I believe he had a good time. We met a really cool new couple – neither of whom are doctors – and Dan got to stand around and discuss politics with the husband all evening. So he was in his element – not something that happens often to the man who is not even in his element among his family!

I *know* he likes Deb and her husband, but sometimes I think he is uncomfortable around any of my old theatre buddies. Theatre folk are so much more open than many people, and Deb even more so than most. (Dan once remarked that Deb has a look that says, “We’d be having sex RIGHT NOW –except I don’t want to.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that that was more or less the theatre professional’s mantra when I was in school.)

And the birthday cake – from Whole Foods - was chocolate – with raspberry filling. Oh-my-God delicious.

When we arrived at the home of the person hosting the party, she welcomed us and asked us to please remove our shoes. Dan said it was the perfect Larry David moment – he wanted very badly to say, “I think I’ll just keep my shoes on.” I think I might have laughed until I peed myself if he had. But he meekly removed his shoes instead.

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Snippets of another nature:

Sarah Louise has a T-shirt I covet. I do so love librarian humor.



Speaking of, Terce just spit up all over my “Go to hell, I’m reading” El-Jay’s Books T-shirt.


The governor of Nevada should be impeached. Perhaps we are living in Afghanistan, or maybe Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale?

For Gina, who does not give herself nearly enough credit and who I am sure looked lovely in her bridestroll dress:
http://www.uglydress.com/

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I have been eating a lot of these – conventional wisdom says oatmeal boosts breast milk production.

2 cups sugar
¼ cup cocoa
½ cup milk
½ cup butter
1 cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups oatmeal
1 cup coconut

In a saucepan over medium-high heat, combine the sugar, cocoa, milk, and butter. Stir constantly to keep from burning, bringing the mixture to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter and vanilla. When smooth, stir in oats and coconut. Pour into a greased 9x13 pan and let cool. Cut into bars.

Some people think these are too sweet; they are sweet, sort of fudge with stuff in it but not as rich or heavy. A friend I made some for said they took her back to her grade-school cafeteria where cookies like these were a big hit with her and her friends. Food as nostalgia trip. And I have reached the point where I can make them in my sleep -- and pretty much do.

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Crouching Baby, Hidden Dragon

This is Going to Be Long--Sorry

I had kind of a rough weekend; I was a bridestroll in the wedding of a very good and very old friend, R.

First of all, no one should have to serve as a bridestroll after the age of thirty. Seriously. I’m too old to wear a stupid dress-—especially strapless—-and be required to wear that much make-up and hairspray. (Please note that I typically wear glasses, Birks, clothes with elastic waists, and no make-up. I dry my hair in the morning, but only because it’s too cold to go outside with a wet head. I am not good with the girly fussing, and I don’t like it at all.)

Okay, but that stuff is really all minor. This wedding was in no way about me. I was there to support R, and look the way she wanted me to look. I didn’t *like* looking like a shiny red apple in a strapless dress, but whatever. It was her day.

Here come the hard things: R has two sisters; one is my age, and one is my sister’s age. (R is three years older than her sister and me.) We all used to be a big happy friendship family filled with sisters. And then R’s two sisters kind of went berserk and turned into horrible, wicked witches. They don’t talk to my sister and me at all anymore, and they don’t talk to R or any of their cousins. They are evil. Did I mention that I’ve never felt more betrayed by people of my own gender than I have by those two? They’re awful.

Anyway, they weren’t at this wedding. Instead, my sister and I (in our fifth wedding together, including our own weddings) filled their places. It’s horrible for me to know that my sister and I had to fill in for her living, breathing sisters, even though they’re hags.

Why so horrible? Because R is dying, and the sisters don’t care. R has something called Scleroderma, which is scheduled to kill her in about five years or so. Imagine hearing the husband vow to love and honor and what-not “until death do us part”, knowing that death really is imminent. AND that R has three kids (two with her ex-husband and one with the guy she just married.)

So that was another hard thing.

Top it off with this: R still loves her ex-husband. They got divorced because he’s an alcoholic, and because he wouldn’t do anything about it. He was irresponsible about it to the point where he was pulled over with the kids in the car.

He’s come a long way since then, and I know they still love one another. He was at the wedding (along with most of his family), and I almost had to run from the room in tears when he and R danced. I don’t know what they were whispering while they held each other, but the whole scene made me even more sad than I already was.

Sigh.

And there you have it. Poor R.

I spent most of yesterday recovering from a sinus headache that I’m sure I brought on to myself by smoking cigarettes at the wedding. But can you blame me?

Sorry to go on and on. This has been bugging me, and I just had to get rid of some of it. You know?

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. ~Phyllis Diller

My house is a freaking disaster area, and my lovely little pills seem to not be working quite as well as they should, so my OCD is kicking in big time. This post is for those of you who said how at home you’d feel in my house – if you could stand the mess, you are welcome anytime! But instead of cleaning up and straightening, what did I do? I sent the boys and Dan off to the Harvest Festival in the park, and I put Terce in the Snugli, took a long walk, and stopped at the coffee shop for a yummy cup of Indian Spice tea. I am trying out all their different types of tea, and this was a black tea with cinnamon and nutmeg. Yummy, especially with milk and sugar. Then I broke out my gardening gloves and pruned back brutally all my roses so they’ll come in nice and thick and lovely next spring. I admit, I inherited these roses from the previous owner, but they are gorgeous, and they line our yard on the alley side. The sky is clear blue, and the sun is shining, and the air is warm – it’s a perfect Indian summer day.
So the house remains a wreck.
As do I.
And so I run around taking pictures of the chaos instead of trying to rein it in.

I did manage the following:

Take down the Halloween decorations on the door

Put in a load of laundry from the mountain in the basement


Clean the upstairs bathroom

What remains:
Oh God, it’s too daunting to list.


So trust me, it’ll never all get done. The porch furniture needs to be covered and the cushions put away for the winter.The laundry must be folded and put away (although why do I bother? I should just make them dress themselves out of the laundry baskets, that’s how fast it turns around.) The downstairs needs to be vacuumed before all the loose fur self-generates into a third cat. Drapes must be measured and sewn for the living room before we get our first winter heating bill. The couch slipcover must be completed so people don’t assume that I think the red plaid matches the chocolate paisley rug and pale green armchairs.

The mail for the past two weeks needs to be sorted.


Things need to be returned – to the shoe store, to Amazon, to the daycare, to people who cooked us things in their very own nice pots.

An organ we were just given (don’t ask; because, yeah, we need more things that make noise around here…) needs to be cleaned and moved to its living spot, which means the toys need to be redistributed rather than just heaped in the middle of my dining room.



I believe this evening I am mixing a nice stiff Bacardi-and-Coke and writing thank-you notes for baby gifts:

Dear Aunt Mark and Uncle Betty, Thanks so very much for the loverly sleeper/creeper thingey for what’s-his-face, you know, that third kid of mine. Really appreciate it. He looks really adorable in it, if a bit blurry at the moment. Love, Us

Dear Grandma/pap, Thanks so much for the baby blanket whatsit. The cats love it. When I put him under it, they just lie ON TOP OF HIM. They apparently just adore the little tyke. Love, Us (but not the cats because I know how you hate the cats.)

Dear Cousin Myrtle, Thank you so very very much from the bottom of our hearts for the crisp new two-dollar bills for el bambino, and also for the gift certificate that expires at the end of this month for that flashy new restaurant. Perhaps if I did not have a baby attached to my boob 24-7, we could actually use it but I believe the maitre’d there might mind if I whipped out a breast to feed old squalling Jimbo right there among the starched white tablecloths and crystal stemware and filet mignon. I think. Thanks anyhoo. Love, Us

What? You think I’m not grateful? I am, so very. I’m just tired and trying not to rip my hair out because I cannot scrub my house from top to bottom. Shame I don’t have any Xanax to go with that rum…(kidding, kidding…)

"See, Meg, things always work out if you just do whatever you want without thinking about the consequences."

I laughed out loud.

Courtesy of Sarah Louise: Librarians rock!

Lauren Weisberger’s new book Everyone Worth Knowing is, in my humble opinion, unreadable. The Devil Wears Prada made me insane with the spinelessness of its – can I even call her this – heroine, but this – this is baaaad. So it’s back to The Thorn Birds for my brain candy.

I used to read Runner's World to be inspired, now it just depresses me. I will never ever qualify for the Boston Marathon. But I still like the monthly profile of a famous person who runs, and Haruki Murakami was last month’s. He even talks about his running in his lectures. I’ve read elsewhere that Joyce Carol Oates runs something like five miles a day and claims she can’t write until she gets a run in. I can't stand JCO, so am plotting to steal her running shoes.

I want this game for Christmas. And my nearest-and-dearest-and-most-well-read friends to play it with me.

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The monster, it is alive!

Let's ride that one again!


Jude-ipus Rex:


Septimus was a dog in a former life:

Jane says, I'm done with Sergio...

"..the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more." - Gabriel Zaid



"All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal." - Nick Hornby



"The surest way to spot a non-reader: someone who comes into your house, looks at your books, and asks, 'Have you read all these?'" - Nick Hornby

"A room without books is like a body without a soul." - G.K. Chesterton

"There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love." - Christopher Morley



"I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage." - Charles DeSecondat

Sleepy, Dopey and Grumpy

I am 3/7 of Snow White's dwarves.

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The weather is beyond beautiful, and I just came from running some lunch time errands. It killed me to come back to work, not because I disklike my job, but because I dislike having to have a job at all. How I envy the stay-at-home-moms, now that my kid is in school all day. I *was* a SAHM until Ted was two, and by that time I couldn't wait to get back to work and be among adults. I spent two years working part-time, and that was perfect. Americans work too much and have too little leisure. Blah.

*****

I read Gregor the Overlander yesterday, and it was . . . nice. I recommend it for kids, but it's certainly no His Dark Materials or even Harry Potter. I'm just saying.

Speaking of Harry Potter, I just listened to The Goblet of Fire so I'll be ready for the movie. I know I'm a dork, but it'sfun stuff. Poor Cedric. It seems like the movie might be pretty scary, and I'm thinking maybe I should see it without Ted to make sure it won't freak him out too much. (It's PG-13.)

*****

My brother-in-law took Teddy and a friend to Family Day with the Steelers. The boys had a good time despite the fact that the STEELERS NEVER SHOWED. Can you tell that's Ted's head on the QB's body?

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. ~Stanley Horowitz

I bought Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without a Country for my father-in-law for his birthday. (It was really Dan’s suggestion, he’s the huge Vonnegut fan.) I was leaning towards a book I heard about on NPR yesterday morning, James Geary’s The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism. Because I’d like to read it too, so -- I will buy it for my father-in-law for Christmas and then borrow it.

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We had about twenty trick-or-treaters, even if you count the gang o’ teenagers who showed up dressed cleverly as…teenagers who are way too old to trick-or-treat! What is wrong with them? The only ones who annoy me more are the moms with babies in strollers who are trick-or-treating “for the baby.” (Granted, in my neighborhood, one person can fall into both of these categories.) Dan brought home vanilla Charleston chews and Junior Mints to give out. I ate about a dozen Charleston Chews in the first half hour because we got no t-o-t’ers till around 6:15 or so. Yuck. Gross. And they do not go well with Bacardi-and-Coke. At the end of the night I was giving away handfuls of the things so they would not sit around and tempt me to eat their mediocre little fake-chocolate selves. We bought candy for around a hundred kids; we had about seventy last year. This year, as mentioned- maybe twenty. Because of the Steelers game? The weather was gorgeous, so that’s the only thing I can think of, is that parents stayed home to watch football. We did not even break into the Junior Mints – and I adore those. So they will got to work with Dan tomorrow so I do not eat all of them.

My boys got enough candy to make them happy but not so much as to make me rip my hair out in frustration. We even let them each eat some last night. Ooohhh, we’re slipping as parents! Jude was an adorable Dalmatian, and Si made a cute Peter Pan. But the winner was Mimi as Tinkerbelle. I made that thing look downright cute. Now Jude is asking for a wig for the doll – long and light brown, please. I wonder if that can be done. I should call a doll hospital and find out. Although she might look even freakier then (if such a thing is possible).

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I am really enjoying Poppy Z. Brite’s Liquor. Who recommended this to Gina? Thank you! It reads like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential (a book I love) crossed with John Kennedy Toole’s New-Orleans-based classic, Confederacy of Dunces, which I enjoyed well enough, although Ignatius is one of the most obnoxious protagonists I’ve encountered. I think Liquor is dedicated to Toole…

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Snippets:

I have been singing “Que Sera, Sera” to the boys lately, I was tired of all my other songs. So I broke out that (Doris Day’s version, probably I was inspired by The Thing About Jane Spring), and “Shanghai Breezes” by John Denver. Also “Sweet Baby James” (of course) and “Hackensack” by Fountains of Wayne. And Perry Como’s “For the Good Times” which my mom used to sing to me, only we always called it “the warm and tender body song.” At any rate, Si just asked me to sing the “hurrah, hurrah” song. I clearly need to work on my enunciation while singing bedtime lullabies.

I purchased a digital camera, and I am so excited. So I will regale you all with random pics of my boys and whatever else catches my fancy. As if I am not meandering enough…I’ll read the manual tonight and get right on that. I ordered it from Staples yesterday and it came via courier today. And S&H was free. How’s that for service?

Have you tried Reese’s Take Five bars? My little brother told me about them, and I filched a couple from Jude’s trick-or-treat bag. God, they’re good, and this is coming from someone who generally doesn’t eat regular candy bars anymore (if it doesn’t have weird spices in it, I am not interested ; )) However, I do adore chocolate-covered pretzels, and that’s what these taste like, but with a hint of peanut butter. Remember how I said I was skinny-like and all now? I can tell it isn’t going to last very long…

Although I went out for a nice long walk both yesterday and today, toting James-monster on my chest in the Snugli. I am trying to soak in all the gorgeous, crisp, clear fall weather before our typical grey, godforsaken winter kicks in.

One need not be a chamber to be haunted; One need not be a house; The brain has corridors surpassing Material place.

This is as ghoulish – and hysterical – as it gets. (This is particularly for those of you who not long ago contemplated chocolate-dipping and eating your offspring…) Happy Halloween!

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So the final (at least I hope!) decision is:
Simon – Peter Pan
Jude – Pongo the Dalmatian
Mimi – Tinkerbelle

I have no candy to give out yet and have already had my first fight with Si about the amount of candy he will be permitted to actually eat (as opposed to how much I can sneak by him and pitch in the garbage).

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We went to church again yesterday. We have kept it on the q.t. because I don’t really want my in-laws asking about it and seeing their faces glow with the delight that we are not going to hell after all, and their grandchildren may yet be baptized, even if it is “Catholic-lite” (Episcopal). Si spilt the beans today though. Oh well, had to happen sometime. The music grew on me this week, perhaps because the first piece was Handel, the second hymn’s words were written by George Herbert, one of my beloved Renaissance poets, and I actually knew the third hymn. Also, I really enjoyed the sermon – the usual priest was back from his conference. Bruce and his wife have been good neighbors and friends to us since we moved here; I like the idea of him being our priest as well.

A couple things I want to share:

The reputation of a saint depends upon the silence of his family.

And I love the prayer of St Francis which we say at the end of the service each week:

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O, Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

This prayer sums up much of what I think religion and being a religious person should be about.

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I *just* saw an ad for the movie of Myla Godlberg’s Bee Season. I liked the book. I even think they could make a decent movie out of it. But is Richard Gere the father, and Juliet Binoche the mom or the daughter Eliza? I think Gere is amazingly sexy – just not sure he’s right for this part. And isn’t Binoche waaay too old to be Eliza?

Did I mention I started Wickett’s Remedy? I will have to read it without reading all the little annotations, they are simply too distracting. Even if they are, according to my coffee-shop book reviewer, what the book is all about in terms of the reliability of memory.

I picked up Amy Scheibe’s What Do You Do All Day? from the library on Saturday and told Gina that afternoon that so far it wasn’t grabbing me. It started like another whiny, whinging book about a poor put-upon stay-at-home mom who leaves a lucrative and glamorous job and just can’t get a grip that maybe her kid doesn’t need to be in 20K per year preschools, and if they are, then what do you expect but spoiled, really rich kids for your child to be with and learn from? You know the books – “Oh, I am the only mommy here, everyone else is a black or Hispanic nanny.” Or “My darling child wants a pony at her birthday party now too, and all we ever did was a cake and ice cream.” But…this book broke out of that beginning rather nicely. It was more introspective than most books written in this vein, and the events more unexpected. The main character does indeed find herself and make peace with mixing her kids and career, for once in these books realizing that it’s ok to want some intellectual stimulation. Although I have never personally found the peace and meditation Jennifer finds in folding endless laundry and playing countless games of Candy Land with her children. . And the husband is not a schmuck. He works long, hard hours, but he’s a decent guy who loves her very much and treats her wonderfully. There were a few too many plotlines, but some terrific characters, especially the other mommies/caregivers Jennifer meets. I am glad I didn’t buy it, but I am glad I read it – thank God for my library.

I also picked up Poppy Z. Brite’s Liquor which I will start next. Gina really enjoyed it so…

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James went to the ped today. He weighs ten and a half pounds and does indeed have reflux. So tummy-sleeping and Zantac for him.

Sometimes I think that hanging out with James is a bit like watching Nathan Lane mime – and I keep expecting him to open his mouth and demand his Pirin.

Wisdom from the priest’s wife: “Some the most unholy thoughts I have come when I am in church with my children.”

I had a lovely hour with Gina Saturday afternoon. We met at the coffee shop sans kids and drank tea/coffee and talked. Despite the fact that we live maybe three miles from each other, we don’t see each other all that much. It was a wonderful way to spend some of the afternoon. I felt so relaxed and almost like a real person when I headed back home.

Emily Dickinson, in case you're wondering.

What age do I act? (Depends on who you ask...)

I turn 36 in April. Pretty weirdly accurate.

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You Are 36 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

Halloween Costume

Here are some pics. I take NO credit for this--it was all Ted and his dad.

Proud Mama Time

So Teddy and I are walking to the bus this afternoon, and he says, "Oh, yeah. I got a kindness award in front of the whole school today. I have a coupon for free ice cream!"

It seems that the Lower School meeting in the auditorium this morning was about kindness, and the Head of School chose one student and one teacher to call up to the stage an point out as good examples of people who are kind.

Teddy has no idea about the details, but MAN am I proud! :-) I told him I'm more proud about this than I am about the gifted stuff. And it's true!

The Man From Beyond

I got this from the library thanks to a recommendation from Finslippy. I sort of liked it, but sort of didn't. The story is "inspired by" the friendship of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Houdini, and I have trouble with fiction that is "based on actual events" or whatever. If you're going to tell a story involving men who really existed, I sort of think you should be telling a story that really happened. If, however, you think the friendship of ACD and H is a perfect set up for making up some fiction . . . then please create fictitious characters who are based on ACD and H, and tell their fictitious stories. Otherwise, for me, you're just sort of lying. I don't know. Plus there's the problem of throwing characters who are real people into a story with characters who only exist on the page.

Speaking of those made-up characters, I liked the parts of the story involving Molly (intrepid girl reporter), and would loved to have spent more time with her.

Wait, though. What about the series of books about Josephine Bonaparte? I freaking *loved* those! Is that the same thing as the Houdini book? Because I know those books weren't actual historical documents, but they felt real and compelling, and there was a lot of actual, accurate history there.

What's my problem, then? Are Gulland's books just better?

"Easy! Massage the scalp. You're washing a baby's hair, not scrubbing vomit off your Christmas dress, you holiday drunk."

Jude's diaper just exploded all over the second floor, the baby was up all night with colicky symptoms (thank God we go to the ped today – hand me that Zantac prescription and no one gets hurt!), and we forgot that Si goes to school today; he just left with Dan, 45 minutes late. Sigh. So life goes on as normal in this household.

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My husband pointed out (not that he reads this blog – because he doesn’t know what it’s called or what the URL is) that at some point in the future my children might happen upon this, somehow, presumably through the wonder of Google. Despite the fact that I am not using any last names or anything close to my real name, in the interest of paranoia, I am going to start referring to my kids by initials. Hope this isn’t hopelessly confusing for all of you. So S, J, and A (because the J is already taken) debut today. I think you can figure out who’s who. Thanks for your patience.

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Yesterday we went to buy Halloween pumpkins. We did not go the pumpkin-farm route but neither did I purchase them at the supermarket. We drove to a nursery I like very much for its friendly, helpful employees, great plant selection, and reasonable prices, and that S likes because they have garden fountains, generally all full and running with real live water that gets you soaking wet and soppy and then Mama lets you ride home in the car nekkid (I have only done this once. Once, people. In the summer. And it IS a fairly new car.) We picked out an enormous pumpkin for Dan, a medium-sized one for S, a small one for J. The baby and I got teeny-tiny ones – and so did Mimi. Because, as I pointed out to S, if you are going to wear a costume for Halloween, you may have a pumpkin of your own. So our little Mimi Tinkerbelle has a pumpkin. Jesus. Since she resembles Chucky a bit too much for my comfort anyway, we will not be allowing her to carve her own pumpkin. Lock up the knives, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Mimi!

S wanted to know if the baby was going trick-or-treating. I said no, that he was too little, and I didn’t feel like dealing with a costume for him this year. S considered for a moment and then suggested, “Well, he can just get his treats from your belly!” Despite the fact that my four-year-old son’s grasp of the female anatomy is understandably murky, I still laughed.

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We have two cats, neither of whom I am all that fond. They are brother and sister from the same litter, about a year and a half old. Septimus is dumb as a stump and runs around the house like a lunatic for no apparent reason. Emmy is a miserable little wench who likes to go outside and rip the heads off birds for fun. She is this delicate little fluffy thing and he is a big lunk, so you’d think it’d be the other way around. But she is the fearless killer and Seppie is the cat who lets the kids pull his tail and try to ride on him. In fact, in another life, I am convinced Septimus was a dog. Yesterday I found yet another dead bird offering on my porch mat. I know it is supposed to be a sign of affection and all that, but honestly, isn’t it enough that I deal with poopy diapers all day? Must I also deal with dead wildlife? I left it there when I went for my doctor’s appointment because I was running late and deep down inside I was hoping that Dan, who worked from home yesterday, would stumble upon it and clean it up before I got home. Not only did that NOT happen, but in the meantime, Emmy ATE half the bird. That’s right, I left an intact if bloodied corpse and came home to a bird HEAD on my front porch. And then that cat had the audacity to want to climb on my bed last night and curl up with her bird-body breath right in my face! Yuck! Yucky, yucky, double yuck.

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I went to a neighborhood forum featuring our local school board member last night and am now all fired up with my civic duty.

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Billboards I have seen recently and wish to share (mostly because S reads every single solitary billboard as we drive by – *who* taught this child to read? Dammit! Share my pain…):

“Jews for Jesus – isn’t that sort of like Vegetarians for Meat? No, not really. Next question?”

A board for a local supermarket chain: “Down. Down. Stay. Good prices!”

And I have a crush on Craig Restano, a local heating guy who looks so solid and dependable and cute and wholesome on his company billboards that I just want to gobble him up, and get him to come heat up my house! I need help.

"You're just like a man with an erection - all the blood in your body is going to one place."

The boy is in his crib – whoo hoo! Two-handed typing!

A woman posted to our neighborhood email list on Monday that she was having a moving sale, of antiques and ordinary furniture, at reasonable prices. We were hoping for dining room stuff – I’d like a buffet and maybe a nice china cabinet/hutch, to help populate my enormous and mostly empty dining room, for when we have the Queen to tea and all. (Also to give me an excuse to satisfy my china/plate/dishes jones and fill up said china cabinet.) I don’t really do the new furniture thing; I prefer flea markets and estate sales. And as far as I am concerned, we *always* need more furniture, but then I am, as Dan often points out, the mistress of the Highland Park Home for Wayward Furniture.
But her list of stuff looked promising so I called and made an appointment to go see it. She had some lovely things – a huge four-poster bed for $500, with a matching highboy for another 500; a gorgeous old sofa with carved walnut arms and feet and matching side chair; a small buffet. Unfortunately, because it took me so long to get twenty free minutes to get the hell out of my house, everything had been sold (Although I am considering buying a watercolor she had for sale. I’m waffling – she doesn’t know much about the artist and I tend to like to know that sort of thing.)
Dan was at the Son Volt concert with a friend and my mother-in-law was over helping me with the boys. So I finally, FINALLY escape the house for twenty minutes without any of my children for the first time in what feels like ages, and where do I wind up? In an old lady’s apartment - full of furniture and lots of other junk, complete with the requisite cat, and reeking of years’ worth of cigarettes…don’t ever tell me I am not living the high life. Sigh.

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Salon’s new blog, Broadsheet, (ok, I know it’s a hokey name) is worth keeping an eye on.

I started Laurie R. King’s The Game but it is way too contingent upon paying attention to or knowing about Russian/Communist politics for my brain to wrap around right now. I dug out The Thorn Birds which strikes me as perfect brain-atrophying reading material. When I finish that, I will probably move onto The Streets of Laredo since Lonesome Dove is about the closest thing to a soap opera/serial I have ever read. Except maybe those Dana Fuller Ross Westward Ho! Series that I plowed through in high school while everyone else was reading VC Andrews (I missed that particular boat).

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A Halloween joke, courtesy of Carolyn:
Why do ghouls and demons hang out together?
Because demons are a ghoul's best friend.

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Jude and Simon keep asking me to print out coloring pages from the Internet. I am *cruising* through printer paper. It still has to be cheaper than buying coloring books, doesn’t it? (Until I have to buy a new black ink cartridge I guess…) And they can get sixteen identical copies of Gordon the Express Engine to color, if that is their heart’s desire – and generally it is. But now every time I sit down at the computer, I get pestered for printouts. And it makes me nuts. I feel better now that I have gotten that off my chest.

Also, Simon has these nervous habits and tics – clearing his throat, making himself hiccup, licking his chin – that are driving me BONKERS. I’m losing my mind. I understand where his compulsions come from – hell, which parent is on medication? But that doesn’t make it any easier for me to watch and listen to him do this stuff. I am a rotten mother.

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I’ve been on a candle binge lately. I think it’s to compensate for the fact that our fireplaces are not functional at the moment and that particular expenditure is not going to happen this winter. Plus I find candles very calming, and they’re pretty. So I do what I can to remain calm. And light a candle. It’s nice. No, I am not a pyromaniac - at summer camp, we all used to fight over who got to go burn the trash and I could never ever get the damn stuff to light. I remember this being a very stressful thing for me at the age of fifteen.

I am a breastfeeding advocate of the first degree (NOT of the lactation Nazi variety, thank you very much). But WHAT is the deal with these Lilypadz things? They sound horribly uncomfortable. Someone wanna enlighten me?

Camilla, you have sacrificed so much – must you sacrifice your dignity too? Poor girl. If anyone should NOT wear a tiara, it’s Camilla. The things we do for men…

Um, James, darling, that is a portion of my anatomy to which I am literally and emotionally rather attached. Owwy owwy ow ow ow.

And tonight’s episodes of “Sex and the City” are the same ones they showed last night. Humph. Clearly the programming director of TBS has never had to stay up with a nursing/screaming baby. Stupid men.

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I am going to add a recipes link, give me a few days. I wish to share with the world my pie crust recipe : ) And whatever else the world wants, food-wise.

My 1920s Name ROCKS!

Your 1920's Name is:

Vivienne Ivory

What's Your 1920's Name?

Thanks for the link, Carolyn!

Snowflakes that Stay on My Nose and Eyelashes

Okay, so I didn't actually see snow this morning, but my parents did! I am a cold-weather girl, so I'm thrilled! Thrilled, I say! I busted out the scarves and mittens this morning. I'm wearing a turtleneck. I couldn't be happier.

I'm also happy about the fact that my car has been parked in my garage since Saturday. Saturday! I've been kicking myself for a while for driving more than I need to, because I live in the city and one of the reasons I live in the city is so I can be smug about not needing a car. Anyway, I've been biking and bussing and walking, and feeling like God's gift to the environment. (I haven't turned on my furnace yet, either. Sweater and slippers, anyone? Take *that*, Dependence on Foreign Oil!)

In other news, I've been reading some stuff lately. Hana's Suitcase: A True Story is a story within a story about a woman in Japan who wanted to teach local children about the Holocaust. She applied to various museums for some artifacts to borrow for her own small museum, and one of the items she received was a suitcase the belonged to a girl named Hana Brady. The Japanese woman and her students become fascinated with Hana, whose story makes the history dreadfully real to them, and as the book unfolds we learn the lengths they went to to gather information, as well as the heartbreaking story of Hana and her family. This book is sad but fantastic--an honest way to present the horror of the Holocaust to older children in hopes that something like this will never happen again.

Here's the thing, though: It's *so* sad that I don't want to give it to Teddy yet. I don't generally shelter him from too much--he's been to lots of funeral homes and funerals. I make sure he keeps vaguely abreast of current world events, like last year's tsunami and Katrina, and what-not. He's aware of the concept of the Holocaust and the fact that people did and do hate Jews and Black people and gay people, etc. But this just feels like too much. It's so personal. Any thoughts? Am I chickening out and doing him a disservice?

In happier reading, I just read Gidget for the first time. Why? Because The Onion A/V Club told me to. It's very different from what I remember of the TV show--much more overtly sexual, for one thing. This is a representation of the 50s that feels much more real than the whitewashed images I normally think of. And it amazes me that the stories that inspired the book were told to the author by his daughter. These aren't things I'd share with my dad *now*, let alone as a fifteen year old girl in the 50s. If you have 90 minutes or so to kill, you should check it out.

And finally, I grabbed this book as I was checking out at the library on Sunday. You'd think that something called "Theatre for Children: Fifteen Classic Plays" would be something fun and worthwhile. So much for truth in advertising, though! What crap! The version I picked up includes a few different titles, and Ted and I read about half of one ABOUT THE GRINCH STEALING CHRISTMAS last night. We had a blast laughing about how bad the damned thing was, and I'm glad (because again, reading is fun), but it got me to thinking about some of the *awful* plays I was in back in grade school. There was a Christmas play called G.T. (Glad Tidings was the name of the main character) wherein the audience was invited to travel through time and space to observe different Christmas stories and traditions . . . and then a musical featuring cave people named Rock and Martha. Gad. Are there no good plays for kids? Is this something I should start working on? :-)

Anyway, that's it for now. I should actually do some of the work they pay me the big bucks for.

iwwdcgqq

Like Rohrshach tests for bloggers…


Uyamaps
Pggyuv
Ikkyl
Suggestions for these, anyone? Meanwhile here are some words, definitions, and contextual quotes I’ve collected over the past week or so on the word verification front:

Iqlvefet – a new vodka from Finland (on a post about wine preferences)

Impjny – I’m pajamas, New York
Would imctpjny be I’m the cats pajamas, New York?

Your word verification today is gofuxxw. Which seems a bit rude.

Today's verification word is "udhaq" which sounds like one of Saddam Hussein's brothers-in-law.

…psaluplr. Right. It's a psalm about healing lupus

the word verification is uhoptah. Is that a foreign word for hopskotch?
-"uhoptah" sounds like one of those PITA British crossword answers.
-isn't uhoptah the second person conjugation for ihoptah?

Gygyll – celtic for giggle?

The word verification is "voldemort." OK, only kidding. It's actually volddedq. Close enough, though.

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These all remind me of "We are now the Knights who say...'Ekki-Ekki-Ekki-Ekki-PTANG. Zoom-Boing. Z'nourrwringmm.'" in Monty Python's Holy Grail.

Also Mr Manfredjinsinjin in A Fish Called Wanda.

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I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

The silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload...

My Monday whine, not having one damn thing to do with any sort of books at all. I apologize.

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I burnt my arm trying to mop up the spillover from last night’s chicken pot pie. The oven was preheating for today's pumpkin pies, and I burnt the top of my arm on the rack and then the bottom on the door. If I weren’t so stupid, I would expect some sympathy.

Every time I tried to get out the door this morning, Jude was poopy. And both times, I let him be poopy. I am a terrible mother. If it’s any consolation/punishment at all, I was the one who had to smell him the whole time.

I made lentil soup for dinner tonight. When I tried to open the bag of lentils to put them into the pot, I - of course - spilled half the bag all over the kitchen floor which is already so freaking gross that the lentils had to be just pitched.

When I picked Si up at preschool, he immediately began to whine about something. His teacher wrinkled her forehead and said, “He’s *never* like that here.” Of course not, because you might actually clock him one whereas I as his mother am meant to exhibit never-ending patience and grace.

It is pouring rain; the Mancini’s bread was not in at the deli yet so I had to buy different bread; I have a headache; I put the baby in the Snugli and he threw up down my cleavage. I hate both my cats at the moment and want nothing more than to shut them out in the rain. And I can’t get rid of the damn fruit flies in my kitchen.

Everything that comes out of my mother-in-law’s mouth irritates me, so clearly I am an awful daughter-in-law. Babies CRY – it’s what they DO. It doesn’t make them bad or good. And while I care about my online friend in SoFla (Joke, hope you’re ok), I was annoyed that my MIL called at 830 this morning to let me know that my Perfect sister-in-law and her family were perfectly safe throughout the hurricane. I have not one shred of human decency in this body. I mean, she has been calling to give us practically an hourly update but regardless…not one shred.

And speaking of this body, I am skinnier than I have been in a long time, and am now terrified to eat for fear that I will get fat again. My brother-in-law laughed at me and said, “We’re old married people, we don’t have to worry about impressing anyone anymore.” And that is so not true in my case that I am depressed and angry about being afraid of gaining back the weight.

The library is telling me I lost a book I am SURE I returned.

We have Thermo Pro boilers to heat our house and I cannot find one single person or company to come service them. We were hoping to keep them and just have them maintained as they are wildly efficient, but now it’s possible we will need to replace them to the tune of several thousand dollars. I love my house but I hate my house.

My favorite used bookstore, Bryn Mawr-Vassar, is closing on Friday. Not only am I sad it’s closing, but also I am sad because I never found the time to go pick through all their stuff for their closing sale.

We went to church yesterday, the nice Episcopalian church on the corner. It was peaceful and lovely, but as a former Baptist, I admit I found the music a tad boring.

And it took me four tries to get this post to publish. Damn Blogger.

The good things:

Dan and I watched Network Friday night. I love William Holden, and the movie was brilliant.

Simon and Dan made a movie about trains yesterday, using stop-action filming with the camcorder and all the little Thomas trains. It was also brilliant.

I just got a prime seat to go see Dar Williams on November 12. I can’t wait.

I'm packing your extra pair of shoes, and your angry eyes just in case.

I went to the library today all by my lonesome. Such bliss. I got to peruse the new release, take my time browsing through the books, and I even spent some time up in the children’s section picking out books on trains for Simon. (All the Thomas fervor in my house has translated into, “Mama knows nothing about how trains work.” So I am trying to remedy the dearth of train info in the house.)

In the new releases section, I scored Myla Goldberg’s Wickett’s Remedy; in the interest of reading something fairly light out of concern for my sleep-deprived brain, I picked up a book called The Thing about Jane Spring. Jane Spring is about a successful, aggressive, and somewhat hardhearted attorney who can’t seem to get and keep a man, so she takes Doris Day as her role model because “Doris always gets the man.” She reinvents herself in the pastel and puffy image of Doris Day, complete with sunshine-yellow apartment, pink suits, platinum coif, and whispery voice. So far it’s light and very entertaining. It reminds me a bit of Elinor Lipman’s The Pursuit of Alice Thrift but I like Jane a whole lot more than I liked Alice.

I also bought three books -- for a buck-fifty. (My library sells its weeded-out books. I’ve gotten a lot of good stuff that way.)
The Jump-Off Creek – Molly Gloss. I have had Gloss’s Wild Life on my to-read list for ages. So I thought it couldn’t hurt to check out her other stuff.
Letters from Side Lake: A Chronicle of Life in the North Woods – Peter Leschak. No idea why. I just liked the blurb on the back: “…capture[s] vividly the great pleasures and rugged hardships that form the very heart of wilderness living.” I would have made a lousy pioneer woman (“What do you mean there’s no indoor plumbing and I have to haul cold water from the well to wash? And it’s not my damn job to keep track of *your* horse harness or *your* sunbonnet!”), but it amuses me to read books about the pioneering life.
Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman – Alice Steinbach. This book seems to be in the same vein as another book I read recently, really enjoyed, and which made me think about things I may not have otherwise, Joan Anderson’s A Year by the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman. Steinbach says, “I had fallen into the habit…of defining myself in terms of who I was to other people and what they expected of me.” Her travels around the world help her explore who she is and what she wants for herself from life.

Two nights ago I picked up Lisa Jewell’s One Hit Wonder. I read Ralph’s Party a while ago – on my maternity leave for Si, actually – and it was a good novel – at first glance, merely “chick lit” but upon actual reading, a decent book with great characters and not as predictable as you’d think. OHW is the same – I read half the book in one sitting and will finish it up after I finish Jane Spring.

Two recent requests from the library, although there are multiple holds on both of them so it may be some time before I get my hands on them:
What Do You Do All Day? Amy Scheibe
Everyone Into the Pool - Beth Lisick
Unfortunately there are enough other people in this town who also keep up on the latest literary trends and new releases, so I am way down on the list for one, and 2 of 3 holds for the other. The last book I had to wait this long for was Confessions of a Slacker Mom which I never actually got, and got sick of waiting for especially after Gina told me it wasn’t even that good.

I'm So Lucky

I never minded doing homework (until college, when I realized I was *paying* for courses and work that meant nothing more to me than requirements fulfilled, but that's different). My sister, however, could often be found crying under the dining room table because she couldn't do her math. Good times, those.

Teddy seems to be like me in this regard, and I'm thankful, especially now that I've read Ayelet Waldman's new post on Salon, Homework Hell. The thing that makes me lucky isn't necessarily that Teddy doesn't mind homework, but that his teachers have always kept it in perspective. He ends up doing homework for about an hour each evening, and thirty minutes of that is just reading--whatever he feels like reading. I rarely have to get involved, and was in fact informed that I *shouldn't* have to get involved. He's not really learning anything academic at this point, but he's learning study habits and skills that seem appropriate to a kid his age.

I think one thing that sets Teddy apart from Waldman's kids is that I don't make Ted start homework until after dinner. He has time to come home from school, eat a snack and unwind. We take walks or run or ride bikes. He plays. Sometimes he watches TV.

So, yeah, I'm lucky. The kid likes school and doesn't mind homework. What more can the parent of a third-grader really ask for?