“Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts.”*

It’s a haircut night in Pittsburgh! Every couple months or so, we run an assembly-line haircut operation and buzz the boys. Yet another sign that it’s probably a good thing I did not give birth to a girl…

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Currently reading:

High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed - Michael Kodas. A compelling read, if a tad scattered – although he may yet pull it all together – and hyperbolic (not that death on the world’s highest mountain isn’t deserving of drama, but his prose get a little purple sometimes...and sometimes I feel like the way people in the book remember events is a bit too…convenient...)

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - Maggie O'Farrell. I believe there’s more to this slim little novel than meets the eye. I am halfway through, I’ll keep you posted.

Beware of God - Shalom Auslander. Ultimately disappointing (if you’ve read Foreskin’s Lament, you’ve read many of Auslander’s riffs before) but the hamster story is positively brilliant, should be required reading in any college religion course, and it alone is worth the price of the book.

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*Jim Morrison

"Mum! Dad! It's evil! Don't touch it!"

Facebook = Virtual heroin

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A few of my girlfriends went out with me last night. A big fat blue cheese burger, a couple of Penn Pilsners, and some wholly inappropriate girltalk, and four hours later I had sufficiently decompressed. I felt so much better today, thank you for all the support and kind words. I knew a new baby would be hard, but….it’s still HARD, you know? I also got my hair cut today (chunky layers put back in) so I feel marginally less trollish.

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Also this afternoon, Primo and I went sneaker shopping (for him), and stopped at a different branch of the library (New! Exciting! Fun! Complete with glass elevator which Primo was dying to ride!), and had some ice cream at Baskin Robbins. He kept telling me how much FUN he was having, and he opened up a bit about some school stuff, and we enjoyed an hour in each other’s company. Which was a relief because as soon as we got home he started tormenting Seg again (although I notice he very politely asked the man at the shoe store for a second copy of the free magazine with Sidney Crosby’s photo on the front cover. A second copy, for Seg.).

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I finished Forgive Me last night. It was a technically more complex book than either of Ward’s previous efforts, but it lacked soul. Or heart. Or maybe both. Not to say it didn’t keep me glued to the page – it did; but I didn’t empathize with the heroine the way I did in Ward’s other books. She tackled a tangled set of complex issues, headed up with apartheid, so I did learn a bit about South Africa’s bloody history - which makes me want to read at least some Nadine Gordimer. Any other reccs, folks?

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As a nod to the movie meme sweeping the Internet, go on and guess which movie the quote came from...

“I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.”*

I believe I have officially reached my threshold.

I am tired of carrying the baby around 24/7, and nursing him nearly as much, and he’s a fussy little bugger.

Terzo is firmly in the Terrible Twos and has thrown several tantrums in the past week that left ME sobbing. And he weighs a freaking ton, so I have been left watching, helpless, because I can’t hold the baby and physically deal with picking him up. Which means that I stood on the sidewalk the other day - baby in the front pack, Terzo lying in a puddle on the sidewalk freaking out – and just waited him out. Stubborn little cuss (wonder where he gets it?) kept me there for fifteen minutes.

Seg, too, for that matter – my sweet boy, screaming No! and throwing himself on the floor, or jumping up and down hysterically, over NOTHING. Nothing, I tell you. He’s turned into a total drama queen.

But Primo – Primo takes the cake. Oh my god, he takes the cake with frosting, and buttercream filling, and sprinkles on top.

He’s been faking stomachaches and lying about throwing up every morning for the past week. He lied to come home early from school on Monday. H and I have asked about schoolwork, his teacher, bullying, his friends – anything we can think of, since it is CLEARLY NOT physical – and come up blank every time. I have NO IDEA what is going on but I am moving quickly from sympathy to anger and frustration. I should not have to be threatening, cajoling, and ordering my seven-year-old around every single morning to get him out the door. This morning, when he claimed illness, I told him he could stay home but there would be no TV, computer, games, hockey, or playing outside – if he was home sick, he needed to be in bed, reading or sleeping. Within five minutes, he “felt better” and had his uniform on. I am at my wits’ end.

And while I am kvetching: my laptop battery only lasts for an hour, I have a chapped area on my lip that hurts like hell and looks like a cold sore, I need a haircut and an eyebrow wax, and I am tired.

I have lost a ton of weight but now am terrified that I am going to pack it all back on.

And we are out of orange juice, my desire for which continues unabated.

Oh, and have I mentioned the weather? Cold and clammy and wet and grey. Sorta like my brain.

It may be March on the calendar, but it’s still February in my soul.

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*Calvin & Hobbes

"Our names are smirched?" *

I always try to pick library books for the boys on my weekly (or more frequent) trips there. I especially focused on Seg this week, as he is READING. Really reading, sounding out words and spelling words to me that he doesn't recognize (and thrilled to death to be able to read the sports page).

I randomly picked this Daniel Pinkwater picture book, about two polar bears accused of stealing blueberry muffins from the docks in Bayonne, NJ. It IS as insanely ridiculous as it sounds, and it's hysterical.

I LOVE this book, and even better, I LOVE reading this book out loud to the boys - Seg especially appreciates the dry humor, and I love voicing the smart-mouthed bears.

I need to own this book (and the other five in this series).

Any of you with kids - trust me - go check out this hilarious book featuring the muffin-loving polar bears, Irving and Muktuk.

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* Irving, in The Bad Bear Detectives

"Well, it doesn't say that exactly, but somewhere there is something about a chicken." *

I finished Alex Garland’s The Beach last night – it was a good read, but I felt like there should be more to it. It reminded me of what one of the characters in the novel says to Richard the protagonist about the beach itself: “It’s great if you just take it for what it is.” The book WANTED to be Lord of the Flies, Apocalypse Now, and The Swiss Family Robinson all rolled into one. Instead, it was merely an entertaining, off-the-wall, slightly disconcerting tale of drug lords, world-weary travelers, and stoned expats in a secret paradise gone awry.

I enjoyed Kathleen Center’s The Bright Side of Disaster. It was fluff, but well-written and with some terrifically quirky characters and subplots, not to mention a comfortingly realistic depiction of life with a new baby AND a happy but not sappy ending.

And lastly, I skimmed through Reva Mann’s The Rabbi's Daughter, a self-absorbed, self-indulgent memoir of her life trying to be an Orthodox Jew in Israel. I disliked the woman by halfway through the second chapter and my dislike just continued to grow throughout the course of her life and the book. And if her poor children don’t need therapy, I would be shocked.

Not that my children won’t – but then I also didn’t write a book about what a colossal fuck-up I was as a teenager and then follow that sad but commonplace enough tale with lots of selfish, blinkered whining about how fucked-up everyone ELSE is, once I was SUPPOSED to have grown up.

Hmmmm. Let me tell you how I REALLY feel...

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*Tevye, "Fiddler on the Roof"

"If you come any closer, I will rip you to shreds."*

Humdy-humdy-humdy-hum…what’s going on around here these days?

Let’s see…

Seg called Primo an asshole last night. Totally my fault. No, I am not necessarily proud, BUT he used it appropriately and in perfect context – Primo WAS being an asshole.

The Baby now fits into his 0-3 month clothes. But he still has little chicken legs.

Terzo is outgrowing six 6 diapers, so he has no choice but to be potty-trained as soon as possible. Lovely. Especially given his recent fascination with all things scatological. WHY do boys find fart jokes so funny?

I spent an hour out by myself yesterday, when the babysitter was here. I hit the drugstore (baby wipes, Easter paraphernalia (new toothbrushes and egg-shaped chalk and jelly beans), and a five-pound bag of cinnamon imperials (Ferrara-Pan, not Brach’s, but still an ok score)). I went to the bank (money) and Starbucks (grande nonfat latte) and Home Depot (white curtain rods for the older boys’ room) and the library (the most important stop).

A lovely discussion about fundamentalism in general, Orthodox Judaism specifically, ensued between My Favorite Librarian, my Second-Favorite Librarian (an earnest young man who apparently reads as much as I do), and me. I recommended Amanda Eyre Ward to MFL, and she expressed surprise that I did not love Gods Behaving Badly. I LOVE my library.

I picked up the following haul:
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You - Amy Bloom. Away is getting lots of press; this is Bloom’s debut, which I think I tried to read before.
The Chestnut Tree - Charlotte Bingham. Someone was reading Bingham and mentioned her on their blog, comparing her to Rosamunde Pilcher or early Maeve Binchy. And we know how much I love Rosamunde Pilcher comfort reading…
The Bright Side of Disaster - Katherine Center. There’s a bright yellow rubber duck on the cover! How could one go wrong?
Beware of God - Shalom Auslander. My new boyfriend’s first book.
Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates. A book mentioned by more than one author in The Top Ten: Writers pick their favorite books.
The Rabbi's Daughter - Reva Mann. A direct consequence of combining Shalom Auslander with Amazon’s “People who bought this book…” feature.
High Crimes: The fate of Everest in an age of greed - Michael Kodas. Everest! Mountain climbing! Death! Yay!
Forgive Me - Amanda Eyre Ward. Have I raved enough about AWE? She’s a great writer, and I cannot put her books down. She needs to write more, and faster!
The Neverending Story - Michael Ende. An 8-year-old friend recently read this and declared it the best book ever. So I thought I’d check it out for Primo. The last book I read for him was Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which was amusing.

I am halfway through The Beach and it is just about what everyone said – a good, fast read, entertaining enough, with some suspense/mystery.

And I have to blog about Salman Rushdie, whom Gina and I went to hear Wednesday night. So you have THAT to look forward to…along with tales about and photos of the boys’ new bunk beds which we are hoping to pick up this weekend and thereby reduce some of the chaos in this house. If we could just get the electrician here…

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* G'mork, "The Neverending Story"