Fictionchick

February Is Shortest Month For Good

2011-02-05T13:04:00.000-08:00

Just a lazy 70's mellow afternoon. Jim Croce, Laura Nyro, Carole King on the new kitchen radio/ipod player larry set up in the kitchen. Kids playing, baby and husband napping. Freezing drizzle tapping at my windows, which are steaming up from the inside. Feeling pretty okay. cooking. drinking tea. Oh -- holy shit! Just burnt the hell out of a batch of popcorn. Okay- fewer points to tally for weight watchers.

Thanksgiving

2010-12-11T19:40:00.000-08:00

Okay, the date has passed, but I am filled with the need to say so many thank yous. It goes like this:

I have always wanted to own a mason jar. Thank you for anticipating this heretofore hidden desire and filling it with (winter!) daisies. If only I could bring you such cheer now that you need it.

I didn't get a chance to say goodbye, but I wanted to thank you for a lovely party. Dylan had such a great time bouncing around like a goon. Best of luck in Chicago.

I know it was late. I know you were so tired after running around taking care of everyone all day; taking Poppa for prune juice, making Grandma go to the mah-jong game despite her depression, cleaning up after the sick dog. And then taking us to see Shalom Sesame. It was so cold outside and I was hyperventilating, I was so upset. Thank you for bundling up and going out to your car to see if my phone was lost in your backseat. Thank you for being so nice when I called minutes later to tell you I'd found it upstairs. I know you need my ear, and I wish I could give it to you more.

Thank you for making me laugh every day. Today it was blue icing all over your hands and then hiding under the table when I tried to make you wash them. Thank you for telling me you had a secret and whispering it my ear, "I love you." I love you, too.

Thank you for calling me short and cute. It made me smile all day long.

Thank you for telling me again and again that I could always talk to you. Thank you for meaning it.

Circled

2010-11-29T20:19:00.000-08:00

So, we're in therapy, and I shake my head yes, but I really mean I have no idea what you are talking about. I come home from a 12 hour day and the kitchen is a mess crawling with food and my husband says I think we have roaches and the therapist says you shouldn't be such a clean freak. It makes me want to take a nap.

Ok, I get it- that I should work on myself before others, that I have a sickness, too. Actually, it has a name: generalized anxiety disorder. I know that this is a term therapists give to relatively sane people so that they can charge their insurance for their sessions. I'm not a total idiot (though I could possibly be convinced that I am), but I hold onto this diagnosis like a rare jewel, shining from my cupped palm. Aha! So there's an explanation (besides my apparent allergy to dairy) for why my hands bleed into the dishes and the keyboard, stigmata-like. And the answer is not that I'm a martyr.

They say other people can't make you feel anything. Only you can make yourself feel and you can decide to feel whatever emotion you want. I feel very weak that I do not seem able to accomplish this task. I leave the therapy session and I am more frustrated than when I walked in, because now I feel like I have not only to actually do everything at home, but I also have to pretend that I'm not so that I'm not called a workaholic and so that my mind can be empty. I try it for a few days: don't make my lunch, let the dishes sit in the sink, do not fold the laundry, leave the toys where they fall, walk on floors gritty from my husband's construction projects. It feels fine mentally to not do stuff - I read, I make a household budget (not not doing something I realize, but something I've wanted to do for a long time), tell my husband he has to deal with the bills this month and the math that lends itself to negative numbers. But it feels a lot less okay when I come down in the morning to the assault of things everywhere in the kitchen, a scurry of little legs and antennae across my counters. It feels less okay when the baby's pacifier is covered in grit. When the numbers still don't add up and we have to go into savings ... again.

The therapist says my husband doesn't clean his pile of clothes because he doesn't give a shit. This is fundamentally true. I am not an idiot (though I am beginning to feel like one), but my question is why doens't he give a shit? Doesn't he want to live in a clean house (I do)? Doesn't he want our bills to be paid (I do)? Doesn't he care that it upsets me (I do)? Isn't it selfish to not do something just because you don't care, when the other person obviously cares so much? Isn't it caring to do something for another person because they will like it, to put your own desires on hold long enough to get your socks into the laundry basket? Why is it so wrong to ask for a little help?

I know I'm not thinking about this right, that somehow, I am supposed to do more for myself and less for my family/house/kids/husband and that magically this other stuff will get done, and then I'm supposed to be all zen and blase about it, but I don't get how this comes to pass. It seems like if I just sit there filing my nails, I'll be surrounded. I feel like I'm drowning and I don't know how to get it all done or allow it to not get done. Is that sick?

Copacetic

2010-10-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

Listening to 90's grunge and power pop and screamy angry riot grrrrrl music that makes me melancholy now instead of happy. I feel wrung out.

My best friend is getting a divorce. Or maybe getting a divorce. Does it matter? It just feels all so complicated and messy and grim. I know there was never a time when it was all simple, when we were all just happy. I know that. I used to be angry at my parents and now I'm angry at my husband and I wonder how my parents ever put up with me. Is it any different now? I am clearly angry at whoever has control over my life. But what's the alternative? Life on my own (with two kids) - alone, lonely? That's why my friend's not ready to sign the papers yet, either. It's fucking scary and who knows if we'll ever be happy.

But there's something so soothing about those crashing guitars, all the sounds mashing together, nothing sharp except the baseline, but loud and pulsing. It's all that feeling. We feel dead now. there's so little left of us, all us old married ladies with our bitty babies. Our souls are thin. I am happy underneath it all, but there's so much sadness and anger and frustration and resignation piled on top that I sometimes don't recognize myself in the mirror. Whose tired eyes are those anyway, the ones with the crow's feet?

And yet, isn't there something beautiful about us, us thin women pushing to maintain careers, community, motherhood, love, friends, family, bodies, and spirits? We used to be the super-moms, but I walk around and see these other moms pushing their designer strollers or wearing their babies on top of their hipster sweaters and they look more like the babysitter than the mother. We've got our jeans rolled up and we're still drinking vodka tonics and accomplishing crow pose and that's got to count for something.

We thought we were pure and indie and destined for lives of art. But it all comes out as poop in the end.

Amreeka for Peace

2010-10-07T19:02:00.000-07:00

I just saw a movie about Palestinian immigrants to the U.S. that showed the difficulties of life for new immigrants in general as well as Arabs in the U.S. and in Israel. It was such a human movie. I don't know if I agree with the political stance of the filmmaker on the Israel-Palestinian conflict - or the implied stance, anyway. I am not sure I totally disagree, either. But I do know that it showed Arabs as people. That's almost a ridiculous thing to say. Of course Arabs are people. But we tend to forget. I hear it from my family all the time. They will tell you they're not racist, but they are. They will tell you Arabs get what they deserve (as if all Arabs are one) for what they do to the Jews and to Israel.

I feel like my family is so progressive on so many issues. I would go as far as to call my dad a feminist. It is really painful that they have singled out this one group of people to hate irrationally. I guess hate is irrational. They will say I don't understand, that I am not close enough to the Holocaust to get it. That I haven't spent enough time in Israel. That I am a heretic. Even though the folks on the left probably consider me pretty far right on this issue.

In the movie, the grandmother sings a beautiful Arabic song at the going away party for the soon-to-be immigrants. It is heartbreaking to me how close I feel to that music. It is the melody and rhythm I grew up with - both Hebrew and Arabic. I realize that music appreciation is not a political solution, but it seems to bear witness to the fact that we are cousins, despite thousands of years living in Europe, just as African-Americans are cousins in some way to the cultures of West Africa. How can we kill each other, if we are cousins?

I do not know the right policy answers, but I do know that people need to live free and unafraid and no one in a place that is dear to my heart personally and spiritually is living that life right now. I do not know how to achieve it, but I know in my heart that we have to stop hating each other, we have to want peace. Love is not rational either, but it is better than hate.

I guess I'll get a lot of flack for this, but that's just something I'll have to accept.

Poisons

2010-10-06T06:25:00.000-07:00

We don't know what dreams are or where they come from, but we know what they do. Sometimes the stories they create stay with us all day and we can't shake them. Sometimes nice dreams leave us feeling unsettled and some times bad dreams release all the poison you didn't know was stored up inside of you, like when you wake up and find out that the dream was not true and you are flooded with relief with your head so soft and immobile in the down pillow that smells of detergent and your shampoo and your husband's spicy deodorant and your toes are warm and not moving and the sun comes for the first time in days through the heavy wooden blinds and they neighbors are fighting out in the street again but you are not and you reach over and say, "I'm so glad it was just a dream," and your husband gives you his butcher hand and you roll your cheek onto it warm and calloused and you hear the baby in the other room, "Ah -ga-da-ba," and your little boy is still snoring away, and the dream sticks to you in shreds of color, but the rest leaks out like a fierce sweat from a high fever that soaks the mattress, but kills the illness, even though it leaves you exhausted. Like a good fight. Or a good fuck.

It's the end of the world

2010-09-09T20:42:00.001-07:00

Foghorn in the distance from my old friend Julie tonight. People do surprise you sometimes. I feel the nostalgia course through my blood thick and pungent as fenugreek. Who was I then, the girl who wanted to marry the skater boy in the REM video?

It seems, of course, that I did marry him, and that there he stays, riding and riding around that great destroyed house, eyes never on the camera, hair always in his tragic face. It is this tragedy that attracts us, that never leaves them, until they come home from work and stare and stare at the tv, making monumental efforts only to sleep over their buddies' houses after they've had operations, while our mothers are still the ones bringing us soup when we're sick. We are still 14 in our hearts, and no matter how angry we are, we are searching for that slick race of pulse when the boy on the skateboard finally tosses his bangs aside and smiles his half lifted lips, his sad, poker eyes dead at us. We married difficultly.

We still love each other, but we are no longer on the same team, and life is too short to wait and wait and wait for that smile. It is no longer enough reward.

Missing

2010-08-30T20:11:00.001-07:00

I was surprised to look down and see your toothbrush was not there. I shouldn't have been.

Then I looked in the linen closet and your travel case was gone, too. It almost made me rethink things.

She Sews Those New Blue Jeans

2010-08-23T19:20:00.000-07:00

Just finished cleaning the kitchen, top to bottom.

Baby has a cold. Poor thing. Can't sleep. Keeps losing her pacifier because she can't breathe through her nose.

Dylan came back from his sleep over with his grandparents and immediately began hitting me. Later, when we were playing in the basement, the baby crawled across the room and my mom clapped for her. So Dylan had to show us how fast he could crawl. My heart breaks. There is not enough love in the world for him.

Must work now. Make lunch. Pay bills. Write New Years Cards. Start non-profit. Write novel. Make love to husband. Lose 10 pounds. Be glamorous. Fly.

Off to email land ...

Monsters revisited

2010-08-03T20:26:00.001-07:00

I just reread the first monsters entry and it seems so cold. It is true that those numbers stress me out, but it is the underlying emotions that are the true monsters. It is not so much the logistics of daycare, the numbers on the scale, or the negative balance in my bank account, but the fear that I am not a good mother, that my children will be traumatized and ruined, that I have no self control, that I am weak, that my life and its attendant bills are beyond my control, that all things are chaos spinning just beyond my grasp, and that my husband and children, too, are out there, uncontrollable, not submissive to lists, rules, or the world as I seek to draw it - these are the things that keep me up at night.

Which is scarier - that these fears are true, or the fact that my mind is comprised of these fears?

Frogs

2010-08-03T20:07:00.001-07:00

I stand in the doorway of the basement bedroom and breath in the deep smell of mold and oak. The dark is soft and surrounds me, as if it is made of the breath of my sleeping children, for they are the ones inside the room, and I am filled with both the knowledge that they are completely safe and at peace, and also the deeper pit of truth that these are merely momentary states of being. Motherhood surely is the breaking of delicate teeth on such a hard rock beneath the gush of juice and peach fuzz to which George Eliot referred.

I hold their little hands, the dimples beneath my rough thumbs, and it is all I can do to keep from breaking their little fingers in this overpowering love. If Mary Gordon did not know the emotional life of motherhood would be such physical sensation, then she was a fool. I knew what to expect in that regard; what I don't know is how to contain or channel it. The rush that comes over me could cause me to beat my children senseless or crush them with my kisses. Perhaps it is me, their own life and love giver, who stands the greatest danger to them, as Lennie Small was to his victim.

It is wet here in Vermont and all day Dylan was promised frogs. There were none at the nature preserve today and he bore up incredibly well for a three year old. So later, when his uncle found one in the garage, it was only the man's sense to give him directions ahead of time - cup it gently in leaf litter, then let it go back into the puddle, then wash your hands with soap - that preserved the tiny brown thing's slippery life. Dylan was practically hyperventilating with anticipation. It was all I could do to keep from crushing him into the moment, as wildflower into a scrapbook.

Monsters

2010-08-03T19:50:00.001-07:00

Dylan is obsessed with monsters. And we call Joey "Miss Monster". But the real monsters are, of course, within us. It seems to me that no sooner do I finish scanning the shadows on my child's dark bedroom wall, than I am suddenly locked into my own, staring at the ceiling as my husband snores beside me, and numbers flip over and over in my head. How many calories have I eaten today? How many dollars have we spent? How much is coming in? Are there any unexpected expenses: tickets, discovered wages from the IRS, cracked macbook screens?

I add up the columns again and again in my head as the passing headlights march across my ceiling, wavy from the blinds, their sound sources muted by the air conditioner, which surely is costing more than we can afford in utility bills. Again and again the columns do not add up. Again and again, I run through the drop off and pick up times times, the daycare locations, the number of hours I am supposed to put in at work, the modes of transportation. Again and again, there seem not to be enough hours in a day. Which leads to spending more on quick meals, which leads to more calories, which leads to more columns that don't add up, which leads to knots in my stomach, which leads to a short temper when Dylan won't brush his teeth and Joey won't play on the floor for one single minute so I can just button my pants. Which leads me to yell at my husband when he comes home with a parking ticket, which leads me to eat chocolate, which leads me to lie in bed awake at night, which leads me to write this blog.

And then it is sometimes the light of day that kills the monsters. We are on vacation (another set of monsters to be left for a different entry). Larry was up half the night with his own monsters; he feared he'd overbid on a job and wouldn't get it. I calmed him a bit by telling him he was wise to bid a bit higher because he was 1) worth it and 2) not turning any profit by lowballing all these estimates. But, as with checking under Dylan's bed and in his closet, I can do very little to assure my husband there are no monsters. When he checked his email this morning, he found he had gotten the job (and I think at a very fair price, in the end). His sigh of relief was the breeze across our day, a physical sensation all five of us could wind our fingers through.

How is it that sex and monsters are so closely woven?

Seriously Dude?

2010-07-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

Presented 7/17/2010, WPA Conference, Philadelphia. Part of a panel with and grad student mentors and mentees.

Seriously Dude?

I want to use Liz’s discussion of the power structure of the academy as a jumping off point for my own talk. As a graduate student and a teacher, you are sandwiched already between the power levels of your professors and your students. Adding the layer of grad student mentor creates a double-decker effect, if you will. As a creative writing masters candidate – as opposed to the more “serious” literature and rhetoric PhD candidates – I found myself having to contend with a fifth layer to my sandwich. I believe we “creative types” contend with this kind of rhetorical bind throughout our careers, which often (and in my case certainly does) includes both creative and other work: academic, administrative, pedagogical, etc. Is what we do – our creative work - serious, and can we be taken seriously as creators, as students, as teachers, as academic thinkers, as workers?

I think Liz’s point that the approach to mentoring – and the discipline she found inherent in that position – can be taken with a bit too much gravity. What she was able to impart to me was a bit of levity. For all the reasons above, and especially because I was unsure about my own ability to teach, particularly my ability to lead a classroom and keep it in order, I approached the classroom and its attendant issues of discipline with entirely no sense of humor. When students texted in class, I threw them out. When students fell asleep I stopped class to point out their evil ways. If students brought computers to take notes, I was constantly checking the screens to make sure they weren’t looking baseball stats or IM-ing. When homework was late, I dutifully marked it in my little black book.

Not that they should be doing these things. They show a lack of respect for the instructor and the material. But what was my approach to be? How was I to gain that respect? As in a terrible case of male penis envy, I seemed to need to prove how big mine was. I believe I thought I was taking the “walk softly and carry a big stick” approach, but I began to realize it was coming off as a case of “little dick in a big dick world.”

I felt like a fraud. For one thing, who hasn’t nodded off in class themselves? I used time during boring class discussions to write my grocery lists. For another, I didn’t really care if they checked their Facebook accounts instead of discussing the rhetoric of reality television. Their grades would reflect their levels of effort. I was reacting out of principle, and as I have learned from dealing with my 3-year-old son, that is rarely a practical or productive approach to discipline. I would have hated an instructor like me.

I brought my problem to our teaching circle. I asked Liz what I should do if a student fell asleep in class. Her answer shocked me. She said she never wanted to embarrass anyone (I had been trying to do so in hopes of discouraging similar behavior) so she would ask another student jokingly to prod the sleeper. That way, she said, everyone felt like they were watching out for each other, and she became part of the group, rather than the disciplinarian. They made it into a light joke and laughed together, but not at the sleeper. This was a revelation to me. Liz was not suggesting that her students were her colleagues. I understood that. But she was suggesting that the power structure I carried in my head was both untrue and unworkable. It was making no one happy.

Basically, I decided to lighten up. Texting in class is annoying, but it’s not the end of the world. The holier than thou attitude – I was up until 2am preparing these notes, so it’s the least you can do to pay attention to me – was getting me nowhere. Instead, I took notes from my 13-year-old stepson. When I do something that annoys him, he looks at me as if I am crazy and says, “Dude – really?” It is usually enough to make me stop and laugh – and stop doing the thing that annoys him.

I tried it last semester when I caught one of my students – I kid you not!- watching a movie on his iPhone. The rest of the class was engaged in group work, so I was not their central focus. I stood over him for a minute before he realized I was there. When he looked up I said, “Seriously dude? Not cool.” He shut off the iPhone and apologized. I believe this served as a wake up call for him. He had already missed several assignments, and after class that evening I received an email saying he would be dropping the class. Of course, I would have preferred the wake up call to have been one that got him motivated to work harder, but I feel that he got the message: – he was seriously not taking the class seriously, dude, and that was not going to fly. Most importantly, I felt like I had delivered the message well. I stuck to this method and the class became enjoyable. I felt most of my students liked and respected me, and I began to like and respect most of them. At the end of the semester one man even thanked me for “actually” teaching him something. That was cool. Seriously.

More Like Kuan Yin

2010-07-17T19:16:00.000-07:00

From a free write linking yoga to writing teaching/practice at a conference. Next entry will be the paper I presented about my own teaching, very much related to these thoughts about power and letting go:

Prompt by Pema Chodron, The Power of Patience: "There's a slogan that says, 'one at the beginning and one at the end.' That means that when you wake up in the morning you make your resolve, and at the end of the day you review with a careful and gentle attitude , how you have done. The path of developing loving-kindness and compassion is to be patient with the fact that you are human and that you make mistakes. That's more important than getting it right. And, interestingly enough, that adds up to something: it adds up to loving kindness for yourself and for others."

This is also a response to my post from last night (boy that was a creepy movie)

I like the idea of being gentle with myself. I like the idea of being gentle with my students. I like the idea of being gentle with my child, realizing that he, too, has to make mistakes in order to grow. I need to realize that I am asking him to understand very complex and adult ideas that make automatic sense to me because I am acculturated to the rules of our society; he is not yet. For instance, why can't he paint on the wall? Why can he write with chalk on the wall painted with chalkboard paint, but not on the other walls? What if it looks nicer after he paints it? What if the chalk just rubs off? Why? Why not?

How can I apply yoga (and humor) to all of these things? How can I be compassionate for myself, and extend that to those just beginning to know how to be and create in a new world (for my son, the world of middle class American culture. for my students, the world of reading, writing, and critical thinking. actually, they are all learning to think critically). What would Super Nanny say to such an approach? How do you make something hard go easier, as in yoga when you relax into the pose? How do I make my pose of teacher/mother better, more elegant by relaxing into it? Both positions seem utterly un-relaxing. How do you breathe into a tantrum or a sentence with no verb? Is it just a matter of keeping my cool? I don't think it's a matter of giving into everything or accepting chaos. How do I keep from getting angry/frustrated? How do I deliver loving-kindness to these other people? How do I make it happen for myself?

I think part of my sadness about Dylan is the separation necessary in our relationship right now. It's the good, productive kind of tension that will help him develop his independence. Joey brings me such joy because we are symbiotic right now - and I mean biologically through nursing. She is my little leech.

I didn't even notice Dylan's new independence until Larry pointed out that he was helping himself to something in the fridge. That's scary for me. It's hard to let go of the control of him asking for something, just as it is hard to let my students discover new modes and voices on their own. But it is good. I recognize that, even if I have to cover my mouth and sit on my hands. It is nice to sit back and watch him; my students, too, when they have a new interpretation or slant on language. How do I prevent myself from reflecting myself onto them? How to allow them the space to create their own identities as people and writers. And then, how do I trust that it won't all fall into chaos? Well, trust, maybe, just as I trust being upside down in handstand, literally accepting an inverted view of the world. Sometimes it is good to leave off your own perspective and see things with inverted eyes.

when you have too much anxiety to sleep, write a list

2010-07-16T21:38:00.001-07:00

Anxieties:
not being able to afford the house
being away from my kids
dishes
keeping finances in order
getting a job
not getting a job
fixing up the house
having another baby
not having another baby
losing baby weight
new neighbors
writing
not writing
putting my foot in my mouth
when is the next paycheck coming?
why do I open my mouth?
how will we pay for this house?
paying for day care
tickets
cracked computer screen
bills
credit card
living beyond our means
pissing people off
making everything more complicated than it has to be
apologizing too much
messy situations
Dylan attacking me while I'm nursing the baby
Waking up in the middle of the night worried about my kids and money
Waking up in the middle of the night to a screaming baby or Dylan with wet pajamas or night terrors or needing to pee in the potty or wanting a drink of water
Trying not to wake Larry up
Dylan not listening
pumping milk
the scale
the credit card statement
the end of the month
the morning, when it starts all over again
re-reading this list

Fears:
Not being a good mother
being a bitchy, controlling wife
not doing enough for my parents/grandparents/aunt/mother-in-law/sister-in-law
that Dylan loves Larry more
That I don't love my kids enough
That my husband doesn't love me
That my husband does love me, but doesn't like me anymore
that other people don't like me
That I'll never get hired
That my children will grow up too fast
That I will spoil them
That I am too harsh on Dylan
That I love them all too much
That I will never publish anything
not being a good friend -- always taking from others
that I am not an understanding person
not a good listener
too entitled
too demanding
too focused on my own needs to attend to my children or my husband
that my grandparents will die very soon
never being able to kick up into a handstand
not being a grown up
becoming middle aged
becoming boring
becoming stuck in my ways
being all business
not laughing enough
never again going out until 3 in the morning without worrying about having to get up in the morning
caring about such things when I should be focused on the important stuff (read: responsibilities)
that I am not working as hard as I should be and Larry is working too hard to make up the difference
never getting a break
that we are so lucky that our luck is bound to run out soon

loooong days

2010-07-11T21:13:00.000-07:00

All winter, I dream about summer. Now it's here. Boy is it ever. Hardly a day not in the 90's.

The best part of summer is the long, long days. Even at 5pm this evening, the sun was high in the sky. I took Dylan on a bike ride (he was in the kiddie seat of my bike, not riding his own). This was after a full day of hanging out with relatives and then hanging out in the basement playing board games after they left. We rode through a random street party with a punk band and some bizarre kind of bubble maker. Toothless women were eating pasta salad (???) and smiled at us as we swung by. Anarchist kids that looked like West Philly imports in their cut off black denim vests and dirty dreads (and the sweat - sweat is so West Philly for some reason) waved to us with bubbly hands. This made me glad to be done with my 20's. But it made me miss going to shows.

We got to the river and sailed by the boats, the tourists, the clean brick of Center City. But in the back of my mind, I couldn't help hearing miss Joey Rose cry, and worried that she would be waking up from her late nap and that Larry might not hear her in the basement, where he was surely ensconced, watching a Sopranos episode.

We got home and Joey was still not up, which made the day seem to stretch even longer. I felt tropical, wished we had our hammock up, wished for a fruity drink and a swirly straw. Wished for time and space to stretch out, be accountable to no one. For the pleasure of doing nothing. But I made myself rally, cooked some fish and salsa, mopped the floor, vacuumed, unpacked more boxes.

As soon as the day seemed to finally wear itself out and I got Dylan down, who should wake up but miss Joey. And so the day kept going. Larry put in the medicine cabinet and took a jog (a jog? whose husband is this?) while Joey and I played. Finally, her little eyes turned red and she began to whimper towards sleep. It was 11 o'clock. I was ready to fall into bed, ready to get up and do it all over again tomorrow.

In the moment 2

2010-07-03T20:47:00.000-07:00

It's like a bad summer movie sequel, but this one goes like this:

Fireworks at Penn's Landing
Even the baby is smiling
They look like they will land on us
They shoot into our eyes
The breeze off the river
The familiar chords of Appalachian Spring

Later the baby will be so excited she won't close her eyes until after midnight
Later the three year old will have a meltdown (could it be the 5 scoops of ice cream he devoured at the all you can eat ice cream fundraiser?)
and the tween will escape to the shelter of video games
and there will be fights about whose turn it is to fold the laundry, put away the dishes, change the diaper, get a cigarette break
Later there will be bodies touching beneath the circular breeze of the fan, as the traffic grows loud and soft, loud and soft, again and again beneath us

Although these are things we could anticipate
We don't know them and we don't conjure them
We just watch the green and gold and blue and red
sparkle down on the five us
together

summerland

2010-07-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

I want to write about being in the moment.

I was at yoga today (first time in a month -- hooray!) and I was trying to be in the moment, to be on the mat, to feel my body, and the room around me, and let my breathing anchor me. But I was so caught up in the directive that I began to let my thoughts drift to why I seem never able to be in the moment and to those few times that my somatic experience is so overwhelming that I can do nothing but be present.

We just went on vacation. Well, vacation is a relative term. It was very nice - a trip to the Chesapeake Bay to stay with some friends and then we stayed on after they left and Larry painted the vacation house while I hung out with the kids. It was very much a vacation while we were all hanging out together. It was great actually, and though it is not the place I would choose to go to rent a house (I'm much more of an excitement, adventure type traveler than an r and r type), it was great to be in a great big house with a great big group. Truthfully, I was more than bored by the end of the week and ready to get back home, where, banal, it's true, my life and all its list of goals lay waiting for me to swing back into action.

The height of the weekend for me was the single moment of action. Perhaps I should begin by saying that I have had almost no sex drive since Joey was born, which is very different from when Dylan was born. My life has seemed so externally up and down and my stress level has been so high between working, moving, and two kids. Now, suddently my stress level was way down, Larry and I were able to enjoy each others' company in h the face of having nothing to get accomplished. By the bay, the still waters inside me began to move. I was feeling sun-drenched, lithe, easy. With the chance to hand off the baby, I felt suddenly able to move, to let my arms and legs stretch. I found myself wrestling with Dylan. I felt myself drawn towards the great blue waters.

So when a neighbor swung by the pier I was standing on and tried to convince som guys to go for a ride on his jet ski, I spontaneously raised my hand. The driver instructed me to grab a life jacket and meet him on the beach, which I did. I hopped on and grabbed the strap as he indicated. We turned out - towards what? Boats passed at what had seemed to be from land very contained speeds - a yacht, a sailboat. "This is going to be bumpy," he said. Did I mention that I'd never been on a jet ski?

"Holy shit!!!!" We rode the waves way off into the air. We collided back again with the water, and then off again, catching air. "Whooo hoooo1" I screamed into his ear. I had just eaten some guacamole and was certain my breath was terrible, but here is where my mind just couldn't get one over on my body. My mouth just opened up and sounds just flew out. It was terrifying and freeing.

We hit the smoother waters of an inlet full of green, green marsh grasses and long legged birds. The driver sped up and my stomach lurched into my throat again. I managed to calm down only when I stepped outside myself. "You're a good swimmer," I told myself and you're wearing a life vest." Then I realized that at this speed, hitting the water would be like hitting the pavement from 10 stories up. The only thing between my present reality and that momentary fantasy was a thin red strap and I held on for dear life. I wanted to puke and cry, but the wind was on my teeth and animal sounds continued to fly from somewhere deep within me. They were sex sounds, primal and beyond thought.

I was grateful when he cut his ride short, possibly to end the agony of my garlic breath hot in his ear, and dropped me on the soft sand. But felt loss, too, as I always do - the moment - again - was gone. During the ride, all I could think was "get me back" and now I was and wanted to be out there again. "My husband's going to be jealous," I said. He looked at me quizzically. "I mean - of the ride."

Roar!

2010-05-31T19:17:00.001-07:00

My son is a monster. I am almost ok with that, and then again I sort of feel like I'm in the mom-o-sphere of 12 step programs and I've just admitted my painful secret. I know this is some kind of extension of the terrible twos, but I truly felt like a terrible mother when he threw sand on Maddie today and made her cry, called his buddy Dutch a baby, and then ran around punching and kicking all of the adults. I should add that he was wet, sandy, and naked from the waist down as he did this.

He is just wild!

It's not like I don't give him boundaries. And yet, I'm definitely into not having too many boundaries -- I think. Sometimes I wish one of those super-nannies would come to my house and unknot this terrible mess. He just has so much anger in him. It's painful to watch. And hear. His latest lovely phrase is "fucking stupid." Nice, right? I'm trying the ignore it and it'll go away strategy. So far, not working. But nothing works.

Probably the most painful is the daddy-ness of it all. Daddy is cool. Mommy is ... well there are some not nice words for what mommy is. Not his buddy, that's for sure. Like last night he woke up at 2am with a nightmare and all he wanted was daddy, but I didn't want to wake Larry. He cried and cried for daddy, but eventually he fell asleep in my arms. Boy, I felt second rate. I guess I'm the "lay down the law" and Larry's the fun dude. But Larry is not one of those dads who just lays all the hard stuff on the mom, not at all. He disciplines him and keeps him in line, and Dylan listens to him.

And Dylan is also aggressive with Larry, too (not just with me, I mean). Tries to hurt him, push the limits. Larry says I over-react and that his anger comes from that. Perhaps I do, but I don't think that's the source. Is it his little sister? Is it all on her? That's a lot for a 5 month old too shoulder. It's so painful to see him so angry, and it kills me to have to discipline him constantly. I want to say yes, not no. I want to hug him, not yank him off of his friends, or his father, or - the worst - his helpless baby sister.

And yet, he is so scared of monsters. Nightmares every night. Fear before bed. We have to check under his bed dresser, behind the door. Monsters monsters everywhere.

2010-05-20T20:32:00.000-07:00

So I go to test out strollers at Buy Buy Baby a few weeks ago and I see this display of books about different jobs. You know, each book is about a different profession: doctor, fireman, etc. And the books are cut out in the shape of the person, so the cover is almost a little doll. And, of course, most of the professions are men. Except, and I am not kidding you, princess and ballerina.

I do not think you have to be a feminist to appreciate that this is just not cool.

So I talk to the manager, Matt, who is very VERY nice and he says he will talk to the buyer for me. Two days ago, he actually called me back and says the buyer told him there are other books "for girls" but these have not sold well. They are nurse and teacher.

So there you go. Our professions are apparently still limited to the only acceptable ones as of 1920, with the exception of the imaginary profession (I don't think you can actually get a job as a princess, right?). And the idea that boys would actually be interested in reading one of the "girl" books is apparently preposterous - why would a boy want to read something with a girl on the cover?

Let me also point out that these are books aimed at 3-year-olds. Say what you want about nature vs. nurture, but there is no acceptable argument that justifies only showing our boys and girls that women have 4 acceptable and feminized professions. And we wonder why there's a math divide along gender lines! We wonder why women take on "caring" professions that pay less. We wonder why girls want to be princesses (and we wonder why women are so convinced that they can change men, just like in the fairy tales). Could it possibly be from the media they are exposed to? Sounds crazy, I know.

And, by the way, just for a reality check: The trash collectors on our block are often women, there are two female fire fighters at our local fire house and both of them fought in Iraq. We are friends with male nurses, teachers, and dancers ... but no male princesses, I have to admit.

Do me a favor. Buy feminist kids' books and keep your mouth open when you see crap like this. I am disgusted.

2010-05-11T19:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, trying to update this thing regularly.

It's raining tonight, but I was out with Len ... without any kids!!! so I walked her up to the bus stop just for the thrill of walking around without other people attached to me. I should be following Weight Watchers since I did not lose any weight last week (only been on the program 2 weeks -- too early to give up) but Len bought me delicious chocolate chip cookies and a latte and I said screw it. Plus, I had to eat huge amounts of food today because I was so nursing hungry. Or maybe because it was a yucky afternoon of hanging around the house (and around the kids and Larry, who was doing work on our house) that I just snacked. But I don't think so - I think I was starving. I haven't been full in weeks, even after a big meal.

So, I just walked around in the rain and felt everything lift and it was gorgeous. I got home and Larry was crabby, and I was like, hey, I'm going upstairs to do job apps - see ya. I felt kind of bad because I think he really needed to talk, but I just needed to not be needed for an hour. I need to be alone with me. I need to need me. I need to fill my own needs for a while.

And they never turn out to be just my needs, anyway. I mean, I'm applying for jobs to keep my family afloat, not upstairs painting my nails. Not that there's anything wrong with painting my nails -- I need to do that stuff more. It's so hard to justify it to myself, though. It seems I have so little time with both kids sleeping (and when I'm not at work) that I have to use every precious second. Larry doesn't get that - I mean men don't, not just my poor put-upon husband. He can watch hours of t.v. and not even think once about the dishes in the sink or stay up late and not think about how he needs sleep because he's going to have to get up to nurse all night and then get up with the baby in the morning and get everyone ready to go in the morning. He can just get up, put his clothes on, and walk out the door. So he doesn't get why I'm stressed in the morning. And he doesn't get that in order to not be super stressed in the a.m. (and be late for work), I have to get everything done the night before. So, he thinks I'm a workaholic. But if I suggest I would be less of one if the dishes were done, the clothes were folded, and the lunches magically made for me .... well, that's nagging :)

2010-05-09T11:18:00.001-07:00

I've decided to make this more of a mom in the city blog and to start posting regularly again.

It's interesting, because we've basically just had a watershed moment, when we decided to buy a house 3 blocks from where we currently live. It's a great house and everything seems to be going smoothly. I feel like a real grown up in some ways (I usually feel like I'm about 12 years old in terms of maturity level and accomplishments) because it's a major house with a major mortgage, one I'm not entirely confident we can afford the monthly payments on, but it also seems like my job is going to work out and larry's biz is picking up (I am so proud of him - and he'll probably kill me for saying that - but I constantly get such positive feedback about his work, and it seems like he's really found his niche), so I'm hopeful that we can do this house thing (and if not, I guess we're screwed). Hopefully here, necessity will be the mother of invention.

Anyway, we did look in New Jersey and the areas are nice and it would be nice to have trees and good school options and be close to my folks without needing to take the bridge and all of that. But it just all seemed so neat and clean and perfect in this way that didn't allow for any of the good grit we are used to. It was all so white, too. I guess our neighborhood is pretty white, and I feel like something of a racist that we did not buy on the other side of broad, but come on, there were crack pipes in the house we looked at! I'm always on the defensive - I know. But the thing with the taxes in NJ meant that we had to look at smaller houses and in the end they weren't much bigger than the house we already have or they were just gross or in industrial areas. Because what we want, or at least I want, more than anything is to be not just in a neighborhood, but in a community. Maybe I need to be in a community that has some adversity to weather, because I really love the way my community is coming together to solve its problems and I want to be a part of that. It makes me feel like I have a meaningful life and that I'm surrounded by dynamic people.

It all goes back to that Woody Allen line: It's important to make a little effort in life once in a while. Otherwise, we're all just sitting around in our pajamas watching tv and being carted from place to place in our hovercraft eating junk food. i don't want a junk food life. I want to make effort. Maybe that's why I'm always making my life more complicated than it needs to be: alternative work schedules/childcare arrangements, volunteering, cooking when i could order pizza, creating programs at work when i could just clock in and out. Writing. Having kids. Having kids definitely complicates life, they create hills and valleys out of the flat line of life, and god those valleys are fucking hard, but oh those hills can make you cry with sweetness. I want my kids to see a life of effort. I want them to know its not about tv and junk food and hovercraft. So we don't have a driveway, we have to improve our school, we have to walk to our "backyard" otherwise known as the playground. But when we get there, all our friends are there and we don't have to play alone.

I don't want to play alone, no matter how much house I could get for my money.

If you think I'm nuts (and why not, my husband and family are certainly convinced I am) then check back for more insane rantings about the people who jog vs. the people who buy their groceries using a double stroller.

Benjamin Button

2009-06-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

There are not enough photos in the world. Video will never be real enough. But there is the smell of your sweaty hair on a summer night. Your little knuckles squeezed into my fist. Your backwards hugs as I read you to sleep. Your surprise at waking up. Your hiccough-laugh as your daddy catches a firefly. Your turn to play pet shop, pretend there's a baby in your belly, throw blueberries across the room, pull the cat's tail, splash in your tiny blow-up pool naked, try to put a marble up your butt, announce with a stick and a golf ball that you are going to teach your doll how to play baseball, jump in the tub until the floor (and me) are soaked, eat your boogies, go nuts for ice cream, build a tunnel for your trains, say "guess what, I'm gonna be a big brodder" in that sing-song voice, learn all the words to Aiken Drum, Where the Wild Things Are, eat charcoal because you think it's chocolate, and be afraid of worms in your shoe. Nothing could be better.

Rainbow

2009-06-22T19:42:00.000-07:00

1) The rainbow the other night at Rachel Barr's graduation party. OMG I have never seen one so complete and bright and beautiful. Obviously a sign of good things to come for the bright, beautiful Rachel.

2) The skittles I want to keep eating and the roaches in my cabinets and my stomach that keeps making me want to throw right up. Hooray for pregnancy

3) The calm I feel (I know this isn't a direct rainbow relationship, but is associated with the calm and optimism I felt at the sight of #1) even though my work world is topsy turvy right now. I know nothing's written in stone and that I made it all worse by getting pregnant, but somehow I feel like there might be a change (for the first time in my life) of actual work actually working out and me actually being able to feed my family and not have to cry every night because i can't get a decent paycheck. do you think? could it happen? probably not.

4) screw rainbows!

2009-05-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

beginning to see the light. creeping towards teh light. gotta get through tomorrow. gotta get summer job. gotta finish story and paper and then ....Laaaahhhhhhhhhh!

I see a future where I can watch TV and buy stuff --- soon to be a real American!

diversity 1

2009-03-17T18:16:00.000-07:00

So, I'm starting a new project and here goes:

I want to bring diversity to my mom's group. That might mean a lot of things: racial, sexual, gender, class, religion, etc and so on.

This will be my final project for my women's studies class, so there will be some academic stuff going on. These blog entries will be part of that.

so here's what's what. Basically, I sent out emails to the group as well as some other local groups who seemed to be concerned with this stuff. I found a mom's group for women of color and a gay and lesbian family group. Haven't heard back from the LGBT's but the mocha moms have been awesome. The end result is that we're setting up a playgroup/meeting to talk about all of this.

I was really afraid that my inquiries would be rebuffed. I was worried that the mocha moms might think it was a very strange thing to get from a total stranger. That they might think I was trying to do diversity tourism in playgroup or trying to get token members or just think the whole thing was stupid. I was also worried that women in my mom's group would be angry. I was worried they would accuse me of trying to bring politics into what they might consider a-political space. Like, hey, we're all moms here and we're trying to support each other and isn't that enough?

BUT that's not at all the reaction I got from anyone. Of course, it coudl be that people with those negative comments just didn't respond to my inquiry, but I certainly didn't get any hate mail. On the other hand, I did get lots of enthusiastic responses. One of the mocha moms actually has a sister right in the area, so hopefully, she can come to the playground sometimes. I joked that she could be our token member. I didn't get a laugh -- but it's email, so its hard to tell withotu emotiocons. I'm very very hopeful, though.

check back to see what happens.

Santosha

2009-03-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

Apparently, this means contentment, with an emphasis on enjoying the moment. Something I aspire to do better.

We spent the weekend at a great BB by this name in the Poconos, did yoga, hiked, washed away anger and doubt, drank good coffee, watched the sunrise, and rubbed each others' shoulders. We also crashed a sweet 16, rubbed elbows with Dati folk wearing streimels and speaking Yiddish, and bought a dresser for $15, so if that's not a good weekend, I don't know what is.

Oh, and it was the first time we left Dylan over night. Don't worry, he had a blast with his brother and a whole cadre of other children.

Spring Makeover

2009-03-06T11:53:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know it's trite, but I can't help it. I just went shopping (I sneaked it in on my way home from an appointment, so it was Dylan free!!!) and I don't fit into any jeans -- ahhhhhhhhh! It's not just that because some fit - that is they buttoned and zipped --- but it's like I have a totally different body. I don't recognize this body. It doesn't even seem like mine. Where did my old one go????

So, now that I've eaten a slice of pizza and a chocolate bar, I need to figure out how to get it back. I don't think Weight Watchers is going to work again, because I'm just way too busy to remember to write down all the points. I guess we've been eating a lot of meat and pasta (and yes, ok, fine, chocolate!!!!), so that's got to stop.

But I don't want to give up chocoate. But I want to fit into pants. Ahhhhhhhh!

Home Place

2009-02-07T11:25:00.000-08:00

Kol Tzeddek Reconstructionist Services 5/7/09

Perhaps it is an omen; I have just checked my horoscope online (a fiendish little habit) and discovered that my Tarot card for the day is the star: “You are consciously on the way home in a spiritual sense.” Sometimes these things are right, sometimes they’re just loopy. Today, it is uncanny. I have just returned from attending for the first time services at Kol Tzeddek, an egalitarian reconstructionist congregation in West Philadelphia, lead by a woman rabbi and woman cantor. This monthly service is called “Tot Shabbat” and it is aimed at families with young children because it consists mostly of participatory singing, dancing, and storytelling rather than traditional lead and response prayers. Despite the non-traditional nature of this service, it contained many elements I consider intrinsic to a Jewish service: the reading of the Torah, the recitation of the Sh’mah and the Mourner’s Kaddish. What made me feel at home was the mixture of these things in what I consider a uniquely feminist recipe.
It is not just that the rabbi and cantor were both women, though that helped. It was not just that the focus was on children, though that helped. It was the larger sense of open-ness that made me feel at home. My husband, a convert to Judaism, and I, raised Conservadox, have been on a pilgrimage for as long as I can remember to find a spiritual home. I can remember discussing with him the feeling of community his sister had been able to find a home in her Catholic parish, just as his parents, who had helped to build a new parish in West Chester, Pennsylvania, had found theirs. My brother and his wife seemed to be finding their home place in a forward looking but very Orthodox shul in Boston. Others of our siblings were not as settled, but neither did they seem to be searching. We felt all alone in our quest not just for religion, but for the kind of religion that resonated with our souls and our hearts. We are interested in social justice, but that’s not a religion on its own. We are interested in meditation on the spiritual, but we do not want to sit alone with our legs crossed and our fingers in mudras – we want to share that journey with others. And we are interested in finding a place which is fundamentally welcoming: to women, to converts, to people who question, to people who want to challenge and try doing things differently. This is what I feel I may have found at Kol Tzeddek.
I often see the difference between the Catholicism that my husband grew up with and the Judaism that I grew up with as a difference between prioritizing faith or practice. Practice without faith is hollow and faith without practice is unanchored to the world. Neither my husband nor I conceive of god as a sentient entity, but as some kind of life force. Similarly, neither of us is willing to embrace ritual without examining it, without imbuing it with meaning that resonates with us. We are looking for a home place that both rejects the universalism of Christianity, in its broadest cultural, moral, religious, and social senses, and rejects the elitism and exoticism of Judaism. We want to be part of the cultural and spiritual worlds of the Jewish people, but we don’t wish to fetishize it. This, I feel is a fundamentally feminist and critical quest as well as a spiritual one. Perhaps it is too idealistic a quest. Perhaps there is no perfect home place, but I feel at home among the doubters, the questioners, the let’s-try-it-this-way-and-see-what-happens folks.

2009-01-27T18:51:00.001-08:00

I want something wide and vast and i don't know what it is: a new country, a new language, a new mode, a new way of moving my body, of knowing the world, of interacting with people.

I just saw a guy get robbed in the subway. Not the end of the world -- they took his i-pod, scared him a bit, ran off. People came to his defense. I went up and told the teller to call the police. Two black male robbers, one white male victim - so cliche I can't stand it. They were all in their 20's - at first I thought it was just horsing around, or a fight between people who knew each other. Just as I told the teller, the two assailants came running through the turnstiles and I said -- those two guys. I should have stuck my foot out to trip them or something, because the next moment, there was the police officer, hot on their trail (he was young and black, too --- too cliche? he wasn't officer krupke, for god's sake). He shot through the turnstile, muttering -- what they hell did they do? --- and swiveling his head all around. That-a way -- I pointed after them and he shot up the steps after them. Could have caught them - I don't know. I felt like I was in a cartoon. I was the lazy mexican with the giant sombrero and the half empty bottle of tequila - they went that-a way --- too cliche?

I want something expansive. I want a new theory, a new critique, a deconstruction of all the things I am told are not problems. You are too sensitive. They didn't mean any offense. Offense is not the issue.

My sister-in-law works with these women - these tofu and broccoli hating women and it makes her so angry. Did you ever ruin Christmas by telling other little children that Santa doesn't exist? - they demand of her, the lone Jew. Oh, we didn't mean any offense. Why would you want to feel any pain? they demand of her for attempting natural childbirth. Indeed, why would you want to feel anything? Process everything. Just eat your damn hamburgers and don't challenge things. Everyone is male and Christian and white and rich. All men are created equal. Let's all go to the mall.

Caffiene

2009-01-14T10:31:00.000-08:00

Cannot concentrate. Comps exam two days away. Fingers twitchy. Time flows like piss from a drunk guy. How did it get to be 1:32? Why did I schedule a playgroup for 3pm? Who is Oedipa Mass, anyway?

an icon that symbolizes hope

2008-11-13T17:17:00.000-08:00

My freshmen are writing papers about icons and I told them that the icons have to symbolize something; they can't just be celebrities, but must have some deeper meaning that reflects the values of our society. I was expecting: My icon symbolizes the deep ironic sexual longing of the post-punk feminists. I got: Barack Obama symbolizes change. Ok, sure he does.

So, today, I symbolize hope. Here's a list, just for brevity's sake: i am becoming stronger, unafraid to set limits, unafraid of consequences of following what i know to be true, unafraid to ask for not just what i need but what i want. i have a new job for the spring. i am about to sit down and write a really cool grant letter. my son likes to play hide and seek, float in the bathtub, sing old macdonald, and covered my face with kisses this evening. I ate a lot of vegetables for dinner and loads of fiber. Now i can have ice cream. there is a good chance i won't fail my comp exam and i think my portfolio might be alright. i just submitted a story to a contest. there is some fleeting chance that my house might approach clean this weekend. my sister is coming to visit, i am hosting a party, and i am hosting thanksgiving. my research is so interesting t me.

all of this despite the fact that i've thrown my back out, i can't stop coughing, my car got broken into (and now we have to fix it even though we were about to sell it) and my cell phone was stolen. oh yeah, and, after an exhausting day, i dragged dylan down to old navy to buy a winter coat during thier half off sale (almost over) and they were closed. but hey, we got to listen to his baby music there and back -- hooray! You can never get enough Look at the Monkey.

Fall

2008-11-08T05:36:00.001-08:00

This blog is where i get to be banal and cliche, right?

The wind blows and the leaves create ana aerial circus outside the window. Dylan and I watch from the bathroom window of my parents' house and he is more captivated by this than by Sesame Street. We go outside. "Airplane," he says, "Up dere." He points towards the bare trees. We watch a leaf helicopter down. "Fall," I tell him. "Fall," he repeats.

We sit on the carpeted landing of my parents' steps. "Uh-oh!" I tell him, sounding ominous. He squeels, starts to back away. "Uh-oh, uh-oh," I reach towards him, "I have to Squeeeze you!" We grab each other in a tight hug, giggling. He puts his head on my shoulder. We sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I leave out words. He fills them in. We rock back and forth. The leaves whisper to and fro outside, settling, settling. We watch them through the windows by the front door. We rock, we watch, we don't let go of each other. Fall.

My Surfboard

2008-09-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

I must be a nester. I just got to my parents' house for the holiday and it's so great when i come here bc i don't have to worry about mopping the floors and i don't care if certain people (ahem!) forget to put their dishes in the sink and also its big and everything works and is clean and easy and, oh yeah, dinner is magically put onto the table without my having to do anything more than say, mom, do you want me to help? oh, you've already done everything. ok. and maybe set the table if I feel generous.

it IS amazing how much time food takes out of my life. The thinking preparing shopping cooking cleaning putting away getting ready for the next day packing lunches cutting snacks wondering what goes with what and picking up those last few ingredients. My mom just had her kitchen redone and so she couldn't cook for 6 weeks. They ate out almost every meal. She's like, wow, i can't believe how much free time i have. so she's been going to yoga. now she's kind of getting back into the swing of things and we'll put her kitchen to the test tomorrow when we cook the holiday chickens. it'll be nice not to have the oven break down on us for once.

still, she was deciding what to cook for dinner tonight and my dad suggested chinese food and she was like, oh, great idea! that never would have happened two months ago. never. i'm glad. i know it's hard for me to pull back and not do stuff --- and that's a lot because of her. and that's a good thing - a compliment i mean. because i think she really taught me how to get stuff done and not be lazy or disorganized. But still, it's also important to know how to relax and i'm glad she seems more able to do that.

He Said

2008-09-17T20:21:00.000-07:00

Bikable, mooksh, li-on, hepticopter, want it, Daddy coming, Mommy here, I miss Aunt Barb, monkey, seal, BUS!!!!, baby, mac-a-RO-lee, Dylan swimming, I Dylan, goona agoona, share (and then rip a toy out of some other kids hand), garage sale, I slide down, chocolate, ice-cream, broccoli, Gampa, Atta, My P.J., A-P.J. kissing, meow, meow-meow, titty tat, boobies, my surf board, no baf, wesh, I loyoo, pease, Maryee, Maryee up dere?, Joshua, potty, I keen it, Ashley, Michael, outside!, payground, trash!, rock, button (belly), buttons (channel changer), shockadoo, bless you, sneeze!, hapchee, hush, hello (just want to say ...), nigh-nigh, moon, star, bu-fly, cricket

Allergic

2008-05-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

Do you ever think you are allergic to happiness? I'm riding down Walnut today and it's just gorgeous. the trees are pink and white and veined with tender green, so fragile, you want to cry and glue the petals in place just to make them last forever. And the breeze as I biked lifted up my hair and cooled my shoulders even as my back muscles grew hot and loose. I went over the Schylkill River (god, will I ever learn to spell that???) and my thighs were burning and I wanted to stop but I didn't want to stop either. I could see the joggers on the river path below, the good ones with their reddened necks and legs and their even breathing and the ones that have just crept out from winter dens, weighed down by fat and sweatsuits, gasping and waving their arms as if drowning. Just walk, I want to tell them, and the thought of yelling it makes me laugh.

I am on my way to buy tickets to a klezmer concert, except this is tough girl, all drum klezmer. I'm going with my whole family on Mother's Day and Larry's family is joining us for dinner at my house before that. Hooray, no one hates me today (I don't think...). We are going to bring the babies to the playground and the petals will fall all around us and it will be like we're in one of those snow globes, but it'll be like a flower globe.

I think about being a mother. And a wife. And a student. And a daughter. And a writer. I could not be happier. To be in my body, to feel the sun pricking red upon my nose, to taste the film of chocolate left in my mouth, to rub my chapped (always chapped) lips together and feel like a movie star because I am on my bike, wearing the sunglasses with the rhinestones (even though some have fallen out). I want to do yoga. I want to swim. I want to read a magazine in the hot hot sun and drink ice tea and wear a straw hat. i want to hike in alaska. i want to creep through the decaying streets of Fez. I want to wear a djellaba. I want a dog.

And just like the petals, I want to glue this feeling in place. I will go home, I will get a parking ticket, my cat will get fleas, my ATM fee will suck, my library books will be late, Larry will put his dishes in the sink instead of the dishwasher, I will get bleach on my Saturday night jeans. And it will all be over. But I dont want it to be. So I keep riding.

Sign Language

2008-02-28T16:11:00.000-08:00

A letter from Dylan, as translated by Mommy
Re: It's so hard to be a baby!

Can you imagine what it's like? All I want is to get some food in my belly, and Mom keeps putting me down for a nap. I scream and scream, but she just tells Dad that I'm fussy. Finally, she gets the picture and plucks me from jail (aka crib). I am so releived I slap her back and she thinks I'm hugging her. Aw! Give Mommy a kiss, she orderes and I bite her cheek. She screams and I laugh. Aw, she tells Dad, he's trying to kiss me, but his little teeth keep getting in the way. She sit me in my high chair and cuts up some cucumbers. I don't want that crap. I want the baby crack, street name, Yo Baby. I'm a sucker for apple. Whole milk is da bomb, yo!

Finally, my poor little tummy stops rumbling and I can concentrate on the important part of life - finding things to put in my mouth. Of course, Mom won't let me get anything good. I pull an empty milk container out of the recycling and put it to my lips - yucky! I get a hold of Marley's toy gun and have just finagled this tiny little plastic piece off, get it on my tounge and - you'll choke! Then I see the true prize of the day - a dead cockroach in the corner. The thing is dessicated. It's mummified. It's spider food. It looks delicious! But oh, no! She nearly faints. It's about as bad as the time I found some choice ice at the park. It smelled just like doggy pee pee and I have always been so curious what that would taste like. Of course, there's no way she'd let me find out. She practically made me throw up sticking her fingers in my mouth to get it all out - so I had to bite her!

Ha Ha Ha - just let her try to potty train me!!!

Monkey Cards

2008-01-11T19:02:00.000-08:00

My grandfather had this collection of monkey cards. You know, post cards with monkeys in suits and fat ladies in bikinis and alligators with thought bubbles. Mostly, he liked the monkeys. When I used to go over there for a cup of tea or something, he always made me look through his collection. He died a week ago today. I asked my grandmother if I could have the collection. I'm sure no one else in the family will be vying for them.

It's sometimes hard to remember who my grandfather was before dementia took him. Even before that, he was kind of a silly old man. I liked him that way, tender at times, sentimental, and sometimes angry. He used to rail against old slights for hours at top volume.

But I can remember him before that, too, if I put my mind to it. He loved opera, turtles, the fight on tv. He loved to watch the herons swoop into the manmade lake by his rented condo in Florida. He loved to drive to nowhere. He loved fruit and nuts and my grandma's chicken soup. That's my penicilin, he'd say. He taught me to stand up for myself. He slipped me twenties when my grandma wasn't looking (when he wasn't looking, she slipped me fifties). He used to carry me on his shoulders, take his teeth out and make facees, sing "Yes, we have no bananas," and riff on his New York accent. He taught me 1,2,3, cha, cha, cha. Once, my brother and I bought temporary tatoos and made him and his neighbor Ceal apply them to their biceps. Then we all posed like street toughs.

There's another monkey in this story - my monkey, my Dylan. I am so proud that my grandfather got to be at my wedding and got to play with my son. I am grateful for the last nice day we spent together. Grandma went to a luncheon with my aunt and I babysat Poppa (that's what I called him, Poppa Joey) and the baby. I fed them their oatmeal together and then took them to the park. After just a few minutes, they both got tired and we hobbled back to Poppa's apartment, where they took a nap together. Dylan will not remember that, but we have photos, and somehow, I know it will create a germ of tenderness for him.

Boy, I loved him. What more can you say?

The mom hole

2007-12-13T17:09:00.000-08:00

So, as a mom, you often find yourself in the midst of rediculous (sp?) situations. Eating smushed banana off of your son's bib, for instance. Or, say, answering the door with your pants undone and hanging off your ass because you were breastfeeding and had to pee so incredibly bad that you had to do it with the baby attached to your boob and couldn't get your pants up in time for the dishwasher repairman. Just as a for instance, mind you.

Tonight I found myself singing (perhaps singing is the wrong word - let's say, intoning operatically) the word "socks" in various pitches, keys, volumes, speeds, tones, voices and with a variety of zany facial expressions. Sooooooooocks! Dylan thought I was hysterical. His giggle is worth a million bucks. But then, he totally stopped paying attention - he was trying to eat the protective foam corners I put on the coffee table - and - here's the insane part - I just kept singing. Soooooockkkkkkkkssssssssss! I even did a little dance. That's a different kind of silly singing and dancing from what happened earlier in the evening, which is that Larry came home to find me dancing up a storm and singing along at top volume to Skip to my Lou. But that's acceptable, because it's on a CD and I was practicing real dance moves (kind of).

Oh, who am I kidding. I've fallen down the mom hole. Where are my sweatpants?

Festival of lights

2007-12-11T20:47:00.000-08:00

Tonight was the last night of Chanukah (transliterations are so fun- I get to spell it differently each time!) and I was so busy with the baby - then starving and throwing food into my face, that I completely forgot to light the candles. I was folding my 800th load of laundry while watching the real housewives of OC (and actually, they aren't housewives -- most of them have jobs!) and totally enjoying not having anything due for tomorrow, when I realized it was 11 o'clock and no candles.

So, I lit them and watched them burn in the window, the light reflecting in the silver menorah, the whole house quiet and dark except for this beautiful, glowing corner. I was sad at first because Larry is at work and I wanted to be able to share this with someone. It's the only holiday we don't really get together with my family and Larry doesn't know the words to any songs so I never feel like I'm really celebrating it. Either I sing to myself or to the baby, but it lacks warmth -- plus, I'm a terrible singer.

But then, I thought, it's really nice to be alone, just meditate on the calm and the beauty, the contrast of the little lights shining against the dark. Whenever I'm alone, I am always busy, but perhaps it is important to also be alone and not be doing anything more than watching candles burn. No TV, no snacks, no books or chores or schoolwork or projects or internet or phone or even writing - just letting my mind wander, just breathing.

Yoga, which I miss dearly, has taught me the value of letting go and the finger trap mentality of life that always gets me into trouble --- the harder you pull, the more stuck you get. Winter is a time to slow down, to nest, to cuddle, to let go. I'm not sure if that's an official lesson of Hannukka (see!!!), but that's what I got tonight. I know there is an idea of being an empty vessel for God's will. Tonight, I am empty.

Chag Sameach, Hanooocka!

ahhhh, couch!

2007-12-10T20:37:00.000-08:00

It's been such a hard semester that I'd forgotten what my couch felt like against my butt, but this evening, my cheeks got a chance to reacquaint themselves with that lovely brown leather. Ahhhhhh. Hooray, I finished my paper! I am glad and I'm sure those of you who have had to listen to me list theories ad nauseum are glad, too. My poor mother - I actually emailed her a copy!!!!! Oh mom, you don't really have to read it!

Anyway, I printed it out and threw in some laundry and performed some other household rescue exercises that can only be done post DBT (that's Dylan's Bed Time) and then I was like, huh, it's only 10:30, whatever shall I do with myself. So i cut a gigantic piece of cake and poured a huge glass of wine and sat down in front of a Scrubs double-header. I lit a candle and felt no pressure or guilt whatsoever. I even called Larry just to gossip and find out how his night was going.

God, I have undervalued television. Maybe Larry's right. Perhaps we are due a flatscreen.

Or maybe I'm due a fabulous trip somewhere. To a place with cake and wine and good reruns. And sleeping babies.

milk and brain cells

2007-11-29T18:41:00.000-08:00

So, I handed in a story for class that we discussed today and no one liked it. My professor told me not to even bother revising it - it was that bad. So, ok, bruised ego aside, I can take that - I wasn't really that invested in it and they made very valid points. But what really freaked me out, is the way they described the main character in the piece. They said she was whiny and shallow and self-centered. They also said she had an unearned sense of entitlement that made her completely unsympathetic. Whew!

I am not upset because that's how people saw my character, but because the character was the closest one to me I have ever written. Of course, no one in the class could have known that and, of course, all my characters are me and not me. The story was about a mother whose friend's child gets cancer and dies. The main character feels trapped by her baby and actually feels jealous of her friend, something she can hardly admit to herself. I can say with certainty that I do not feel this way, but, oh boy do I know what it feels like to just want a day off from a job that has not one single day off ever. I was drawing on that feeling to write about a woman who resents that her baby keeps her from following her dream to open a photography studio.

When the class was discussing the main character, I could not help feeling bad about myself. I felt that perhaps I have been silly and shallow and entitled. Perhaps I was the one who has acted like I'm the only woman ever to have borne the burdens and sacrifices of motherhood. Perhaps I am the self-congratulator, the one who thinks everyone else in the world is just as interested as she is in every moment of her baby's life. I mean, of course I think my baby is the cutest - everyone thinks that of their own babies. What kind of mother would I be if I just thought he was fair to middling? I mean, he may be so as an adolescent or an adult, but as a baby? He's got to have some sort of chance in life - he can't even talk yet!

And yet, these are good things to doubt about yourself. Maybe I need to examine the ways in which I have been all of those things at different times. Maybe I have not been supremely right in all arguments with my husband, my mother, my friends. Perhaps, as I felt today, people from the outside have a completely different view of actions, rationality, psychology. Perhaps I have been a less good person/wife/mother/daughter/sister/friend than I believed. Perhaps I am a jerk.

Whenever I think these bad things about myself, I think how good it is for those around me to put up with me. I am embarrassed sometimes to recall all the times I've gone on and on to my husband or my mother or my friends. Why would I think anyone would be interested in these banal details of my life and how dare I present them as special? Why do I feel the need to give other people advice in terms of my own experiences? Can't I ever see them on their own terms? Why would I think that other people care at all? What about the big issues? Why can I not see beyond the narrow confines of my own small life? WIll I ever be able to do anything well or will I be a failure my whole life. Sometimes, I think life would have been easier psychologically as a charwoman. No it wouldn't - there goes my sense of entitlement. Even writing this blog is the essence of pondering my navel. It's not that cute a navel (though Dylan did try to nurse it today - but there I go again with the boring details). Ok, I'm ending before my brain fries.

daddy works nights

2007-10-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

so, here are a few things I don’t think you know about that are so cute. First, he loves his little Ikea star lamp on the wall. It has these little pinholes, you know, that let the light out and make bird V patterns on the wall and ceiling. As soon as I turn it on he starts laughing and hopping up and down in my arms and reaching for it. Tonight, I wanted to distract him, so I put him on the other side of his bedroom and turned it on and he crawled over as close as he could get and tried to climb up the drawers on his dresser/changing table. God it was cute.

Today we tried Cheerios again. On Saturday, I gave him some bits of apple because you were taking a while smashing his avocado and he was getting really fussy. I just had the apple in his little mesh bag “lollipop” and I cut it up right there at the table in your restaurant. I was excited because he was picking up the pieces and eating them on his own, and I even said, “Cool. Now, I don’t have to feed you anymore,” and that’s when he started choking. But tonight, I decided to give Cheerios another go anyhow. So far, he hasn’t been that interested, but tonight he dove right in and smushed them all up in his little gums and swallowed them almost without incident (he coughed once) and I could barely get his yams in. I was like, wow, the first time he actually eats them and he KILLS em – I had to get him a second handful! – but then I went to take off his bib and I realized most of them had ended up in a little cereal pool in his lap. Ok, so he’s not ready for a pie eating contest, but still, good show!

We met a Mexican family in the playground today. I used my rusty, barely existent Spanish to chat with the mom about her younger child, a baby just two weeks younger than Dylan. His name was Jhon – she pronounced it “Yan” and I kept trying to ask if it was Swedish or something, but apparently they don’t call Sweden Sweden in Spanish and I don’t know the Spanish word for that country. Also, I couldn’t remember the Spanish for love or like or anything, because I wanted to explain that Dylan loves other babies. He pulled himself up on Jhon’s stroller – he even climbed onto the footrest!- and was smiling and laughing and jumping up and down, grapping for the other baby’s head and hand. At one point, when he was pulling himself up, he grabbed Jhan’s little foot in its little red leather shoe and tried to eat it. I was laughing so hard!

Then he crawled all around and turned the knees of his baby blue pants black and was following around some big kids. First, they were on the swings so crawled right over and sat below them. They were about 9 or 10 and were so good about not hitting him or stepping on him. They were getting up a game of tag and I said to him to make them laugh, “What, do you think you’re going to play tag, too?” Then they went and stood in a little circle a bit away from the swings and don’t you know, Dylan crawled right up to them and sat down right next to their feet as if he really was ready to join the game. I had to swoop him up to keep him from being trampled. He’s quite the social baby. Remind you of his mommy?

I love your body

2007-10-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

Consider this an open letter. Consider this my heart. Consider this the smooth round cheek of my baby son when he's concentrating hard on picking something up and his lips stick out like little pickles and his eyes are cast downward upon his work. Consider this the wart on my husband's middle finger where it joins his hand and I love when I feel it tickling the inner pad of my hand, my breast, the hard line of my aging jaw. Consider this the smell of shampoo in the thick hair of my stepson, tousled so it shows that little streak of premature gray. Consider this the hot stars shooting out from my hips and buttocks after a hard, uphill bike ride, the raw cavity of my throat, glowing red, a heat wave around my head, the world still and solid once again below my feet. Consider this real.

My outer lip

2007-07-06T17:54:00.000-07:00

I just emerged from my darkened childhood bedroom in which I just danced my beautiful baby boy to sleep to the tinny music of his mobile. What a love! Down in the basement of my parents' sprawling suburban estate my step-son is playing on his new X-box with his friend Phillip. They were such good boys tonight. They came to my grandparents' house and ate pizza (Phillip only eats pizza and fries, which I find kind of cute) and swam in the pool at their complex and then played at the playground and didn't complain about not having their video games or about being in their house of strange old people they barely know.

It's amazing how close I am at this moment, with the fireflies in the grass outside and no children playing stickball in the middle of the street, to the life I never thought I'd have. Perhaps because it is borrowed (we'll be back in the city as soon as my kitchen is done in a few weeks), it's not so terrible. Plus my parents have mega-cable. Very nice when breastfeeding.

So I just took down a post about all the anxiety my husband's job and spending habits are causing me. I actually only posted it because I never actually think anyone reads this stupid thing. But apparently, you do. I was shocked - shocked - to see that some of you have even posted comments! I was also thrilled because it's nice to know I am actually communicating with people. But I've always thought of this thing as more of diary that gets housed in cyberspace and I don't think I would have actually posted some of that dirty laundry had a I realized.

So, I took it down for that reason, but also because I feel like it's unfair to Larry. Everything was true when I wrote it - the anxiety, the anger, the hopelessness. But as soon as I wrote it down, most of that dissappeared. The events are there and the bank account is still low, but writing down my bad feelings has always helped me to overcome them.

And the thing is, I get it. I understand completely that my husband is absolutely drained after working for 12 hours straight on his feet without so much as a lunch break. I get that that's why he needs to smoke - to relieve stress and to stop working for 10 minutes. I get that on his days off, he can barely move, let alone wake up early and head out for an all-day hike. And I know why he bought Marley that X box - he wants to make up for not seeing him enough, for dragging him between so many houses and people, for more dissapointments than any 10-year-old should have to bear.

There is also one thing I didn't mention about buying the X-box. He called and asked me if he could buy it before he did. I didn't feel like I could say no, but I could have. And we have plenty of savings. I don't really want to dip into them and I think the Xbox is an extravagance that we shouldn't even consider if we can't afford to fix my car or go on vacation, but if he really feels like its that important for his son to have this, how can I say no? How can I? And, after all, it's just money. It means nothing. I won't even notice it's gone a year from now. And the two of them will enjoy it for much longer than that.

I suppose sometimes, I feel like Larry doesn't consider how I'm going to feel, but do I always consider his feelings? What about posting a mean entry about him? Is that kind? I always want him to show up with flowers or some sort of surprise, but I do remember what it's like to go to work (it wasn't THAT long ago) and just want to get home and hit the couch.

Really, I am just lonely and not lonely for people, because my friends and family are great and always around - which is a luxury he does not have these days. I am lonely for him. I just miss him. I miss being able to laugh with him because he doesn't get to do much laughing these days. But that's because of his schedule, not because he's a bad husband. It's because he's working hard, not out partying or seeing other women or even abandoning me for his buddies. My god, his buddies must think he's dropped off the edge of the planet. I never really thought about the fact that he not only gets no time with his sons, but also no time with friends or any of the rest of his family.

I guess there's this evil little part of me that just wants him to miss me as much. And I think he does.

If I were a kind wife, I would probably arrange some sort of guy party so they could all veg out on the couch together and make stupid boy jokes. If I were a wife that didn't think about herself and dirty socks all the time.

He said to me a few weeks ago that I was the only reason he was able to hold this job- that without my support he'd have to quit. It made me feel so good. Maybe that just has to be enough for now.

Wardrobe Complications

2007-06-18T19:46:00.000-07:00

So, I always knew I'd need a separate wardrobe for pregnancy and with maternity clothes so cute these days, I was totally looking forward to that shopping spree. By my third trimester, I was, of course, sick to death of maternity wear, especially the pants that never stayed up and especially because the wardrobe consisted of so few choices, since I only bought a few things. At the end I told anyone who would listen how I couldn't wait to get back into my regular clothes.

So it was a major dissapointment to realize that, having gained 40 pounds, I was not going to fit right into my "regular clothes." I refused to buy more than two pairs of pants two tops. That combined with some super stretchy long t-shirts and an old pair of fat jeans lasted me all spring. Eventually, I began to shed the weight. I am now 12 pounds from my old weight and the baby is three months old. I swear, next time I will only gain 25 pounds, I absolutely swear -- no cheese doodles! I finally fit into my larger jeans and can just barely zip my smaller pair. But now I have a bigger problem. I suddenly realized I have only two pairs of jeans!

I know that might not seem like a huge problem. After all, I've had two pairs of jeans for years - a casual pair and a "Saturday night" pair. (I had that old pair of fat jeans, too, but they didn't count because I pretty much used them for painting in or cleaning the basement and chucked them as soon as my real casual pair zipped up.) It was never really a problem, but that was when I could only wear jeans in the evenings and on weekends. To work, I wore slacks and skirts. Now, suddenly, I find myself living in a jeans, t-shirt, and shorts kind of world. Mine is a world of sweat, spit up, and breast leaks. Every day the effluvia of my child find their way onto my clothes. Although I have never been a big clean freak, showers are now my favorite time of day. Whereas I used to wash my clothes after several wearings, now I often have to change several times a day.

I have to say, it was kind of a thrill to find myself in front of the graphic T shirt display at Old Navy, a location I always avoided in favor of the sweater set aisle. It made me feel young to dress like a teenager again. I can't even remember when sneakers and flip flops were my staple footwear. The last time I was out of work I still got "dressed" every day, but suddenly, I can barely manage to change my earrings every few days, let alone organize outfits. Plus, almost every day in the city means miles of walking and pushing a stroller. I had no idea that motherhood was so physical. The thing is, I spent my 20's contstantly trying to find a job that didn't put me behind a desk all day. I was miserable doing that unsuccessfully for 8 years. Now, it looks like I've finally found that job - only I don't get paid for it. It feels good to go to bed tired from a hard day's work, but not zombified by having stared at a computer screen for hours and hours.

But I do miss my wardrobe. I never get to wear my red, high heeled sandals. I sometimes stare at my closet and stroke my beaded evening camisoles. And I am still waiting to squeeze into the pencil skirt larry bought me the day after our wedding, the only week in my adult life that I weight less than 130 lbs.

There has to be a mix, right? A job that includes quiet work and physical activity, a life that includes work and family, a wardrobe that includes tank tops and kitten heels?

Magnolias revisted

2007-05-17T20:13:00.001-07:00

By the way, i figured out the difference between Magnolias and Dogwoods. Duh, Rachel!

Oh, and it continues to rain petals and every day I am grateful to be outside with my baby.

My grandmother sent me a mother's day card with only one line: Enjoy Dylan every day. I'm trying, Grandma.

Bedbugs

2007-05-17T20:00:00.001-07:00

It's true. I was changing my sheets yesterday (for the first time in a MONTH!!!) and I saw this little doodley bug doodling its way across my pilllow. Then another one on my mattress cover. Finally a dead shell of one, which I carried into the office and looked him up online and there he was: teeny, round, stripey - a bedbug. The disgusting thing (if it can get more disgusting) is that the exterminator can't come until tomorrow, so I had to sleep in that bed last night and will again tonight. Eeek, heebie jeebies!

Of course, the more upsetting part of this story is that my little bedbug has to sleep there, too. I mean, it's one thing for met to get some little itchy spots, but I keep checking Dylan to make sure he's ok and thankfully, so far he is. Unfortunately, he is also far more annoying a bedmate than the bugs. He is kicky, scratchy, restless, and regurgitative (if that's a word). I know I should be keeping him in his co-sleeper, but lately he's had some real trouble going back to sleep after waking up to nurse. This keeps me awake. I do not like that. Therefore, at the risk of being yelled at by my pediatrician, I sometimes let him sleep on my chest. Then, sometimes, I feed him lying on my side and then we both fall asleep that way. I am not a big fan of this, both because of the aforementioned kicking and also because I often wake up with my fingers tingling because I have to keep my arm above my head. And, of course, I worry about the baby suffocating or some other horrible thing involving my pollow top mattress and my feather douvet. Now, I get to add being bitten by icky vermin to the list.

Ah, god it feels great to write. I just paid all my bills, cleaned my floors, did my dishes and laundry, made the beds and organized. I am almost a real human being here. I feel like I can start taking on freelance work again. Maybe I should say yes to some of the projects I've been hemming and hawing on. I'm definitely going to go to that interview with the Tribune. Some days I have no idea how I will be able to go to school in 3 months, and other days (usually the days my mom comes to help me and the days the baby crashes out early/easily) I can't imagine why not. Next task - find childcare/write novel. That's all I got in me tonight ...

Magnolias

2007-04-21T09:41:00.000-07:00

So, I'm beginning to come out from under the baby haze. I even have Dylan lying on the bed next to me while I type this and he's totally entranced by Larry's belt or something else sitting in that general direction.

Yesterday was the first glorious day of true spring, a little late in coming, but welcome nonetheless (however you spell that word!). Dylan had a doctor's appointment in the morning and I had a midwife appointment in the afternoon, and it was so nice out that I decided to just spend the whole middle of the day wandering around. As a result Dylan got to breastfeed in a number of interesting locales, including on a bench next to a smoking, but very polite homeless man.

Magnolias and Dogwoods are my favorite trees -- although I can't tell the difference between them. I love their lush flowers that shade from deep pink to white, but they die very quickly. First the flowers open too far, like a middle aged woman who still relies on the makeup routine she used when she was 20. Then, the tender white ends of the petals turn yellow and thin, as if someone has smushed them on purpose. Finally, the petals fall off individually and the branches, while still in bloom, but lacking any of the green that will come later to fill them up, looks scraggly, naked, while beneath the tree a carpet of rotting petals builds. It is one of the hardest trees to catch at its perfect peak, but when you do, it's breathtaking.

There is a magnolia garden in the middle of the colonial section of Philadelphia, one in a string of connecting gardens that run throughout the old city. I love to walk that route and yesterday, Dylan and I meandered through it, taking the time to stare at the daffodils -- ok, I stared and he slept -- and rest under arbors. It was delightful. It felt so great to stretch my legs and take advantage of one of the best parts of the city -- one I don't often get a chance to appreciate -- especially with my little son in tow.

The best part was the magnolia garden. I had Dylan in his baby carrier at that point, so I left the carriage at the foot of the stairs and strolled slowly through it with the baby. We just stood under the trees and felt the breeze. There were people reading on benches and there was a hushed sense of being in a quiet, contemplative place in the middle of the city. No one was talking and all cell phones were silent. The trees even blocked the sounds of the traffic. The magnolias were just a hair past their prime, but still lovely. I sat on a bench, kissed my baby's head and teared up at the beauty of spring. I decided I would go back to school in the fall and this summer I will make it to Montana. After all, I've turned 30, had a baby, started my own business and am married to the man I love. Now I just have to lose the last 20 pounds of baby weight and I'll be a chick lit heroine. Ok, maybe not, but standing there beneath the blue sky and the floral crosses of pink and white, I felt like life is pretty damn good.

new life

2007-04-07T18:46:00.000-07:00

This is my first post since having the baby and it is such a respite to write. I am typing as fast as I can because I can hear him stirring downstairs - our little dylan henry. He's great. But he hasn't let me put him down in days. except the last hour and I finally got my bills paid and my dinner eaten -- first things first. well - I hear crying. looks like second things second will have to wait ...

Speach

2007-03-07T03:27:00.000-08:00

Larry's sisters and mom are throwing me a baby shower this weekend and I cannot wait. I hope they won't think it's too corny, but I want to give a little speach. I don't know if I've ever given a speach before. We didn't do anything at our wedding or even, I think our rehearsal dinner. I guess I've spoken at friends' weddings and at my grandmother's funderal, but that's different. Anyway, this is pretty much what I want to say:

When Barb called me to tell me she and Jeannie and Eleanor were making me this party I was so touched. It was so important to me to share this really special time in my life with the important women in my life and I'm so excited you are all here.

Larry is always talking about how much he loves my family -- and that's such a blessing for me. He gets job advice from my dad and they chat about music all the time and he gets cooking lessons from my mom and grandmother. And I'm always telling Larry I actually married him for his sisters. When I was having job trouble this winter I kept Barb on the phone for hours and Jeannie's talked me through every moment of pregnancy hysteria. Sometimes I think Kevin is the only one who gets my sense of humor and Eleanor is, of course, the most supportive mother-in-law I could ask for. The only person that I miss - of course - is Nancy, but I know she's thinking about us, just like we're always, always thinking about her.

And all his wonderful cousins and aunts! I was telling Larry the other day that I was daydreaming about all the parties that are about to happen - all the graduations and first communions that bring everyone together in the spring - and I said I can't wait to be there and play pass the baby with all your cousin and aunts. It's going to be so great - Ryan and Jayden will be just this baby's age and they're going to grow up together. Because of the war, my family is very small and I grew up without any cousins - barely even any second cousins, so it's so wonderful to me that my children will have that.

And I also have to say that it was Mary Pat who actually convinced Larry to let me try natural childbirth -- so if I'm screaming bloody murder a week from now it'll be all her fault!

Anyway, I just could not ask for a more caring, more forgiving, more amazing family - on both sides - to bring this baby into. Thanks you guys so much for doing this for us. I love you!

Well, admittedly, it is pretty corny, but that's ok, I think. Showers by their definition are pretty corny, no? So, oh well, I give into the cheese. After all, it really is what's in my heart.

The Evil Eye

2007-02-23T19:21:00.000-08:00

I just got off the phone with my sister, who is not sure she wants to come to my baby shower. She says she is superstitious, but I really don't undersand why. I've never been much for superstition, although I do read my horoscope sometimes. Anyway, I never even knew Jewish women didn't have baby showers until 2 years ago when my friend Nitza was pregnant. I was like, oh, let's make her a baby shower, and everyone was like, no, you can't because of the evil eye.

The evil eye is very annoying and inconvenient, if you ask me. When my mother was born, my grandparents kept her in a drawer. A drawer - I swear to god! When I was a kid, I always thought they meant that they pulled out a drawer, stuck her in it, and then closed it back up, still full of socks and everything. I guess they must have kept it on the ground by their bed and had it lined with blankets and stuff. Actually, it probably made quite a cozy little bassinett, but that's not why they did it -- they did it out of fear.

Historically, when mothers and babies survived childbirth far less often than they do today, I suppose it made sense. After all, how terrible to have to return all those gifts and furniture and everything. But I was always taught to prepare well ahead of time for new situations and this seems like a situation you'd want to be really prepared for. You don't want to be out shopping for a crib 3 days after giving birth, when you're sleep-deprived and just learning how to breastfeed and stuff - right?

But the thing I was trying to explain to my sister is I don't want the baby shower for all the presents -- as my mother pointed out, people are going to give us plenty of stuff no matter what. And whatever we don't get, we'll just buy on Craigslist (much to my grandmother's horror). For me, the party is right of passage, a welcoming into this stage of womanhood. My sister pointed out that some Jewish people have parties after they give birth with men and women and the baby there -- but that's really a party for the baby, not the mom. This is really about femaleness and fertility. I don't know if it's corny or too anthropological to describe it this way, but I would be so sad not to have this little celebration. I am completely grateful to Larry's sisters for organizing it for me. It also really means a lot that my mom is going to come - even if she's not going to bring a present (actually, she already sent me a stroller/car seat, which I promised to keep in the basement until the actual arrival). Anyway, it means a lot to me, even if it's cheesy, so I hope she'll change her mind and come, because that would be really sweet and it would be so nice to have her there.

A Quail's Coffin

2007-02-07T19:57:00.001-08:00

I watched Babette's Feast tonight. Good winter movie. I was making beef stew. It's not quite the lush perfection of the Cafe Anglais, but it smelled good and I know it will warm Larry's belly when he gets home soon.

It's so cold out and he has to wait alone for the subway. It makes me feel like some sort of prarie wife, waiting for her man to come in off the barren plains. It is nice to be home, covered in a blanket like a shawl, having put in a hard day's work myself. I love working from home, even if I do get a little lonely sometimes. I have a new peace.

I think it's like the movie - how good food links the physical with the spiritual world and breaks down the stoicism of this religious community. Sometimes we get so caught up in the rat race of it all, it's hard to remember the joys of earthly basics like good food and it's hard to remember that so many of the things that seem like such big deals don't really matter in the end. I choose a bread and chocolate life.

I looked deep into the mirror as I was brushing my teeth just now. I get lost like that sometimes, wondering who that woman on the other side is and what she has to do with me, other than a snaggletooth that needs fixing and some chin hairs that need desperate plucking. For the first time in a long time my eyes don't have bags; its the third trimester exhaustion and the former job stress --- but that feels lifted. I saw my big eyes and my round face and the zits by my hairline. I saw the blond streaks growing out and the shiny brown coming in. The elastic of my black shirt caught the hollow light of our tiny bathroom because it is stretched so thin across my belly and breasts. I looked at that woman in the mirror, a woman who makes mistakes, but, I think, a good woman, and I thought, I am ready to be a mother. For the first time in a very long time, that thought didn't scare me.

My baby is all but bursting out of me already (so it's a good thing I'm getting used to the idea of him in my life). I am all belly. I am a ripe fruit. He bolts around inside me like a torpedo. I think he must be very squished in there.

We need to come up with a middle name for this baby. Dylan is such a hard name for an infant, I think. I know it will suit him later on - I still love the name - but when he comes out all tiny and bloody, when he's screaming and cold and wrinkled, I think it will be too solid a name just yet. Larry still won't go for Sawyer as a middle name. It's still my favorite, but I guess I can't win all arguments (even though we all know I should!!!). So, I've been thinking Solomon, Sebastian, Stefan, Sagi. Sagi means strong - and that would certainly be a name to do justice to my grandmother's dirt-tough legacy - but I'm not sure I love the sound of the name. Sebastian sounds like a young, royal paige with blond bangs flopping in his eyes. It was also the name of the boy in the Never Ending Story, and I would love for my child to grow up with that sense of wonder, imagination, fortitute, and, of course, indulgence in the power of the written word. 'Course that kid was also a dork that had to hide from bullies and I don't want a sissy for a son (or a daughter).

The other thing we still have to figure out is the ceremony of it all. Larry convinced me to do a bris. It wasn't hard, because it would be such a fight with everyone not to have it, but I really don't see much of a point to it. It's weird to me to decide to chop off a piece of his little body - especially as I consider the "natural" alternatives of not giving him every vaccine on the list. I also don't think he needs a nicked noodle to be a part of the Jewish people. I mean, I know rabbis would say he does, but shouldn't religion, faith, and peoplehood emanate from the mind and spirit? Then again, Judaism certainly teaches a strong connection between the two hemispheres - something I believe in strongly -- I'm just not sure I see this particular connection. I mean, is he going to think about being Jewish every time he pees or has sex?

Well, Larry should be home soon, and I should get this belly to bed. I was up at 6:30 this morning, working on a spec assignment. I feel good about that. I like working for myself. It feels so much more meaningful. It feels solid, rooted. I just hope I can keep up that feeling as I enter this sacred, liminal space of emergence and life. Namaste, I guess.

my famous blue raincoat

2007-01-27T17:07:00.000-08:00

I am standing in a CVS in Boston with my brother buying junk food and pre-natal vitamins when a magazine cover catches my eye. It is a photo of the young actress Scarlett Johansen, who I like because she chooses good roles and plays them with depth. The headline says that Cameron Diaz’s boyfriend has left her and he has hooked up with Johansen instead. It describes Johansen as Diaz’s enemy, which certainly juices up the story. Since I do not follow Hollywood gossip, I have no idea if this is remotely true or has even been long-rumored. What catches me off guard is the idea of Johansen, whose character I imagine to be sweet and down to earth, with an enemy. It occurs to me that part of the reason I like Johansen is that I feel a kinship with her; I picture her as a beautiful, actress version of myself: smart, funny, buxom, unafraid to embrace her inner dork. This impression is based on flimsy information gathered mostly from the characters she’s played in movies, and yet it moves me to think: Scarlett Johansen has an enemy and I do, too.
This is the first time in my life I have had an enemy and I find it hard to get used to the idea. This is also the first time in my life I have ever disliked a person so much. I will not say I hate her, because hate is a word filled with a high level of anger I do not posses. Stunned would much better describe how I feel. I am both stunned by my feelings of dislike and by my own actions. The actions that lead this person to become my enemy were predicated not on my dislike, but almost wholly on my fear and a sense of survivalism. As in, if I didn’t act, I feared this person would hurt me far worse than I was hurting her. In the end, I may have been wrong about that, because we both ended up getting burned, but I do feel sure I was right to fear her, that she is a bad person, that she wanted my destruction far more than I wanted hers, that she would have stopped at nothing to get it, and that she had better means to do so than did I. All of these things are what make me dislike her so much. It is a ridiculous revelation for me each time I realize how much she must hate me back.
In my dream last night, my enemy tried to trick me, but I didn’t see the ruse until I woke up in the morning. Our devolution from friends to enemies was always predicated on her trying to help me. I am not a cynical person, and I always believe people are who they say they are, offer what they mean to offer, are as honest as me. It never occurs to me that people I trust - and I trust almost everyone - are out to hurt me, have ulterior motives, or mean anything other than the good they profess. My grandfather always says not to trust anyone an inch, but since he also focuses on bitter family feuds that took place more than half a century ago, I have always laughed at him. Now I wish I had listened.
Before I tell the dream, here is a case in point, a very small point, which, by its very smallness shows how endemic is this enemy’s insidiousness. Before I told this person I was pregnant, she was constantly showing me photos of her cousin, who was about to give birth. She asked me how big pregnant women were supposed to grow, since her cousin had gone from skinny to huge, and a number of other pregnancy-related questions, none of which I knew the answers to, because I was so newly pregnant myself. I was always afraid of answering her questions because I was afraid she would find out I was pregnant before I wanted to tell her, which could have had very bad consequences for me, but it never occurred to me that she actually suspected I was pregnant and was trying nearly every day to get me to admit it so that she could use that information against me. After the incidents that made me her enemy occurred, a friend pointed out that that had been exactly her intent all along. I felt so stupid for not having noticed or even suspected. I thought this person would be able to see beyond politics and be at least a little happy for me and the new family I was starting. I was so naïve.
In my dream, I was naïve again, and it felt like relief. My enemy was suddenly in the picture and was talking to me normally. She was going about work in her usual way, giving me too much information and extolling her accomplishments. She told me she had a job working for the business desk of the Philadelphia Inquirer and she’d brought a number of people from our old situation with her, mostly students and cloying underlings. She says she knows we’ve had our differences, but says I should talk to her new boss, explain that I’m with her, and he will give me writing assignments. I am glad for the openness, but not sure I want the assignments. In addition, her boyfriend is there and he is following me suspiciously. He is a nice guy and I hope that in real life he won’t be hurt by her. In the dream, my enemy is telling me how our new life together will go, the only detail of which I remember is that I am supposed to move in with her. I do not want to do that because her place is a mess, full of shoes and clothes, and because I do not like the way she is laying out the future. She is not order me around outright, but assumes I will do what she says. I begin to have the vague notion that if I do what she wants now, I will be doing what she wants forever. Then there is the impression of someone else, and I remember that I am married. Larry certainly can’t move here with me. I tell her quietly thanks but no thanks, that I have another writing assignment from another desk at the paper -- which is true in real life -- and that it was nice of her to think of me. Then I walk out of the room and out of the dream calmly, as she stares resentfully after me. I wake up feeling even more relieved.
If this situation doesn’t represent plotwise what happened between us in real life, it certainly represents it symbolically. I trusted her instead of myself and when I finally realized how dangerous she is, I was honest to a fault and left. In life, the situation was much more dramatic and full of gray areas, but it felt the same. I beat myself up daily for the real life situation, like a soldier who survived war but had to kill men. In both the dream and real life, ridding my enemy from my life is still the source of my greatest relief. I am so thankful, even as I sort through the emotional, financial, and bureaucratic debris of the fallout, that I do not have to deliver my baby with the black cloud of my enemy in my life. The fact that the pale memory of her will always be with me is like a battle wound. Luckily, having wounds means you’ve survived the battle.

Wordsmith

2007-01-10T08:49:00.001-08:00

To grow up Jewish is to grow up in awe of words. Had I grown up Catholic, I believe I would have become a painter, a mosaicist, or a jewelry maker. I remember seeing the Vatican in Rome and the Sisteen Chapel and thinking, Oh, I get it, this is what makes people believe in God. I did not grow up Catholic, nor did I grow up to believe in God in any traditional sense. I grew up to believe in words.

I remember in college, I would dream in typewriter. That is, as I thought the thoughts that lead me into sleep or those that woke me from it, I often saw them typed out, each letter hit on an imaginary keyboard in my head.

Now I make my living with words, weaving them into stories and eliciting them from people whose stories are locked deep within them. One of my greatest feelings of accomplishment at my present job came after I finished interviewing a man who has lived for decades with full blown AIDS. This man is a motivational speaker for a local AIDS group, so he's comfortable talking about hard subjects, including the details of his own disease, but usually he speaks as an educator, divulging his status simply to make a point. During our interview, we talked about his life, his lovers, his drugs (his prescription drugs, that is), and his struggles. We went into deep detail and the detail was fascinating to me (and hopefully later to the website's listeners, as well). Afterwards, the man thanked me for my questions and I felt wonderful. He was so happy to tell this much more personal story and we both agreed it would make a difference to whoever heard it.

Though I no longer dream in typewriter, I do often still dream in words. Sometimes, I wake up and can barely describe the colors and voices and smells of my dreams. The plot is completely tangled. But often there is one word or a feeling of a word that sticks with me, makes me see the waking world differently.

My writing guru, Mary, has explained that in stories dialogue is action. That words can be considered action is so revolutionary to me. Recently, I heard a lawyer who is also a novelist interviewed on a radio show. He related how his law school professor told the class that the law, after all, is only a collection of words. This stunned the man, because in his mind, the law is so powerful. But, of course, these are words that describe actions, and, more to the point, words are powerful. So, words = law = power or law = words = power.

As Chanukah approaches, I think of the story of the Maccabees, their war, their miraculous oil, the lesson that we are all vessels, empty oil jugs, and that God - however we conceive him - is here to fill us, to light our flames. As a kid, I used to wonder how much of these fairy tales could be true (I was a rather cynical kid). Now I realize it doesn't matter. It is the words that fill us with light against these short days and long, dark nights.

Poor Nutrition

2007-01-10T08:48:00.001-08:00

Today I ate French fries and shared an ice-cream topped blondie. My poor baby is going to come out a junk food junkie. And I will be fat fat fat.

Rainy Winter Dreams

2007-01-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

Since this is a dream blog, let's interpret loosely. Larry's dream is to own his own cafe. On rainy nights like these, when I picture this family that's coming and he's sick and sleeping in sweat and my heart just goes out to him and i can't stop hugging him, my solace is this vision in my mind of me and him in this cozy winter scene. We're behind the counter and the cafe is filled with people and a dog (our dog, the one we'll have someday) is lying in front of the fireplace on the frayed oriental rug. Larry hands me the baby as I ring someone up. He's busy making one of his signature sandwiches and cutting the cucumbers for the side salad just so - he's such a perfectionist. The Old 97s play low in the background. Everyone is reading or typing or chatting and sipping tea and lattes and eating yummy baked goods and everyone is happy to be in our safe little nest.

Dylan Sawyer Howe

2007-01-10T08:46:00.002-08:00

Dylan: D for David after Larry's dad, who passed away when he was in college. It's controversial in his family because one of his sisters has major issues with their dad. I think it will mean a lot to his mom, brother, and other sister's though, even though they, as all children and widows, have their own issues with him.

This is what I know about Larry's father. He took cake decorating classes. He was absent minded. He lost his job with the state when he blew the whistle on corrupt managers. He lived his life in the shadow of his father - a grad of the University of Pennsylvania who started his own accounting firm and made lots of money. He loved sports. He had a desk job in the army, which he left with honors. He loved to sing while he did the dishes and would wear an apron. He had six kids, one of whom died as a little boy, one of whom suffered from childhood diabetes, and one of whom was so badly burnt as a little girl that she never really recovered. He was not open about his emotions. He was super-involved with his church and helped to start a vibrant community in their brand new parish. He suffered from depression. His widow never has one bad thing to say about him. He worked two jobs most of his life, including a candy store that never really made it. Larry's favorite memory of him is staying overnight with him in a state barracks on Penn's Landing. They had the whole place to themselves and they played the most amazing, echoing game of catch with a rubber Spalding ball.

I want Dylan to have David's senses of play, of generosity, of honesty, of accepting loss, of community, of pitching in, and of morality. I also want him to have David's legendary sweetness and good looks.

Dylan is also Bob Dylan, Dylan Thomas, cowboy boot wearing, dust-trudging, poetry reading, quietly singing, a little bit shy with a very sweet smile. A guy who makes all the girls crazy without having to try, who loves rivers and mountains and dogs and fires and mission furniture and wrapping gifts and keeps all his crayons in order by color and intensity.

Sawyer: S is for Sarah, my grandmother, who lived well into a tortured old age and was known as a difficult woman until the end. My grandmother was not a pretty woman, with a big nose and a sallow complexion, but then again, I don't think she ever cared very much for looks. She was known to be slightly off in her hometown, a little shtetl in Poland. The details of her life are fuzzy because she wanted them that way, but the timeline goes something like this:

She came to America, to Chicago, as a teenager on her grandmother's dime in hopes of going to school and making lots of money. Her grandmother, though, wanted her to help keep house, and so Sarah left, went to business school (I would guess an associates degree) and married a man. That's all I know about him, that he was some man somewhere in the mid-west. That didn't last (something about a mother-in-law?) and she left him and went to nursing school (another associates degree? She only ever worked as a nurse's aid). Somehow she ended up in New York and when the Holocaust ended, she found out most of the people in her town had died. My grandfather was on the list of survivors. Thinking he was in fact his older brother, she contacted him in Palestine and said, hey, we're from the same town and we're both alive, let's get married. He agreed and they were married in New York with no pomp and little circumstance. He wanted to live in Israel and she said, as soon as the baby's born, but then my mother was born and she wanted to stay in New York and make money. They owned a nursing home and real estate and she worked as an aid in people's homes. My grandfather never called her anything but Mrs. Strenger and she had several boyfriends on the side. They made a lot of money and moved to New Jersey.

So what could I want my child to inherit from such a cold, calculating woman? Her strength, of course, and her shrewdness, her sense of entitlement and the ethic of hard work she coupled with thriftiness. In her own way, too, she was loving. She never stole or cheated or shortchanged to make her money, but she was exacting, demanding, and stood her ground always. She knew who she was and she made her dreams come true.

This is what I remember of my grandmother. She never gave us presents but put all her money into trust accounts for me, my brother, and sister. She ate directly out of pots kept in the refrigerator. She drank borcht out of jelly glasses. She had the smoothest skin of anyone I've ever touched because she used Nivea cream obsessively. She gave me a jar of anti-wrinkle cream the day I turned 21. She wanted my mother and then me to be a lawyer. Once, when she was very old, I came to her house unannounced. She was wearing a horrible green sweater, a turban, a nightgown wrapped around her neck - as was her custom - and nothing on her lower half. She was dusting something and singing in Polish. She was very happy to see me. When we were kids, my mother used to take us to her house deep in the Pine Barrens - or so it seemed to us then - to swim in our underwear in the kiddie pool and swing on the hammock she kept in her sandy backyard through which deer foraged and which always smelled of pine. Once, we pulled up and she was standing by the side of the house completely naked, bent over a garden hose, which she was using to wash her enormous, hanging breasts. She waved to us, smiling. She used to call us Shenkshicks, Shinebudgela, Shinechuchela and kiss us with her sunken in mouth, staring out at us from beneath her thick, rose-tinted, cat's eye glasses. She loved turqoise. She always watched her weight. She had terrible arthritis. She called things a "dois" when she couldn't remember the right name. She once told me her kindly neighbor, a farmer who raised hounds and cranberries, was rooting through her trash and calling her on the phone to harrass her - sexually. She told my mother that's why she was continually changing her phone number. The phone company told my mother they would cut her off if she tried to change her phone number one more time. Once, on a New York subway in the dangerous early 80's, en route to visit an accountant and carrying a paper bag full of cash, she loudly said to my father, There sure are a lot of Hispaniolas on this train. Another time, apropos of nothing, she asked my mother - who she once accused of being a member of a girl gang in her mid-30's - How 'bout that Gorby? Her favorite store was Clover because they made the softest nightgowns to wrap around her neck. She loved a sitz bath.

Sawyer means woodcutter. I love the idea of my child having a name connected to nature and the outdoors. I want him to be healthy and wild and filled with the language and scent and sound and solitude of the forest. Very zen, no? Strength and gentleness, genrosity and self-reliance, survivalism and drive. He has a very big name to grow into.

And Howe: Howe is Larry's name and I love him for too many reasonson to list. And that is enough.

posted by Fictionchick @ 10:43 AM 0 comments links to this post

Gray morning, bloodshot eyes, mushroom hair. Sometimes the routines of the day seem like such a hassle. Every time I floss my teeth, they bleed - pregnancy. Instead, I dream of Cuba, Brazil, Naples. I have always believed I was meant for a hotter climate, for hot blood, for tiny bathing suits, a life of fresh fruit, salty air, crisply fried fish, lemons all around me. Philadelphia is so even, so calculated, as is my life within in, doled out like the city blocks, each a tenth of a mile, separated by squares. My life is bills, work, exercise, television, dinner, regimented social activity.

I need to dance more, to throw my hips toward the walls, to unscrew all the clenched inside parts of me. Does passion die at 29? Do I live inside my library books? Is it because I read the newspaper and the New Yorker instead of poetry now?

The other day I dreamed I was Vincent D'Onofrio, saving a little girl given the evil eye by a Santaria, who appeared in scratchy black and white (the rest of the dream was in color) covered by a cowl, a henchwoman of Darth Vadar. I can't tell my own life from TV anymore.

The sky is my favorite this morning, a blanket of clouds cut in regular patterns by the sun, small pillows of bluish gray, each surrounded by a mystical gold. I have to go and take the trash out.

List Mani

2007-01-10T08:46:00.001-08:00

So, to continue with the dream theme, I don't know what I dreamed last night, but I know I woke up feeling amazingly positive once again. Even got to work on time - major accomplishment: I was the first one in. I spent the weekend writing (new story, almost done) and also spray painting a crib for the little octopus swimming ungainily inside me. Aside from the bruise on my trigger finger (yo! Spray painting is hard work.) I think it's coming along really well.

It's really amazing how great I feel when I get things crossed off my to do list. Larry thinks I'm nuts (actually, Larry generally thinks I'm nuts) because I feel so releived when it's all done, but come on, we just this weekend went to pick out a door for Marley's bedroom. The kid hasn't had a door on his room for over a year now. He's 10 and very shy. When we were in Home Depot, he wanted to know if he could have a lock on the door. I think he's really looking forward to being able to change his underwear without having to worry who's on their way up the steps to use the bathroom (which is right next to his room and gives a great view all the way in).

Of course, I also feel really good right now, I think, because of the second trimester euphoria. All those books and predictors are so accurate that I sometimes feel like a case study. Pregnancy brain, check. Humungo boobs (that just keep growing!), check. Unreasonable happiness, check. I didn't think I was depressed during my first trimester, just a little emotional (double check!), but now I realize I must have been. Now I see the world in a totally different light and all the things that seemed impossible 6 weeks ago now seem imminently do-able. Like getting an MFA even though we're just about to have a baby and it would definily mean not being able to work full time. In fact, not working full time suddenly seems possible, too, even though my credit card bill takes up my ENTIRE monthly salary right now (of course, it the credit card I share with Larry, so it's like it takes half my salary - ok, no justification is going to work here, so I'll just stop). Anyway, eating well, budgeting, planning for a happy future - I think it might work out. Now, just add those to my refrigerator list ...

Swimming with Dolphins

2007-01-10T08:19:00.000-08:00

Ok, I finally got a blog. Whoo hoo, about time. So what's with the dolphins? Reminds me of some lady on Clean House who won't give up her collection of glass marine figurines. But actually, it comes from a dream I had a few nights ago.

Actually, last night, I had - yes Larry - one of my usual, horrible dreams. I dreamed we barbequed our cats. God, don't even ask why, but I suddenly realized what was going on and I ran back to rescue them - they looked so peaceful curled up on the grill, like they were near a big, cozy fire - but it was too late. Some annoying man was eating Magic's tail and said it tasted like a cheese doodle. So I took a bite and then threw up.

That would be a typical dream, the kind that leaves me shaking with dread for the day when I wake up, the kind that brings me to a sea of wakefullness frought with half-solutions to impossible problems. This morning, I woke up kicking the covers and contemplating how to bring Larry's sister Nancy back into our lives. I keep thinking I can show up to her house with my big belly and tell her all about the little neice or nephew she should be expecting in March and she'll come back to us. But I know I won't go through with it and even if I did, she probably wouldn't come running back to the family fold.

But Sunday night, I dreamed I was working for the Philadelphia Inquirer as a lowly copyeditor. In real life, they're all about to go on strike and in my dream that lead to huge layoffs. I was somehow elevated to a full reporter and asked if I would take on the now vacant Paris beat, to go live there for a year just as soon as I felt comfortable travelling with my new baby. Larry, who loves Paris, was ecstatic and so I went for a short trial visit, to find an aprartment, meet colleagues, etc.

Except when I got there - this is a dream after all - Paris wasn't just beautiful buildings and romantic rivers, it was also like Tahiti, on a tropical beach and Sarah was out swimming with the dolphins. She was riding one and the others were swmming all around her and she wanted me to come out with her. I was walking toward the water and that's the last thing I remember, except this feeling of absolute freedom, of safety and and of soft, calming, crystalline beauty. It was the smell of turkey cooking for a holiday, of Larry's arms around me, of laughing so hard my belly hurts. And I woke up and carried that sense of hope throughout the day.

The Return of the Dolphin

2006-12-29T10:05:00.000-08:00

Coming soon to a blog near you