On Gentrification

I am completely immersed in Michael Patrick MacDonald. Now I'm reading Easter Rising, his second book, which is totally fascinating in relation to the first, as well as on its own merits, but I'll save my thoughts about that till I'm done. I'm also thinking a lot about identity and guilt, about which I may manage to pull together a post. But today gentrification is on my mind--though, now that I think about it, gentrification bleeds into identity and guilt...

We are gentrifiers. There is no doubt about it. We've spent an outrageous amount of money to move into a formerly working-class neighborhood. I can kind of fudge it by saying that S grew up in Town and had friends in this neighborhood when he was a kid, so we're not as much the outsiders as some people. Also, we immediately got involved in the school and the community and the neighborhood, so we're not the kind of yuppies who think we rule the world and the world should conform to us. Still, we displaced someone who'd lived in this house since he was a kid. And yet, he got more money out of this house than his grandparents could possibly have imagined when they bought it. It's complicated.

But it's even more complicated, because I have been gentrified out of the neighborhood where I grew up. That neighborhood was not working-class in any way, but it was my neighborhood, a neighborhood where families lived, and where I knew every kid on the block. Now it's the kind of neighborhood where my old drugstore is a Starbucks and blondes drink cocktails and every baby rides in a Bugaboo, and we couldn't afford to live there in our wildest dreams (the only reason we can afford to live in our neighborhood in Town is because of help from my parents--and we are quite well-off in the scheme of things).

So what are we to do? We have to live somewhere; we can't live where I grew up; displaced, we turn around and displace someone else. I'm not happy about it, being the liberal guilt type, but if we want to live in East Coast Big City, which it seems reasonable for us to want to do, given that we grew up here, this is the way it plays out. And I do appreciate the privilege entailed in the fact that, in 2007, we can choose to live in East Coast Big City, and lots of people can't. But should I not live here in principled solidarity? With whom? I can't come up with a good ending for this post, because there just isn't a good solution to this dilemma.

Hot Chocolate and Aquaphor

A while ago in the Food section I saw one of those taste tests they do about hot chocolate. A panel of judges tasted a bunch of hot chocolate mixes and, though one of them won, they all sounded pretty mediocre. I think about that article every morning when I make M's hot chocolate. I'm not so much of a cook, but there are certain things that are so easy to do from scratch, that I can't believe people use mixes, especially when the mixes are not very good.

Here's how we make hot chocolate: in a mug mix 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 teaspoon cocoa, a pinch of salt, and a few drops of vanilla; add about an inch of boiling water (kettle is usually still hot from the coffee) and stir; fill cup with milk and stir again; microwave for two minutes. Add mini-marshmallows if you're feeling indulgent. So easy, so chemical-free, so delicious.

And while we're on the topic of products (we're not really, but I needed some kind of segue), I think we've finally found a lotion that effectively treats E's lizard-scaly skin: Aquaphor. Why didn't I know about this?

All Souls

I don't know where I was in 1999, when All Souls came out, or in 2000, when it won an American Book Award. Actually, I do know where I was. I was in No Longer Red State, I was distracted by my personal life, and I wasn't reading a lot. So somehow I missed All Souls, never even heard of it until last fall when Easter Rising, Michael Patrick Macdonald's second book, came out. A friend loaned that one to S, and then I got him a copy of All Souls, and I even started it, but I put it down, part of my general difficulty in committing to books these days.

Well, I finally picked it up again and tore through it and I must concur with the superlative blurbs: All Souls: A Family Story from Southie, the story of Macdonald's family and South Boston in the 70s and 80s, is just an incredible book. In prose that burns with passion, even as it is beyond matter of fact, Macdonald transforms my understanding of something I lived and thought I knew. This book matters more than any book I've read in a long time.

You know, I want to go on and on here, about class and race and liberals, about the Tall Ships in 1976 and doing The Freak, about cocaine and busing and Whitey Bulger and gentrification, about how much everything has changed since the 80s, about the way the best books feel like they are speaking directly to you and to you alone, about survival and making a difference, but, really, I just want to say that this is a book that anyone who cares about any of those things must read.

Growing

Last night E fell asleep in my arms. She'd stayed up late watching her movie. I agreed to read her two pages of her book, so we sat down in the reading chair, I read, and then she snuggled against me, and within a moment she was asleep. I held the warm weight of her, and then I fell asleep too, and awoke, and fell asleep, and after a while I carried her to bed.

E still fits just perfectly, just barely, in my lap. Sitting sideways, her bottom nestles against my legs, and her head comes right to my shoulder. As I held her, I remembered 9/11. In the morning, I watched the towers fall at work, and then I didn't watch any more TV till M went to bed. I had friends who couldn't turn it off, who watched all day with their small children, but I knew I didn't want M to see, so I held my curiosity, aside from whispered conversations with friends after school, at dance class, on the phone. When M, oblivious, finally went to bed, I turned on the TV and sat there, watching the ash in the dark, nursing E. After a while she fell asleep, as she did every night, nursing, but I couldn't put her down. I clutched the warm weight of her, tiny and solid in my arms, and cried for her future, and her sister's.

Now E is big and barely fits. M still climbs into my lap, and it's sweet and snuggly, but also awkward and gangly as her long legs spill over me and her arms loop around me. Soon I will have no small child of my own to hold, not till my grandchildren, and I won't be able to hold them late into the night.

E is sick today, so I borrowed a neighbor's jog stroller to take her out in the sunshine. She fit, barely, but she was so heavy. The stroller was just a tiny bit imbalanced, so it kept veering to the right, and I'd have to shift it over to the left to go straight. My arms got tired from the pushing.

I'm OK with being done with strollers.

[M is reading over my shoulder as I type. She asks if I'm going to include her calves in this post. Her calves ache, and I've been telling her they are growing pains. This post is about growing, she says, and her calves are growing. Sure, I say, I'll include them.]

What a Relief

I don't know about you, but I slept better last night, knowing that Papelbon is going to be closing again. And it's kind of sweet: that he spent all of spring training being prepped to start, but wishing he could close. You know I love spring training and all, but I'm thinking it's just about time to Play Ball.

We Interrupt This Blog to Get Really Pissed Off

Not about my kids getting on my nerves. Not about my husband's incapacity to put things away.

I'm pissed off about dead kids. So pissed off I want to scream and bust open this computer and the world wide narcissism it accesses.

I'm pissed off about the kids I know who know what it's like to go to their friends' funerals, and who are scared to walk home down their own streets.

I'm pissed off about kids who go off to war and come home maimed, with memories of their friends' dead bodies, or who don't come home at all.

I'm pissed off about kids in Iraq whose families, neighborhoods, and country have been destroyed.

I'm pissed off about Iraqi insurgents blowing up a car with kids in it. Dead kids.

I'm pissed off at people who abuse kids.

I'm just burning up with anger, and it seems such a pathetic response to pour it into this blog. I'm idealistic enough to feel like I need to be doing something, but cynical enough to feel like nothing I could do would make a real difference. Yes, S has a half dozen kids who are in his kitchen instead of on the street, and hopefully his support will help them escape becoming dead kids, though it might not. And my job, well, it's not exactly developing alternatives to napalm, and it makes some difference in an oblique kind of way. But there are so many kids, and they need so much, and I just can't imagine how to give it to them, to give them the world they deserve, and it just makes me crazy.

Why I'm Being Kicked Off America's Best Feminist Mother

Because this is M and E's new obsession.

(Bet you didn't know there was a reality TV show for feminist moms. Our challenges? To get our daughters through Target without buying anything pink or sparkly. To keep the whole family from mentioning anything related to beauty or body image for 24 hours. To host a playdate in which the kids happily play with gender-neutral toys the whole time. No wonder I'm getting kicked off the show!)

Edited to add: Oh yeah, you can be a feminist mother of boys too, right?! Not that I would know, being a failed feminist mother of girls. So let's see, some more challenges...well, I suppose the challenges should have something to do with nurturing and avoiding guns, but clearly I'm running out of feminist parenting steam. Maybe I'll just go find a nice outfit for Eva Longoria.

Disobedience

Disobedience is another novel I warmed up to--sort of--in my final chunk of reading, even though for most of the time I was reading it, I was mainly quite certain that I would never be selected as an Orange Prize judge.

Disobedience is about the (semi-)lesbian daughter of a renowned British rabbi who has escaped her father and his Orthodox community in London to make a new life for herself as a secular New York businesswoman. After her father's death, she returns to London where her ex-lover is now married to her cousin who is expected to succeed her father. Difficulties ensue.

Sounded interesting, but for the most part, I found the book's two voices too annoying. One voice is a "we" located in the Orthodox community who begins each chapter with highfaluting rumination on some Jewish topic, and goes on to narrate events from the perspectives of Dovid, the cousin, who is afflicted with colorful (literally) migraines, and Esti, the former lover, who appears to be autistic but turns out to be (I think) enlightened. The other voice, in a more modern typeface, is Ronit, the rabbi's daughter, whose story reads like ex-Orthodox lesbian chick lit.

Along with the annoying voices, the characters were none too appealing, and also kind of incomprehensible. What was the importance of Dovid's migraines? Was Esti stupid or brilliant? Was Ronit really as much of a bitch as she seemed? If so, why was Esti so entranced with her?

In the last few chapters (which I read in one sitting, on a bench at the park, so maybe it had something to do with my mood, though I couldn't say what), I started to see that the book was trying to say something perhaps kind of interesting about compromise and the value of speech. No, I know it was trying to say something about those things, because even though it was a bit interesting, it was also quite heavy-handed.

Final word? Disobedience was not as good as I imagined it might be.

The Truth

Sometimes I make my children cry.

On the Same Theme

The theme being the need to justify one's own choices as the best and/or only choices, rather than simply one's own choices. Case #2 in point being this article by Amanda Foreman, whose Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire I absolutely loved, but whom I am no longer quite so fond of, now that she has told me I am wrong for having only two children (case #1 in point--or should that be case in point #1?--being of course the aforementioned Rebecca Walker).

Why can't we just say "this is me," rather than "this is what everyone should be"? I mean, there are things I think everyone should be, like against the war, but mother of five? more in love with one's biological children? Who am I to say? (Meaning, really, who are you to say?)

Rebecca Walker

I always love it when Dawn announces that she doesn't have time to blog, because inevitably she goes on to blog prolifically, and there is no such thing as too much of Dawn's blog (see, in the minute it took me to write that sentence, she put up another post!). Of course she is eminently sensible on Rebecca Walker's silly assertion that biological parents love their children more. I mean, Rebecca Walker may very well love her biological child more, and that's OK for her (I hope), but does it necessarily mean that all parents feel as she does? I think, perhaps, not?

It really was Rebecca Walker NY Times overload, what with the Style Section AND the Book Review, and that was way more than enough Rebecca Walker for me. Yeah, yeah, you had a baby and it changed your life, and you're a writer so you had to write a book about it. Hopefully, if the review is any indication, the book will serve as another shovelful of dirt on the grave of parenting lit, a genre whose body is starting to reek.

(Though I would like to know more about why she hates her mother. Maybe it's time for the pendulum to swing back to daughter lit. Alice Dearest, anyone?)

On the Value of Convalescence

Convalescence isn't something I've done much of. Like most adults, I deny that I'm sick until I can't, and then as soon as acute illness is over, I'm back at it. This time, though, I'm being forced to convalesce. The fevers are gone, and my head is clear again, but when I stand up I get dizzy and need to sit down, and I have a hard time at night, which only leaves me more exhausted than I already am. I think a piece of it might be short-term anemia, which is apparently a side effect for adults with Fifth Disease, and then of course there are the aching joints which come and go.

And I have no appetite, except that Friday I suddenly had a yen for rice pudding which S made for me yesterday, so that's what I've been eating, and suddenly I see why Madhur Jaffrey, in Climbing the Mango Trees, which I also read while sick, and which is absolutely wonderful, especially if you are at all interested in India or food, which I very much am, at any rate, in a high school domestic science class in Delhi ca. WWII, she complains about having to make English food for sick people, like blancmange, and while generally my sickbed yearnings are for Asian soup with noodles, right about now a nice white quivery blancmange sounds just about right.

At any rate, the children are no longer freaked out by my being sick, as I can sit up and engage with them, rather than lying back with my eyes closed, and I no longer feel the need to lie back with my eyes closed, but can sit up and engage and resume my usual directing of the household, albeit from the couch or bed, so it's really not so bad, this convalescence, especially since I have rice pudding.

Hopefully, though, it won't last too long.

Edited to add: Of course the context for this post, I realized, just after I hit Publish, is all of nineteenth-century fiction, and especially Little Women, the Katherine Hepburn version of which we are STILL watching, though I am determined to finish it off this evening, even if that means Beth must die, because it is overdue, and we've done multiple viewings of multiple portions of it, and this is just getting ridiculous.

My Little Non-Christian

E: Mommy, we don't have school on April 6. It's Good Luck Friday.

Chalk

Being sick, I have realized how completely disengaged I am from television. Back in the day, I watched as much TV as anyone. The height of my habit occurred right before M was born with Melrose Place on Monday, NYPD Blue on Tuesday, 90210 on Wednesday, and of course NBC all the way through on Thursday (remember Mad About You? I loved Mad About You--I was recently married and while you couldn't quite call S Paul and me Jamie, there were enough similarities to bring it in close to home, plus that show was damn funny).

I remember exactly when I stopped watching TV: M was about six months old, and she started turning her head to the screen as I nursed her in front of my shows. Now that I think about it, that can't have been right, because it would have been incredibly painful, but basically once she started becoming aware of what was on the television, I stopped watching (this has nothing to do with keeping her from TV--witness our current Disney obsession--but everything to do with keeping her from adult TV, though why I would have thought Paul and Jamie's mild innuendo should be developmentally disturbing to an infant I have no idea).

I really haven't watched any TV since, aside from baseball, Olympics, Oscars, election nights, and, of course, Zack and Cody (which is really code for "whatever my children make me watch"). And somehow, I've become completely disinterested. I did watch Sex and the City on DVD, but even though I'm sure my life would be made better by Six Feet Under and The Sopranos, and even though I could participate more actively in water-cooler conversation if I watched Grey's Anatomy or American Idol (except that whenever I'm at the water cooler, there's nobody else there), I just haven't felt strongly enough about these positive outcomes to settle down to the actual watching. And while I know most people see being sick as the perfect opportunity to binge on junk TV, I tried to think about doing that, and it had zero appeal.

So instead I read old New Yorkers, and the real point of this post is to let you know that John McPhee's "Seasons on the Chalk" in the March 12 issue is superlatively sublime. This abstract is a perfect example of the inadequacy of the summary. Yes, the piece talks about geology, geography, champagne, grandchildren, and the M15, but it is so much more than the sum of its parts: just a marvelous piece of research and rumination, and beautifully written. Go read it right now!

(I assume any regular reader realizes that the high-brow impression given off by this post is completely inadequate to the complexities of my cultural leanings--if Star, People, or Vogue had been in the house, I would have so been reading them before The New Yorker.)

Silver Linings

I called S yesterday afternoon around 5, weeping, and asked if he could come home (I never ask if he can come home: unless the emergency room is involved, he can't come home). He said he was trying to leave by 7. I wept some more and said that would make no difference, because he'd just get home in time for E to go to bed. He said he'd see what he could do. 15 minutes later, he called and said he was leaving in 10 minutes. He got home around 6, brought M (who is now perfectly healthy, except for her slapped-cheek rash) dinner from the restaurant, and cajoled and consoled E (who is extremely stressed out by her sick mother). Then he played games with E while M got in bed with me and did her homework and chattered. It was almost like the kind of evening I imagine normal families have--except with a supine and fevered mother.

***
My kids are generally nice kids. They say please and thank you, they temper their developmentally appropriate gluttony with genuine concern for those who have less than they do, and they have the capacity to be enormously helpful. But they are not particularly interested in the feelings of their parents, which is also presumably developmentally appropriate.

Except that M seems just to be turning the corner into...not sure what to call it: empathy? altruism? When she went back to school yesterday, we agreed that I would come check on her at lunchtime and see if she was up for finishing the day. I found her in the cafeteria with her friends, checked out her slapped-cheek rash, discussed how her day was going, and we decided she would stay. Then, without any prompting, she asked, "And how are you feeling?" The day before she held me when I was shaking with fever, even though later on she said it had been scary (she didn't let on at the time). It's kind of exciting to think that someday all this hardcore parenting may result in a relationship of reciprocity!

***
M is off to her play. My parents have come out in the blizzard to take her to the theater, take E out to dinner, see the play, and bring them home. I am free to crawl into bed and shiver--and ache: I've reached the aching joints stage. I suppose I'm slipping away from silver linings here, but truly, it is a good thing to be sick alone rather than sick caring for children.

Fifth Disease

The school nurse says M has Fifth Disease. She is back at school today, but she went to see the nurse for a headache, and apparently she has slapped-cheek rash which, following headaches and fever, means Fifth Disease. Which means I probably have Fifth Disease too, as I have had headaches and a barely controllable fever for almost two days now. Which means I could end up with months of joint pain. It's also highly likely that E will get Fifth Disease, though S thinks it's possible she's already had it, given the number of fevers she's had this year, and the fact that she always has a rash, so we wouldn't necessarily notice.

Who ever heard of Fifth Disease?! Then again, I'm the one who thought Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease was something cattle got--until my children came down with it.

Since Christmas, E has been sick four times, I have been sick three times, and M has been sick twice. S was only sick once, but it lasted for weeks. I'm tired of this.

Little Women

I heard Pure Prairie League's "Amy" on the radio, and it got stuck in my head, which is fine, because I like "Amy."

"Amy" always makes me think of Kiss and "Beth" which makes me think of the scene in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius where Eggers at his sister Beth's wedding is aghast when she walks down the aisle to "Beth."

Over the weekend we watched the most excellent Katherine-Hepburn-as-Jo Little Women which made me wonder if the reason "Amy" makes me think of "Beth" is Little Women.

That made me think about a Little Women mixtape which would include, besides "Amy" and "Beth," Beth Orton, the Indigo Girls, and the White Stripes. Only I can't come up with a Jo (though I must admit I didn't try too hard--this is all out of my head, no Google). "Visions of Joanna" might be OK, if nothing else comes to mind, though it's obviously a stretch. And I don't want to use Joe Henry or Joe Jackson. Then again, they might be kind of appropriate in a transgender sort of way.

Edited to add: Josie and the Pussycats!

Edited again to add: Josephine Baker! (I came up with Josie and the Pussycats myself, but I must admit I saw a reference to Josephine Baker.)

Poor M

I'm not quite sure how M ended up in two plays and band this spring, but she did. So far it's been OK, but this is the killer week.

Monday:
4-5:30 Rehearsal for Play 1
6-9 Dress Rehearsal for Play 2

Tuesday:
3:45-5:45 Religious School

Wednesday:
3-3:30 Dress Rehearsal for Band
6-9 Dress Rehearsal for Play 2

Thursday:
4-5:30 Rehearsal for Play 1
6:15 Call for Band Performance
7 Band Performance

Friday:
5:30 Call for Play 2
7 Play 2 Performance

Saturday
9 Call for Play 2
10:30 Play 2 Performance

And then at 2:00 on Saturday there is the reward: all-ages St. Patrick's Day Irish punk show that you Red Sox fans so wish you could attend.

At any rate, it looked ugly, but I sent a note to her teacher explaining why homework might get short shrift, and we were ready to go.

Then she got sick again. She was sick last week, a kind of not-so/whiny sick that drove me crazy but got her two days out of school. Only now she is really sick. 103.1 "Mommy, I can't move" in the middle of the night sick. Skipped rehearsal for Play 1 yesterday, made it to Dress Rehearsal for Play 2 double-dosed on Tylenol and Advil, and collapsed when she got home. Home sick and miserable with Daddy today. Forget religious school. Actually, I'm ready to forget everything, including school and band, so long as she can make her Friday and Saturday performances, because given her part, it's going to be a big problem for them if she can't do it, plus she will be so very very sad.

I think it's going to be a long week.

Early Daylight Savings

My kids had been getting up too early with the sun rising at six. Now it's light at seven, when we have to get up on schooldays. Yesterday the early evening light was glorious, especially conjoined with the day's sunshine and almost-warmth. Count me a supporter. (Though I might feel differently if I was still in No Longer Red State, which is at the other end of the time zone, but actually I don't think so, because late afternoon light would fully make up for early morning darkness.)

Women and Housework

I feel like I should have some feminist critique of this article, but actually I think it's spot on. Crux of the argument is that it's our own damn fault we do all the housework, and we should just insist that men do their share and suck it up if it doesn't get done, i.e. let go of our control issues.

Case in point: S can't do much of the day-to-day housework, or childcare, because he's never here. So he decided, when I was losing my mind one day, that he would do the laundry. Only he didn't do the laundry my way. I do it once a week, fold it all up, and put it away. He did a load here and a load there, left baskets of unfolded laundry around, and never put it away. This made me crazy, so I started doing the laundry again. Which is just stupid.

Plus, I feel really bad when he has to spend his rare time at home doing housework. Even though I spend enormous amounts of time at home doing housework, and taking care of the children. And I rationalize this on individual terms: he works so many more hours, I have more time to myself; he does so much more than most men. Which is just stupid again.

If we're thinking in terms of money, not hours, I've always made more until this year. Right now he has a bigger salary, but all told we make about the same. Within a few months I should be making more again, significantly more. So why am I the one who always feels guilty? For answers, see article.

Yoga Update

After last summer's yoga apogee, things trailed off. No more yoga outside, I stopped doing yoga on my own for no reason I can think of, S started working Saturday brunch which meant no Saturday morning yoga class, and much work made it hard to justify weekday yoga. I've been working out almost every day--running, treadmill, elliptical, walking to work--which is pretty miraculous, but yoga hasn't been in the picture so much.

Finally, though, S has stopped working Saturday brunch. Don't get too excited--this is mainly because he's been working Sunday brunch instead of having Sundays off, so on Saturday he goes in around ten a.m. instead of six a.m., which means at least I can go to yoga.

So a few weeks ago, off I went to Saturday morning yoga. And it was awful. Actually, I don't remember much about the class, so presumably the class was OK, but afterward I not only ached for days, but I was totally, completely, and irremediably grumpy. Which is the antithesis of the ideal yoga outcome, and was very upsetting.

But I do not give up easily, so last week, off I went again to Saturday morning yoga. And it was awful again. I felt completely wrong. See, I am extremely flexible. I can stand on my hands. Lotus is easy. My knees go straight down to the ground in Bound Angle pose. My head touches the ground in Double Pigeon. You get the picture (my flexibility is countered by my complete inability to balance, even on two feet). Anyway, the teacher would say "this is really hard" and tell us to do something like stick the left leg out, bend the right knee so the right foot is on the outside of the right hip, bend sideways over the left leg, slide the left hand under the thigh to grasp the right calf, put the right arm over the head, and grasp the left foot with the right hand. And most people would struggle and stretch and barely do the half of it, and I would just do it. Except that I would feel totally ungainly and like I couldn't possibly be doing it right if it seemed so easy when it was supposed to be hard. I purposefully position myself away from the mirror, so I don't get all achievement-oriented about my poses, but unable to see myself, I am always convinced that I am all out of whack, and I don't think it's my imagination, because often when I look down at stray body parts, like my hips, or my legs, they seem to stick out in odd angles and lumps. Or maybe that's just me. Needless to say, none of this is conducive to a yoga state of mind.

Can you tell that I was in a bit of a state?

The next day, I took E to a family yoga class. The woman who ran it had quite a nice concept, actually, but terrible execution. She had made a CD with songs that related to yoga poses--we did Downward Facing Dog to "Atomic Dog," and I can't remember any others, but take my word for it, they were fun. Only she was this awful Dorothy Hamill-coiffed tiny white woman stuck in the 70s with wiry glasses and a pinched face who had neither charisma nor gentle peacefulness and seemed to think that we would just understand what she wanted us to do and embrace the freedom of our inner yoga spirit, only we didn't, really. We would start doing some Downward Facing Dogs to "Atomic Dog" and then she would start sort of free-dancing yoga-posing, and we would try to follow along, when I think she really wanted us to just let it all hang out and do our own thing. Awkwardness ensued. Nevertheless, it was actually kind of fun to just rock out and yoga, without worrying about the quality of my poses, and I got a glimpse of yoga pleasure again, only I feared that I would be reduced to finding pleasure in my yoga only in rooms full of small children and George Clinton (as I said, her concept was indeed good, but she was kind of a problem).

Yesterday, though, I got it back. I'm not quite sure why, but I have a few theories. One is that--duh--I was out of practice from not doing yoga, and now I've done a little yoga, and I'm back in practice, which lets me enjoy yoga again. The other is that I've finally weaned myself of my winter eating habits which mainly consist of spending an enormous amount of time eating an enormous amount of every kind of edible food I can find in the house, and even some food which probably shouldn't be considered edible, and then feeling pretty much disgusted and disgusting. Having weaned myself of those habits, I am feeling a little less disgusting, which probably helps with the yoga, both physically and psychologically. Or maybe it was was just a miraculous confluence of me and the biosphere in the zone. At any rate, this Saturday I just flowed through my poses, and felt strong and powerful and adept, and even got into the weird snorty breathing.

So for anyone who's still here (Jenny, you're here, aren't you?), that's the update. I'm back in the yoga saddle. Let's hope I can stay on the horse.

The Playground After Winter

I wonder if, when I am a grandmother, I will pay attention to my grandchildren at the playground. Will I stand next to them and cheer their feats of derring-do? Will I willingly, nay, happily push swings and wait at the bottoms of slides? Will I be right there to lift them up to the monkey bars, without even needing to be asked?

My children are big enough, finally, that they can do almost the entire playground by themselves (a few high-up sets of monkey bars excepted). So I sit on the bench and read my book (Sarah in Little Children), and no longer feel quite as resentful and guilty as I once did, when I had to stalk them across the playground, furiously bored.

But after a week of frigid cold, the ice and snow finally melting, in great rivulets and mud clotted with last autumn's dried grass, my children are in ecstasy. They run and stretch their arms above their heads, swing wildly across the monkey bars and throw themselves down the giant slide in all sorts of experimental contortions. They take off their sweatshirts, though I am still huddled in my parka, careful not to get chilled on my bench.

They are so ready for spring, and so am I. Even the playground is not so bad.

E's First Essay

The girls were playing school and asked me to give them assignments. E's assignment was to write an essay about Laura.

Gingrich on Clinton

This story just rubs me the wrong way, and I'm trying to think it through. Newt Gingrich has admitted that he was having an affair at the same time as he was leading the charge against Bill Clinton for having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. But, he says, it wasn't a problem, because the issue was that Clinton lied about the affair, not that he had the affair:

Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity.

"The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge," the former Georgia congressman said of Clinton's 1998 House impeachment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.

But see, Clinton wouldn't have lied if they weren't going after him about the affair, and there's no law against a president having extra-marital sex with an intern, regardless of whether it is right or wrong, so really the perjury charges were completely implicated in the affair, and this is bullshit.

I'm an agnostic on infidelity. It hasn't been part of my marriage, and I hope it never is (note my phrasing: I wouldn't dare say it never will be), but in earlier relationships, I've been the one who cheated, the one who was cheated on, and the one who someone was cheating with. And I've seen lots of people I like and respect in all three positions as well. It happens. People aren't perfect. Especially when it comes to love and sex. And when it does happen, it's a matter between three people. There are cases where I have a right to be emotionally involved--if my sister's husband cheated on her (only using that as an example because it's so highly unlikely), I would want to claw his eyes out--and I may have an opinion (you know me, of course I'll have an opinion). Honestly, though, I don't think I have any right to judge.

I am so over this hypocritical nitpicking. Perjury is not the issue. Sex is the issue. And people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

Celebrities of Interest--or Not

I'm always slightly amazed at people who don't know who Tom Cruise is, or Anna Nicole, for that matter. People who have zero interest in the celebrity world. People who don't fall for CNN's top news stories on celebrities, which are so totally there only to raise their hits, and make me so annoyed, yet still I can't resist clicking.

I can't ask who are these people, because I know loads of them. But I can wonder what it's like. I think it must be a good thing, to keep one's mind on loftier topics, like the implications of Libby's conviction, or the best way to stew a rabbit, or whether Ozawa's Beethoven's 5th is better than...well, there you have it: I am so lowbrow that I cannot even name another living conductor--yes, I can: Barenboim (sp.)?...um...I am so not going to google so that I can say "oh yeah, I know him": let's face it, I'm a philistine.

And yet, I have my limits. As I peruse my crack dealers of choice, there are certain topics that hold absolutely zero interest for me. For instance: Rosie and Donald. For instance #2: American Idol. And I realize that what it's like not to be interested in celebrities is not to live always on a higher plane, but simply not to care. Like I don't care about football, or the boys in M's class, or the fact that the children of people who have lots of money are more likely to get into fancy schools (where did that one come from? I was trying to think of something that didn't interest me, but also that wasn't explicitly gendered, like football--really, you know, I'm interested in a ridiculous number of things) (oh, but of course:) or classical music.

Confusion

Am I the only one who thinks Kate Middleton looks like Lindsay Lohan?

Or who can't tell the difference between Fall Out Boy and Badly Drawn Boy (oh yeah, Badly Drawn Boy's the one with the hat).

I Am In A Good Mood This Morning!

There are good things happening at work.

I am so close to being done with something I have been working on for longer than you could possibly imagine that I can smell it.

I got to go to the gym this morning.

Husband and children were delightful this morning, perhaps because I spent most of the morning routine at the gym, coming in just at the end for hair, coats, and kisses.

Then I got to walk to work.

It's not as cold as yesterday.

Baseball is almost here, and Almost Here is my very favorite part of baseball.

Dice-K threw three shut-out innings yesterday.

This article about Gabe Kapler could put anybody in a good mood.

I am getting my hair cut this afternoon.

I know what I'm making for dinner.

Tomorrow night Local K is coming over for dinner.

Friday we are going to A's for shabbat.

Sunday I get to go to an exhibit I really want to see, and I won't be alone with the kids, so I'll actually be able to see it.

OK, that's enough. Off to my day. Fingers crossed for the good mood lasting.

A Great Miracle Happened Here

Completely of her own accord, E picked up all her dirty clothes from the floor of her room, picked up all HER SISTER'S dirty clothes, and put the dirty clothes in the laundry basket.

Perhaps there will come a day when I am not the only person who maintains this household, and what a glorious day that will be.

Too Much Winter

I am pale and dry: hair, face, hands, skin. I am thinking about hot oil treatments. Head to toe. Preferably with massage. Preferably here.

Hillary

The other day I tried to actually imagine Hillary as president. In doing so, I realized that, so far, I've been thinking about her as a candidate, but candidacies can lead to presidencies, and what would that be like?

The Ohio State-Michigan game gets hit by terrorists. 25,000 Middle Americans die in their arena seats (seriously, I have thought since 9/11 that this would be the best next move for Al Qaeda: forget the predictable targets, forget Washington, ports, New York yet again--go for the heartland, where everyone thinks they're safe). Hillary gets on TV. How do I feel? Not so good. Hillary in Iran face to face with Mossadegh? Ugh. Hillary on the ground after the next hurricane? Blech. Hillary proposing a budget (does the president propose the budget? god, I should know that)? None of it is very palatable.

Then my internalized misogyny meter started flying code red (I have no idea what that means, but it sounds good). Could I really be just like those old white men who can't envision a woman president? Do I think she's not strong enough, not tough enough, not manly enough?

Not so much. I'm pretty down with the idea of Nancy Pelosi as president. Or Barbara Boxer. And I don't think it's just because I like their liberal politics better. I think it's because they are who they are, and we'd know what we were getting.

The fact that I was only thinking of Hillary as a candidate seems important: she's just presenting herself as the candidate, she's not standing up for anything, and that means we have no idea what she'd do as president.

I know none of this is very original. David says it at greater length and depth. Rob gets at it too, from a different angle, without mentioning her by name. But I've decided I really don't want Hillary to be the nominee or the president.

(I've been hearing nasty scuttlebutt about the Edwards campaign, and it has nothing to do with bloggers. I guess I should pay more attention to Obama, but there's a gubernatorial parallel that's got me a little cynical these days. Really, I just have to say, I'm pretty much waiting for Gore. Let's hope Beckett didn't write the screenplay [and I don't mean Melissa Etheridge's kid].)

Sundays

I loathe them.

The Lottery

At the gym yesterday, I saw on TV that the lottery was up to 223 million dollars. I immediately started to spend the money.

First we would give $500,000 to a fundraising project I am working on.

Then we would pay off my sister-in-law's house-it's funny that I thought of paying off her house before I even considered our house, but she is the one most in need of money, and I think everyone else's house, besides ours, is paid off.

Then I started thinking about our house. I don't want to leave our neighborhood and move to a fancier neighborhood, or even a fancier town. So I first thought we'd just do our planned renovations, the ones we can't afford. Then I thought maybe we'd buy a bigger place, but stay in the neighborhood. It wasn't till later in the day that I figured out what we'll do: we'll buy out F and L, who are planning on moving within the next few years anyway, and we'll hire our architect friend to redesign the whole house as a one family. With lots of bookshelves and built-ins and skylights in an attic family room. And we'll rent something else while the renovations are being done, so we don't have to suffer.

Cars? Mine is fine, but S could use a new one. Maybe a Prius.

A clothes shopping spree for me and the girls. M wants solid-colored tights, patterned mini-dresses, a jeans mini-skirt, pink pants, bright green Mary Jane clogs, boots, and Marimekko. I want a personal shopper who will come up with exactly the hip, attractive, comfortable clothes I don't even know I want.

A vacation--later, when the girls and I were discussing what we'd do with the money, we decided on the Maldives, where M and I have wanted to go for years.

Put away money for the girls--for college and houses and a general safety net. I'm thinking a million each.

S can open his restaurant in Town without worrying about financing.

Maybe a vacation house.

Then I think we'd pretty much keep enough to live on comfortably and give the rest away. My first two ideas were education and public health (I know, how Gates of me), but then I thought maybe the arts too. I'm a little shocked that I didn't think politics, or the systemic eradication of poverty, but I didn't. I told the girls they could each have some money to give away to whatever they want. M wants to give to a foundation for women's rights and her school. E wants to give to poor people. All three of us want to give to Grown-up M's homeless shelters. We'll give some to Grandma's project too.

I bought seven lottery tickets. By that point it was up to $267 million.

We didn't win.

Easy come, easy go.

Chocolate Pudding Cake

The chocolate pudding cake is J's fault. I wish I could also blame her for the fact that I seem to be eating the entire cake.

J emailed me a few weeks ago asking for a chocolate pudding recipe. I said my regular recipe is Joy of Cooking, with the optional chopped chocolate, but there is also the chocolate banana creme brulee S makes, and did she want me to send her the recipes? She said yes, so I asked S where the chocolate banana creme brulee recipe is, and he said it was in the weird celebrity chefs cook kosher benefit cookbook that his parents gave us some years ago. So I was flipping through the weird celebrity chefs cook kosher benefit cookbook (the chefs aren't weird; the cookbook is) and I found the chocolate pudding cake recipe, by Chris Schlesinger, no less, and I thought I've got to make that. So Tuesday I did.

I just googled around a little to see if I could find the recipe, but I couldn't--there are plenty of chocolate pudding cake recipes but I got bored before I found one that looked as decadent as Chris's. They all follow basically the same methodology: make a thick batter and spread it in a pan, cover it with a sugar-cocoa mixture, then pour liquid over it (in this case 2 cups coffee and 1 cup water), and bake. You end up with brownie-like cake atop fudgy pudding-like sauce. I don't know why, but you do.

The cake was very easy to make, aside from my customary panic when the batter did not seem like the right consistency, according to the recipe description. But I persevered. I also used the Valrhona cocoa and French Roast coffee. Yum. Luckily I went to pick M up from religious school, so S took it out of the oven and I got to skip my usual is-it-baked-enough panic. Which was a good thing, especially because that is one ugly cake: lumpy and mottled, kind of like a dark moonscape, or perhaps Kelly's garden when it rains after the compost is dug in, but before anything starts to grow.

How was it? We had it warm on Tuesday night and it was quite delicious: kind of like a chewy cake with hot fudge sauce--on the bottom. But Wednesday? Cold? Spooned straight out of the pan? The sauce thickened to a puddingish consistency and the cake perfectly chewy? Really good. So good you have to take another spoonful. And another. And then take a break, and maybe go back for more. Because, after all, you know you're going to eat the whole thing eventually, because nobody else seems to be eating it, because that's how we are, we eat cake the first night and then we just leave it, which is why we give half of every cake to F and L downstairs, and even I am of this non-cake-finishing persuasion, for the most part, but this time, it's just too too good, and I know I will eat the whole thing eventually, so I might as well eat it now, because then I won't have to eat it later, no?

Happy to send the recipe to anyone who wants it, but you either need to have good willpower or be at peace with your lack of willpower.

You Heard It Here First

Next Olympics, everyone will be talking about Canada's Alex Duckworth in women's snowboarding. I'm sure of it. And M and E will be especially excited. Because...well, just because.

Literary Fiction Redeems Itself

When I saw the title Special Topics in Calamity Physics*, I immediately decided I wasn't interested, because I'm that kind of a judge-a-book-by-its-cover girl. The reviews didn't grab me either. A novel organized as a Great Books in Western Literature survey? Huh? Even when the Times named it one of the ten best books of the year, I shrugged.

Mea culpa. I was wrong.

I don't know what made me pick it up at the library a few weeks ago, but I'm glad I did. I thought Special Topics in Calamity Physics was just great, and now that I've read it, I'm even down with the title. I mean, this is a novel with high school, books, and politics--what more could I want? Throw in pretty much all of Western literature and then some (yeah, the Great Books are chapter titles, but it's not as didactic as all that), much pop culture (three mentions of Grease! three!), and a mystery that's actually complex and ambiguous, and I'm a page-turning happy reader--happy enough to keep the book till I finished all 500+ pages, even though it was a one-week library book, no renewals, with a quarter a day fine (at least $2.25 is a lot less than it would have cost to buy it, even paperback, which still would have meant waiting till the end of April).

Really, what I liked most about this book was that it was smart and complicated, but also had an engaging narrative and characters I wanted to read about. And though it reminded me of The Secret History (I gather I'm not alone in that association), I loved that it wasn't predictable. Loved, loved, loved that.

Postacademic, I think you'll like this one. You too, Jackie. Mom, you can skip it.


*Link to Amazon for the diverse reader responses which I'd say are reasonable and justified. The book definitely has some of the flaws people identify, but in this case they didn't bother me.

Justine Kurland

I am loving these photos. Naked women in the woods resonate for me, as do large-format American landscapes. I love Bierstadt too. And Sally Mann, despite myself. And Mary Ellen Mark, though now the connection--to Mann--is generational, not imagistic.

Yes, I'm reading the Sunday NY Times, a little late, as usual.

But aren't you glad I managed to write this post without a single parenthesis? Let me tell you, it was a challenge.

My Little Younger Sister of a Pre-Teen

M: Did I tell you about [boy in her class]'s buzz cut?!

E: If you stop talking about boys for a month, I'll be happy, but if you don't stop talking for a month, I'll make you get a buzz cut.

Victoria Beckham Is an Insect From Another Planet

Check out that picture on the right. I tell you, Molly really has made Popsugar viable again, and I'm all over her obsession with Posh and Becks.

And, speaking of Posh, I wonder what on earth she and Katie Holmes-Cruise talk about (I know, I know: famous husbands, celebrity kids, Barneys, Armani...the usual mom talk).

If Really You Are a Great Parent, But Sometimes, Just Occasionally, Not Very Often, You Get the Teensiest Bit Tired of Reading Yet Another Book Aloud

You will love this site. We love it: you should have seen S and E mesmerized by When Pigasso Met Mootisse.

(And if you have a glimmer of angst, personal or societal, over the image of a child sitting glued to the computer screen while a movie star reads her a story, get over it. Let's face it, either you read to your kids all the time, in which case the occasional book read on the computer by a movie star will be a nice change of pace, or you never read to your kids [not that that describes anyone who would read this blog], in which case at least they will get read to by a movie star on the computer. I just don't think there's a category of people who will say "Great! Movie stars on the computer reading books! Finally I can stop reading books to my kids!").

The Beginnings of Posts I Decided Not to Write

On the Question of Whether the Capacity to Clean Is Innate

Obviously the answer is no. If I were Ma, and M and E were Mary and Laura, I would have them well-trained in cleaning, regardless of their instincts. But I am not Ma, and I am of the progressive (read lame) tribe of parents that lets their children do largely what they please, and then gets angry at them for not doing what we want.


Sometimes I Just Hit the Wall

Last week I had coffee with a new acquaintance. When she discovered that my husband is a chef, she said what people always say: "That must be great!" With my usual smile, I proffered my usual reply: "The great parts are really great, but the bad parts are really bad." (The other thing people always say is "Wow, you must eat really well," to which I always reply, "When he's home, but he's never home.")

Last week was February vacation. S was home Tuesday and Wednesday, the first time he's had two days off in a row this year (more specifically, the first time since Christmas Eve and Christmas Day). But on Friday, he left the house at 9:30 in the morning and got home at 12:30--in the morning. Saturday he left around 10 and got home around 11. Sunday he left at 10 and got home just before midnight. Did I mention that it was February vacation?

I Told You He'd Show

Manny in Florida. [link from a famous philosopher]

A Few Oscar Notes

Enough already with the beige/blush/gray/silver/white column dress.

Ellen makes me laugh. (When she said "Without Blacks, Jews, and gays, we wouldn't have movies," M asked "Who's Jewish?")

What on earth is Apocalypto?

Interpretive dance? By PILOBOLUS??

And the montages? Why??

I liked her OK in the 80s, but I am so over Melissa Etheridge.

Come on, Al, run already! Save us from this madness! (But maybe lose a little weight and cut back on the make-up?)

Do you think Gwyneth and Nicole planned it that way, or are their stylists totally getting chewed out in the morning?

I wouldn't mind Sherry Lansing's career. Or her dress. Though not her voice.

The one person I know who was up for an Oscar lost.

Does Clint Eastwood really speak Italian?

What's up with the weird J.C. Penney ads?

Helen Mirren rocks the world: expected, but gratifying, and man is she hot. And gracious. (And M likes her because she doesn't try to make herself look 20 years younger.)

Nice speech, Forest.

Why is Jack Nicholson bald? (And M, who woke up and saw the end as well as the beginning, wants to know why Jack Black is short.)

Why do I watch this thing anyway? And am I doing my children a terrible disservice by training them to watch it with me?

Movies to see: Dreamgirls, The Departed, Half Nelson, Pan's Labyrinth. I think I'll skip Apocalypto.

Edited to add: You know, that was totally boring, and this morning I am still grumpy at having lost an entire evening of my life to it, and, yes, I know it's my own damn fault.

Sorority Scandal

I'm not much for sororities, but I happen to know a bunch of Delta Zetas (including one of M's favorite babysitters ever) and they are the smartest, most feminist women who've ever overturned my sorority stereotypes. But clearly the Delta Zeta national officers don't appreciate what they've got going for them, and would rather play into those stereotypes. Ugh.

M Gets a Life, E Is Sad

M is four years, seven months, and three days older than E. We didn't plan it that way, but it's worked out well. When E was born, M was old enough to have a life of her own and appreciate a baby sister of her own. There was a reasonable amount of covert sibling torture, but significantly less than I've seen between kids who are closer in age. Mainly there was lots of playing with the baby and ignoring the baby, who of course didn't care if she was ignored, given that she was a baby.

As E became human, they played together all the time. It helped that in No Longer Red State Capital City Suburb, M's best friend was an only child who was very tolerant of E, indeed, considered her an adjunct younger sister. Also, for the last two years we lived there, when M was 7 and 8 and E was 3 and 4, S and E, who were 5/6 and 8/9 respectively, lived two houses down, and the four girls were inseparable, playing together most afternoons and all weekend, in various arrangements of two and four (and occasionally three, when there was a fight, which was usually between M and their E).

Since we moved, though, and especially this year, M has been leaving E behind. They can still play together very happily, but E now has a mind of her own, which leads to much conflict over "the game," and while M still loves to play, she gets bored long before E does. In addition, M's social life is ramping up considerably. She has just become serious about her email and she and her gang of friends (there are about eight of them, give or take the day's conflicts, which are actually remarkably minimal) email every day, making plans for sleepovers, sledding and the like (never one to be left behind, E has also become serious about her email, but her correspondence is limited to grandparents and her cousin--Aunt M, let me know if you want her email address!!). Then there are the slumber parties, the dashing up to me after school and asking if she can go to X's house, the invitations for expeditions with friends and their families. Which is all very well and good and age-appropriate.

But poor E is not so happy. She misses M. She wants M to play with her. She gets lots of Mama time, which is all very well and good, but, let's face it, I don't play so much, and consolation prizes are never as good as the real thing. She has started having sleepovers with her best friend, and I occasionally manage a playdate, usually at the behest of a more organized mother (I think she's had two in the last month), but the bottom line is: she's six, not ten; her best friend lives twenty minutes away, not across the street; she has lots of friends in her new school, but none that she or I have clicked with to the point that making an effort is effortless. In other words, she's the tag-along second child with the neglected social life.

I'm not worried. E will find her friends, and eventually she'll get older and dash off to her friends' houses after school. But I think it's going to be a lot harder to be the big kid younger sister of an early adolescent, than it was to be the little kid younger sister of a big kid.

Five for Five: Notes on a Scandal

This afternoon the big one took care of the little one, the medium ones took care of each other, and Lucy and I saw Notes on a Scandal, which means, for those of you who haven't been keeping score at home, that I have now seen all the Best Actress nominees. And, along with everyone else, I still think Helen Mirren has it in the bag.

But Judi Dench is awesome, as is Cate Blanchett, who is fully deserving of Best Supporting Actress, even though I don't know who the other nominees are (all I know is the Little Miss Sunshine girl, and Cate Blanchett has it all over her). I also see that the movie is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, which it fully deserves as well, and Best Original Score, but more about that later.

Seriously, though, of the THREE MOVIES I SAW IN THE THEATER THIS WEEK (can you even believe it?!), Notes on a Scandal was hands-down the best. Interestingly enough, it has some of the same issues as Little Children: origins in a book I've read (albeit a much better book), a powerful voiceover, and infidelity (not to mention pedophilia, though very differently).

But it all worked for me this time. I didn't think for a moment about the inadequacy of film adaptation, or the fact that I knew what was going to happen, because the movie itself was totally gripping. The voiceover is an integral part of the film: it is Barbara's voice in her diary, revealing her delusions, not an omniscient force telling us what we should know. And the motivation for infidelity is ambiguous and complex, not predictable.

Indeed, compared with Little Children, Notes on a Scandal is an excellent brief for British vs. American cultural preoccupations. In America we have glossy suburbs, glossy compulsive moms, and glossy cinematography. In Britain we have class difference, urban grit, and the lunatic loneliness of the repressed lesbian schoolteacher (did you say Miss Jean Brodie gone mad?).

The only thing I didn't like about the movie was the music which, Philip Glass and all, and probably very good and all, felt intrusive (though Lucy didn't even notice it, so maybe it was just me). And the last thing I loved was Cate Blanchett's clothes, for which I would happily swap my wardrobe, though I would have no hope of looking as fabulous as she does, given that she is tall and slim, and I am not.

Edited to add: The reviews on this one are good: Ty Burr and I are one, once again, and David Denby is right on the mark, though Manohla Dargis seems to be protesting too much, I'm not sure about what.

Joyce Hatto

I know nothing about classical music and even less about music technology, but I am fascinated by the story of the plagiarizing pianist.

Rebecca Traister Nails It Again

This is kind of what I've been thinking about Britney all week, only she says it so much better (and yes, yes, yes on Little Dorrit and Luke and Laura).

The Game

I don't understand why my children spend as much time negotiating the game as actually playing it, but I have come to accept that the negotiation is part of the pleasure of the game. These days, however, part of the negotiation is over who gets to be better ("I'm better at gymnastics, but you're the better dancer." "No, I want to be the better dancer."), and this I simply cannot stand.

Coolest Lunchbox Ever

M lost her lunchbox. A lot of time has been spent searching for a cool new lunch box. She wants metal. Unfortunately, this one is too small. This one is the coolest ever, but, alas, inappropriate for fifth grade in public school (would it be appropriate for fifth grade at private school? I doubt it). We'll probably go with this one, which is pretty darn hip, even if it's not the coolest ever.

Notes on Current Events Including, But Not Limited To, Baseball, Best Actresses, and Boots

I'm not one for fetishizing dead bodies, especially when the body in question figures as a metonym for the money (see: James Brown). But I do think that Anna Nicole should be buried in the Bahamas, because one thing that seems true about her is that she loved her son, and I'm sure that he loved her, so it seems only right that she be buried next to somebody who actually loved her. Although I thus agree with Howard K. Stern's position on the matter, I hold to my formerly-expressed opinion that he is scum. In fact, I'd amend that to total scum (see TMZ for details).

I'm against the war, but I'm even more against the contemporary American way of waging war, which involves elites arguing and poor people fighting. So I say kudos to Prince Harry for going to Iraq.

This morning I was thinking that I am not in love with this Red Sox team like I was with last year's. But that, of course, will change, because the nature of being a Red Sox fan is that you can't help falling in love. And you know, Kevin Youkilis hasn't crossed my mind all winter, but just the thought of him makes me happy. David Ortiz reporting to camp? Great day. Nevertheless, I am happy to go on record saying that if we'd paid Johnny Damon 50 million last year, we would not need to pay J.D. Drew 70 million this year. That's all I'm saying.

Did I ever say anything nice about Dan Shaughnessy? Why, yes I did. Well, I take it back. The boys are right.

Just chill: Manny will show, and he'll hit, and he'll catch, and that's all that matters.

S was home last night! We got a sitter! We went to see Notes on a Scandal! Except the projector was broken in that theater, so we saw Volver instead. Which means I'm still up to four on Best Actress nominees. Liked the movie, didn't love it, am really wanting to LOVE a movie, but it hasn't happened in a while. Penelope Cruz, like Kate Winslet, was great, but no Helen Mirren. Nevertheless, she certainly wins Most Beautiful Actress.

Finally, my great achievement of yesterday, besides another Best Actress and coaching my friend on her contract negotiations, was boots. OK, so they are my fifth pair of black boots, but unlike the battered granny boots, the flat ankle boots, the stiletto calf-high boots, and the suede knee-highs, these are slightly-higher-than-calf-yet-lower-than knee! Pointy-toed! Goretex! Waterproof! On sale for half price! Boots. In my boots and my coat, I am just the most put together bad weather professional woman you know.

Hair Triumph

This morning I gave E a choice of wearing her hair down, with the front ends pulled back in a barrette (sp?), or in braids. She chose braids.

(I am the unsentimental mother who never grew her daughters' hair because it would be too much of a pain. I love the long locks of other little girls from afar--sort of. I mean, they are often pretty, but either those little girls are much more docile than my children, or those mothers are a lot more patient with combs, brushes, snarls, and screams. But, I am also the empowering mother who lets her daughters do what they want, and E now wants long hair, so long it is, along with snarls and screams. Recently, though, I've instituted braids, which are very cute, and apparently they've taken. Thank goodness.)

Little Children

For weeks now, all I've wanted is to see a movie in a movie theater. I'm not quite sure why it hasn't happened. There are tons of movies I want to see, and several of them were playing around the corner. My dad stayed with us for two weeks, which means that theoretically I was free in the evenings. But kids were sick, S was at work, I had work, it was cold, I was tired: somehow my desire was endlessly thwarted, becoming, in the process, as desires do, that much larger, until, truly, all I wanted in the world was to see a movie in a movie theater (world peace would be nice too, but one's vision narrows in the depths of winter).

Last night I finally made it (sorry, Lucy, S got home at the last minute and pushed me out the door). Borat and The Departed are no longer playing around the corner, and I realized that if I could manage to see three movies this week (ha!) I would at least have seen all the Best Actress nominees, so I went to Little Children.

My main reaction at first was that I either need to give up reading, or give up seeing movie adaptations of books I've read (this doesn't bode well for Notes on a Scandal which I am absolutely determined to see by Sunday--don't know if I'll make it to Volver, though). The movie was fine, but knowing exactly what was going to happen made the whole thing a little slow. It's a pretty faithful adaptation, as far as I can recall. The only significant (and unnecessary) addition was the documentary about the kid whose dad died in Iraq; the only significant omission was the paring down of Sarah's back story and her husband's role (though the absence of the back story, at least, may have made Sarah's character not make so much sense, for those who haven't read the book).

Eventually, though, I got into it and, really, I think I liked the movie better than the book (didn't like the book that much, liked the movie a lot more than I thought I would). The book is pretty frothy, but the movie convincingly, if direly, plumbs the dark side of the suburbs, albeit with a conservatively redemptive ending. The acting, from the playground ladies to the child molester, is excellent, and the cinematography appropriately dark and garish (yes, it can be both). The one thing that didn't work, really didn't work, to the point of making the movie significantly less good than it could have been, was the intrusive voiceover. Isn't the point of film to show, rather than tell? Shouldn't the filmmaking be sufficient to reveal how the characters feel and what they think? Isn't that why we go to the movie, instead of reading the novel?

As for the Best Actress issue, Kate Winslet is great. Physically and emotionally, she fully inhabits Sarah, the ill-fitting suburban mom who doesn't like her child and finds herself in the arms of Brad, the Prom King dad. But the part isn't a full-scale unrecognizable transformation, a la The Queen, so I'd still say the conventional wisdom (i.e. Helen Mirren) is right.

(The weirdest thing about watching the movie was that both Sarah and Brad, the Prom King, reminded me acutely of actual people I know--people who don't know each other, and would never have an affair, though the Brad doppelganger may be on his way to an affair with someone else. Even as I watched the characters on the screen, I couldn't stop thinking about the real people.)

Edited to add: The NY Times review is excellently on the mark (not sure whether it's available without Times Select).

Tiny Houses and the Challenge of Visibility

The media has once again discovered tiny houses, but what strikes me this time is how so many of these people claim an environmental motivation for their tiny houses--see "ecologically sensitive," "express purposes of conservation," and "no lasting impact on the land"--yet if you look at the slide show, you'll see that the houses are positioned in the landscape so as to visually blight it for anyone outside of the house. "We live in our view rather than look at it," says one couple, but everyone else has to look at them living in it. A paradox that epitomizes the American way of doing good.

(I actually love the idea of tiny houses, but I like them nestled into trees or against a cliff or something--my favorite is the one with the steps down to the water. Then again, I don't like big houses that just stick out of the ground either. Except, of course, The Glass House, but it's surrounded by trees, not invading the prairie--and, of course, it isn't so big).

Every Night Movie

Grease is the word, is the word that you heard
It's got groove it's got meaning
Grease is the time, is the place is the motion
Grease is the way we are feeling

Grease is in heavy rotation over here. I actually tried it on the girls a year or so ago, but M nixed it pretty quickly. Then Other E got her into the soundtrack. Then she went to a slumber party a few weeks ago where they watched it, and she came home hooked. We rented it the other night as a family movie (our membership allows us three movies at a time, which translates into an E movie, an M movie, and either a Mommy movie or a family movie, depending on how into my book I am). Now E is completely enamoured as well. Plus E has a fever (again), which means all screen time rules go out the window, and we watch Grease over and over.

Summer lovin' had me a blast
Summer lovin', happened so fast
I met a girl crazy for me
I met a boy, cute as can be

E made me print out the lyrics for "Summer Nights," and she walks around reading/singing them. She holds auditions and she gets the part of Sandy; then she has rehearsals (M is currently in two plays; E is suggestible). Both girls are amazed that I know every word to every song.

But now there's nowhere to hide, since you pushed my love aside
I'm not in my head, hopelessly devoted to you
Hopelessly devoted to you, hopelessly devoted to you

I'd forgotten that Grease is about sex. But you know, it's kind of like Asterix: it operates on different, and bizarrely appropriate, levels for each of us. E knows that it's about a boy and girl who like each other, but are really different. M gets that Rizzo thinks she's pregnant and is worried. I know what Rizzo means when she tells Danny to go flog his log, and I appreciate the complexities of American sociosexual dynamics at play in Danny's implied pasts with Rizzo and Cha-Cha, not to mention Sandy's costume shift from virginal white to skin-tight black with red stilettos.

Because, really, Grease is the meta-text of (white) American culture. It's all there. James Dean meets American Graffiti meets Welcome Back Kotter meets Happy Days meets Frankie and Annette meets 90210 (or perhaps 90210 is really the meta-text, for surely Kelly and Dylan's summer idyll when Brenda is in France derives directly from Sandy and Danny on the beach in the opening sequence to Grease, except, of course, that Kelly has sex, because it's the 90s, not the 70s riffing on the 50s). But Grease is even more than that: It's "The Gift of the Magi," except things work out, because, after all, we're talking Hollywood American meta-text, not the gloom and doom of the literary past. It's the romance of the automobile. It's Rogers and Hammerstein, with Ado Annie backing up Laurie. It's homosocial bonding. (And I always liked Rizzo best, and, overall, I'd take Kenickie.)

But, finally, Grease is John Travolta, for whom the word I keep coming up with is sinuous. The things that guy did with the length of his body? The dimple in the chin? The brilliant salvageable-sanitized-bad-boy trio of Vinnie Barbarino, Tony Manero, and Danny Zuko? When he and Olivia Newton-John dance through that fun house, two long lines of sinuously twisting black, they're the ones that I want.

Next rental? Saturday Night Fever, for sure. But not with the kids.

I got chills.
They're multiplyin'.
And I'm losin' control.
'Cause the power
you're supplyin',
it's electrifyin'!

You better shape up,
'cause I need a man
and my heart is set on you.
You better shape up;
you better understand
to my heart I must be true.

Nothin' left, nothin' left for me to do.

You're the one that I want.
(you are the one i want), o,o, oo, honey.
The one that I want.
(you are the one i want want), o,o,oo, honey.
The one that I want
(you are the one i want want), o,o, ooooo
The one I need.
Oh, yes indeed.

Praise

I've been mulling over New York Magazine's piece on the perils of praise all week. If you don't feel like reading it, it can be boiled down into two points:

1) Don't praise kids for who they are; praise them for what they do. As far as I can tell, this is standard teacher/parent advice. Don't say "that's a beautiful picture"; say "I like the way you used lots of colors in your picture"; or, even better, "tell me about your picture."

2) Research shows that kids who are praised for working hard, or who are given the impression that working hard is the reason for their achievement, do better than kids who are praised for being smart, or given the impression that they achieve because they are smart. In other words, the whole self-esteem movement may very well be bunk. Indeed, it may set kids up to fail, because, if they believe their achievement rests on their intelligence, then failing to achieve signals lack of intelligence, and this knowledge (presumably latent) makes them scared to try and fail.

I have to say this resonates for me. I am always worried about not being smart enough, and I definitely fall into the category of people who don't try as hard as they can for fear that their best effort will not be enough and thus will prove that they are not good enough.

Nevertheless, as a parent, I am ambivalent. I already do the politically correct variety of praise, but I hate the idea of not being able to tell my children they are smart, because I think they are, and I want them to know it and believe it. In other words, I want them not to be like me, but this research suggests that the tactic I am taking will turn them into me.

But then there is the fact that they are them, not me.

As I was mulling over this article, E, out of the blue, addressed the issue. "You know how to make yourself good?" she asked me at dinner, in a conversation about school. "Give yourself compliments before you even know if you're good or bad at it." Then she told a story about a boy in her class who said "Oh, I'm so bad at this," before they began a game, and was indeed bad at it, whereas she, E, thought she would be good, and was. Clearly a believer in the power of positive thinking, not to mention self-boosted self-esteem.

That night, I brought the topic up with M. I told her about the article and asked her what she thought. She said the argument doesn't make sense, because you have to work hard to be smart. "Like, some of it is your genes," she said, "but the rest is work." I think her "it" there is achievement, but overall this seems like a more holistic vision of the issues. When I asked her if she thinks she's smart, she said yes. When I asked her if she works hard, she said yes.

Where to go with this? I'm not quite sure. Perhaps I can make a deal with our entwined psyches: I'll work harder AND I'll keep telling them they're smart, and maybe we'll all turn out OK.

Two Words for Today

Spring training!

Chocolate Conundrum

If you have a box of chocolates with quite a lot of chocolates, and they are exceedingly delicious chocolates, do you eat quite a lot of them every day until you are done with the box, because you will eat them all eventually anyway, so you might as well eat them all now, or do you eat one a day, because eating so much chocolate at once can't possibly be good for you, and by stretching the box over time, you will get that much pleasure for that much longer?

Fourth-Grade Slump

I agree with this article that No Child Left Behind deserves blame for what they call the "fourth-grade slump," but I would define the slump more broadly and cast the blame more narrowly. I don't know about other states, but in Blue State, the fourth-grade proficiency tests are the first that really matter. Which means the teachers spend the whole year preparing for the test, because they know they are being judged as much as their kids. Which means the best, most creative teachers avoid fourth grade like the plague. Which means you end up in fourth grade with the worst curriculum and the worst teachers. And everyone slumps. (I'm speaking as the mother of a fifth grader, thank god.)

Leaving Europe

The lore of my father's and grandparent's escape from Germany is so powerful it's like an implanted memory. I feel I was there the day my grandmother took my toddler father to their usual playground in Berlin and found that overnight a sign had sprouted saying "No Dogs or Jews Allowed." I can see her standing there reading the sign, the little boy beside her pulling at her hand so that she will take him to the swings, disappointed when they turn around, and then thrilled when they get on the trolley and go out to the country where he can play freely in the woods. I am on the last train out of Berlin in 1941, or perhaps it's the last ship out of Lisbon. I am in Bermuda with my father, clutching the teddy bear someone has given him, the little Jewish boy escaping the Nazis.

My grandparents were prosperous, assimilated Berliners--my grandfather was a lawyer, my grandmother went to lectures by Adler, not Freud, but you get the picture. The rest of his many siblings had long since immigrated, but my grandfather was sure that things would be fine. His daughter left for Palestine with her boyfriend. His older son went to relatives in New York. But he stayed, and then my father was born.

As my grandmother told it, the sign at the playground was a turning point, but of course it must have been more complicated. Another piece of the story, that doesn't quite fit for me chronologically, is that my grandfather's brothers in New York would not sponsor him because he was a Zionist. Some of the elders in their community (what elders? what community? these were assimilated businessmen and doctors, not yeshiva buchers out of the shtetl) called them out on it.

Somebody must have sponsored them at some point, or perhaps they got out some other way. I need to reread the memoir my grandmother wrote. I need to ask my father, though his memories are cloudy, by virtue of youth and personality. But there must have been letters and cables, back and forth from Berlin to New York, as my grandfather finally realized the seriousness of the situation and tried to get the rest of his family out.

I don't think about this much. I'm not a child of Holocaust survivors. I think perhaps my grandmother's mother, and maybe her aunt, died in a camp, perhaps Teresienstadt, but they were already estranged and it doesn't seem to have affected us much (is this right? did I make it up?). But our mythologies are of escape and upward mobility in the new world: from Washington Heights to the Ivy League.

I think of it, though, when I read about Otto Frank trying to get his family out of Holland.

In Which I Try to Be Slightly Intelligent About the War

I am shamefully bad about following the specifics in Iraq. K and I were talking just recently about how embarassed we are to be among the ignorant Americans who simply can't remember the difference between Sunni and Shi'ite, though we do try (I know Saudi Arabia is Sunni, and then I go from there with the notion that those who oppose Saudi Arabia, i.e. Al Quaeda and Iran, are Shi'ite, but I probably should not be saying this in public, as I am in no way certain it is right). At any rate, I skim the headlines, but I'm generally confused.

Nevertheless, I am quite sure that I saw headlines just the other day saying that the intelligence linking Iran to the insurgency* in Iraq is highly problematic, as is the timing of the release of that intelligence. And now I see that the President is saying, emphatically, that Iran is arming the insurgency, and I'm feeling some serious deja vu all over again, and what the hell is wrong with these people?

*Is that the right word? Should I be saying militants? Militia? Something else? Certainly neither freedom fighters nor terrorists, given my general political bent.

Another Recommendation

Instead of a bunch of second-hand links, I'll just give you a reminder that you should be reading Jenny's blog if you want to read the best things (right now I'm refering to Phil Nugent's tribute to Helen Hill, but there I go with the second-hand links, so I'll leave it at that).

Onion Soup, Old School

S made the onion soup from Sunday's NY Times Magazine last night, and M and I had the leftovers for dinner tonight. Consider this a recommendation. It's super delicious, and so easy I think I'll be making it again myself, though it does take a long time.

A Narcissistic Valentine's Post

I don't have issues with Valentine's Day. I quite like chocolates and love notes and pink hearts and oysters and all that, and I have a husband and children, so lonely is not an option. Of course, for the wife of a chef, Valentine's Day is a lot like New Year's Eve: forget romance when your husband is making everyone else's romance possible. But I'm used to that.

This year, though, I'm not really in the mood. I Valentined for the children, because I am a good mother (Valentine-ish socks and pink and red hair ties--yes, we are excessive), but I told S we should skip it. Luckily, he gave the right answer: that's fine, but you'll probably get some chocolate anyway (his pastry chef made chocolate-covered caramels sprinkled with sea salt, I had some on Monday when my mom and I went to the restaurant for lunch, and I'm hoping that's what he means).

Which leaves the blog conundrum. Ignore it and post about my hair (to cut or not to cut)? Post about the hegemony of school Valentines (been there, done that--one of my most popular posts ever--and googling to find it, I came up with this delightful post)? Post about things I love (uh, my kids, my purple hat...BOring)?

Then I came up with an idea: what I love about me.

That one's tough, though, really tough, which of course--never one not to take up a challenge--makes me go for it. There are things I'm proud of--running two marathons, leaving No Longer Red State--but pride and love are different. There are things I love with qualifications--my hair, except when I don't--but that's no good, and neither are the things I don't love, of which I could easily come up with a long list. There are things others love about me--my eyes, for instance, only I never think about my eyes, except to think that they are too small and close together, which obviously means I don't love them.

But enough of this quibbling. Hence and forthwith: a list of things I love about me, with no explanations or qualifiers:

My wrists and ankles.

My (physical) flexibility.

My capacity for friendship.

My instinct for language.

My embrace of Popsugar and George Eliot.

My refusal to embrace jazz.

My lasagna.

Edited to add: There was indeed chocolate, excellent chocolate, though not the caramels, and I relented and sent a bevy of absurdist e-valentines (before the chocolate! I sent them last night, before the chocolate!)

Tales of the Cold

Perhaps due to global warming, I have not found the climate of Blue State that different from the climate of No Longer Red State. Until the last few weeks. And it's a sense memory, as well as the circumstances, that mark the difference. For the last few weeks, since the thermometer dipped below--often far below--freezing and has not risen, the girls have worn tights under their pants. Sometimes I have worn tights under my pants. Which reminds me of how when I was a little girl, we always wore tights under our pants in winter. M concurs with my recollection that they never wore tights under their pants in No Longer Red State, except when we went ice skating.

Speaking of ice skating, yesterday E went to a friend's house after school, so M and I skated without her. M pointed out, tentatively, fearful of being bad, that it was kind of nice to just be able to skate, without having to hang back and wait for E, whose skating capacities increase exponentially each time she's on the ice, yet who is still cursed with the shortest legs in the family, and who is perhaps made even slower by the bulk of tights under leggings under another pair of leggings under snowpants which is her chosen skating garb (the snowpants are forced upon her by parents, but the multiple leggings are her innovation).

I told M that one of my first blog posts (sorry, can't find it) was about how you do some things with your kids because they are fun, and some things because someday you will be glad you did them, and ice skating with a little kid who is learning to skate is something you do because it will be so great when they finally can skate, like M can now.

The wind was fierce when we first got on the pond, and we fought it out to the middle, then turned around, held out our arms, and sailed back to the beach. We did that several times, often holding hands. Then we skated around the cove and looked into the back of my favorite house. Facing the pond, it is all windows. The people in the kitchen waved at us, and we skated away, embarassed (OK, I've typed that five times and still have no idea if I spelled it correctly). Then we skated to the far far side and touched a branch, to prove we'd made it, and on the way back we went around the island, for the first time.

It's supposed to snow tomorrow, but they say it will turn to sleet and rain, and then it's supposed to be cold again. So maybe the skating will continue.

Another Abandoned Book

Heidi Julavits, The Uses of Enchantment (linking to Amazon because I'm relieved to see I'm not the only one).

About 60 pages in, I realized that the characters were unpleasant, the circumstances were unbelievable, the psychiatrist who apparently delivers a significant piece of the narrative was annoying, and the writing was no great shakes either ("abrased"? "wicker-thin"? how thin is a wicker? and woe betide the copy editor who let "Each had a water glass in their laps" slip by).

(Is it possible, after the snark essay, to just say that Heidi Julavits wrote a book I didn't like, and leave it at that?)

Whatever you think about Anna Nicole

there is no question that this guy is scum.