Janis

E and I were driving downtown this afternoon for some Mama Time. The radio was on when we got in the car, and she asked me to switch it to the oldies station (some day I'll blog about the radio: about the kid-value of the oldies station and how I don't listen to NPR). The first chords of "Me and Bobby McGee" were just playing, and E said "That guitar sounds like Daddy's guitar," and I said "This is one of Mommy's favorite songs." The song was still playing when we got downtown (Red State Capital City Suburb isn't very big), and after we parked I didn't turn off the ignition till it ended. E said "That was a nice song. We should get that CD." I said, "We have that CD. We can listen to it when we get home."

I've loved Janis since before I can remember, maybe since I was ten? eight? But this isn't about loving Janis; this is about loving Scars of Sweet Paradise, Alice Echols' brilliant biography of Janis. Echols is a feminist social historian who also wrote Daring to be Bad, a history of radical feminism in the 60s and 70s. In Scars of Sweet Paradise, she situates the complicated joys and tragedies of Janis's short life geographically, historically, and musically. She describes what it was like to grow up "ugly,"resisting the dicates of conventional femininity in 1950's small-town Texas. She takes Janis and San Francisco from the decline of the Beats through the rise of the hippies, from speed to heroin, from blues to rock and roll, with lots of sex along the way. In its careful attention to context and character, the book is a model of social history and biography, and it's a great read too. It's the kind of book that I read and wish I'd written.

So, today's advice is to go listen to some Janis and read Scars of Sweet Paradise. You'll be the better for it.

Natural Living in Red State Capital City Suburb

Sometimes I feel like I live in a time warp. According to this New York Times article, kids have lost touch with nature. They zone out on their X-Boxes and never leave the house except under close parental supervision. They don't know what a caterpillar looks like, and they don't even break their arms falling out of trees anymore.

Is Red State Capital City Suburb the only remaining bastion of childhood freedom? From April to November, you can't walk down the street without seeing packs of kids on bicycles racing through the neighborhood. Middle-school girls saunter down the sidewalks, giggling and gossiping in their newly-achieved big girl freedom. The backyards are full of kids poking at dirt, picking dandelions, throwing balls. As soon as it's warm enough, M and E are outside every minute they can be--scootering, chalking, hula hooping, skipping. OK, those aren't very nature-centered activities, but they take place out there in nature. And they do the dirt-poking and dandelion-picking too (especially when S agrees to pay them a penny a dandelion).

Am I imagining it all? Are we that unique? Or is this yet another example of the Times grandiosely generalizing from a bunch of upper-middle-class coastal-big-city suburbanites?

Cranky Mom and Reading Girl

In case you can't tell, I've been cranky mom lately. And M has been reading girl, and you know how I feel about that.

Last night, she got home from swim practice and immediately sat on the couch to read her book. But when you get home from swim practice at 8:15, your task is to go straight into the kitchen for snack, and we do not read during snack (a rule instituted after many prolonged bedtimes due to reading during snack). I--being cranky mom at the end of my rope who had already had to call her half a dozen times for homework and then for dinner--yelled. Then I announced that I wasn't going to deal with her anymore. Luckily S was home to deal with her. He took the book out of her hands and sent her straight into the kitchen for snack.

After eating snack, your task is to go straight upstairs and take your shower. I went upstairs first, and she arrived moments later, WITH THE BOOK IN HER HAND. Did she read walking up the stairs? I think perhaps she did. Was she planning to read in the shower? I think perhaps she was. Did I tell her she could not read and why on earth had she gotten the book? I'm quite sure I did.

But then she gave me a big hug and cried "But the book is soooo gooood!" and my heart melted. I told her I really did know how she felt and I just wanted to read my book too. So we decided that she would take her shower as quick as she could while I read my book in the bathroom, and then, instead of reading a bedtime book aloud (having gotten bored with Jo's Boys, we are between bedtime books), we would snuggle up in her bed and both read our books. So we did. And now we are friends again.

Until the next time.

[We also decided that sometime soon we are going to go out, just the two of us, and have a reading day, just sit in a cafe all day and read. And, M insists, go out to lunch.]

Mixed Feelings

I don't know whether to be happy that there are little signs of political sanity, or sad about how little they really are.

Calgon, Take Me Away

As a cuspy second/third wave feminist, I tend to pick and choose amongst the dictates of contemporary femininity. Mini-skirts : yes. Make-up on the weekend: no. High heels: yes. Wonderbras: no. Waxing my legs in the summer: yes. Shaving my underarms in the winter: no.

I lose all my autonomy and objectivity, however, when it comes to spa treatments. I know that hot baths and pampering will not cure what ails me (I once read a great article about the absurdity of "take a hot bath" as the omnibus advice for women, but I have no idea where I read it--Bitch, maybe?--so, alas, no link). I know that seaweed wraps and hot stone massages have no real physical or emotional benefits, and their purveyors are just looking for innovative ways to take my money. I know that every women is beautiful, just as she is, in her own way. I know all that.

But they just feel so good.

Yes, I'm a total sucker for soaks, steams, wraps, rubs, really just about anything some woman in a white jacket or tight t-shirt wants to do to my body.

When we lived in Berkeley, K's and my favorite treat was a daytrip to Indian Springs, one of the oldest spas in Calistoga, home of the famed mineral springs and mud baths. It's an old-fashioned kind of place, almost Victorian, where you have your mudbath in a rectangular cement tub like a horse trough, then soak in a clawfoot tub filled with hot mineral water, sipping cold mineral water with cucumber and orange slices. Then they wrap you in a big flannel bathsheet and take you to a white panelled room, like a cabana in an old beach resort, where you lie down with more flannel sheets on top of you and more cucumber slices on your eyes (that's M and E's favorite part of the story). If you want, you can have a massage after that, and sometimes we did, but just lying under those flannel sheets was perhaps the most relaxed state I have ever experienced in my life.

If K called me right now and said she had plane tickets and spa reservations, I'd be out of here in a split second.

Anyway, I thought about spa treatments this morning, as I scraped dead skin off my shoulders with my fingernails. Not even a loofah or pumice, for god's sake. It's the end of winter and I am a flaky, dry, tired, stiff mess. I know I could just go buy a loofah and a pumice, pour some olive oil in my bath, slather myself with Lubriderm, and make S give me a backrub. But though that might take care of the problems, it just wouldn't be the same.

There are fancy spas in Red State Capital City, but they're not Indian Springs. And I'm not enough of a spa dupe to pay their ridiculous prices. So I won't be getting a day package any time soon. Maybe this weekend, though, I'll spring for a pedicure. Because after all, I'm a hardworking woman, and I deserve it!

The Fourth Passover Post: Matzoh Brei

I'm grasping at straws here, folks. I'm tired and busy and stressed and the last thing I want to blog about again is Passover, but it's really all I can think of in the midst of my tired, busy, stressedness.

Besides, I'm sure that both grandmothers (and perhaps the aunt) (and maybe K) will truly appreciate the news that not only did E try matzoh brei, but SHE LIKED IT. (Of course, as we explained it to her, and as she now points out each time she asks for it, it's just matzoh, which she also tried and liked, combined with scrambled eggs, which she already likes, plus she can eat it with maple syrup.) (No, mom, I do not eat it with maple syrup, for that is a desecration, but alas, they have a father, not just a mother, and, as we all know, he can be a bad influence.)

Maybe the rest of you will appreciate my grandmother's recipe for matzoh brei, modified, like every recipe in the Becca-S-M-E household, to include lots of BUTTER:

For every person eating, you need one sheet of matzoh and one egg (so in our house, that means 4 matzohs and 4 eggs).
Run each piece of matzoh quickly under hot running water on both sides.
Shake off the water.
Break the matzoh in half, and then in half again, and then again, so basically you have jagged matzoh pieces about 2" square.
Put in a bowl and cover with milk to soak for a few minutes.
Meanwhile beat your eggs and add salt. More salt than you think you should add.
Melt a big chunk of butter in a big frying pan over a medium flame.
Drain the milk from the matzoh (we pour it into a jar to use again the next day), pour the eggs over the matzoh, and mix quickly so that there is egg everywhere.
Pour egg/matzoh mixture into the frying pan filled with sizzling butter, spread out matzoh pieces amongst egg, and let sit like a giant pancake.
When egg mixture is set and starting to brown on the bottom, break into big pieces and flip over.
When it is starting to brown on the other side, break up into smaller pieces and toss around in the frying pan till it is dry and cooked.
Serve.
If you are a philistine, pour maple syrup on it.
If you are a civilized person forced to live with philistines, berate philistines for pouring maple syrup on it.
Enjoy.

Chocolate Meringue Truffle Cake/The Third Passover Post

For some strange reason, the Passover chapter of Feast lacks a flourless chocolate cake. Luckily, there's always the Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame to fall back on. Though Nigella suggests Chocolate Orange Cake, I went for Chocolate Meringue Truffle Cake. How can you argue with 14 ounces of chocolate, 2 cups of cream, and not much else?

First you make the meringue crust: whip an egg white, beat in sugar, sift in cocoa, add a drop of vinegar, and beat a bit more. Spread over the bottom of the pan and bake. No problem. The chocolate truffle filling was also no problem: melt those 14 ounces of chocolate with some rum and light corn syrup, then mix with the cream which you've already beaten till it's thick. Pour over the crust and refrigerate. That's it.

After all that sedering, we had to remind ourselves about dessert. There had been some blessings, a lot of children explaining what things mean with varying degrees of accuracy, much harassing of J the putative seder leader, a big bowl of baby carrots consumed by E, and a Passover play with a strikingly knowledgeable M as narrator, E as Miriam carefully snuggling the baby Moses, N as both Pharoah and the burning bush, C as Pharoah's daughter, the other E as a very hardworking Jewish slave, and A as a rambunctious grownup Moses.

There had been parsley, horseradish, and charoset, then gefilte fish, matzoh ball soup, brisket, salmon, potatoes, and asparagus. The children had found the afikoman, negotiated (poor E settled for 12 cents early on, but luckily was included in the final group settlement of one Susan B. Anthony dollar and two Sacajaweas), and disappeared.

The adults were sitting around arguing about politics and admiring the impeccably-behaved baby on his first social engagement, when we realized that we should be having dessert. S plated the cake, dusting it with cocoa and powdered sugar, and it inspired oohs and ahs before it was even cut. We served it with fruit, and it was simply delicious: a dense but not overwhelming slab of softened chocolate that just made you want to eat more. The only problem was that the meringue crust had disappeared, which didn't surprise me as I'd used a 9 1/2" pan instead of the suggested 8", and it had been spread pretty thin. If (when) I make it again, I'll either double the meringue, or leave it out altogether.

Everyone thought it was great. J says it's #1, putting Chocolate Guinness Cake into second place. I think they are both delicious but fulfill different chocolate cake needs, though please don't ask me to pinpoint those needs--I'll know them when I have them.

[And in weather news, after intermittent rain, wind, and wet semi-snow all day yesterday, we now have an inch of snow and more coming down. I guess pink-blossomed trees frosted with snow are pretty. I guess.]

One More Thing

It is snowing. On my tulips. On April 23. The first night of Passover.

I am not joking.

The Second Passover Post

E doesn't remember celebrating Passover. Last year, in London, we skipped it. Seders at London synagogues are prohibitively expensive, we had no idea where to buy Passover food, and really we're just not as observant as all that. So E was two the last time she attended a seder or encountered matzoh.

She's interested and excited, though, and trying to wrap her head around what Passover means. The other day M read her My Very Own Haggadah, which she now eagerly claims as her haggadah. Last night we read the relevant Sammy Spider. She knows that there will be seders, she's excited to wear a pretty dress, and she's a bit worried that she will get too hungry before it's time to eat. She also knows that M is going to try to keep kosher for Passover this year, so she's been talking a lot about how M fasted till lunchtime on Yom Kippur, but she doesn't fast and she gets to eat bread. Last night she even asked if she could break the shabbat bread at the seder.

Like I said, she's trying.

Edited to add: We're doing content too, at a four year old level. I asked her at breakfast if she knew why we celebrate Passover. She said, "Yes." I asked, "Why?" She said, "I don't know." So we talked about how the Jews were slaves in Egypt which meant that they had to work for the Egyptians and not get paid and the Egyptians were in charge of them and that was not very nice, so then they left Egypt to go be in charge of themselves, and that's what we are celebrating. Then we got sidetracked wondering why on earth it took 40 years to get from Egypt to Israel, which seems like it should take about two weeks if you're walking, though E suggested that maybe they took an airplane. Then we talked about how Passover reminds us to help everyone be free. Then we talked about Sammy Spider some more.

The New Yorker at Its Best

Check out Adam Gopnik's review/essay on John Brown.

Random Connections

On the basis of her stirring rendition of "DADDY! I want an Oompa-loompa NOW!" M has been cast as Veruca Salt in her theater class's production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Way back in the day, I had a long-term but alas never consummated flirtation with Jim Shapiro, then the guitarist and singer in his own band, U Thant, later the drummer for Veruca Salt.

Nina Gordon, Jim's sister and another former member of Veruca Salt, has recorded a Joni Mitchellesque version of N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton."

It's definitely a better listen than this guy's version which removes everything but the swear words from the original track.

The First Passover Post

Perhaps the lamest piece of work I produced in college was the final project for my folklore class. We were supposed to do background research and fieldwork. I did the background research, and then I interviewed two people, pretended that I had interviewed myself, and discussed each of us as if we were a significant-sized group: “1/3 of the sample” (i.e. person A) does this; “1/3 of the sample” (i.e. person B) does that; and “1/3 of the sample” (i.e. me) does the other thing.

Despite the methodological lameness, my conclusions were in fact quite sound. I was researching Jewish holiday practices. Specifically, I wanted to see what holidays contemporary Jews were most likely to celebrate and why. Think about it: which holiday do you think is most popular? (Don’t cheat and look at the next paragraph.)

Did you say Hanukkah? That was my initial hypothesis, but no, the most frequently celebrated Jewish holiday is Passover. For some reason the number 74% sticks in my head, but I have no idea where it came from.

The next question, of course, is: Why Passover? The Jewish identity answer is that Passover is about the essence of being a Jew, about being oppressed for being a Jew and then escaping that oppression, proudly, as a Jew. The Jewish culture answer is that Passover is about family tradition--Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (the other major candidates for most popular holiday) take place in synagogue, and Hanukkah always has that “weak imitation of Christmas” problem. The third answer, which is as much a result as it is a cause, is that Passover is so adaptable. The basic story of escaping oppression can be articulated in terms of Zionism, Marxism, Lubavitcherism, “Messianic Judaism,” feminism, lesbianism, and just about any other ism you can think of. In other words, even if you’re a fairly assimilated Jew who isn’t interested in synagogue, celebrates Christmas, and thus has no need for Hanukkah, you can still find meaning in Passover.

Ever since I did that project, I’ve been interested in Passover adaptations, most of which take material form as haggadahs: vegetarian haggadahs, secular haggadahs, feminist haggadahs, lesbian haggadahs, self-actualization haggadahs, children’s haggadahs, and the list goes on. I have to say, though, that I’ve become a rabid haggadah moderate. S and I have additional readings that we love--I can’t do a seder without some Song of Solomon, a little Anne Frank believing all people are good, and ten contemporary plagues. But when it comes to seders that are all politics and no prayer, you lose me.

Which brings me to the inspiration for this post: The New Freedom Seder, a haggadah compiled by Rabbi Arthur Waskow and The Shalom Center. I’m all for peace, justice, and Judaism, and for the Shalom Center as well. Which means I probably shouldn’t even be saying this. But you know, bad poetry and muddy politics just bug me. So I really have no desire to recite this at my seder:

Big Oil Burning: The Planetary Pharaohs

They Enron-cook the books.
They rent the Burmese army to sweat rebellious workers.
They pour the smoke that chokes asthmatic children.
They sweltered heat-stroke on 40,000 European elders.
They melt the ice caps that keep our planet balanced.
They torch great Amazon forests.
Their Saudi branch pipe-line paid to explode the Twin Towers
And their Texas branch pipe-line cooked lies to burn Iraqi cities.
With oily money they bought the oil-soaked White House.
They scorch all earth, befoul all oceans.

As we breathe in what the trees breathe out,
Air pungent, sweet, and peppery,
And the trees breathe in what we breathe out,
Air filled with songs and stories, sighs and laughter,
The burning oil fills up our lungs and noses,
heats and dissolves our brain,
Turns all earth oiloholic.

Heat melts.
Melts us to death, or
Melts our walls of separation
To connect our different agonies —
Warming our hearts to join in cooling Pharaoh.

Instead, we’ll be reciting this:

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

Then we’ll spill drops of wine and recite these:

Hunger, War, Crime,
Disease, Racism, Abuse,
Poverty, Homophobia, Pollution,
Indifference to human suffering.

And eventually we’ll conclude with Nigella’s (flourless) Chocolate Truffle Cake. Details to follow.

Slime of the Times

Has anyone else noticed that David Brooks just keeps getting worse? His "I'm such a reasonable conservative you could almost mistake me for a liberal" cover is pretty much blown by now, but he still works that "aren't I being even-handed by condemning everyone?" line to mask the fact that he is essentially a right-wing stooge who drinks lattes instead of Budweisers. To condemn Blackmun, not for legalizing abortion, but for getting everyone, right and left, all upset and overreactive about abortion, is just so slimy and back-handed that I'm just glad I'm reading this on the computer instead of in a newspaper, so I don't have to rip the paper into tiny little shreds and make a big mess.

Someone Please

tell me that this is a joke. I try so hard not to be judgemental of other parents, really I do, but the effort can be truly taxing.

Blogging Status

I seem recently to have reached new heights down here at the bottom of the blogging hierarchy: this week I got my first comment spam (prom dresses, anyone?), my first irrelevant nasty comment from a blogger I've never heard of (why me, Kevin?), and what appears to be a veritable burst of relevant comments from readers I don't actually know (very exciting--if you want to excite me, just leave a comment). Plus there's the pleasure of learning that people I do know are reading me--last week I found out that an old friend I've been quite out of touch with is a regular reader, which was a nice surprise.

Really, though, I try hard not to think about readers. I even deleted my stats. Yes, it's true. I don't know how many page hits I have, I don't know the IP addresses of my readers, and I don't even know what Google searches bring me up (though when I did have stats, my main Google category seemed to be Nigella chocolate cakes).

This is hard for me, you know. I'm actually the most self-conscious, competitive person on the planet. Which is why I had to delete the stats. I checked them constantly; I obsessed about the significance of IP addresses from New Mexico (then I figured out it was you, K) and Princeton (I've caught you, A); I rejoiced when I had three more readers than the day before and fell into paroxysms of self-loathing when I had four fewer. It was not good. It was counter to the plan. The plan was to write. Not to be part of the blogging community. Not to rival Dooce. Not even to rival Dawn. Just to write. Which is what I do now. Happily, for the most part.

Though I do like my little non-stats signs of blogging status.

Hierarchies of Affection

E is into ranking the people she loves. I usually come first, which is good, as S doesn't mind not being first, and I believe I would mind it, even knowing that this is the absurdity of a four year old attempting to make sense of the confusing world that surrounds her. After me, in varying orders, come S, M, and Teddy. Occasionally she ranks her best friend A , and sometimes grandparents or cousins. Always, though, she ends her list by announcing firmly, "And I hate George W. Bush and the Yankees."

[I just read this to E. She said, "You know what I do last? George W. Bush and the Yankees, because last is the hating part."]

[I should be clear that we are generally anti-hate at our house, except when it comes to George W. Bush and the Yankees.]

One More Attempt

I keep trying to write a post about finishing Case Histories, Kate Atkinson's new novel (I'm not even going to put the link in, because I have no faith that this will work). First I had conceptual difficulties. Then I finally actually wrote something and Blogger ate it. If this doesn't work, then I am not meant to write about this book. Which is too bad, because it's a great book.

Basically, the one Blogger ate said that Case Histories is a great book, but I don't particularly like mysteries. The connection was that Case Histories is basically a mystery, even though it is being marketed as literary fiction, and even though it is literary fiction. Ayelet Waldman commented (again, not going to link) that it was too bad we don't seem able to consider literary fiction and mystery together, and I'm not surprised she would say that, given that she writes mysteries and is attempting to make the switch to literary fiction.

But the thing is, even though I loved Case Histories, which has beautiful writing, dazzling plotting, and lots of great themes like love, loss, mental illness, and family (I said it better in the Blogger-eaten post), the mysteries are kind of lame. Basically, as in all mysteries, either someone really obvious or someone really random did it, and neither are particularly satisfying solutions, though then again I can't really imagine what a satisfying solution to a mystery would be. Which may be why I'm not much of a mystery reader.

Still, I highly recommend Case Histories. And now I'm going to stop and see if this works, because I have other things to do. Still, I'm sad I lost the last post, because it was a lot better, but I'm too frustrated to attempt to recreate it.

Marlo Thomas Was Right

We have been cleaning. Seriously cleaning. Carloads to Goodwill and extra-large trash bags piled up in the garage cleaning. We do not do this often.

S has cleaned the basement, the kitchen, and his side of the bedroom. I have cleaned the attic, the toy cabinet, and my side of the bedroom. S is in the middle of the dining room, and I have puttered around the living room, but they weren't so bad to begin with. The girls' rooms are ok too, especially because enormous amounts of baby doll and American Girl doll paraphernalia have recently been stowed in recently purchased plastic bins, themselves part of the cleaning project.

The office, however, is another story. The office is the last straw, the sticking point, the Rubicon, and a black hole, all rolled into one. The office is about seven by twelve feet and contains three doors, one window, two file cabinets, three wall cabinets, a rolling cabinet, two sets of wire shelves, a desk, a computer, all the games, all the art supplies, all the projects, the guitar books, and everything else we shove in there because it is such a pit that what difference could an enormous inflatable duck make?

I'd tried, I'd really tried. I'd cleaned out the little set of shelves on the desk where I keep bills that need to be paid and pieces of papers that need to be dealt with. I dealt with the pieces of paper. I looked around a lot. I sighed a lot. I left the room a lot.

Then last night, as we were putting the girls to bed, I said to S, "Let's just do it. Let's pour ourselves enormous drinks, go in there together, spend 45 minutes on it, and see what we can accomplish." And we did it. Stumbling over each other and the giant trash bags, we sorted the game pieces, got rid of the crumbling fingerpainted masterpieces, put the markers in containers, got rid of the orphan toy pieces, organized the box of paints, and got rid of a lot more stuff. Now, instead of looking like the metaphorical manifestation of our tortured family life, it looks like a nice little room where a nice family keeps their nicely-organized games, art supplies, projects, and computer.

What does Marlo Thomas have to do with this? Remember Free To Be You and Me? Remember Carol Channing's nasal whine?

Little boys, little girls,
When you're big husbands and wives,
If you want all the days of your lives
To be sunny as summer weather,
Make sure, when there's housework to do,
That you do it TOGETHER.

With a big glass of vodka right beside you.

Sunday Morning Blogging

It’s a toss-up between blogging about how a year ago today we came home from Europe, leaving behind the perfect London spring day, after months of late winter gloom, and blogging about how close I came to hitting E yesterday. I think leaving Europe would be pretty banal: gosh we had a great time in Europe and it was sad to come home. Whereas almost hitting your kid, that opens up more possibilities.

We got in the car after a lovely Mexican food and ice cream girls night out with our neighbors (who are also just about our favorite people to hang out with in Red State, not to mention anywhere). I strapped E into her booster seat and started to drive away.

“Mom! E put her strap behind her back!” crowed her happily tattling big sister.

Usually I come down as hard on tattling as I do on just about any behavior being tattled upon, but safety trumps all in my parenting practice. I stopped the car, got out, fixed E’s strap, pulled it as tight as it could get across her belly, got back into the front seat, and started to drive away again.

“Look, Mommy! I undid my strap!” crowed the gleeful miscreant herself.

I stopped the car again, got out again, grabbed her hand hard, hard enough to hurt her, and yelled. This is where I might have hit her. I really wanted to, because I wanted to impress upon her how absolutely wrong it was, and scare her so much that she would never do it again. We were going 5 miles per hour on a side street, so really she wasn’t in danger, but all I could think of was her undoing her seatbelt on the freeway where there would be nothing I could do about it. I held her hands tight, and I yelled in my loudest and meanest voice that what she had done was not safe and she could never do it again, did she hear me?! She squirmed a little and said I was hurting her hand. I said I knew I was hurting her hand. I told her if she undid her strap again, she was going straight to her room when we got home and I wasn’t going to give her a snack or read to her at bedtime. Then she asked for Teddy who was in my bag in the front seat. I told her she could only have Teddy if she promised never to undo her strap again. She whimpered and promised. I redid her strap, got back into the front seat, gave her Teddy, and drove home. She didn’t undo her strap.

Friday Afternoon

There’s a group of young people at work. They all started this year, and they’re the best of friends. Most of them are single; only one has a kid. They sit together at meetings, they go out for beers, and they seem to be having a very good time. Yesterday a bunch of them were throwing a football on the grass outside work when I drove by (in my station wagon) with the girls. I told them they should either be inside working or somewhere else drinking. They threatened to throw the football into my car. I’d guess they ended up somewhere else drinking.

Meanwhile, M and I took E to her first theater class, which she’d been eagerly awaiting for weeks. I’m not sure what I was expecting--not what happened, only I’m not sure I can describe what happened in all its surrealism. The teacher (“You can call me Candace, or you can call me Miss Candace”) was a woman somewhere between 60 and 70, dressed in a black tunic, black knickerbockers, and black-and-white horizontal-striped tights. She had a hedgehog in an aquarium, and a big bag of feathers, plastic eggs, boas, fabric, pipe cleaners, baby ducks and baby birds, and red dots that were pretend strawberries in the show (that’s from E who is jogging my memory).

I think the plan was to read a story about a hedgehog, visit with the hedgehog a bit, and then act out the story. Which is kind of what happened. In a stream-of-consciousness, hodge-podge kind of way. Candace read a bit, then handed out some costume bits, then performed a bit, then spread out some fabric and hula hoops on the floor for scenery, then got the kids to perform a bit, then took out the hedgehog, then acted out the story with the kids, then showed the kids a few more pages in the book, all the while maintaining a random monologue addressed to the kids, the parents, M who was helping her, even herself. The kids were a bit baffled, but eventually got into it. I felt like I needed a giant margarita to truly appreciate it all.

Then a bunch of other kids started showing up for the next class--including a girl M hadn’t seen since preschool, M’s friend J’s little brother, E’s friend R’s big sister. Candace asked if M was taking the next class, M looked at me beseechingly, and I thought what the hell: if you’re going to have one kid taking a Friday afternoon theater class with a lunatic, you might as well have two. So I took E and R off to the playground, where they hung out on the jungle gym with three developmentally disabled guys and their caretakers. Meanwhile, a pregnant teen mom smoked cigarettes and let her toddler climb to the top of the jungle gym from where I rescued her (I tell you, it only got weirder and weirder).

M’s class is putting on a performance of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Red State Capital City Arts Festival, so today we need to get a copy of the book which somehow she has never read. E has been chanting “I want some yummy yummy yummy for my tummy tummy tummy,” which was the refrain of the story her class performed. It’s all very theatrical around here.