2005

The only problem with saying goodbye to 2005 is fear of what 2006 will bring. Planet-wise, it's been catastrophic, literally and figuratively. Personally, it's been complicated, and I'm tired of rehearsing the complications. So I thought I'd end the year with some things I loved in 2005:

- M and E's friends, and their friendships

- Niagara Falls

- Prep

- seeing Madagascar with E and Pride and Prejudice with M AT THE MOVIE THEATER

- the beach

- ice skating

- renewing my friendships with E and A

- talking to Aunt M

- Madison

- Wilco

- our summer vacation

- running

- the bed at the hotel in Newport

- the picture on our holiday card

- E

- M

-S

Happy New Year!

Holiday Notes

The doughnuts were quite good. The best was the one we bought at the bakery, still warm from the fryer, to see if we wanted to buy more. We did. We got raspberry, apricot, and cream. The only problem was that they were so big and, well, doughnut-like, that after latkes, brisket, kugel, asparagus, salad, and challah, not to mention hummus, baba ghanoush, chopped liver, spicy eggplant salad, crackers, and vegetables before that, most people were daunted and went for rugelach instead. The rugelach were delicious. As was the challah. So now we have a holiday bakery, and we have had doughnuts, and they were good.

****

It seems to be the Polly Pocket holiday season for the five-year-old set. E got one for her birthday and two for Hanukkah. My sister gave E the same one we got for my niece (Calendar Polly--either you know what I'm talking about, or you don't want to). My sister had gotten the same one to give to my niece the next night, so luckily I got to take that one and we gave it to E's friend for whom we'd forgotten to buy a birthday present.

****

It's a very musical holiday season chez nous, especially in the car nous. We have a permanent medley going: "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," "Rudolph," "Jingle Bells," "Hanukkah O Hanukkah," "The Dreidel Song" (with the special verses E learned at religious school: "I had a little dreidel, I made it out of bread, and when I went to spin it, I ate it up instead," and "I had a little dreidel, I made it out of air, and when I went to spin it, of course it wasn't there"), and a new composition by M and E that goes "Sufganiyot, sufganiyot, oh how I love my sufganiyot," over and over, ad infinitum, forever, could these holidays please end already.

****

This Christmas/Hanukkah/New Year's/school vacation marathon is wearing me out. We've had grandparents, we've had Disney on Ice, we've had a Hanukkah party and a birthday party, we've had annual special treat excursion with E and A-R, tonight we have New Year's Eve dinner party, and we just got invited to yet another Hanukkah party tomorrow. Oy. [Edited to add: And we just got invited to two more parties tomorrow!]

****

My New Year's Eve strategy seems to be working again. I decided many years ago not to worry about New Year's Eve, and as a result I've never had a bad New Year's Eve. Tonight we're going to dinner with several families from E's school, and then coming home to write in the girls' New Year's books, play games, and watch the ball drop. E is very excited to watch the ball drop, though she is still struggling to understand what the ball is and how it is going to drop. Unfortunately, I would peg the chances of her watching the ball drop at low to negligible, given her penchant for falling asleep on the couch. The big question is whether S will make it home by midnight. The chances of that are barely higher. Oh well. At least M is good company.

CNN Does the Government's Work Once Again

I think it's great that the Georgia National Guard is helping the Iraqi baby with spina bifida. I really do. I wish the National Guard could spend all its time helping babies with birth defects--and babies who are hungry and babies who are homeless, not to mention their hungry, homeless brothers and sisters and parents. But can we all just agree that CNN publishing this as its top news story is pro-war propaganda?

Newport 2: The Money Post

So we came home. We left affordable and moved to expensive. The opposite of those people in those articles. The stupidest financial move we could make.

In Red State Capital City Suburb, we were at the top of the economic heap. Sure there were people with a lot more money than us, people with much bigger houses than ours, but we could do pretty much whatever we wanted, given our income and our desires, and we never felt ourselves at any loss. (Really I should not be saying "we" here, because S doesn't have these issues. So when I am saying "we," know that I mean the family economic unit, not the family emotional unit, and that the emotions expressed herein are all mine.)

I was about to say that in Red State Capital City, wealth was not visible, but as I wrote that, I realized it is not true at all. Wealth in Red State Capital City was quite visible, largely in the form of McMansions and Hummers, neither of which interested me at all. Which is to say, the signifiers of wealth did not signify for me, and therefore I felt fully satisfied with my own economic state.

Then we moved.

Until I quit my job, our income in East Coast Big City was actually about 25% more than it was in Red State. To put it a bit more precisely: we had a good income in Red State, a better income in East Coast Big City, and both incomes were well above all relevant medians, means, etc. We had enough money there, we have enough money here (or rather, we had enough when I had a job, and we will have enough again when I get a new job, and clearly we have enough that I was able to quit my job) (I just want to be absolutely clear that this is about feelings, not money, except that it's also a little bit about money, but enough disclaiming already--like I said yesterday, if you want to take this as privileged whining, you probably should).

Now that we live in East Coast Big City, I am constantly aware of the money we don't have. We don't have the money to send our kids to private school (not that we want to, but the option would be nice) (let's not even talk about how we'll pay for college). We don't have the money to live in a house in Town (let's not even talk about taxes). We don't have the money to drive the car I would drive if I had the money or to buy the beautiful things we see in stores. And the thing is, all around us are people who have that money and more.

In Red State, I would read the New York Times and wonder who on earth would buy a $700 stroller. Now I see that stroller every day, not so much in Town, thank god, where I think I've only seen one, but whenever I go to East Coast Big City or City or Other City. I listen to the parents at ballet complaining about the number of private schools they're applying to. In a kind of ordinary nice restaurant in Newport there were Botox faces and fur coats and designer purses.

And the thing is, a lot of these people are not so different from us. Similar backgrounds. Similar educations. And sometimes this just makes me totally insane. Because I appreciate so much, really I do, everything that we have. I appreciate that, with a lot of help from our family, we were able to buy a condo in Town. I appreciate that I could quit my job. I appreciate that we can go to the doctor whenever we need to. I appreciate that we have lots of nice things and can go out to dinner and really, still, even in East Coast Big City, do so much of what we want to do.

But there's a piece of me that wants to buy a beautiful new bed like the one I saw the other day in the window of a furniture store on Fancy Shopping Street. And replace all my dingy bras and fraying towels at one fell swoop, and I'm not talking shopping spree at Target. I'd like to remodel our attic to the specifications of my dreams. Buy organic and hardcover whenever I want. And not worry every single minute about whether I'm going to find a job that makes enough money.

This is where S gets sensible. S says we could have had all that, but we made different choices. And he's right.

But I tell you, it boggles my mind how much money some people around here have. And I hate how much I want some of it.

[Newport, of course, is the ultimate metonym for money, not just that old Astor and Vanderbilt money, but real people today who have yachts and summer houses and wear Lilly Pulitzer and drive BMW SUVs.]

[I really should just delete this post.]

We Can't Resist

We are becoming Soxaholix addicts around here (don't worry, I won't keep linking, I just want to underscore how truly great this blog is and give you one more chance to click on the link, in case you didn't take me seriously last time) (Grandpa, this means you).

Newport 1: The East Coast Post

S and I went to Newport (I was going to call it Millionaire Beach Town to preserve my fiction of placelessness, but then I couldn't have links, and I figure most of my readers know me and know where I am, and the rest have either figured out where I am or don't care, so I'm going with actuality). We toured a mansion and ate at a nice restaurant and stayed in a hotel and walked on the beach.

Newport crystallized some things I've been thinking about and thinking about blogging about since we moved. I haven't managed to blog about them, I think because they're complicated and kind of obnoxious, but I also haven't managed to stop thinking about them. So I thought maybe I'd try blogging about them in the context of Newport.

I'm going to try and write three posts: the east coast post, the money post, and the house post, though I'm not sure they will come out in that order. They are also deeply entwined, so I don't know if I'll be able to keep them separate. And before I even start, I should say that it's extremely likely that this whole thing will come off as simply a privileged whine, which it is, so consider yourself warned.

***

For the last few years, I feel like there's been a constant stream of articles and stories about people leaving the coasts for the heartland: the midwest, the southwest, anywhere you can get a job and afford a house and live happily ever after.

I'll be the first to say that jobs and houses are great things. In Red State we had both, or should I say all three, because we had two good jobs and one nice house which equalled a lovely suburban life. All those things that those people in those articles move to the heartland for. Great. Fine. Groovy. I hope it works out for them.

This post is not going to go all culture and politics and lattes on you, because, frankly, you can find culture and politics and lattes in the heartland. We saw Mark Morris and Wilco and John Doe solo. We went to anti-war rallies and worked on the Kerry campaign with lots of like-minded folk (though not enough). There were corporate lattes all over the place and independent lattes just a short walk from our house.

But it didn't work for us. Why? Well, that's a long story, and a lot of it comes down to work, and I don't go there (much).

But in a fundamental way--and I didn't realize how fundamental it was until we left--it didn't work for us because it wasn't home. On one level, this is about family and friends. We had wonderful friends in Red State Capital City: friends to have seders with, and friends to celebrate with, and friends to sit around and bitch with: all kinds of friends. But our family was all in one place, 600 miles away, and nearby were my grade school friends, my high school friends, my college roommate, my post-college roommate, K and D. We were always packing up and coming back: for holidays, for bat mitzvahs, for weddings, for vacations. We could never fully root ourselves there, because everyone else was here.

OK, I'm having trouble with a segue. What I want to talk about (and maybe I did blog about this? certainly I started to blog about it, but I seem to recall deleting, as I've deleted lots of attempts to blog about this nexus of issues) is the landscape. I'm tempted to get all metaphorical and talk about the social landscape, because that's a piece of it too: almost everywhere I went in Red State, I was pretending, pretending to be a normal person in Red State (not at your house, J, and not at your house, D, but pretty much everywhere else), whereas in Blue State, I'm just me.

Really, though, I mean the literal landscape. The houses, the freeways, the beach, the ponds, the mountains, the lakes. In East Coast Big City I still drive a lot, but I drive through neighborhoods and along rivers and even the freeways go over neighborhoods and across rivers. When I get to the country, which often I do, I'm driving through woods and over hills. Almost every time I run, I run by a river or a pond, and this is in the middle of Town, which is not exactly a metropolis, but is certainly on the urban side. A few weeks after we moved, we went to the beach, the beach I went to as a kid, and I could breathe.

Basically (literally and metaphorically) it comes down to fields. I hated those damn fields. And if you love fields, because they are the landscape of your childhood or because you have grown to appreciate their bleak midwinter beauty and their summer expanse of green, more power to you, and I truly mean that. But they weren't for us. So we came home.

And I thought about all this on the beach in Newport, where I could breathe.

Highlights of My Day

- Walking on the rocks by the ocean.

- The delightful company and impeccable behavior of E, M, and A-R on a very treatly excursion.

- Snuggling on the couch and watching the candles with E.

What I Hate Most About Parenting

Making food that my children don't/won't eat.

[When I was in a rage and thought of this post, it was long and detailed and had to do with my relation to cooking and food and eating, and each child's individual relation to food and eating, and it made us sound like we have huge issues, which in fact we don't. Now I'm over it and everyone just ate the nice dinner I made, so I feel no need to rehearse it all. But the sentiment still seems worth recording.]

The Question of Whether to Keep Reading

I used to finish every book I started. I'm not quite sure why. It was like brushing my teeth or wearing earrings or going through my stretching routine before running: something I just did because I did it, without even thinking about it.

At a certain point, though, perhaps when I had kids and a job and less time to read, I realized that this habit, really this compulsion, was keeping me from reading. If I didn't like my book, I wouldn't read at all. I couldn't start a new book, because I had to finish my book. But I didn't like my book, so I wouldn't read it, which meant I didn't finish it and thus couldn't start a new one. Something of a readerly Catch-22.

So I threw caution and habit to the wind and started abandoning books. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't read it. I'd return it to the library, or put it back on the shelf, or even just leave it in the stack on the bedside table, and I'd defiantly find a new book. Sometimes I stopped after a few pages, sometimes half way through.

I started a list of books I'd abandoned, right next to the list of books I've read. Somehow that helped it seem ok.

Sometimes, though, it's hard. There are the books I love immediately and race right through (Prep). There are the books that grow on me, engaging me just enough from the beginning to keep me reading, if slowly or even a bit resentfully, and eventually becoming a pleasure (On Beauty). There are the books I cheerfully abandon after a chapter or so (something I took out of the library last week which so totally didn't work for me that I've already forgotten the title). But then there are the books that I don't quite like enough to want to keep reading, but don't quite dislike enough to quit without a second thought.

I have two of those out of the library right now. New novels I'd heard of by famousish literaryish writers: Kathryn Harrison (you know, the affair with dad book [Amazon link for reviews], which I've never read, and a bunch of novels that always get reviewed in the Times, which I've never read either) and Lynne Sharon Schwartz (loads of middle-class New York intellectual novels, including Disturbances in the Field which is great). Promising, no?

No. They're not working for me. The first chapter of Envy is dazzling, and I was ready to settle in, but then the plot gets tedious (psychoanalyst with dead kid obsessed with sex) and the writing gets pedestrian (the dialogue, my god, the dialogue is so bad). The Writing on the Wall is way too self-conscious in its "I'm writing a 9/11 novel"-ness. The character has oddnesses that make her seem like a character, not a person, and there is an arch tone, maybe it's the self-consciousness, a kind of winking at the reader, like aren't we smart to be reading about this odd character and knowing the towers are about to fall and, presumably, change everything (I haven't gotten there yet, I'm only in the middle of Chapter 2).

Oviously I should just stop reading. But I can't seem to let go. Maybe it's the old completion compulsion; maybe it's kind of wanting to see what happens; maybe it's wondering if they are really so bad, given how good the reviews are (I read The Starter Wife straight through in two days, curious if it could possibly be as bad as it was, and it was indeed as bad as it was, but it was trash, absurdly trash, fully aware of its trashness, so that was fine). And I don't really have anything else to read--except the stack of books-to-be-read on my dresser, now so high it has mitosised into two stacks.

Maybe I'm just having trouble letting go and moving on.

Five Weird Things

Landismom posted about five weird things her kids do. I've been thinking of posting about a very weird thing my kids do (#1 in the list below). Let's see if I can come up with five.

1) My kids spend an inordinate amount of time upside down. Basically a modified plough pose, if you know your yoga, though without the arm position. They watch TV upside down. They read upside down. They lie upside down on the couch and on the floor, contemplating the ceiling. They do their next weird thing upside down.

2) My kids practically live on frozen peas. We go through three family-size bags a week, not a pea cooked. When we get home, which is usually around 5:45, the first thing I do is pour each of them a bowl of coldy peas, as they are known chez nous. Which they then consume upside down, as often as not.

3) One of my kids' favorite games is known as the two-year-old game. I believe this game consists of E being a two year old and M being some older person in charge of the two year old--mom? big sister? I'm not quite sure. But they play it a lot.

Wow, those three came quickly, but now I'm having trouble. E eats frozen waffles frozen, but that basically repeats #2. M reads the same books over and over and over, but that's ordinary bookish child weirdness. Oh, I've got one, though it's a kind of passive weirdness, testimony, really, to their weird father.

4) My kids own records. LPs. Lots of them. And they go to record stores and pick out new records (well, used records, but new to them) (when their friends come over and see the records, they ask what they are--that's how weird it is for kids to own records).

I'm struggling here. And my kids are so weird, really, they are, but somehow I'm having trouble pinpointing their weirdness.

Of course there's the M weirdness of refusing to see movies in movie theaters, but I'm trying to come up with shared weirdnesses, and E is down with movie theaters.

OK, I've got it.

5) My kids spend more time planning the game than playing the game. In fact, in the middle of playing, they'll stop for more planning. Very meta.

And I even thought of one more.

Extra credit: The weirdest thing my kids say to each other: "Let's pretend that we're sisters."

Some Awesome Red Sox Blogging

Who is this guy? Is this yet another internet phenomenon that everyone knows about but me, or am I once again (not) on the cutting edge?

Chocolate Chestnut Cake Redux

When we last left Chocolate Chestnut Cake, things were not so good. There was stress; there was angst; there were suspicions of inadequacy on the part of Nigella. There was resolve to try again, with the egg yolks the recipe so oddly left out.

I tried again. This time I used the KitchenAid (I don't know why I didn't use the KitchenAid last time; I always use the KitchenAid; the KitchenAid has revolutionized my baking; I owe almost all that I am as a baker to the KitchenAid; but last time, for some reason, I did not use the KitchenAid, I think perhaps because the recipe involved lots of bowls and much mixing, and the hand mixer seemed apropos). This time I also used the egg yolks. I scrutinized the recipe once again; I wondered What Would Nigella Do; then I did what I do: asked S what to do. After much scrutinizing of the recipe himself, he decided that I should add the egg yolks after the melted chocolate and before the superfine sugar. So I did.

People, Nigella made a mistake. This recipe needs egg yolks. It also benefits dramatically from the KitchenAid. I had batter that looked and acted like batter. I spread the batter into the pan. The cake rose. I was a happy baker.

Then I took it out of the oven, three minutes after the maximum recommended time, because it seemed a bit moist, and the cake collapsed. I was once again an anxious baker, though I reminded myself that many cakes collapse on purpose.

S dusted it with powdered sugar and we served it with whipped cream to raves from the first-night-of-Hanukkah guests.

It was pretty good: a dense kind of cake, moist, but with a light chocolate flavor, and the chestnut gives it, well, a kind of nutty sweetness, as might be expected. I wouldn't say that I adore it, but I do like it, in an "I'm not quite sure why I like this" kind of way.

Overall: thumbs up (with the egg yolks).

My Little Pollyanna

E: Maybe Johnny Damon just thinks he's a really good player. And he helped the Red Sox win, and now he wants to help the Yankees win.

M: But they're the Yankees.

E: Maybe he's just nice.

Holiday Concert

The most exciting thing about M's holiday concert was that T's mom's water broke, so they had the fifth grade go before the fourth grade so she could hear T sing before she went to the hospital (which means T's new little sister has the same birthday as E!) (as do E's friend A's mom, M's friend I's little sister, and M's teacher's daughter).

The most important practical lesson of M's holiday concert was if you have an older kid, come late. It's standing room only at 9:00 when the concert begins, but the kindergarten parents leave after the kindergarten sings, the first grade parents leave after the first grade sings, etc. By the time you hit third grade, there are seats to spare. Of course this won't help us much next year, when we'll have kids in kindergarten and fifth grade so we'll need to be there from start to finish, unless there's another dramatic near-birth experience. But by, say, 2008, we should be able to drop E off at school at 8:10, go out to breakfast, and mosey into the auditorium around 9:25, just in time to sit down in a comfy chair and hear the second grade sing (M will be long gone to middle school by then).

The best thing about M's holiday concert was how totally fabulous it was, and how much it made me love her school--standardized tests, xeroxed worksheets, and all. What was fabulous? The principal welcoming us by explaining how the school has people from lots of different countries and religions so at the holiday concert they share lots of different holidays and cultures so everyone feels welcome. The music teacher who got the kindergarten kids to sing in unison, the fifth graders to sing in multi-part harmony, and every kid in the school excited and involved. The songs, which ranged in language from Hebrew to Japanese to Spanish to English, and in content from the changing seasons to the new year to lights to posadas to Frosty. The kindergarten girls in their party dresses, despite instructions to wear white tops and black bottoms. The ultimately conforming fourth graders in their white tops and black bottoms. The fourth graders singing "Song of Peace" to end the concert.

I tell you, it was like the winning entry in a competition for best public school advertisement ever.

The Day After

Last night I thought I'd come to terms with it.

If Johnny Damon thinks 13 million dollars a year is so much better than 10 million dollars a year that he's willing to cut his hair and abandon Red Sox Nation for the Yankees, then the hell with him.

But this morning, the pain is back: the sick clutching feeling in my stomach, the anxiety about what the future will bring, the free-floating fury that doesn't know where to land--on Johnny, for doing the deed? Larry, for apparently screwing up everything? Theo, for abandoning us first? John Henry, for letting it all happen?

At least if Theo were still around, we might maintain the illusion that this happened on purpose, that it was part of a bigger plan. And maybe it is. But it's pretty hard to have faith these days.

[And of course sports are the opiate of the masses, to bastardize Nietzche and Marx, and it's all just big business as usual, except...well, except that it's not.]

I Am Once Again Ahead of the Curve

Combining the topics of yesterday's post, here is the New York Times on doughnuts.

Edamame and Rice

Our family birthday tradition is going out for sushi (you know, because of our ethnic heritage and all those years we spent in Japan and our deep connection to all things Japanese, like Hello Kitty). Of course E does not eat sushi, but she does eat edamame and rice. Copiously--at the age of two she consumed three bowls of edamame one night. In fact, edamame and rice is one of her main dinners--she eats it at least once a week. So we could easily make dinner for her tonight at home and give her her heart's desire, but since she is the altruistic, keeping-up-with-the-rest-of-the-family kind of girl that she is, she is insisting that we go out, so that she can have edamame and rice, and the rest of us can have sushi.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY E! We love you more than edamame and rice!

Heartbroken

It's not often that a newspaper headline leaves me speechless, gasping, and ready to cry.

Time to stop paying attention again. God knows, I've done it before. (Don't call me fair weather, just call me too sensitive for so much pain.)

A Few Things I'm Thinking About

I'm obsessed with finding doughnuts for Hanukkah (sufganiot, for those of you who like the traditional nomenclature). Gourmet doughnuts are all the rage in Israel (link from Allison Kaplan Sommer). We made sufganiot once, the traditional kind with jelly--it must have been 1997, because we were in the house we rented when we first got to Red State Capital City Suburb--and it was a hassle. Or rather, it could be done, but since one needs latkes as well, and S will be at work 4 out of 7 nights of Hanukkah, including the night when my family will come over, it's not going to happen on my stove. Luckily Jewish Town is just 20 minutes away, and there must be somebody making doughnuts. Time to start calling bakeries.

Meanwhile, in central Pennsylvania, a Republican judge does right (as opposed to wrong, not left) by the schoolchildren of Dover. Of course, the voters of Dover already did right, by booting the school committee that voted in intelligent design and replacing them with a committee committed to evolution. It's great to see some good news for once.

And in other New York Times news, I read Ken Auletta's New Yorker piece about the Times the other day ( actually it took me a few days to read it), and wondered how, well, how believable his disdain for Sulzberger is. That is, the article invited the reader, at least this reader, to take it with a grain of salt, in the very intensity of its evident disgust with its subject.

But then came the story on unauthorized spying which suddenly appeared just as the Patriot Act was up for reauthorization and its author was about to publish a book (sorry for the link to the other side, but they've got a point this time). You start to wonder who's minding the farm.

Then yesterday, they published the article about the teenage boy who became an online child porn star, of his own volition. The article's depiction of the world of predatory pedophiles is horrifying, and I suppose that's its main point. But I found it disturbing in some more subtle ways as well. First, of course, there are the pornographic implications of writing about pornography. Isn't reading the article just a little titillating, even as it is so upsetting? And how many people read that article and thought "wow, I'm going online to find myself some of that teen webcam porn"? Maybe not a lot, but certainly enough. Then there is Justin himself. The boy clearly had a bad homelife: his father abused and abandoned him; his mother seems, at best, not to have been paying enough attention (would you let your fourteen year old go out of town on his own to meet people you don't know? and those untreated ear infections?). The article is quite clear that the attention Justin got from adult men was a huge motivating force for him, as he escalated his pornographic activities. Indeed, he only stopped when confronted by Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald, and that happened only a few months ago (see Eichenwald's accompanying essay). Now he has done a 180: he has a lawyer, he has received immunity, and he is assisting the FBI in a massive investigation. Clearly Eichenwald and the Times thought long and hard about how to do the right thing, both by Justin himself and by the subject matter. But has anyone thought about how this boy, who so craves positive attention from adults, is still getting that attention, just in a different kind of way? I'm not saying that Eichenwald and the FBI and the lawyer are in any way parallel to the pedophiles, but can't they see how hard Justin is trying to please them now? So when Eichenwald boasts, and really it is boasting, about how Justin has turned his life around, thanks to him and the Times, I don't know, I'm a little skeptical of how it will all turn out once the attention dies down.

Wow, not much coherence to this post, huh?

Child Bride?

Does anyone else think it's kind of sick that Tom held Katie's birthday party at FAO Schwartz? Or that they do so much kissing in front of his kids? Or that being by "themselves," to such folk, appears to involve a photographer?

Do you think he's going to release the ultrasound pictures to the press? Will we get to watch the birth video?

Please, someone, just make them go away.