Facts, Etc.

Fact: I am unemployed. S disputes this self-characterization, especially when I am pointing anxiously to articles about professionals in their 40s who have been seeking employment for years, but the bottom line is that I do not have a job. I have work, which means income, and some people think I should go with work and forget job, but I would prefer job, though I wouldn't mind job and work, because job means steady income and health insurance.

Fact: There are not enough afterschool spaces at E's school. Every year there is a lottery, and every year we have ended up on the waiting list and stayed there. There are other solutions--off-site afterschool, teenage babysitters, grandparents--and we have used them, but they are not ideal, for a variety of reasons. Afterschool at school, four blocks from home, with your friends and your playground, is ideal.

Fact: The day we got home, which was my first official day of unemployment, there was a message from the afterschool program. A space had opened up, and it was E's if we wanted it.

Symbolic Interpretation: The universe is looking out for me and this is a sign I will get a job.

Practical Consequences: It is ridiculous to put E in afterschool when I am unemployed. And one of the few pleasures of being unemployed is getting to pick your kids up from school and be with them in the afternoon. And of course afterschool costs money which one is not earning at the job one is not at when one is unemployed. However, once you get into afterschool, you are in for good. No more lottery, no more waitlist, no more scrambling to find someone for Wednesday afternoon when the teenage babysitter has the flu. Someday, presumably, I will have a job, and we will need afterschool.

Conclusion: We have accepted the place in afterschool. I will pick E up early, when I don't need the time for work or job-hunting. I hope, symbolically and practically, this means that soon I will have a job.

Maybe I'm Just Too Soft-Hearted

We need to win. It's August, and the Yankees are (OK, maybe it's were, not are, and how happy are we that they were up till 4 this morning, and then lost?!)...the Yankees are/were/may still be on the prowl, and we need to win. So I'm happy whenever we win. But we were watching the 8th yesterday afternoon, and, you know, that was just cruel. I mean, it was good, and then it was funny, and then it got to be too much, and those poor White Sox just needed to be put out of their misery. And then it happened again, and again, and oh dear, I just may be too nice for this endeavor, this fan thing.

Then again, maybe not.

(And, by the way, although it looks like we'll still be 6 1/2 games up by the end of the evening, and Big Papi and Youk have finally gotten their mojo back, those Yankees are still those Yankees, so let's remember to keep an eye on LA and Seattle who need to keep winning, just as a wild card insurance policy.)

My Little Feminist Revisionist

E: It was a bright and sunny morning. Six women were sitting around a pine tree. And the leader said, "Kate, tell us a story." And Kate said, "It was a bright and sunny morning. Six women were sitting around a pine tree..."

School Looms

1. Unabashed Bragging

School starts two weeks from today, and we are ready.

Lunchboxes: check (E: tin Harry Potter; M: old school silver with stainless steel thermos)

First day of school outfits: check (E wanted a real schoolgirl dress, and she got it; M is going middle school casual with character, in jean capris, a striped t-shirt, and lots of necklaces)

School supplies: check (to the tune of almost $80, for E alone!)

Don't worry, I'm only bragging because this is so very uncharacteristic. Usually we are scrambling the day before school...

2. Things I Am Determined Not To Worry About

The scandal that has convulsed the middle school this summer. ( It won't affect the kids, right? RIGHT?!)

Our lack of information on pretty much everything having to do with the middle school, except the scandal. That would include what cluster M is in, how she gets her bus pass, and what school supplies she needs, to begin with. (They're always this disorganized, right? It's not the scandal, RIGHT?!)

The fact that the only other child in the grade who I know reads as well as E is not in her class, even though all I asked was that she be placed with at least one other kid who is at her level. (They told me in November that there were six children who were advanced in their reading, so there must be some others like her and P, and at least one of them should be in her class, at the very least by the law of averages, right? RIGHT?!)

E's new principal. (Sure everyone loved the old principal and was devastated about him retiring after 23 years--23 years!--but the new one seems very nice, and everyone will pull together to support her, right? RIGHT?!)

[Yes, this is one of those posts where if you think you know where I live, you could probably figure it out, but I'll leave that up to you.]

Grace Paley, 1922-2007

Yes, she was that great.

It seems significant, somehow, that Tillie Olsen and Grace Paley died within months of each other. Perhaps because I see them both on my mother's bookshelves; perhaps because they so laboriously yet seamlessly melded motherhood, politics, and literature; perhaps because we live in post-feminist, wartime days the likes of which I'm sure they'd hoped never to see again.

I'll not say who I hope does not follow them, for fear of setting the evil eye on her, but luckily we still have one more.

On the Road

I read On the Road again several years ago with some trepidation. It seemed like one of those books that might not live up to one's youthful love for it. But it did, oh how it did. My kneejerk inner feminist bristled, but my language-loving, road-loving inner Beat overcame her, and I reveled in the riffing madness. When I saw it on the cover of the NY Times Book Review I thought, oh, I should read On the Road again, but then tonight I read the actual review and now what I really want to read is the original scroll. (And Dharma Bums, which I think of every single time I walk down a mountain or run down a hill: You can't fall off a mountain!) (Except that you can. My friend J did, and when I heard of his death, it was one of the first things I thought: Kerouac was wrong.)

(Also in the Sunday Times, and this I did manage to read on Sunday, is this must-read op-ed by seven soldiers in Iraq [whose names reflect a diversity the Times op-ed page rarely evokes]. I didn't see the news much this summer, maybe two or three times a week, which is rare for me, but it seems like all that is happening is the war, going endlessly and disastrously on and on.) (No, the campaign does not count as news, because nothing really happens.)

Ballet Shoes

For freeway driving hours 14-21 of the week (yes, you read that right), we followed the example of my exemplary sister and got books on CD from the library.

Books on CD sure make freeway driving more pleasurable, though at this point I am still so car averse that I may even skip the beach tomorrow.

We only managed to listen to one of the books, even with all those hours (a few of which involved cousins in the car and hence no listening). It was Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes which mesmerized us all, even though E was the only one encountering it for the first time.

But perhaps because I'd read the book so many times (to myself as a child, to M when she was younger) and knew exactly what would happen, and perhaps because I was listening, not reading, and perhaps because I was encountering it all at once, in three straight hours on Saturday and another three on Sunday, I noticed things I'd never noticed.

Ballet Shoes is a novel of vocation, for girls, that doesn't end in giving up vocation for boys (i.e. it trumps Little Women and Middlemarch by far, and I'm having trouble thinking of any other books like it). It is also a profoundly mathematical novel, which seems somehow related to this theme: there is a constant string of financial and temporal calculations, and the narrative itself moves not by dramatic event but by season, sequentially. For some reason I found all this very interesting, and very post-WWI/Depression-era England.

I really must read I Capture the Castle.

[Anyone who knows the novel and my daughters will not be surprised to hear that M wants to be Pauline and E Posy.]

Movies, Books, Etc: Summer 2007

S watched Ocean's Eleven while we were away. He said I had to see it. He was right. I definitely did not follow the whole thing, but cool crime + hot guys = satisfaction. Brad Pitt totally has it going on, and I wonder if I'm the only one who thought of The Great Train Robbery, one of my favorite movies ever.

You'd think I would have read Monkeys, but I hadn't, and now I have, and that's about it. Oddly timeless, oddly flat.

I read most of The Dogs of Babel, and it's still by my bed, but though K said it's one of her favorite novels, I'm not so enamored. The love story engages me, but the talking dog stuff bores me, and that pretty much sums up my approach to fiction.

I finally read Murakami, and yes, he is that great.

E and I saw Ratatouille. Fabulous animation and excellent depiction of restaurant life (and the two come together brilliantly when the rats get it on in the kitchen), but my inner kneejerk feminist couldn't take the tough butch chef girl losing it for the lame guy.

Harry Potter finally entered our world. M has refused to go there, but E and S read the first book and are well into the second, and E and I just watched the first movie. The whole thing has never particularly appealed to me, but I did enjoy the movie, and now I am thinking that I will go completely heretical and just watch all the movies. My nephew tells me that this is a mistake because the books have a lot more description, but, heretically, I don't particularly care.

This book is so bad I can't name it and I couldn't read it. I'll just quote the first two sentences which I had to read about half a dozen times because I couldn't believe a copy editor hadn't done something about them (and if you don't see the problem, maybe you shouldn't be reading this blog): Laurel Estabrook was nearly raped the fall of her sophomore year of college. Quite likely she was nearly murdered that autumn.

It makes me really happy to know that Phil Rizzuto is the announcer in "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." Probably I should have known that already, and now he's dead, which is why the topic came up and I now know it, but it only makes me like him and the song that much more.

Friday Night Movie

You all may have been scrambling to find a barbecue or a beach to entertain you last night, but our plans had been set in stone for months. 8:00 found us lined up in front of the TV with a hearty supply of blueberries and pretzels, and finally it began, the media event we had certainly been waiting for (E, last week: Can we buy the DVD? Me: Let's wait and see if we like it.): High School Musical 2.

And it was, in a word...tedious.

Zac Efron was boring when he went bad, even more boring when he turned good again, and totally ridiculous singing righteously in black.

Gabriella was totally neutered: no longer smart girl, just good girlfriend.

They tried to heterosexualize Ryan by making him a Little League World Series baseball player, but luckily it didn't really take.

And though Sharpay still rules, she is now ickily reminiscent of Paris. (M, midway through: I want more Sharpay.) But they made her good in the end too, with absolutely zero narrative logic (and seemingly forgetting the fact that she got good at the end of the first movie too...).

The Busby Berkeley Sharpay-and-her-friends-being-fabulous-in-the-pool musical number ruled, and the gang-rocking-out-in-the-kitchen one was pretty good, but even the music got tedious.

And the plot? Nonexistent when it wasn't predictable.

You might ask: what do you expect? But really, High School Musical was...OK, forget about me, I just checked my original High School Musical post, and looks like I wasn't so crazy about that one either. I guess it just grew on me after I'd seen it forty million thousand times! So let's just say this one is worse, and nowhere near as twisted, which helps make it worse, and we'll leave it at that.

Oh, and if you really must see a summer resort song-and-dance movie right now, go for Dirty Dancing. In fact, I think I might need to see Dirty Dancing as an antidote.

Then again...

M: It was good.

M's friend L: It was good.

E: It was awesome.

So what do I know?

Eric Gagne

OK, so maybe not. (I'm posting in real time for once: we watched the game go from 5-4 to 5-7 on his watch, and we couldn't bear it, so we turned it off. I'm not even going to check what happened next.)

On Not Missing My Stuff

It took me twenty minutes to pack. We'd lived in the tent for eight weeks. I could have stayed forever.

The tent was in a meadow nestled against a ridge, with two other tents. It backed onto the woods, so I kept the back flaps open, and if I kept only the left flap open in front, from my bed all I saw was meadow and then the far woods, steepening up against the ridge. At dusk, as we went to sleep, it was as if we were alone in the wilderness.

It's a big tent, with walls about four feet high and a pitched roof, up four steps on a platform sixteen foot square (not sure I'm saying that right: I mean sixteen feet on each side, not four). It had a double bed, a single bed, a big set of shelves for our clothes and a smaller double shelf with books on the bottom and things like toothbrushes, hairbrushes, lotion, a jewelry box, pens, a clock, a lamp, and an awful lot of flashlights on top. There was a bottle with water for brushing our teeth and an outhouse down the hill with the best view of any outhouse I know.

E and I mainly lived in the tent. S came up a few days a week, and M lived down the road in a bunk and a trunk. K spent one night, and her daughter N was there one night, and sometimes E had a friend sleep over.

It took me maybe 30 seconds a day to keep the tent clean. E brought up some toys and books, but aside from Bitty Baby and Teddy, she paid no attention to them. She was too busy training the goats, picking raspberries, braiding grass, swimming, and playing Hogwarts with her best friend. I had some books, but I didn't read very many of them.

There was one other time we lived in a different place, all of us. We went to London for several months with a suitcase apiece of clothes, one more suitcase of books and toys, and a laptop. S bought a guitar when we got there and sold it before we left. We were living in someone else's house, so there were toys and videos and CDs instead of goats and raspberries and grass, but the net effect was the same: I was perfectly happy without our stuff, with just a week's worth of clothes and some books and my family. I could have stayed forever.

Since we got home, there's been a lot of laundry and cleaning.

I like my house, but I miss my tent.

Music Notes

So this "Umbrella" song? I don't so much get it. I've been hanging out with a lot of kids this summer, and they all know it by heart (except for M who is not so much about the pop music). Me...I find it kind of irritating, especially the "ella ella a a a a a" part.

On the other hand, "Rehab"? Now that's a hit worth being a hit. S says it's the only song he can think of that both his white teenagers and his black teenagers sing (S hangs out with a lot of teenagers--the restaurant is a bit of a youth employment project).

On the way to pick up M from camp today, I did the junkie special: Amy Winehouse followed by Hole, and I do still think Celebrity Skin is a great album. Then I did an L.A. segue into X's Anthology and I do still think X is one of the greatest bands ever.

Meanwhile, M and E are still heavy into Lily Allen. Luckily I still like her too, if not quite as much as they do (i.e. it was very nice to be alone in the car--most of my car time this summer involved E--and choose my own music, though once I picked up M, it was Lily Allen time).

Only Red Sox Nation

would be in despair with their team the best in baseball, five up on the Yankees.

(OK, J.D. Drew was a bust, but chill out on Eric Gagne, my peeps: the dude knows how to save games, he's just having Fenway adjustment issues.)

On My 43rd Birthday I...

- drank wine in a hot tub with some women I'd know for over 20 years, some women I'd know for a few hours, and some women I'd know for some time in between (OK, that was the night before, but it counts)

- finished my novel (that would be the novel I'm reading)

- got emails and cards and phone messages from my mom, my dad (two emails and two voicemails from Europe!), my sister, and my best friend

- got a fine selection of trashy magazines from my sister; a cool tape measure and chocolate from E; and a Murakami novel, tiny reading light, and awesome rain boots from S

- got to see M twice!!

- ran around the lake, did yoga, and swam

- drank a gin and tonic on the terrace here

- ate dinner here

- went for one of my favorite walks at sunset

- slept in a tent

(and worked, but that was good too)

Blog Hiatus

I was going to wait a few more weeks. I'll be away for the summer, in a (lovely) place where blogging is not so viable (feasible? no, I think viable, though it's interesting to consider the differences between the two). So I was going to stop in a few weeks. But right now I've got a lot on my mind that I can't (won't) blog, and I'm a bit busy, and thinking of posts is becoming more of an ordeal than a pleasure, so it seems like a good time to cut it off. For the moment. Check back after Labor Day. I'll likely be back.

11 Things About M

1. She got her hair cut a few weeks ago in an ear-length bob with uneven shoulder-length locks on each side in the front.

2. The top of her head comes up to my chin.

3. Her goal is to write a play and have it produced on Broadway.

4. She plays kickball every day at recess and this week she got her first triple.

5. She is going to overnight camp for eight weeks this summer.

6. Last week she decided to go to the drugstore to buy herself new flip-flops with her own money, but they didn't have any flip-flops she liked, so she bought me the new Vogue and E a chocolate bar--with her own money.

7. She admits it when I'm right.

8. She is friends with lots of boys. And girls.

9. She dresses very carefully every day, even when she ends up in jeans and a t-shirt.

10. She likes adult food writing (Ruth Reichl, Julia Child, Pierre Franey, Gourmet) and tween series (Beacon Street Girls, Dolphin Diaries, Royal Ballet School Diaries, Camp Confidential), and she still regularly rereads the Little House, Betsy-Tacy, Anne of Green Gables, and All-of-a-Kind-Family books.

11. Today she is eleven.

Speed, Age

I've lost about 45 seconds on my mile. I noticed it first last spring, but I chalked it up to the end-of-winter shift from gym to street. Don't believe what they tell you: the elliptical and treadmill do not translate to running (or maybe they do for some people, but they don't for me). Every spring when I get back outside, I have to laboriously build up my stamina and my speed--even if inside I've been working out for over an hour and running 7 1/2 minute miles.

It's clear, though, after at least a year, in which I have run quite a lot, that I am slower. My short run, which used to take me about 20:30, now averages 22:30. A longer run that I swear used to be just over 30 minutes now hovers between 35 and 40.

It makes sense: I'm about to turn 43. I have to squint at the small print on the cereal box. We won't even talk about the gray.

At least I'm still running.

And, hey, I get to live the new Reebok campaign.

A Long Post That Should Be Broken Up but I Can't Seem To Do It

Alternate title: Thoughts on Having Lived Here Almost Two Years

***

When I was little, my father worked with two other men. All three had intelligent wives, ambitious in that ambivalent early-60s smart woman way. Between 1963 and 1967, they each had two children. I don't think anyone was the best of friends, but the families were connected enough that there are stories about those days and pictures--especially one of my mother and another wife pushing me and the other wife's son in our strollers at a march with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. Eventually all three couples divorced, like couples did back then, the other two by the early 70s, my parents in the mid-80s. The fathers drifted apart, professionally and personally, but my mother and one of the ex-wives have seen each other on and off over the years, and my mother ran into the other ex-wife a few months ago.

The children's lives have intersected intermittently. We went, in various combinations, to the same grade schools, high schools, Hebrew schools. One daughter danced with my sister (am I making that up?). Another daughter was a good friend of mine in high school and right after. The sole boy went to college with one of my closest friends who has brought us together every few years--she visited us both in California, and our daughters played together gleefully at her wedding. When we moved back to East Coast Big City, I discovered that another daughter lives just a few blocks from me, and now our lives intersect in the minutiae of Town mom life. To show just how very close the world in which I grew up remains: this woman's husband made the sign for the restaurant where S works, because another childhood friend of ours is married to S's boss's wife's brother.

***

When we said that we were leaving No Longer Red State Capital City Suburb, our friends who had moved there for work were surprised. But our neighborhood friends understood immediately. Almost all of them are from No Longer Red State. They mend lawnmowers for their aunts on Sunday afternoons, leave their children with grandparents for the weekend, celebrate every birthday with the same big family dinner. Of course we were going back to Blue State, they said, we were going home.

***

In No Longer Red State I always worried about who to put down as emergency contacts when I filled out permission slips for the girls. Do you ask someone if they are willing, or do you just write down their name? After a while, it was obvious to put down J and J, because they became our local family, the friends we left our kids with, celebrated birthdays and holidays with, sat around and did nothing with. And it's not surprising that they are the friends we miss with that grip in the stomach feeling we used to get in No Longer Red State when we thought about the east coast.

Now I don't think twice about emergency contacts: grandmother, then grandmother, and, if there's a third space, grandfather.

Has anyone ever needed their emergency contacts? Especially in the cell phone era?

***

I wondered what would happen when we moved back home. Would we discover that we had nothing in common with our old friends? Would we make new friends? Did we really want to spend that much time with our families?

Here's how it's working, so far:

I think one set of grandparents wishes they could see us more, and the other sees us as much as they want (this is not because we see one set of grandparents more, but because they are different). The third set of grandparents comes and goes, and we definitely see them more than we would if we weren't here. We see my sister a good amount. We should see S's sister and brother more, but we all acknowledge the complicated timing of modern working parent life.

We see some of our old friends more, and some less (modern working parent life), but they remain our (my) emotional rocks.

We have made many new friends, in the neighborhood and at work, and we spend the most time with them, because they are right there.

What is striking, and what I did not expect, is how many people we used to know are still here. We run into them on the street, in the subway, at work, at synagogue. Some of them we reconnect with, some we just say hello, but they are always there, this interknotted net surrounding our life, past intersecting with present.

***

I mentioned my friend M the other day, and my mother asked who she was. She's one of the people who wouldn't know if I died, I replied, and my mother nodded in recognition. M and I met when our daughters auditioned for a movie. We discovered that we have some work in common, and every month or so we have lunch or coffee and discuss work and life. We haven't met each other's husbands or children, though we know all about them. But M's husband went to my high school, and she went to the same high school as my friend A, and we both know Lucy's sister and her boyfriend, and that's what it's like to live here.

***

Local K, a new friend who has become an emotional rock, shakes her head when we run into yet another person I used to know.

***

Traditionally, this was one of the big problems with East Coast Big City: that it was insular and ran on the grease of who you went to school with, who your grandparents knew, how long your family had been here. Now it is changing, thank goodness, but there is still some of that.

***

One of the ex-wives has cancer, terminal. Last week I went to a poetry reading and art exhibit that was, implicitly, in her honor. For many years, she has rented a cabin in the country next door to another woman who is the widow of a good friend of my mother's. They are both poets, and their artist and poet friends have gathered at their cabins every summer to draw, paint, photograph, write, swim, eat.

Their houses are on the lake I went to as a small child, just a few miles from the lake we went to from when I was five till I was nineteen (at the end of that summer my parents divorced and we never went there again). The poems and paintings and photographs at the poetry reading and art exhibit were inspired by the cabins and lake and meadow. One painting looked just like the farmer's house on the road by our lake. I felt all the summers of my childhood come back.

The poet's daughter, who was my friend in high school and right after, read a poem and a memoir. She wrote about how she didn't make art at the cabin, she raised her daughter, raised her to be her own person. I'm not sure I'm raising my daughters to be their own people, I think I'm raising them to be like me: to read, to eat too much ice cream, to check email obsessively, to love the Red Sox and hate the war, to love their friends and their family. But if they want to be their own people, that will be OK too. So long as they still hate the Yankees.

Things That Need to Be Fixed

- the soap dish in the bathtub (fell off over a year ago and is in a bag under the sink--the gap in the tile is taped over)

- one of the dining room windows (propped closed with a stick)

- the doorbell (little sign saying it is broken so please knock or come in)

- the dryer door (stays closed if you wedge a stick between the handle and the floor) (do you detect a pattern?)

- one of the living room blinds (barely opens and closes if you know exactly how to jiggle the strings--needs to be replaced)

- stair railing in the front hall (almost off the wall--girls are forbidden to lean on it)

- CD player (speakers are hooked up to the DVD player which plays the CDs)

We haven't even lived here two years. I hate to imagine the future.

What Do I Know About the Yankees?

Not much, except that they suck. But I'm always happy to kick 'em when they're down.

How the Other Half Goes to the Game

Prerequisites (so you can temporarily access the experience of the other half):

Get a babysitter.

Receive last-minute free box tickets from a friend who can't make a rescheduled rain-out.

Know the executive chef of the ballpark and the sous chef of the club restaurant.

What to do

Enter at the B Gate and take the elevator up to the club level. Give the security guard your name, and get special passes that have been left for you. Walk down a long cement hall lined with antique uniforms. Be skeptical that you are ever going to get anywhere anyone would want to be. Emerge into a fancy restaurant. Find it hard to believe that there is a fancy restaurant at the ballpark, even though you've been hearing about it since your friends started working there and read about it just last week in the paper. Give your name to the hostess and be seated.

Order drinks. Eat the steady stream of delicious food that starts arriving practically as soon as you sit down, without you even ordering it. Look around at the people who seem to take totally for granted sitting in a fancy restaurant looking over the field. Eat some more. Be amazed when, during "The Star Spangled Banner," everyone in the restaurant stands up, takes off their caps, and puts their hands over their hearts. Ask for your check and be told there isn't one. Go up to the line and chat with the chefs who tell you if your seats are no good, you should call and they'll get someone to take you to a better seat.

Find your seats, which are fine.

What about the game?

Sucked. Totally sucked. Terrible weather, terrible game. The highlight was the guy who ran out onto the field, was chased and tackled by security, and arrested right out there. We left after the sixth, but, hey, the other half doesn't care how much money they spend, so they leave when they want, and we spent no money, so we left with aplomb (luckily, unlike recent nights we have known, the weather and the game only got worse).

Yesterday's Developmental Milestones

M outgrew rocking kids music.

E learned to text.

Life Today

Jenny posted about this David Grossman piece which also appeared, in a longer version, in the Times last Sunday. I found it almost unbearable to read, and my own squeamishness equally unbearable, for so many people are dying all the time, and I think David Grossman would be the first to say that his son merits no more mourning than anyone else, and his grief is no different, only he has the words and the venues in which to articulate it publicly. Even as my own life has its full quota of bliss, I so often find living now a barely tenable proposition.

[This isn't what I meant to blog today. In fact, this post started as a comment on Jenny's post, but quickly outgrew the bounds of the comment. I've been mulling over a solipsistic three-part post about past and present, stimulated largely by an art event I went to Thursday night, and a lovely day of friends and neighbors yesterday. Maybe I'll get to that tomorrow. Now I'm supervising three cookie-baking girls, and then heading out, last minute, to a rocking kids concert, and this evening, even more last minute, to a Fun Sporting Event, which we usually attend on the low end, but tonight are being comped across the board on the high end. Trying to make the best of cold and rain, we are pretty much succeeding, living out the first clause of the final sentence above.]

Sky Blue Sky

The new Wilco album is so good (I know, I'm so predictable, but, hey, I gotta be me). I've gotten used to turning on Wilco to rock out, in a certain sort of way, but this is a return to the beautiful, contemplative mode ("California Stars," anyone? except not quite as innocently sanguine, though perhaps that's because post-rehab Jeff Tweedy is writing the lyrics, not Woody Guthrie). And once again (I know, I know), he says it exactly as it is, at least for me, these days: it's hard, it's sad, but there is love and beauty, and therefore hope, at least maybe. There's a little bit of the Romantic in all of us, or, at least, in me and Jeff.

(I'm not quite sure why, but this album makes me think of Leonard Cohen and Lucinda Williams and a few moments of Simon and Garfunkel when they're great, and there's a guitar riff that's so familiar, but I just can't grasp it.)

(Oh my goodness, Wilco dolls!)

(Well, I'm obviously not a Pitchfork guy. Ouch. But, hey, I love American Beauty!)

(OK, Jon Pareles makes me feel better. Oh no! Jon Pareles is making me feel better!)

(Now I feel the need to restore my cred by listing all the hip music I'm listening to, except that I'm not. But this is the other band I'm into this week, and I bet you've never even heard of them, so there!)

Where Else Can You Come for the Latest on Paris AND Wolfowitz?

Good behavior? What on earth has she done that's good? And what happened to the judge's insistence that she be treated like any other prisoner? Can we all say travesty?

On the other hand, if Wolfowitz is really on his way out (which of course he is, it's just a matter of time), there is a tiny iota of a modicum of justice being barely preserved.

Today Wolfowitz, tomorrow Gonzales? We can only hope.

Edited to add: And away he goes.

It's the 2-2-2 Pitch

Two jobs not offered.

Two jobs turned down.

Two jobs still in play.

Oh, and one short-term job that I am probably about to accept, which would make it a 2-2-2-1 pitch.

If you're wondering why you've never heard of this auspicious-sounding baseball term, it's because my cousins made it up around 1975 and, being basically meaningless, it has not spread very far beyond my family. It's the pitch with two balls, two strikes, and two outs, which has no baseball significance, but is fun to say. Just try it: "It's the two two two pitch!"

I suppose the 2-2-2-1 pitch would be the 2-2-2 pitch in the first inning, or perhaps in the first game of a doubleheader. I'd rather, though, that this game be a bit closer to won.

(Now that I think about it, I have, in fact, turned down or declined invitations to apply for a somewhat absurd number of jobs over the years--at least a dozen that I can think of off the top of my head. I must remember that I am choosing my life, not floundering through it, no matter how much the latter may appear to be the case.)

Imaginary Shopping

I could buy a lot of clothes here (but not skorts--skorts are an abomination, unless you are under 12 or playing tennis).

If You Are Watching Me Try to Feed My Child

Please do not tell me I should be feeding her hearty food, not fruits and vegetables.

Don't suggest peanut butter.

Do not tell her to try just one bite.

Do not ask if she wants sauce.

Don't tell her that she cannot have one food until she finishes another.

Please, just leave it to me. I know it looks bad, and I'm sure you would handle it better, but my guess is we've tried everything you are going to suggest, and this is how we've ended up doing it.

Feel free to judge me. Just do it behind my back, if you possibly can.

[On the positive side, E has decided that Cojack cheese is the best, so we have one more source of protein and quesadillas back on the menu--for now.]

Another Birthday Post

While everyone else is doing Mother's Day, we've been celebrating my sister's 40th birthday (it's also my dad's 70th, but he is away, so we'll be celebrating when he gets back--Happy Birthday Daddy!).

This is the speech I made last night at her birthday bash (first her husband welcomed everyone and introduced me, saying "I am a man of few words, but Becca is a woman of many words"):

Hi, I'm S's sister, Becca. Those of you who know us both know that we are very different. Those of you who only know one of us also know that we are very different, because you've heard us complain about the other. [nervous laughter as people fear this is going to be an inappropriate roast]

But there is one important way in which we are alike, and that is our looks. [peals of genuine laughter, as all evening my sister's friends have been doing double-takes when they see me]

Now, I don't really see it. First of all, nobody knows what she herself really looks like, and second, I'm the one who, when people say the baby looks just like her mother, thinks, uh, the baby looks just like a baby. [now they know they can laugh, and they are pretty much laughing through the rest]

But I have come to terms with the fact that S and I look alike, because wherever I go, from City to California, people come up to me and say, "S!!!" or "S?" or "Did you teach at City Neighborhood School?" or "Did you go to City School of Suburb?"

[Here I left out a piece, but nobody noticed. The part I left out was: So I've learned, whenever I see a stranger looking at me quizzically, to say "I'm S's sister."]

Actually, though, looking like my sister has been a wonderful thing, because I've learned so much about her. Did you know that there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of children in Blue State whose best teacher ever was S? And that she is a fabulous dancer? And such a great hostess? And there are so many people out there who miss her, and wish they could see her, and send her their best regards? [I actually can't remember if I did this part in the interrogative or the declarative--I practiced the speech a lot in my head, and this is the first time I'm writing it down.]

So I'd like everyone to raise their glass and toast S--and I'm going to do this chronologically--the best daughter, sister, wife, mother, teacher, dancer, flower arranger, long-term maker of photo quilts [at this point, S and and a few of her friends started chiming in with "ninja warrior," "Jedi knight," and the like, and I was pretty much drowned out]. May the next forty years bring double the pleasure and half the trouble.

The Last of Her Kind

I have been thinking about the intersecting set of books Jenny likes and books I like (that is the correct term, isn't it? like in a Venn diagram, with the circle of books I like and the [much larger] circle of books Jenny likes, and then the two circles overlap with the books we both like?).

At any rate, the list begins with Jane Austen and goes on to Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin*, A.L. Kennedy's Paradise, and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones that jump to mind). I think what characterizes these books is that they are fiercely intelligent, and they take a close and nuanced look at complex characters in complex social and emotional situations (not sure whether it is incidental or central that they are largely by women writers).

Newest addition to the set: Sigrid Nunez's 2006 novel The Last of Her Kind, which I'm almost certain Jenny recommended to me. About forty years in the life of a working-class girl who enters Barnard in 1968, her rich radical roommate, and her hippie runaway sister, this is one of those books that has it all: fascinating characters, compelling and unexpected plot, social panorama, big issues, emotional nuance, memory, drugs, friendship, family, class, race, politics, literature. The writing itself, at the sentence level, which is usually so important to me, is not that exciting, but the book as a whole is pretty much stunning.

Here's a more thorough, and equally rave, review from Salon.


*Correct title thanks to Postacademic.

DeLillo Meets 9/11

I am not a DeLillo fan (S plays that role in our family--I think we have all his books), but I may have to read this one. The excerpt in The New Yorker--which I thought was a short story--is by far the best 9/11 fiction I've read, really just superb.

Latest Chapter in the Bad Mother Chronicles

M and E's current #1 CD is Lily Allen's "Alright, Still."

Why does this make me a bad mother? Just check out a few lyrics.

Our current favorite is:

Just get out my face, just leave me alone,
And no you can't have my number,
"Why?"
Because I've lost my phone.

It loses a certain je ne sais quoi without the catchy beats. It sounds best of all when M, E, and I are singing along at the tops of our lungs in the car.

[Of course we all know that the self-deployment of the bad mother trope is in fact an overtly self-deprecating yet implicitly self-congratulatory mode of calling attention to the mothering practices in which one in fact harbors no small amount of pride due to their display of one's rejection of the hegemonic mothering discourses. See the original bad mother.]

Halliburton in the Classroom

This is outrageous, but, I guess, at this point not surprising.

OK, everybody, repeat after me: corporatizing government DOES NOT WORK.

Shout Out to Kelly

You should read Kelly's blog. You should eat sushi with Kelly and her kids. You should be so very lucky as to have Kelly for a friend. And you really should go to that blog and wish Kelly a happy 40th birthday! In fact, I'll just do it right here and now: Happy Birthday Kelly!

High School Reunion

High school reunion is high school, except with legal alcohol and nicer clothes (and more gray hair, says my friend M, whose high school reunion sounds a lot like mine, except with hot tubs and drunken waterskiing instead of...well, we'll just leave it at that).

I've been trying to formulate some thoughts about being a mean girl. Except Lucy and C say we weren't mean girls at the reunion. Though C is the one who was scared to see all the people she says she used to be mean to. Except that I don't remember us being mean. But then I wonder what the relation is between mean and cool. And in our high school, the nature of cool was perhaps reframed by (1) the (small) size of the school, and (2) its general intellectualized oddity. Then, of course, C, or maybe it was Lucy, says that my angst about our mean girlness is in fact displaced anxiety about the mean girl M is currently dealing with. See, it's complicated, hence my difficulty formulating thoughts.

What I can say about high school is that at the time I didn't think I was...hmm, what phrasing is most accurate...really, the best term, I think, is cool, even though that sounds so so stupid, but maybe I should just go with popular, because, truly, I don't think we were mean, certainly not in the way of the girl M is dealing with, who is actively trying to elevate herself and make others feel bad. We didn't do that, although--and this is really my point, though I'm not sure it's a very good point at all--we nevertheless probably made other people feel bad, and they may very well have thought we were doing it on purpose. OK, the high school part is that in high school I didn't think I was cool, but then afterwards I realized that I probably was.

Which leads to the reunion where, really, what I felt was shy and anxious. And when I feel shy and anxious, especially in big social situations, what I do is find one person to talk to. Which I did at the reunion. Rirst it was someone I used to be friendly with but hadn't seen in 25 years. When we said hello, she pointed out that we have something important in common, so we grabbed some wine and went over to the couch and got into an interesting and somewhat intense conversation about what we have in common.

Then R arrived and I had to tell her something, so we ended up sitting back down on the couch and whispering and giggling, and I truly felt like I was back in high school, because that's what I used to do a lot in high school: whisper and giggle with R. Which I can imagine might seem aggressively exclusive, except that we never even considered what other people might think, we just had things to whisper and giggle about.

And really I spent most of the evening on the couch, talking to one person, though other people did come and join us and we talked to them too. But of course the people who came and joined us were our friends--my friends, really. So I can imagine that us on the couch might have looked, well, mean. Even though being mean was the last thing on our minds--in fact, we didn't give a moment's thought to what other people were thinking. Though that is a problem in itself.

So maybe, I thought, this is what it's like to be a mean girl? Except I can't imagine that's what it's like to be the girl E is dealing with. So maybe the point is that there's a difference between mean and...whatever else this thing is that I'm trying to grapple with. Or maybe I really am a mean girl, and one thing mean girls do is try to justify their behavior.

God, I have no idea if this is worth posting.

It Isn't

I used to think my aversion to the contemporary catchphrase "It is what it is" was personal.

When I worked for Anna Wintour (nope, I'm not Andre Leon Talley, it's a metaphor--or is it an analogy?), her favorite phrase was "It is what it is." And her just-as-evil-but-not-quite-as-powerful henchwoman said it even more than she did. So when I left that place of employment, I vowed never to utter that phrase again. I banned it from my home. I don't like to hear it anywhere else, either.

But the issue isn't only one of association. These were two of the most unethical people I've ever encountered, and when they said "It is what it is," they were usually trying to whitewash bad behavior. In other words, "It is what it is" was their ultimate excuse.

On Saturday night, at my high school reunion (I really might blog about it someday), I was talking with an old friend and he said--I can't remember in reference to what, perhaps the fact that he is still single and has no children--"It is what it is."

"Please don't say that," I said, and I told him the story of Anna Wintour and how I've banned the phrase.

Now this guy is much more enlightened and zen and yogic than I am, and he was OK with my personal aversion, but he did push it on the general view of the universe expressed therein, saying, in a lot more words, that he believes things are the way they are for a reason, and everything is the way it was meant to be (yes, Phantom, this is what we were talking about just last week).

In fact, in my life, this has been the case. I've been very lucky and privileged, and the bad things that have happened to me--and there haven't been very many at all--have ended up causing good things that I wouldn't want to have missed. I was devastated by my parents' divorce, but 25 years later, there is no question it was for the greater good. Two years of infertility were terrible, but they resulted in E, and that's all that needs to be said about that.

However, and this is what I said to my friend, there are certain things that I simply can't find any justification for. My friend J dying at 26. Lucy's brother being killed. AIDS. The war. Child abuse.

While it would be nice to think that the current penchant for "It is what it is" betokens a benign acceptance that stands against capitalist striving of all sorts, I might venture to suggest that it is in fact, or at least also, a capitulation to a world where things as they are pretty much suck.

I know I'm overreacting to a silly catchphrase, but, hey, language matters.

Poor Roger

The "extreme rigors of travel"? Is a sportswriter really saying this with a straight face? Frankly, I couldn't care less whether Roger Clemens travels with the Yankees, but could we get real? Yes, his days as an effective pitcher are numbered (and I hope the last one occurred some time last September), but he's, um, 44, not 94, and, uh, don't baseball teams travel on private jets and stay in luxury hotels and get to sleep in every morning because work doesn't start till 2 at the earliest, 8 at the latest? (OK, OK, I know they have to get to the park and practice and warm up and all, but still...)

(I wish I could say this is the last Roger Clemens post, because I am suddenly disgusted that I am even discussing the whims of a rich, fat, jerk--yes, I do think he's a jerk--who is being paid $4.5 million a month to occasionally throw a baseball when there is a war going on, for god's sake. But, alas, depending on how the season unfolds, there may be Clemens posts in our future.)

Ah, the 70s

Postacademic and I have a lot in common, as we discovered during our first real conversation, which took place at Spats (points if you've been to Spats). She was a punk and I was a hippie, but our parents are divorced, we have sisters named S who are three years younger than us, we spent time (different time) at two of the same educational institutions, and we like many of the same books. Now it turns out that as children we both learned to chart our biorhythms (points if your elementary school teachers taught you to chart your biorhythms--more points if you still do it!)

I Don't Know What to Call This Post--Probably Something About Jobs, Work, or Health Insurance

At my high school reunion on Saturday night (perhaps more about that later), I talked for quite a while with an old friend who is in a similar situation to me, workwise. Only her husband is in hedge funds.

For the first time in my adult life, I'd rather not have a job. There are so many things I'd like to be doing--so many things I am doing--that bring in some money, might eventually bring in some money if I could devote the time to them, bring in no money but are still worth doing. And while I have lots of job possibilities and career options, I don't have a burning desire for them, a sense that THIS is what I MUST be doing, or even WANT to do. They are good possibilities that I'd be perfectly happy with, and I hope one of them will capture me and make me truly excited for work again, but that's not where I am right now.

However, where I also am is married to a wonderful man who is not in hedge funds. And where he is, there's no health insurance. And please don't give me the "you can live on one income, you just have to make choices" line, because these are the choices we have made, and I need to have a job.

Kindergarten Update

E and her friend A are no longer Power Girls because now E is a Cheetah Girl and A is an alien. Just thought you'd want to know.

Today's Baseball News

Damn.

(We were just talking about this yesterday morning at soccer. I was sure it wouldn't happen. Shows what I know.)

Headstand

I did it.

OK, so it was against the wall and my teacher was helping me, but still, it was the first time I even tried.

All the yoga classes I take seem to divide into people who do headstand and people who don't. How to get from one category to the other is strikingly opaque. So I decided to forge ahead and create my own category: people who are learning to do headstand.

You Know What Bugs Me?

No Sugar Added pickles. This is the second time in the past month that I have grabbed the pickles off the shelf at the supermarket, and then gotten home and realized that they were No Sugar Added. What's wrong with No Sugar Added? Well, No Sugar Added means Splenda, or aspartame, or some other disgusting chemical sugar substitute. And we don't do sugar substitutes. Or butter substitutes. Or low-fat or low-sodium. We like our sugar, butter, and salt. We like our food real. Except when we like it fake, but even then we like it real fake, as in Chocolate Eclair bars from the ice cream truck. There's no reason for fake food in pickles.

Michael Chabon and My Dad

[This post has nothing to do with Ayelet.]

I've been reading Michael Chabon for a long time. Except I should say that I used to read Michael Chabon.

I read Mysteries of Pittsburgh the summer it came out (sorry, this is going to be a linkless post, but, come on, you know these books, or you can find them yourself) and quite loved it. I read Wonder Boys soon after it came out and thought it was quite wonderful as well.

Then Michael Chabon turned into my dad.

Huh? How could the love of Ayelet's life, that Berkeley-based, intellectualish, liberal Jewish writer, be my dad? (I guess I couldn't keep her out of it.)

Well, my dad was born in Germany in 1937 and escaped to New York in 1941. When he was sick as a child, he would read comics and listen to the radio. So he was a 40s and 50s pop culture kind of kid. He was also, like every Jewish boy in New York, a baseball fiend. He played it--he was telling us recently that when he can't sleep, he replays his childhood baseball triumphs in his head--and he was a big Yankees fan, and he listened to games on the radio, and he went once a year to Yankee Stadium for his birthday and once a year to the Polo Grounds to see the Giants. As an adult, he is still a baseball fan (Red Sox--he came to his senses), and his main tastes in reading are literary fiction of certain sorts (certainly not contemporary women's literary or domestic realism) and mysteries.

What does this have to do with Michael Chabon? Uh, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Summerland, and, just published this week, The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

Interestingly enough, when Michael Chabon turned into my dad is about when I stopped reading him. I read the first 70 or so pages of Kavalier and Clay, and liked it quite well, but put it down and never picked it up again. S read it and loved it, and then we gave it to my dad who also loved it.

Fending off analysis, I will state for the record that I love my dad. And I know what I'm getting him for his 70th birthday this month.

[On the other hand, in this interview, Chabon does not resemble my dad in the least.]

Lindsay's Birthday Plans

Could the emphasis on the phrase "milk it" in the text (including caption) have anything to do with the photo? Subtle, CNN, very subtle.

Gender Genie

I just put five blog posts into the Gender Genie. Two came out male, and three female, but two (one male, one female) were almost evenly divided. There's some test, something like Myer-Briggs but about gender, that everyone in Intro to Psych was taking in college. I never took Intro to Psych, but I did take the test, and I came out definitively masculine.

Bad Reviews

There's a scathing review of a new restaurant in the paper today. The aesthete in me is laughing because the review is so funny and the restaurant sounds so ridiculous. The chef's wife in me is thinking, oh, those poor people. As S says, they are not having a good day.

I'm reading a stupid book. Actually, I'm leafing around in a stupid book, reading bits and pieces, hoping I can find something that will make it not quite so stupid as it seems. It's one of those anthologies, the kind where Jacquelyn Mitchard, Amy Bloom, and a bunch of thirtysomething women writers from Brooklyn say pretty much the same thing, with minute differences, about a shared topic. At first I was thinking I had to blog about how stupid this book was (I also had some perhaps thoughtful things to say about the nature of anthologies and the limitations of the writer's perspective on life). Then I wondered why I felt that need. Why not let stupid books lie?

S has never received a bad review. There have been negative comments in generally good reviews, and scathing attacks online by disgruntled customers, but overall, especially at this restaurant, he's been in the media's graces.

There are some books whose ideas are so wrongheaded that negative reviews are essential (obvious example: The Bell Curve). But doesn't it seem more humane to just leave the ordinary bad books, the ones that do no harm, alone to die their natural deaths? And what's the worst harm a bad restaurant can do? Serve someone a bad meal? And then they never go back, and they tell their friends not to go, and the restaurant dies its own natural death. Why publicize its badness?

If I were a benign influence on the universe, I would take this position, and I aspire to be a benign influence in the universe, really I do. Except I am a cranky, opinionated bitch who is offended by bad books, bad food, bad fashion choices, really, anything that grates at my sensibilities. I'm just going to try to remember that I don't always need to say so.

Virginia Tech Must Reading

This beautiful, painful piece by Peggy Hong.

One of the horrific, tragic parts of this horrific, tragic event was the Korean parents arriving in droves at Virginia Tech to take their children home.

One of the inspiring parts has been that we appear not to have fallen into our usual vendetta-seeking, racist responses--at least, as far as I know, which is not very far.

Why I Can't Handle 21st-Century Mothering

As of July 1, it is possible that I will be employed full-time. I am saying possible, though other people might say likely, because from my end of anxiety it seems equally possible, nay, likely, that I will be unemployed. Needless to say, I am in a bit of a tizzy.

If I am indeed employed full-time as of July 1, there will be childcare issues. The current plan is four weeks of overnight camp for M in July, two weeks of farm camp for E while M is at overnight camp, and one week of art camp for both while I have to be out of town. Which leaves seven unaccounted-for weeks for E, and five for M, in case you're not keeping track at home.

The Good Moms had the entire summer planned by February. I know, because they told me. I didn't, because I didn't. If I were continuing on my current schedule, I would be a little screwed, but I would know I could work it out. If my schedule changes, which it is going to, one way or the other...well, I've already made my point.

Last night, in my tizzy, I emailed eight people who posted on Craig's List looking for summer nanny positions. When I might not even need a summer nanny.

Maybe what I really need is a personal assistant. Or a job. (Yesterday, I decided that if I were a rich person with a secretary, a personal chef, a gardener, and a housecleaner, life would be good. S said what I really needed was a nanny. I said if I had all those people, I wouldn't need a nanny. He was skeptical.)

The Sticker Chart and the Chores

Once again, the sticker chart has worked.

A few weeks ago, I was at the end of my rope dealing with attitude. Specifically, with the attitude I received every time I asked anybody under the age of 11 to do anything with the slightest relationship to maintaining the household.

"E, could you please set the table?"

"But it's M's turn. I did it yesterday. She never does it!"

"M, could you please pick up your clothes from the floor."

"[Grrooooooaaaannnnn.]"

I'd had it. It was time to take action. I announced that we were going to make chore charts. Each girl would devise her own list of daily and weekly chores with me. We're not talking saving money on the housecleaner here (ha! as if there was a housecleaner around here) (hmm, can I save money on myself?). We're talking assigned nights for each girl to set and clear the table (alternating every other night, with the night off on Friday when we usually go out for dinner) (this is useful, because in fact we not infrequently will eat at a friend's or miss dinner somehow, so the old system of just plain alternating nights, rather than assigning them, was a major cause of arguments over who did what when). Also putting dirty clothes in the laundry (rather than on the floor), cleaning their room every weekend, opening the shades in the morning (E), closing the shades at night (M), helping fold laundry and doing the recycling (M--yes, her list has more than E's, but she's 10 and E is 6, and M did bupkis when she was 6, so everyone calmed down about that).

How has it worked? Fabulously. And it has nothing to do with a reward. We made a month's worth of spaces on the sticker chart, but we left it vague as to what would happen when the chart was full, though there were intimations--mainly from the children--of a treat (yes, we are the terrible sticker-chart-rule-breaking parents who use food for rewards, but we're food people, for goodness sake, and we have stick-like children who need to be forced to eat--somebody can smite me down if their body types change with adolescence and we regret it). Anyway, the reward wasn't the point; it was the ritual.

What has happened is that the onus for the chores has shifted from me to the chart. They know what is expected of them, so it's no longer Mommy the Witch Woman forcing them to abandon their books and dolls to labor in the salt mines. It's the thing that they are expected to do, and I still need to remind them, but they just do it. If they remember to check the chart themselves, that's gravy for me, and if they remember to put up their sticker, that's their gravy.

And if it costs us an ice cream sundae a month, well, that's fine too.

(Interestingly, this is how most of our sticker charts have worked. We've only done a few, but generally the stickers have been abandoned quickly, while the desired behavior has persisted.)

Black and White

I saw Dani Shapiro's new novel in a bookstore while we were on vacation and was kind of intrigued, because I liked her last novel and this one is obviously based on Sally Mann, whom I like as well. Then I read this excerpt from the first chapter (sorry if it's Times Selected), and I was even more eager to read the book because part of it is set in a few blocks of New York that I know about as well as I know any place I haven't actually lived.

It's an interesting book, though ultimately, I think, kind of irritating. It's about Clara Brodeur, daughter and model of famous photographer Ruth Dunne. Clara has spent the last 14 years of her life escaping her mother and the naked photographs her mother took of her as a child. Now Ruth is dying, and Clara needs to face her. (Don't you think I should get a job writing summaries?!)

What's interesting? Well, the story, for one thing. Shapiro is just a skilled writer, though the back and forth between the present and a fairly linear account of the past is a bit standard. Also interesting are the ethical questions about whether a mother is most responsible to her art or her child. And I liked the daily life pieces (you know, that contemporary women's literary realism thing I go for).

What's irritating? Well, frankly, the main character, and that's a problem. My first reaction to finding Clara kind of unbelievable was to doubt myself: I've never been photographed naked and unwilling by my mother the famous artist, so how can I say it's unrealistic for Clara to run away, refuse to tell her own daughter about her past, and constantly feel the world breaking down into blurry little pieces? Then I wondered whether Shapiro meant her to be an annoying character. But then I thought no, the responsibility of the novelist is to make the unfamiliar, the unknown, the that which is not me, real, and I'm not quite sure Shapiro succeeds in this case.


[Erica Wagner's review in the NY Times is just plain weird. The USA Today review is just plain stupid. This one is good (LA Times). Yikes: scary book party photo.]

Different Parenting Styles

[Prologue: E woke up delightful, but when it was time to get ready for soccer, she became increasingly impossible. I tried very hard to hold on to my grip (sorely tested in the last 24 hours), but when I sent her to get the hairbrush and found her reading in her room, I lost it--or, as another soccer mom put it, I went Alec Baldwin on her. Which resulted in torrents of tears (angry, embarrassed, and penitent, as I pointed out to her, once I regained my equilibrium), mutual apologies, and compliance, but also recurrent tears all the way to soccer. As we headed for the team, we passed another girl and her mother in earnest conversation on the edge of the field.]

Other mother: You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.

Me: You are going out on that field.

[Epilogue: I walked E to her coach and the other players in the middle of the field. She ran her first lap in tears. Within 15 minutes, she was playing happily. By the end of soccer, she was ecstatic. The other girl eventually ended up happily on the field too. But it took a while.]

A Man Speaks Up

This is a great post about how one man came to understand what it means to support abortion rights. I have stories like this that I can't tell because they are not mine, but they have absolutely cemented my already deep commitment to a woman's right to choose, and to keeping the government out of the doctor-patient relationship. [link from Kottke]

New Lives

I spent a lovely few hours yesterday in a hospital room on a maternity ward with Local K and her newborn baby. There is something so peaceful about that one happy corner of the hospital, where all is quiet and the outside world disappears as you gaze at tiny fingers and hustle to attend to the hint of a weak cry. M and E have been awaiting this birth for months, especially eagerly for the last week, and they were utterly besotted. They took turns holding him--I barely got my hands on him, except during transfers from one girl to the other--and their gentle bliss was almost enough to make me want another baby, though that semi-urge was easily squelched by their squabbles over who got to hold him and whether the other could come anywhere near when he was in the arms of the one.

The hospital is downtown and after we left, we had Vietnamese food for dinner and went shoe shopping before taking public transportation home (a post on spring shoes may be forthcoming--the situation is dire).

Though we've lived in Blue State for almost two years, and for S and the girls I think it is thoroughly home, I still feel oddly transitional, largely, I think, because of my job situation, but also, probably, because I am the introspective one of the family. So I think often about the fact and nature of our living here. Going to visit a new friend's new baby; hearing her tell M and E, when I say I won't have another baby, that her baby will be their little brother; public transportation; the diverse vitality of East Coast Big City; my children comfortable with all of it: these are things that make me feel at home.

[This one is for Kelly.]

I Finally Weigh in on Alec Baldwin

You know, I'm probably the only person in America who had a little sympathy for Alec Baldwin last week. Yes, I've heard the tape (of course), and yes, he should never have said such things to his daughter, but I've said things to my daughters that, if caught on tape, would make me look like a terrible person, plus I think whoever leaked the tape to the media surely did not have the girl's interests in mind--it's good for an eleven year old to have the whole world know her dad yells at her like that? I think not.

But my sympathy is gone at this point, after Baldwin himself has maintained this story as a media event, apologizing on television, calling Dr. Phil for advice (uh, there are other competent therapists who might keep this confidential), and pimping his book. The appropriate response to the initial leak of the tape would have been to release a statement of apology and announce that he would be dealing with this privately, which he pretty much did. The appropriate follow-up would have been to deal with it privately, doing whatever he needed to do to try and mend things with his daughter, far from cameras and tape recorders.

By contrast, this kind of behavior--the media courting, not the difficulties with his ex-wife and child--is what leaves me with pretty much no sympathy for celebrities, especially when they complain about the media. Sure it's hard to get photographed every time you leave the house, but celebrities with dignity, like, say, Julia Roberts, let the paparazzi click away, smile (or not), go on with their well-behaved lives, and, funny, seem to find ways to live a good deal of that life in private. Whereas if you're always sticking yourself in front of the cameras and trying to make your business the world's business (see: Tom and Katie, Brad and Angelina), then, yes, your life will be made hell, because you asked for it. And if you behave badly, in private, but then collude in making that bad behavior public, well, all bets are off.

I Know Nobody Cares But Me and Phantom

Josh Beckett: 5-0

Jonathan Papelbon: 7 saves (in seven tries, which makes him essentially 7-0), 0.0 ERA

Wow.

News Alert!

E has received her first marriage proposal. Yesterday, before school, C came up to her and said, "E, will you marry me?" For the record, her answer was "no." Her sister thought she should have said she would think about it, but I asked her if she wanted to marry C, and she said no, so I told her she gave the right answer. When I asked her what C did when she said no, she said that he was nice to her all day, which I think is fully to his credit.

Hypothetical Etiquette Question of the Day

If a husband comes home, acknowledges his wife and her friend chatting on the couch, and then settles down in the kitchen with a beer, some food, and a magazine, is he being rude or considerate?

Edited to add: He says he tried to talk to us but we seemed to be into our own conversation, and when he comes home from work sometimes he just doesn't want to deal with people any more. I say he gets a B in Husband (if we were into grade inflation and generosity toward effort, maybe a B+; if we were hardcore about results, a B-).

Stupidity

If this ends up in a DNA test, it will be another sad commentary on America today, whatever the outcome (I know he's a blowhard Republican, but nobody can argue with his accomplishments).

Sad Reading on a Rainy Night

This story made me incredibly sad. I suppose it should make me angry, but right now it just makes me sad for what we have become, or rather, for what our government has become, and how we treat people and lives and the truth.

Yesterday at the Bookstore-Cafe

These days I have a bookstore, a cafe, and a bookstore-cafe.

The bookstore has mostly used books, with some new, and orders whatever you want for 20% off. It's right in the middle of Town Center, so it combines nicely with Friday night edamame or any-afternoon ice cream. You can get Samantha books, thrillers, or food memoirs, and the lovely owner recommended great books for my vacation--I wanted something that was neither stupid nor Serious, and he suggested books I've always meant to read, only my vacation was so lazy that I didn't even finish a book, so I can't blog them yet.

The cafe is in Another City, a five minute drive away. It is independent and slightly dark and has couches and small rickety tables and wireless and baristas of indeterminate sexuality with narrow shoulders and pouchy bellies under tight t-shirts with low-slung trousers. The pumpkin bread is delicious, and though it's noisy with clacking yuppies on the weekend, during the week it is perfect (right, Mom?).

But this is a post about yesterday at the bookstore-cafe. The bookstore-cafe is owned by its employees who opened it after the bookstore where they worked went out of business. It is clean and well-lighted and full of books you want to read. The cafe corner has Vietnamese rolls and thick vegan cookies and at least five kinds of scones a day that they refuse to label--perhaps to prevent discrimination, but it just makes more work for the people behind the counter who need to recite the day's list to every customer who asks. The bookstore-cafe is right by my office, and I go there for the kinds of meetings you can have over coffee at its awkwardly-placed tables, or to get some work done at the counter in front of the window (or to have cold drinks and Vietnamese rolls with my mom, right Mom?). Yesterday I went at the end of the afternoon to do some work and have a sandwich, because I hadn't eaten all day.

The first thing that happened was I think someone tried to pick me up. I sat down at the counter and opened up my work and my sandwich and started to work and eat. A few minutes later, out of nowhere, the young guy next to me observed that we were engaged in similar work and started asking questions about mine. This was odd because he was at least 15 years younger than me, and I was not feeling particularly babely: my front ends of hair were pulled back in a barrette, and I was wearing a sweater I consider matronly, though come to think of it, it is tight and low cut, but would you try to pick up an older woman with graying hair pulled back from her face in a barrette, and ruffles at her (low) neckline and elbows, who is eating a sandwich?

The thing is: I am quite happy to flirt at a party or a bar or a lake (in the summer we flirt at the lake, though that's with people we know), but yesterday afternoon I just wanted to work and eat my sandwich, but even though I liberally waved my wedding ring in his face, he kept looking at me wishingly and asking me questions and finally I had to abruptly end the conversation and turn definitively back to my work and my sandwich.

The second thing that happened was that after I finished my work and my sandwich, and brusquely returned my neighbor's wistful goodbye, I went to look at the new fiction table and discovered that knitting group books are the book club books of 2007. I loved Ann Hood's Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine, a zillion years ago, and I read an essay she wrote for some magazine about how knitting comforted her after her five-year-old daughter died, so of course I had to leaf through The Knitting Circle, her novel about a woman who is comforted by knitting after her five-year-old daughter dies. The only ethical thing one can say about such a book, I think, is that I hope it helped her to write it. Though I love knitting and books, I'm not quite sure what is gained from putting the two together. (OK, I just realized there is a huge problem with the previous statement, which I'm not going to get into, but the statement sounds good, so I'll leave it. However, feel free to disabuse me of the notion, so that I can eliminate the problem.)

For the Record

M and E went swimming outdoors for the first time this year on April 22.

And now, some questions:

1) What's with the leap from winter to summer? Spring, anyone? That gentle moment of daffodils, soft sunshine, and light breezes? You know: April with her shoures sweete? Wherefore hath it goneth?

2) Is sunscreen from last year still efficacious?

3) If I have brought the sandals out, does that mean it's time to put the boots away? (I'm talking the five pairs of black boots, one of which I wore four days out of five last week, not the snowboots.)

4) Could eyelash extensions possibly be worth it? (Not that I'm considering it, indeed, I never heard of them until this morning when I saw an advertisement.)

M's Best Line of the Weekend

[Discussing whether she was going to swim in the bucolic woodsy pond.]

Me: You'd be braver than I am.

M: That's like saying I'd be taller than you are.

[Perhaps you need insider information on my feelings about cold water and my height for this to truly register, but take my word for it, it was very funny.]

Weekend Accomplishments

Four home runs in a row.

In. A. Row.

Sweeping the Yankees at Fenway for the first time in 17 years.

Oh, you thought I meant my accomplishments?

Running in shorts.

Walking around the bucolic woodsy pond (in capris).

Figuring out the difference between Zack and Cody (that's Zack, the wild and crazy one, on the left, and Cody, the uptight gay one, on the right).

OK, so the Red Sox had a bigger weekend than I did. But we all enjoyed it.

Another Clarification

Maybe I should stop blogging about this kind of stuff. Because I get all caught up in my own words, and then I'm clearly not being clear. The stuff about rich parents was meant to be an aside, though I can see how it doesn't seem that way. My main point wasmeant to be that yes, there are some parents who are overparenting, but I'm guessing the majority have their overparenting moments, but on the whole are just going along with their parenting, like parents have done throughout parenting history, albeit in the context of a media-supercharged parenting moment. I.e. think about the real people you know, the actual honest-to-god parents you carpool with, chat with outside school, went to high school with. Not the ones you read about. Not the ones you cast the evil eye upon because their kids seem like brats in the moments you intersect at the park, in the grocery store, in the cafe (if you are of the echelon that goes to cafes). How many of those real people in your life do you think are overparenting? I know an awful lot of parents. They come in various degrees of obsessiveness. But true overparenting, as described in that article? I'd say three. And maybe a few others who grew out of it. Not a huge percentage. But then maybe I just choose to surround myself with reasonable people.

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, go on to the post below.)

Those Terrible Parents of Today

Katie Allison Granju has a piece on over-parenting at Babble (obligatory disclaimer to preserve my cred: I do not read Babble; I was just pointed to this piece). In theory, I agree with her: over-parenting is bad. But at this point in the parenting media bubble, I have to question the premise. In four pages of diatribe, Granju describes the terrible hovering parenting practices of our generation in terms that any parenting pundit or mommy blogger will recognize, but she offers essentially no evidence that these practices are actually widespread. I'm not sure what statistics could serve as proof, but she hasn't found them--she cites one poll on a tangential issue. Even the anecdotes that usually pass for proof in the pages of women's magazines are strikingly absent--there is one.

So where's the beef? Are we really as terrible as they say we are? I think, perhaps, not. Consider: where do you see these parents who teach their children to crawl, schedule afternoon activities in half-hour intervals, and send their babies to speech therapy when they can't say "Mama" at six months? They're usually in the pages of the NY Times, New York Magazine, and upscale mommy lit. And what do those media manifestations have in common? Hint: major cities of English-speaking countries and lots of cash. You don't often hear about competitive parenting in Dubuque.

Of course I know some parents like Granju describes--I spent an uncomfortable hour with one just last week..in an expensive apartment in just such a city. But the majority of us? Sure we're more obsessed with our children than our parents were, but we have some reason to be: many of us were scarred by parental self-indulgence in the 60s and 70s (not me, actually, but lots of other people), we parent in a more dangerous world, and the decline of the American public school system has made education an issue that is ever more fraught. But in the day to day grind? We're too busy or too poor or simply too uninterested to hover over our kids (and I'm not even going to go there on the class bias of Granju's piece, which is a hopelessly omnipresent fact of the public discourse on parenting).

There is always going to be a certain proportion of the population that is insecure and tries to live up to media images, whether those be the housekeeping magazines of the 50s and 60s that Granju cites, the reality TV shows of today, or...well, I'm sure you can think of examples yourself. And we are certainly more media-saturated today than we've ever been. But still, I really do believe that the majority of us are just living our lives. And the recent failure of a bunch of parenting magazines supports my claim.

In my set, the basic tenet is "Don't worry unless there's blood." We may not live up to this all the time, especially when it comes to college applications and bar mitzvahs, but when we're all sitting around drinking beer, and the kids are upstairs wreaking havoc, that's pretty much how it goes. Katie Allison Granju should come over and join us some time.

On Speaking Ill of the Dead and Dying

Many years ago, a young man I knew died in an accident. It was during a period when many young men I knew died in many ways, but this young man was a family friend and I had just spent a lot of time with him, so his death was that much more present for me. There were hundreds of people at his funeral and he was mourned as the paragon he was, and everyone talked about how loving he was and what a good friend he was, along with all his other accomplishments. Only he and I hadn't gotten along during the time we had spent together. I could recognize, like everyone else, that he was a paragon, but a loving good friend? Not so much. I felt terrible for not being able to embrace the hagiographizing of the moment, but there were the facts: we did not like each other so much. I turned the dislike in on myself, figuring that if everyone loved him and he loved everyone, there must be something wrong with me. Of course I didn't say any of this, or maybe I did, but I tried not to. Strangely, the only person who I really connected with was his girlfriend. I'd been there when they met, and I'd seen him with her a few months before he died, and it was the most pleasant time we'd had together. I don't know who brought it up, me or her, but we agreed that he and I hadn't gotten along, and that it had been a pity, but she pointed out that he could be a huge pain, which he could, and after that it was easier to just feel sad and not guilty.

An elderly relative is very ill. It looked at first like he would die, but now it seems that maybe he won't. His wife died several years ago--on September 10, in fact--and he is estranged from one of his sons, and he hasn't been well. His life is hard, not a life one would wish on anybody. He is also one of the nastiest people I know, just a truly mean and awful person to whom I stopped speaking many years ago. My mother loves him, though, and so does his other son, and I am sad for their loss, which if it doesn't come now will come soon enough. But I was talking to Aunt M about how if there was a funeral soon I didn't think I would go, logistically speaking, and she said "Well, you hate him," and I said, "Yes, I do."

The title of this post is not right. I am not reflecting on speaking ill of the dead and dying; I am doing it.

I have always been deeply uncomfortable with the tendency of the funeral oration to file the rough edges, burnish the tarnished spots, and present the Platonic ideal of what was once a real person. On the one hand, it is a lovely thing that we can appreciate the best in people, though unfortunate that too often it takes death to produce that appreciation. On the other hand, we lose something, I am certain, by appreciating only the best. Because isn't part of love and real life appreciating the worst and the kind of not so great as well?

When the NY Times did the Portraits of Grief after 9/11, there were families who refused to participate because the dead relative was a son of a bitch.

My friend W was another young man who died, in those years of young men dying. I loved him dearly and M is, in part, named after him. He was dying for a long time, though, and he was particular, and got cranky, and at some point I flounced out in a huff. Here I was, caring for him while he was dying, and he had the nerve to--well, now I don't remember what he had the nerve to do, or why we were estranged and annoyed with each other at a time when we should have been savoring every perfect moment. Luckily we made up, and I was in the hospital as he descended into dementia, and I arrived at the house five minutes after he died. The fact that I can't remember why we fought might suggest that I should forget about it and just recall how beautiful he made everything, how he challenged me politically and intellectually, how much fun we had. Only that seems disrespectful to the whole complicated annoying lovable fabulous person he was. At his memorial service, we sat in a circle and shared our memories. I described how we fought and how I brought samples of the silk and lace from my wedding dress for his approval. Everyone laughed and nodded, at both memories.

I like many more people than I dislike, love many more people than I hate. But there are times when you are not supposed to dislike people, only it's hard if you do. And there are times when it is more complicated, only you're not supposed to say so.

(Really I don't hate the elderly relative any more. How could I? I don't see him, and his life is sad and lonely. The only possible response is to feel sorry for him. But I can't say that I didn't hate him, because I did.)

Vacation Notes

Nothing like coming home to a five-run rally in the bottom of the 8th and the season's first (of many) (knock wood) triumph over the Yankees (sorry about that, Aunt M).

Nothing like going to An Only Slightly Less Exciting Place and doing nothing. Well, Aunt M thinks we did a lot, but basically we hung out with friends, hung out by ourselves in the bedroom, read, went to the park, drank wine (that would be me), and counted taxis (768--that would be E). Also one shopping mecca that will remain nameless (and was, I must admit, disappointing for both of us, ontologically, though successful, consumeristically), many modes of transportation, and one museum. Despite the fact that there was much more we could have done, but I'll leave it at that.

Nothing like going on vacation and barely paying attention to the news on a terrible news week. Can I just say Virginia Tech, Iraq, abortion, Wolfowitz, and Gonzales and leave it at that? Actually, I might have a post in me about Wolfowitz and Gonzales whose desperate (and, I would predict, hopeless) efforts to hold onto their jobs signal the outrageous hubris of the Bush administration, along with its ongoing collapse. OK, I guess that's about it, and I don't need to write a post, though I will say that outrage is much easier to articulate than grief and despair, or perhaps with outrage I feel like I have something worth saying, whereas my contributions to grief and despair can only be neglible at best, cliched and sentimental at worst.

Seriously, though, M and S have been taking care of the active vacationing, but E and I are rested, relaxed, and home. Blogging will now resume.

Back in a Bit

In the last two weeks I have finished two enormous projects (you can't even imagine), survived Passover, maintained the usual work and home routine, with the addition of my father (sometimes he lives here), and not slept. I need a break. Luckily, I get one. We're off on vacation: M and S to a Very Exciting Place, E and I to an Only Slightly Less Exciting Place. Blogging will resume in a week or so.

Are You Unique?

You can find out how many people in the United States share your name here. Except it says there are 0 people who share my name, because there are 0 people in the United States who have my last name, which is obviously not the case. I know of at least six living (my mom, my dad, my sister, me, and my kids), and I believe there was one more in the phonebook of City when I was a kid, and that's just one city in one state. I mean, it's an uncommon name, but it's not that uncommon (there are three who are sort of famous, at least to those who care about the realms in which they are--or were--famous--OK, four [not me!]--but I'll leave it at that).

A First!

M just looked up from the dining room table, where she is doing her homework, at me, sitting at the computer, and said, "You look good." Which is particularly rewarding, not just because it may be the first time that she has noticed how I looked when I am not dressed up for something special, but also because I had just been looking at myself in the mirror, while E brushed her teeth, and thinking, I look good (something about my hair and my nice red shirt, or maybe sleeplessness becomes me). I tell you, the era of empathetic mutuality, it fast approacheth.

Great Job!

I think I'm getting blog amnesia. Have I already blogged my skepticism of the critique of parental praise? The one that says we shouldn't say "good job" to our kids because it will make them think they are valued only for their performance? Or perhaps that it makes them think there is an arbitrary level of achievement they must achieve? Instead, the critique goes, we should specifically acknowledge exactly what they have done, a la "My, Susie, you drew daffodils and colored them yellow." I don't know about your kids, but I'm suspecting that my kids would respond to that kind of response with a deep "duh, Mom, I think I know what I just did."

Anyway, I just read another essay on this topic in our local paper, and once again I thought it was ridiculous, but who am I to think, so I called in an expert: the kid. M read it and said, "That's stupid. When you say "good job," I don't think you won't love me if I don't do a good job." I rest my case.

Besides, I love getting praised. But maybe that testifies to my inadequate personality development, and if only my mom had just told me I'd drawn a daffodil, I would be able to draw from a deep well of self-esteem and have no need of the assurances of others.

I'm SURE I've blogged about this before. Prize if you can find it. And sorry to be redundant, but it's been a long week.