We Didn't Have a Name for It Then

A long time ago, my sister and I arrived in Amsterdam the night before New Year's Eve. We had thought we would easily find a hostel or cheap hotel--in fact, I think we just planned to stay at Bob's--but no go. People laughed in our faces. No reservation the night before New Year's Eve? Forget it!

We stood in the square outside the train station, wondering what to do. If worst came to worst, we could always spend the night in the train station, we figured, and then go back the next day to England, where my sister had a cozy dorm room (we slept head to toe in her very narrow bed, and cooked in the communal kitchen where everyone had their own shelf with their own national food).

Then I saw a man with a big backpack emerge from the station and walk purposefully across the square. I figured he had a place to go, so I went up and asked him if he could suggest a place to stay. It turned out that he was not the tourist I'd mistaken him for, but an Amsterdamian returning from a chess tournament. He, too, scoffed at the idea of finding a place to stay the night before New Year's Eve, but he followed his scoff by inviting us to come stay with him until we did find something.

Somehow the chess tournament made him seem safe. Plus, it was a long time ago and we were young. Truly, we hesitated barely a moment before accepting his offer.

He lived in a squat in an abandoned hospital. A bunch of young people had taken it over, and by then it was a fairly reputable squat that also housed a youth center and an organization that sent bicycles to El Salvador, among other things. His flat was an old operating room with 20-foot ceilings, tall windows, and granite ledges. He slept in a loft and my sister and I slept on the couches. He loved Siouxsie and the Banshees.

He insisted that we could stay with him as long as we wanted, but we did try to find another place the next day, New Year's Eve, and then we gave up. That night his friends invited us to a vegetarian New Year's Eve dinner--I think he had a date--and we ate the traditional New Year's Eve olliebollen with them, and then went out into the streets where people set off fireworks all night long.

I think we stayed there, in the hospital squat, for almost a week, visiting the Van Gogh museum and the Anne Frank house during the day and falling asleep at night to the sound of Siouxsie and the Banshees. I meant to send him some bootlegs when I got back to London, but I never did. It's one of the things I regret.

This NY Times article on couch surfing made me think of that time. Our experience certainly proves their philosophy, and yet there's something to be said for unorganized serendipity.

[Go ahead, click on that Times link, whenever you're reading this post, and say "so long" to Times Select!]

I Did It So You Wouldn't Have To

Yes, I did, I watched the premiere of Gossip Girl.

Come on, what do you expect from the world's greatest 90210 fan? OK, maybe not the world's greatest, but dedicated for sure, and to Melrose Place too. I never got on the O.C. bandwagon, but it wasn't for lack of desire. I watched the premiere, because B's cousin was in it, and quite enjoyed it, but then watching TV regularly is such a challenge for me these days. And I always pause at the DVD when we're getting movies, but the commitment, oy, the commitment...

So, will I commit to Gossip Girl? Probably not.

Rich kids, inappropriate parents, partying in limousines, partying in bars, partying at parties, fast-cut soft porn, glitz, more glitz.

Good boy, bad girl trying to be good, really bad boy, young innocent girl, ambiguously boring boy who cheated on ambiguously boring girl with bad girl trying to be good back when she was bad.

I mean, no redeeming features, but quite fun.

Sort of Dangerous Liaisons on TV, without John Malkovich.

And the bad girl trying to be good heroine looks kind of like Cate Blanchett meets Giselle with a touch of Kate Moss and a tiny bit of young Ellen Barkin. Not that she looks anything like a high school student, but that's not the point.

Hmm, maybe I will watch again...

I Take It All Back

Eric Gagne? Mistake.

Dice-K? Send him home.

J.D. Drew? Loser.

But, seriously, the rest of this team? Great guys. Great team. So WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO US?

I don't read a single Red Sox blog (oh my god, what a nightmarish thought), but I'm wondering what they're saying about Tito these days... I mean, I love him, really, and I trust him, really, but...well, let's just say the doubt, it might be surfacing soon.

My other perhaps productive but surely non-original thought is Manny. Who hasn't played since August 28 (right?). And since August 28? Not so pretty around here...

Please please please let me be able to take it all back again on September 30. For now, I'm just trying not to look.

What She's Really Learning

M: Of course Latin is my most creative class. There's no Latin Blue State Proficiency Test.

Off the Deep End?

I think I have been quite reasonable on the lice front. Anxious and insecure, yes, but I have neither shaved everyone's heads nor rubbed in a bit of shampoo and ignored it. There has been a lot of combing and laundry, a bit of internet searching (really, not that much, considering), one dose of chemicals and one dose of home remedy (dubbed, in our home, Operation Saladhead: mayonnaise, followed by white vinegar).

Today, though, I did something ridiculous. I threw out every single hair band, including the ones at the bottom of the box, which may never even have touched the head of a member of this family.

I was at the drugstore, buying more laundry detergent for the really quite unbelievable heap of laundry in the basement. I saw the hair accessories. I realized that for ten dollars, give or take, I could buy two dozen thick black hairbands, two dozen thick colored hairbands, and a massive hunk of thin colored hair bands. And then I wouldn't have to worry about the hairbands.

Done.

Now back to our regular routine of laundry and combing.

[I hope lice positing will cease soon. And then maybe I'll post about lucid dreaming. Or vetoing children's health care. Or misbehavior at religious school.]

My Little Future Vegan

E: I feel bad for the lice.

I can't believe I missed the opportunity

to rhyme lice and mice.

It's Not That Bad

Life's fine, really, just the mouse was a bit of overkill.

What the Hell, Let's Just Add Vermin

I am sitting here at the kitchen table, working, yes, I am working at 11:30 on Saturday night at my kitchen table, and a mouse just sauntered, yes, it really did saunter, in a skittering mouse kind of sauntering way, across the bottom of the refrigerator, turning right at the baseboard, and then I looked away, so I have no idea where it went, but I just cannot cope with a mouse in the kitchen at this point, this point in the evening, this point in the weekend, this point in my life. So I'll tell S about it tomorrow, and he will be unable to cope because, well, he has lots of reasons not to be able to cope with a mouse in the house, beginning with the fact that he spends perhaps nine hours a day in the house, seven of them asleep, and we're talking seven days a week. As well as not coping, he may get mad and shout and swear, and that will be unpleasant, even though he will be shouting at the mouse, not at any of us. But, you know, shouting at a mouse won't really do much. Then there's the fact that I left my phone at my sister's house, which could be secondary to the mouse, though I don't know, it seems easier to ignore a mouse than a lack of phone. So I have no phone, and I have a mouse, and it's the middle of the night, and I'm sitting here at my kitchen table. Some people are out dancing and drinking and flirting and enjoying what a Saturday night should be, but I am here, at the kitchen table, with no phone, and a mouse, and now I think I'll get back to work.

About the lice

I was wrong.

Chocolate Babka

Really, I should not be a baker. I am neither precise nor patient, I have no faith in anything, and baking fills me with anxiety. Yet I persist. Why? No idea. Is the product worth the pain? This week: decidedly.

I know, Rosh Hashanah. I should be making honey cake, or at least apple cake. We even have a delicious recipe for apple cake (the apples are applesauce, and there is lots of olive oil--it's Italian[ish]). Nevertheless, Monday night found me sitting at the kitchen table with Nigella and Joan, trying to decide what to make.

I didn't get to Nigella. I didn't even get to the Rosh Hashanah section of Joan. I got stopped in Shabbat by Chocolate Babka. Chocolate Babka? For Rosh Hashanah? I don't know: it just grabbed me and had to be made. Remember when I used to make chocolate cakes? I haven't made one in a long time, and just the other day I thought: I should make a chocolate cake. Then there was the Chocolate Babka recipe in last December's Gourmet. Phantom made that one, and my recollection is that it did not blow us away. So Chocolate Babka remained an unspoken goal. And there it was.

Sure enough, my usual baking trauma commenced. Made the dough the night before. An ordinaryish dough, five eggs, made in the mixer, 15 minutes of mixing. And it was still totally sticky. The recipe said soft, but this seemed ridiculous. Luckily, S was home by that point, so he reassured me, as he does, divided the dough in three, dusted the three with flour, and put them in the refrigerator.

The next day. Need for ingredients. Whole Food: chocolate, but no almond paste. Way too many chocolate choices, and I hadn't written down what kind I needed. Finally went for Lindt bittersweet, since you pretty much can't go wrong with bittersweet or Lindt, and it was a 10 ounce bar and I had written down that I needed nine ounces (and it did not cost a fortune). Luckily, bittersweet turned out to be right. Gourmet store: French almond paste in tiny and huge bars. Hadn't written down how much I needed. Got the huge. Anyone know any almond paste recipes?

Home. Have to pick up E in two hours. House is a mess. I am tired. Need to mix cake crumbs (chocolate chip muffin from Whole Food), melted butter, and fraction of huge almond paste bar in Cuisinart. Only no-longer-so-new-that-my-failures-have-any-justification Cuisinart refuses to turn on. There is something that I am not locking, but I have no idea what it is. Call S. He is useless. Hang up on him. Waste precious time searching for Cuisinart manual online. Download Adobe to new computer. Cuisinart manual seems to assume a level of competence I lack--i.e. the ability to turn on the Cuisinart. Give up and switch to tiny Cuisinart. Which barely mixes cake crumbs, melted butter, and almond paste, but clearly is not going to chop ten ounces of chocolate. Chop chocolate by hand.

Roll out dough, spread almond paste mix, sprinkle chocolate, roll up, put one in loaf pan, two in bundt pan. Creatively mix leftover chopped chocolate (remember, bar was 10 ounces, recipe said 9) into streusel. Sprinkle streusel on babkas. Streusel slides down sides of babkas. Leave babkas to rise. Pick up E from school.

Recipe says they should rise above the pan. Nothing ever rises above the pan. But it's been more than an hour. Stress. Put babkas in oven. Go to farmer's market.

Home with apples, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, flowers. Take babkas out of oven. They have risen above pan. They look like babkas. Everyone impressed. I am sure that appearances are deceiving.

Well, they were outrageously good. We ate the loaf last night with my dad, and leftovers at lunch today with my mom. I took the bundt to the neighborhood Rosh Hashanah picnic this evening, and the crowd went wild. Truly. Softly sumptuous dough, sweet chocolatey filling, delicious streusel, light yet filling.

Joan Nathan's Chocolate Babka: definitely a keeper.

Lessons learned? Probably none.

Lucy, Daughter of the Devil

We have been anxiously watching Lucy's development, for many reasons, and we are thrilled that she has finally reached the little screen. Unfortunately, Adult Swim is a little late for us (yes, all of us, even the actual adults), but luckily there is also YouTube. (I only discovered the previous link's worth of video while googling for the show's website, so I've been relying on YouTube, and what the hell is wrong with those Adult Swim people that they haven't made the show a real website?) Luckily, too, Lucy has at least one maniacal fan who is serving up all things Lucy.

Really, take the time to watch at least the YouTube clip. It's funny. Very funny. And twisted. We like twisted. Hell, even my mom likes twisted, when it comes to Lucy. And we want everyone to love Lucy as much as we do and make her a huge hit so Cartoon Network orders lots more episodes and people we love get rich. And happy, of course.

Only don't watch it at work.

L'Shana Tova

Now that's what I call a walk-off home run. (OK, so everyone else calls it a walk-off home run too...)

Thank Goodness

This is no time to be losing multiple games to Tampa Bay. Luckily, they worked it out. Or worked their way out of it. Or whatever.

Summer Songs

It's been a long time since I was in tune with the zeitgeist on summer songs. Last summer? I think I heard "Crazy" once. This summer I'm a little more with it: Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, and "Umbrella" will always make me think of the summer of 2007, and if Wilco counts as a certain corner of the zeitgeist, well, everyone knows how I feel about Sky Blue Sky.

But really for me this summer is about two songs, "Purple People" and "Wagon Wheel."

[Just have to say that this post is causing me anonymity angst. Really my anonymity is a ridiculous schtick, because I do believe that everyone who reads this blog knows me in real life--is there anyone out there who has no idea who I am??--yet I persist in maintaining the pseudo-anonymity thing, which is hard in this post because it is so tied in to my summer which I'm only writing about obliquely here, even though everyone knows all about it. Stupid, I know, but my very small OCD inclination is manifesting, and I just can't bring myself to change my ways, so obliqueness it is.]

I can't link to "Purple People" because it was just written this summer by two excellent friends of mine whom I could link to, but won't (see above). Let me just say, though, that if these friends ever make it big, which is quite possible, you can say that you first heard about "Purple People" here and, like the rest of us, you won't be able to stop singing it.

"Wagon Wheel" is a little more complicated, I've just discovered, in the course of my requisite googling. Everyone everywhere (in the tiny little corner of the world where I spent my summer) was singing "Wagon Wheel." Why were we singing it? I have no idea. Truly. But singing it we were. I was told it was an old Dylan song, but apparently it's an Old Crow Medicine Show/Dylan mashup (yes, I know I'm using the word mashup unorthodoxly these days, but it's my blog and I can do what I want). I've never heard of Old Crow Medicine Show, but here's a video of them singing it. Here are the lyrics and, at the bottom, a bit of the complicated history.

Maybe you can tell why we sang it all the time, and maybe you can't, but one of the highlights of my summer was sitting in B and B's tiny living room, which used to be our tiny living room too, and I can't believe all eight of us used to share that tiny house, while B and J and S played guitar, and we all sang "Wagon Wheel," and I remembered once again that guys playing guitar are totally hot, and singing with your friends is the best, and it was a perfect summer night, and all was good in the world--at least our tiny little corner of the world.

(Summer of 1987? Another summer with B: Graceland and Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car.")

(This is another one of those posts that absolutely proves how solipsistically useless blogs are.)

Today's Dilemma

If I don't take the cold medicine, I can't breathe.

If I take the cold medicine, I can't think.

Sisters

The highlight of my weekend: watching M and E at the dining room table, each playing Stardoll on a laptop, laughing and chattering away as they constructed and compared their fashion creations.

Microexplanation: Yes, it was their umpteenth hours of screentime. Yes, it was a stupid website. But three of the four of us had nasty colds all weekend and one of the four of us was at work with his nasty cold all weekend, so I was just happy they were amusing each other and I could lie on the couch with my nasty cold and read the paper.

Macroexplanation: I think I am not misremembering when I say that for the first four years of E's life, M and E got along great. Yes, Mom, I know M would pinch E in her carseat--or do whatever it was you thought I didn't notice--when I wasn't looking, but overall they enjoyed each other's company, played together fairly endlessly, and fought briefly when at all. This honeymoon was, of course, predicated on their age difference: four years older, M still loved to play, but could make all the rules; four years younger, E was in love with her older sister, generally happy to follow her rules, and cute enough that when she was insubordinate, M could usually just laugh.

Then E got some opinions. And M got a life. And things weren't quite so halcyon. E wanted to make rules, M wanted to go out and play with her friends, and while there were still more happy moments than not, the fighting escalated, as did M's efforts to manipulate E ("First we'll play my game, then we'll play your game...OK, now that my game's over, I just want to read, not play.") and E's comprehension of when she was being, shall we say, played ("M's not being FAIR!").

When M got back from camp this summer, we hit rock bottom. I am quite confident that in the long run M and E will be best of friends. They really do like each other, and by the time M is in college and E in high school, I'm sure they will have much to do and say, not the least of which will be commiserating over their impossible mother. But with M entering middle school and E in first grade, things looked bleak. M wanted to hang out with her friends, and E felt abandoned. M had a cellphone and could go to the park and the store by herself, and E was jealous. E wanted to play, and M was bored. Which resulted in fight after fight after fight, pretty much constantly. I knew part of it was circumstantial, as M transitioned from camp independence to the familial embrace, but it was so dire as to seem (temporarily) permanent. Had we become one of those families whose kids don't get along?

No, thank goodness. And, interestingly, it took the forced intimacy of family vacation to bring them back together. On our vacation, they shared a room--and for the most part stayed in it all night, which may be a first. It was a pretty cool vacation and a pretty cool room, and they got very into doing things on their own in their room. The vacation also naturally involved time together and time apart, which made things less forced. And since we got home, they've just been normal again. Yes, they fight. Yes, M has her middle school life and E gets jealous and bored. But they are not sworn enemies, as they seemed to be three weeks ago, they play, and they seem reasonably happy together, except when they're not.

And I am one relieved mother of children who get along well enough.

S's Latest Pick

I can't find a direct link, but go here and click on track 9. Basically a John Berryman/Beach Boys mash-up, metaphorically speaking, and that's all I'm going to say. Oh, I should probably also say that it's hauntingly beautiful, musically and lyrically.

I hate to say it

but if I were Theo and I had to make a decision right now, I don't think I would re-sign Schilling. I mean, you've got Beckett who's a franchise player, Wakefield who is still strong, and Dice-K who isn't going anywhere, regardless of what Phantom thinks. Then you might very well have a rehabbed Matt Clement. And then Lester and Buchholz...I'm thinking it's time for the future.

However, there's a lot of baseball left. Given the way Detroit and Seattle are playing, I'd say we've almost got a lock on post-season, and I'm speaking mathematically, not emotionally. And if Schilling is a significant player in the post-season (think bloodstained sock), then Theo is going to have some very hard decisions, come November.

(Can we not even talk about the possibility of A-Rod instead of Mike Lowell?! Not an option, Theo. Just Do. Not. Go. There.)

The High Spark of Summer Meals

If you want some real garden-based food blogging, Kelly's your woman (and just to show how cool she is in so many ways, she's the one who pointed me to this most excellent Wilco post). I must say, though, that I've been doing pretty well in the farmer's market area this summer. I also must say that I'm not missing the CSA. I'm much happier going to the market on Wednesday afternoon, planning meals for the next three nights on the spot, buying fruit, and then going with our standard sushi/beans and rice/takeout for the rest of the week.

(Have I blogged about our current homemade sushi habit? I make sushi rice and mix it up with rice vinegar. I make some omelette with soy sauce, sugar, and a little more rice vinegar, and I cut it up in thin strips. I cut vegetables in thin strips--cucumber, red pepper, carrot, avocado. I put it all out on the table, along with nori, and we roll up maki and handrolls to our hearts' (and stomachs') delight.) (No, of course E does not eat sushi. She eats plain sushi rice, pre-rice vinegar, and thin strips of vegetable. She does like to make rolls for me, though.)

So anyway, the farmer's market. Actually, now that I think of it, my farmer's market genius is heavily inspired by my friends. Libby, also a much more impressive cook than I am, is the source of our favorite fresh tomato pasta, which I make with balsamic vinegar, assorted heirloom tomatoes, and either feta or goat cheese (last week we got goat cheese with sundried tomatoes...mmm).

And this week I was inspired by the aforementioned Kelly's gorgeous ratatouille. I did not seed my tomatoes--that's just going too far--but I carefully chose paste tomatoes and roasted them in big chunks with eggplant, zucchini, onions (those were from my sister's garden), garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Served over couscous with more goat cheese (plain this time), it was one of my most triumphant meals in a long time.

That was Wednesday night. Last night I boiled up fingerling potatoes and M made an omelette with outrageous gold and purple cherry tomatoes, so sweet we were eating them like grapes, and some more of the goat cheese (E made herself scrambled eggs and chopped up a farmer's market carrot for her vegetable). The omelette was runny in the middle for a long time, so ended up a bit tough on the outside, but overall dinner was once again delicious.

Really, I am just incredibly impressed with myself.

(Tonight? Beans and rice. But I'll chop up the big green stripey tomato whose name I would know if I were Kelly. And we'll eat more Ginger Gold apples for dessert, if we don't finish them up for snack.)

Update on the Update

Am now totally stressing out about whether the new computer is TOO small. Love the weight, but am angsting over screen size (about 3/4 the size of the old laptop's screen) and keyboard. If only I had no point of comparison, I'm sure I would be thrilled, but there's the rub...

Duh, or Another Wilco Post

I turned down Wilco tickets last night. Yes, I did. Not just Wilco tickets, but Wilco tickets with two of my favorite people. Unfortunately, they were also Wilco tickets that would have entailed significant travel and expense, neither of which I am up for at the moment.

But that's not what this Wilco post is about. This one is about, again, Sky Blue Sky, which I continue to listen to incessantly. And I continued to wonder about that riff that sounded so familiar, in the instrumental in "Impossible Germany." Cream? Allman Brothers? Traffic? (Not such a weird comparison as it might seem, really, though perhaps I am the only person who ever compares anything to Traffic these days, but the disappearance and return of the melody in "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" is one of the dominant musical motifs of my life, and it's there in another Wilco song too, maybe "Spiders"?) At any rate, none of this seemed right, and then today I was driving, listening to the song for the umpteenth time, trying to think of what that instrumental riff reminded me of, and it suddenly struck me (here's the duh): it's the Grateful Dead, of course.

Why duh? Because, uh, everyone has been comparing this record to the Grateful Dead (see link above), and, uh, I spent half my life (OK, maybe a quarter) as a Deadhead, and the Dead are the only band besides the Beatles that I can recognize within two bars. And of course, as soon as I realized that the instrumental sounded like the Grateful Dead, the song ended, and "Sky Blue Sky" began, and could that song be any more Grateful Dead? Rain and windows and little guitars? My god, it was like Jerry was hanging out in my car with Jeff, noodling away.

So how did I miss this? I think because I was so focused on the lyrics, which, for the most part, are so contemporary in a post-9/11 loss kind of way, and also because later songs are not so Grateful Dead. But it sure does make sense that I would love the Wilco CD that sounds like the Grateful Dead.

I mean, duh.

Update

I got decisive. The hair is cut. I bought a cute new Winbook (loved my old Winbook until it started to die, and this one is only 4.3 pounds--yes, the screen is small, but even though I know I'm supposed to care about screen size, well, I don't). (If you're keeping track at home, Jenny wins.)

In phantom email news, while I was away last week, two of the non-answered emails were answered, with good result. Unfortunately, the woman who owes me money has not responded to email, snailmail, or voicemail. Because I am anxious that way, I called a mutual friend to find out if something terrible had happened to her. Nope. Indeed, the mutual friend is having coffee with her on Monday--and I'm going to just happen to bump into them at the cafe...

Finally, E decided not to wear the schoolgirl dress on the first day of school. She was worried it would look weird. Instead she wore a striped orange, red, and pink t-shirt dress of M's under a blue tank top with a silver star on it. And pink crocs. And her newly-cut-but-still-pink-at-the-ends hair in bunches that she made herself. I'm just hoping the bunches are messy enough that people will assume that she made them herself, rather than assuming that she has a hair-incompetent mother who would let a girl go to school looking like that...

On Gossip

I could so totally have written this article. Except that I've never made it more than a week. And I'm not sure I could have managed the tongue-in-cheek self-delusional conclusion.

Today's Good News

We don't have lice.

I Need Answers

1. Should I cut my hair?

Last cut maybe in April. Now a few inches below my shoulders (in case you've never seen me, I have thick graying brown hair that is sometimes straight, sometimes curly, sometimes in between, slightly parted on the side, longish layers). Perfect length for scooping up into a bun with just a hairband, or pulling the front ends back into a barrette at the nape of the neck. Mostly looks fine down too. But last week I all of a sudden became completely sick of it. I was ready for it to skim my shoulders again. The only reason I didn't get it cut immediately is that I was out of town. Then yesterday I was looking at a magazine (In Style, if you must know: I loathe it, but M loves it, and we were on an airplane...) and everyone had hip long hair, and it seemed crazy to give mine up. What to do?

2. Should I buy a Mac?

OK, all you dedicated Mac-users, I know your answer. But what about switching? What about not being able to double-click my touchpad? My four-year-old laptop is going. Soon to be going going gone, either proactively on my part, or suddenly of its own accord when I need it most. Takes forever to boot up, hardly any battery, cord keeps falling out of its little socket, and I just realized that the reason my photos look so bad is that there is an out-of-focus stripe down the middle of the screen. The case for a new laptop is firmly made. Last week, I was hanging out with a bunch of Mac people, all with their laptops, and they were very definitive. But I haven't had a Mac since 1986. Aren't there good, cheap, light PCs? With lots of battery? That you just open up and they start? That don't have that string of incomprehensible icons along the bottom? And let me just keep doing what I've been doing?

Is This a Math Question or a Logic Question?

If the Red Sox beat every team except the Yankees,

and every team except the Red Sox beats the Yankees,

and the Yankees beat the Red Sox,

then who is the best team in baseball?

The Anxiety of Phantom Communication

I'm used to leaving phone messages that don't get returned. Heck, I hardly ever return my phone messages: I think it's become a social convention.

But the unanswered email? For some reason, that gets me worried.

It shouldn't, I assume. I have little evidence of emails not arriving, and when I email my friends, they generally respond posthaste--we are a very emailcentric bunch.

But here are some unanswered emails of late:

A distant friend, who is not the nicest person ever, emailed me asking for information. I responded. She asked for more specific information. I responded. Nothing. Later that afternoon, I thought of some more specific information and sent it to her. Nothing. Possible explanations: she is rude, she is on vacation, the emails didn't get to her.

I emailed the administrator of our temple, asking about High Holiday tickets. Nothing. I emailed her again asking if she'd gotten the previous email. Nothing. Meanwhile I have received at least half a dozen temple emails from her. Possible explanations: she is busy, the emails didn't get to her.

Then there are the emails that really worry me. I'm job hunting, which means I am networking, which means I am sending emails to my friend's sister and the director of a place I might like to work and there's one other that I don't remember. Cold call emails, as it were, though some of them, like the one to my friend's sister, should be expected. Nothing. Possible explanations: they are busy, they are on vacation, they have no interest in me, the emails didn't get to them.

Any rational person who trusted in the apparatus of modern life would go with the first explanations. Me? I agonize about whether my email is working.

I'm really sorry, Aunt M,

but they are so so finished. (OK, I'm not really sorry they are finished, but I am sorry that my Aunt M, who has only one fault, is sad, but if your one fault is loving the Yankees, well...I think I better not finish the sentence, for the sake of familial harmony.)

Yes, I still get excited about

bad days for Republicans. So long, Gonzales, it hasn't been good to know ya...

Thoughts on Amy

So. Amy Winehouse. Just another junkie rock star in a fucked-up relationship, Sid and Nancy, Kurt and Courtney, Pete and Kate, ya, ya, blah blah blah. Right?

Except, you know, there's always the gender angle. (Really, there is, and if you doubt it, just tell me why we're always hearing about Lindsay and Britney's bad girl/mom exploits, and there's so little out there about bad boys? Yes, they're bad, but do you think maybe we put particular pressures on them because they're girls, and both the bad behavior and the excessive attention result from those pressures? Uh, yeah.)

Anyway, back to Amy. If you haven't been following the story (WHAT? You haven't been following the story? You don't have a sick fascination with junkie rock stars in fucked-up relationships? What's wrong with you? Oh, you mean what's wrong with me? Uh, yeah, but, hey, you're the one who's reading this blog, even if I'm the one compulsively googling Amy Winehouse.)...where was I? Amy. For deep background, you can read this Spin profile. For recent news, the Daily Mail is best. (Wow, trying to set up that link, I learned the BBC is making a Samuel Pepys movie--who knew?!) To recap this month's events: overdosed, cancelled European dates, in and out of rehab, cancelled American tour, beat up and/or was beaten up by her husband, and so forth.

So where's the gender angle? Well, Amy isn't the first junkie female rocker (can you say Janis? or even Billie Holiday?), but as far as my superficial thought is going this afternoon, she and Blake are the first major junkie rocker couple where the woman is the talent and the man is the hanger-on (please don't use this claim to attack my belief in Courtney's talent--she is talented, but he was the bigger star, and we're not talking about them anyway). And yet, she thinks she is nothing and he is everything. Amy Winehouse, award-winning major rock star, possessed of a killer voice and significant song writing chops, falls prey to the same old insecurities, the same old marriage plot, the same old same old. Ugh.

[Can you tell, from the proliferation of blog posts, that I am working today? Why, yes, I am, and getting a boatload of work done too. For real.]

Overheard in Cafe

Hippish middle-aged mother to young son: Yeah, when you get older, you can play pool.

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.)