And What Did You Do With Your Friday Night?

I enabled other people's lives. Which isn't so bad.

I made dinner for two first graders and two sixth graders. I ate dinner with two first graders and two sixth graders, and discussed matters of first and sixth grade.

I packed sixth graders off to free skate and settled first graders in front of High School Musical with cherry italian ices and bunny peeps.

I made a chocolate cake for the cake walk at the school festival tomorrow (a Devil's Food from some silly baking cookbook we got at a book sale--not such a great recipe as the boiling water stirred into the cocoa was not sufficient, leaving the cocoa in little balls which did not diffuse as the batter was mixed, but it seemed a bit better when removed from the oven, and looked quite nice covered with an easy chocolate icing and M and Ms).

I cleaned the kitchen.

I took the other first grader home, because her parents are OUT and there was a babysitter.

I picked up my sixth grader and another sixth grader (a different one), and took them to their sleepover, so that the other sixth grader's parents could go OUT because their seventh grader was away skiing so they didn't even need a babysitter.

I put my first grader to bed.

I did some work.

The excitement never stops around here.

(I will say that the first graders dancing on the futon were pretty cute, and dinner was quite entertaining, and the parade of minivans and station wagons at the rink was amusing, as was the crowd of post-skate middle schoolers.) (But I'd rather have been drinking gimlets in a dive bar.) (Or, at least, I'd rather know that some day I will again drink gimlets in a dive bar.)

Spring?

From a distance, the trees could be barely fuzzed with barely green.

The Extent of My Boredom

I am even bored of Jezebel. (Truly, I am so bored. Deep, meta, existential boredom. Accompanied by shame, because such boredom is so privileged and, well, pathetic. But there it is.)

What's Up With Texas?

Could someone explain to me how they caucus AND vote? Sinda?

Here in Town, we voted today for the third of four times this winter/spring. I am not kidding. Actually, I shouldn't say we, because for maybe the second or third time in my life, I did not vote. I don't like the Democrat and can't vote for the Republican because he refuses to take a stand on choice or gay marriage. There's a third guy, but I don't know anything about him, and I left the house at 7 this morning and got home at 7 this evening, and it's raining. So no vote from me, though next time I'll be there, as that one will be school committee, which really matters.

Meanwhile, E pointed out this evening, with great glee, that we vote for president every year that's there's February 29!

Regretting Motherhood, Not

I'm in the middle of Charlotte Mendelson's When We Were Bad, which I'm quite enjoying (radical female rabbi in North London and her supposedly-perfect-but-actually-not-so-much family--what's not to enjoy?!). One of the thing's that's most enjoyable is the portrayal of Frances, the rabbi's daughter, who is a failure as a mother. Not sure why it's so enjoyable, I think maybe because the writing is just so confident: Frances is what she is, and what she is is a disastrous mother who wonders how the hell this happened to her. Anyway, my reading matter turns out to be topical: from Jezebel, links to articles on mothers who regret it in the Times (London) and Salon.

This is actually one problem I don't have at all: much as my children drive me mad and interfere with my life, I always knew I would be a mother, have never regretted it, and really do feel like it is one of the things I'm best at (except, of course, when I'm not). I remember my (childless) sister-in-law saying once that most of her friends regretted having children, and I felt so bad for them. In fact, cliched though it probably sounds (except maybe not, in these days of embracing the bad mother within), the weeks after each of my children were born were peak experiences in my life (I'd say happiest times, but for some reason the superlative scares me in this case, prone though I usually am to superlatives). Maybe it's just intriguing to explore the alternative--though the novel is much better than either article, suggesting that the intrigue is as much about fiction as alternative.

My Fault

You know that job interview question, the one where they ask (or you ask, if you're hiring) what your biggest flaw is, and you're supposed to offer up a flaw that's really a strength, or twist your flaw back into a strength? Like, "I'm too much of a perfectionist," or "I tend to procrastinate, but I always get everything done," or "I used to have a hard time delegating, but I've been working on it and now I'm pretty good." The question is partly a chance to check out your flaws, but also a chance to figure out how savvy you are, because the person who says "I never answer my email," or "I'm really bad at planning," is obviously not only flawed in the workplace, but flawed in her job-seeking capacity, which is just as bad, if not worse.

When I'm asked that question, I usually go with the perfectionist or procrastination lines, both of which are true, but signal my savviness. If I were going to tell the real truth, though, about my biggest flaw in the workplace, it's my inability to tolerate stupidity. Actually, it's more specific than that: my inability to tolerate stupidity in peers whose work affects my own.

I'm fine with inept or not-so-bright subordinates, especially when they are young. I have quite a lot of patience, and I'm a very good supervisor, teacher, and mentor. I can usually find a strength, or I can find ways to provide encouragement and support while at the same time minimizing damage.

Moronic superiors are annoying, but I can usually work around them--and if I can't, I leave.

The problem is the person on my level who is 1) stupid, 2) doing their job badly, and 3) affecting my ability to do my job. Actually, the real problem is me, because when I encounter this person, and there's usually at least one of them in every workplace, it is very hard for me to contain my disdain, and, really, the worst sides of my personality come out: the nasty, impatient, sarcastic, scornful know-it-all. God, just thinking about that person (me) makes me cringe.

Unfortunately, somebody who I work with quite closely has revealed herself as that other person, the one who turns me into someone who makes myself cringe. Actually, it's more complicated--and worse--because this person is a lot younger than me and a lot less experienced than I am. But, technically, she is at the same level as me, and she is doing a shit job at her job. Her incompetence is impressive--and this is with me trying to help her. The other problem? She keeps trying to tell me how things are. Not realizing that I'm all about making things the way they should be, regardless of how they are. Or perhaps realizing it, but resisting it, which is not such a good idea.

Unfortunately, my patience is slipping away. I think she knows she's in over her head, and I'm guessing she knows that I'm disgusted, because, like I said, in these circumstances, which have happened before, I am very bad at hiding my disgust. Which is just a terrible flaw. Really.

Hillary at 3 AM

I don't know what's better, the ads or the comments: first version, second version (both courtesy of D). (Click on these, really.)

The last thing

we need around here is an extra day of February. I mean, I get the 28 days thing, but April, June, September...any one of them could have borne the weight of 31 days every four years. And how delightful it would be to have an extra day of April, June, or September. But even in its brevity, this month has already gone on for way too long. I don't believe I've enjoyed a single day of it, and I see no reason to expect that I will enjoy another.

Guilty as Charged, Sort Of

My girls love getting pedicures. So sue me, because I do too. I'll cop to being indulgent, but hyper-sexualizing my kids by letting them have their toenails painted with sparkles and designs? I really don't think so. (We don't, however, do make-up, which may be the heart of Wiseman's point.) (Actually, come to think of it, in No Longer Red State we had tons of make-up, which I have no idea how we acquired. All played with for about ten minutes, then ignored, except when occasionally rediscovered. None of it made the move, and it hasn't been replaced. Aside from nail polish.) (Of course, pedicures and pretend make-up probably take on a differenc valence when your mom is constantly lecturing you about ads, brands, and objectification.) (None of which, clearly, do I feel apply to pedicures.)

In Which I Prove Myself a Luddite

Just yesterday, maybe the day before, I requested Beautiful Children from the library (OK, that doesn't prove I'm a luddite, it proves I'm a pop culture lemming, but keep reading). Our town belongs to a library consortium of maybe 25 local towns, so I am something like the 128th hold on 32 copies. In other words, it's going to be a while before I'm reading Beautiful Children.

EXCEPT. Stop the presses. Turn on the computer.

Charles Bock is making Beautiful Children available as a free download from now until Friday. Shades of Radiohead, except even more rad. Sort of. Given that Powell's has only one copy available, I'm guessing they're going back to print but don't want to miss any potential readers between now and then. But, whatever, free book, more power to him.

Except. It's a PDF. You have to read it in Acrobat. On your computer.

Now I spend hours a day reading on my computer--email, NY Times, blogs, documents, even short stories and poems. But an entire book? On the screen? I'm not so excited.

So it comes down to time vs. comfort. Read it now? Or read it on the PAGE?

I may not be the best test case here, or maybe it's that this book may not be the best test case for me, because I'm not dying to read it (I'm not dying to read anything right now, which makes me kind of sad--please, if there's anything I should be dying to read, recommend it!). But the idea of reading Beautiful Children on my computer has no appeal. I even--I'll confess--downloaded it, and seeing the text on the screen was less appealing than the idea of the text on the screen.

I'm waiting for the book. However long it takes.

YouTube Dependence

At a party tonight I just heard about Tina Fey's Hillary bit on Saturday Night Live. Did I feel bad that I didn't see it? No, I did not, because I knew I could just come home and see it on YouTube, this being 2008 and all (even with the berets) (see below).

But alas and alack, avant and avast! The clip has been pulled from YouTube, and I am Tina and Hillaryless!

The funny thing is, I haven't given Saturday Night Live a moment's thought in, probably, decades. But just this morning S said that Wilco is going to be on this weekend, so I was thinking, hey, maybe I'll watch Saturday Night Live for the first time in decades. Only looks like maybe I should have had that thought last week.

Since YouTube has gone and let me down and all...

Today's Fashion Tip

Men under 60 should not wear berets, especially if they're not in France. (I'd really like to say that in 2008, men should not wear berets, except maybe in France, though even there I'm guessing it's lame. But such a broad claim would negate the winter sartorial choices of my father, father-in-law, and stepfather, and I just can't do that.) (The previous sentence probably tells you all you need to know about me.)

Jimmy Fights Back

You know, I could have posted this like seven hours ago, when it only had like 200 hits, but I decided I didn't need to post it, but then C sent it to me, and I know I have nothing else to say today, and I hate to let down those of you who depend on me for your pop cultural fix, so here you go: find out who Jimmy Kimmel is f*cking.

At first I didn't think it was as funny, but then when it gets to the "We Are the World" part? And Robin Williams? Josh Groban? Harrison Ford? OK, pretty funny. And can we not worry about whether it's offensive?

But I think I'm going to have to go with Dawn: Matt is definitely the cutest Affleck.

The Aesthetics of Afflecks

OK, people, I need some back-up here.  M and I are having a dispute.  Ben or Casey?

Trying to Be Rational

Healthy people do not have an irresistible urge to lie in bed with their eyes closed.

Healthy people do not lie down in the shower.

Lindsay/Marilyn

The Lindsay-Lohan-as-Marilyn-Monroe photos are fine (and nicely highlight remarkable breasts that internet debate seems to have rendered real) until you look at the Marilyn originals.  The difference is about being alive: sure Marilyn was posing, but she was playing with the camera in the moment; Lindsay was recreating, which is always, especially when verbatim, a dead exercise.

A Little Light Reading

Having finally succumbed to the flu, or some fever/cold variation thereof, I have spent the day on the couch, dozing, fending off children, dealing with work crises by phone, and reading The New Yorker and Gossip Girl (first volume).

Re: New Yorker: found the McCain article kind of fascinating, though strangely empty--but maybe I am the one who is empty, because I also found the Louis Auchincloss profile (not, alas, on line) quite odd. For the first half, it was like why are you profiling this guy? He is just not very interesting, even if he has written 64 books. But then the profile takes a turn toward Groton (the school, not the town or the submarine base) which is quite fascinating, and really she should have written a piece about the history and legacy of Groton (to which I could contribute tales of college friends who really were the WASPiest of the preppiest of the preppy WASPs).

Re: Gossip Girl. Why do I feel like I've already read this? Maybe because I watched the first two episodes of the show? Or did I flip through it in a bookstore? Anyway, it's a bit of a slog, but maybe that's the flu... M likes it.

I've actually been meaning to write a reading post for a while, but now I'm not even sure I can remember what I've read, or what I've abandoned.

I abandoned this because geographical realism cannot trump plot banality; indeed, plot banality shows the inadequacy of geographical realism (click on that link, C, you'll laugh). Actually, wait a second, I did not abandon it, I skimmed it, because I wondered what would happen, though I could tell from scene one that it was going to be bad (never trust a novel with a first scene set in a college creative writing class).

I abandoned this because it was boring and pompous. She wants to be the George Eliot of Morningside Heights, but it just ain't happening. And you'd think I would have known better after abandoning her previous book, but I guess I'm not such a quick learner.

There's something else I think I abandoned. Well, I'm still stuck in Valencia, which made me wonder if I really did love Michelle Tea, but then I read Rent Girl and loved it, which made me think I like Michelle Tea when she's being thoughtful about sex, class, and gender, but not when she's just chasing girls around the Mission in the early 90s, but then again, maybe I am just a voyeur, because the sex trade is not something I know so much about from personal experience, whereas I was very much in proximity to the Mission dyke scene in the early 90s.

I'll try really hard to write about Without a Map without using the words elliptical, lyrical, limpid, or pellucid, but it will be hard. This birth mother memoir (Dawn, do you know this one?) is absolutely beautiful, despite, or maybe alongside? its depiction of terrible pain. I'm not quite sure why it took me so long to read, because it did, or why I don't have much to say about it, because I don't, unless the problem is denying myself those adjectives, but, really, this is a great book.

And I continued the Ian McEwan investigation with Amsterdam, which also took me a long time to read. Like all late McEwan, Amsterdam is technically brilliant, but it's oddly--almost disturbingly--mean-spirited. I wonder if Atonement is his one GREAT novel, but he got the Booker for this one because they didn't know he'd write Atonement, and then they couldn't give him the Booker again so soon thereafter, so they were screwed. Really, though, if you want a book that covers similar aesthetic and ethical ground, with more sympathy and spirit, try The Line of Beauty.

Oh man, I don't know where this post came from, and I hope it's coherent, but it has wiped me out. Back to the couch (actually, I've been on the couch all along). This may be it for a while, though I have a slight hope that maybe this won't be as bad as E's, since I don't seem as sick as E was. Then again, I have been liberally dosing with Advil, which she refused (her fever finally broke in the middle of the night last night, exactly 96 hours since it came on--in my feverish sleep, it was at least a small comfort to feel her recovering.) (Wow, really milking the melodrama there, eh?)

Tonight's Debate

Man, they are both really good.

Edited to add: But he blew her away on the plagiarism thing.

A Poem for M

Vacation is the best.
You get to take a rest
from school and all that junk,
but this vacation stunk.

Your sister was so sick
she was truly pathetic.
Your parents had to work.
You could have been a jerk.

But no, you were a doll.
You tried to help us all.
You watched E on your own
and didn't even moan.

The first day you were sad
and you never got real glad,
but you made the best of it
and kept our spirits lit.

OK, you had some fun.
New blades helped a ton.
You met your friends to skate
and iced treats you ate.

You know we owe you one.
Someday soon we'll have some fun.
Now don't you get the flu!
But if you do, we'll care for you.

A Perfect Book

Blueberries for Sal.

Perfect in narrative symmetry and repetition, visual use of elongated pages that are at once spacious and child-proportioned, twinned themes of independence and security not to mention adult vulnerability, realistical anthropomorphy, endpapers that end the story: really, everything.  And though I usually am a great admirer but not always lover of the perfect, in this case the contours of the perfect in themselves invite love.

Political Thermometer

Today I'm feeling guilty about Hillary.

The Post I Haven't Been Writing

The issue is the impostor syndrome. Or, more precisely, my impostor syndrome, which is, according to Wikipedia, hopelessly textbook.

What first got me thinking about the issue, though I hadn't named it as such, was an experience with S and our friend B, the food writer. B, who is insanely picky, has been hugely enamored of S basically since she met him, before she even tasted his food. When she finally went to the restaurant, she was beyond ecstatic. Really, everyone loves the restaurant, but B LOVES the restaurant. Only that one night is the only time she's ever eaten S's food (we've tried to have them over, but really we are all such food nuts--except, remember, I'm faking--that we just end up going out to eat at different restaurants--like the fabulous new hipster Chinese restaurant in Trendy Neighborhood, but that's a different post).

Anyway, B's mad embrace of S's expertise on what appeared to be little solid evidence nagged at me. Why? Because I feel that people often develop what seem to be inflated opinions of my expertise and capacity on very little evidence, and I am always quite certain that if they looked a little closer, they would realize that I am in no way all that.

So one day I brought this up with B. "How do you know," I asked, "that S is such a great chef, when you've only eaten his food once?" And B got quite offended. She pointed out that she is an expert on food, which she is, and that, as an expert, she knows what's good, and she knows it fast. "After all," she pointed out, "don't you immediately recognize the good stuff in your area of expertise?" (OK, that's not exactly what she said, because she named my area of expertise, but, you know, the anonymity schtick and all.) And she's right, I do. I can tell immediately if someone is any good, and I'm almost always correct. So why don't I trust other people's snap judgments of me, especially when I respect the people, which generally I do? Well, the answer to that would be the topic of this post.

Another issue, along these lines, is the people who think they are so great at what they do, but who I think suck a lot. And there are a lot of those people. And they make me wonder about my own self-assessments: if they are so obviously misguided in thinking themselves capable, or even highly capable, doesn't it seem possible, indeed likely, that were I to think myself capable, I would be similarly misguided? Yes, even I can see the fallacious logic there, even through the tortuous prose, but still, that's how I feel.

Then the other day, I was talking to Lucy about my work, and she described what I was doing in a very complimentary way. "No, no, no," I said, "that's not what I'm doing at all. Really, I'm doing this," "this" being very much a minimization of my accomplishment, in comparison to Lucy's "that." Lucy, in her Lucy way, laughed at me and said, "OK, I'll just leave you to your impostor syndrome," and changed the subject. Light bulb! That's what I'm doing! I'm living my impostor syndrome, every single day, and let me tell you, it's a little wearing.

Because these days I am really scrambling to fulfill my commitments to a lot of different consulting projects. And I know, or perhaps I should say, I am hyperaware, often to the point of near-despair, of everything I am not doing as well as I could be, and yet I am accomplishing everything that needs to be done, and the feedback I'm getting is very positive (OK, it's kind of over-the-top positive, but to say that feels like tooting my own horn in a way that truly makes me nauseous). And yet all I can think is NOT, "Wow, I have a ton of work, and yet I am accomplishing it successfully, go me!" but "Oh man, as soon as they find out all the ways I'm slacking, it will be all over." And yet, in 43 years of a fair amount of success, I've never been found out, despite my ever-present, and I mean ever-present, fear that I will be, so shouldn't I, to co-opt a phrase I used recently while giving advice to a friend, pretend to be a member of the reality-based community and accept that I'm fine?

And that, my friends, is what it's like to live with a bad case of impostor syndrome, on top of an acute case of self-consciousness.

Brooks Backpedals

Didn't David Brooks think Obama was the Great Black Hope just a few weeks ago? (Too lazy to find the links, but you know he did.) (Oh, wait, I'll just link to myself.) Not so fast, America. More proof that this unfortunately tedious Alternet article (why do so many of the virtuous elements of our universe, like Alternet, so often have to be so tedious?) is totally on the mark.

Am I the only

liberalish, thoughtfulish, bookish mom who can't bear Anne Lamott?

Today's Tips from the Whatever-It-Takes Mom

Does your feverish baby-obsessed child refuse to take more than tiny sips of liquid, no matter what delectable decoction you offer her? Pull out the old baby bottle you keep in the back of the cupboard, fill it with cold water, and let her play "happy baby" to her heart's content.

Is your cranky tween distraught because her sister is sick, her friends are busy, and she faces the harrowing fate of a day at home with nothing to do? Dye her hair purple.

A Weird Thing About Me

Sometimes when I get what I thought I wanted, I feel really sad.

Arts, Crafts, Valentines, Baseball

Dawn was talking the other day about not being crafty, and I could only nod in agreement. In fact, my lack of arts and crafts acumen was the subject of one of my first blog posts ever. And my position still stands: drawing, painting, clay, painting on clay, origami, beading, all that stuff: bores me to tears. Except for making Valentines.

Making Valentines is big in our house. The dining room table is covered with newspaper and supplies for at least a week (must clean that up--tomorrow). We have a shoebox of Valentine supplies and every year we augment it to replace what was used up the year before: stickers, doily hearts, foil hearts, red cardboard hearts, stamps and stamp pads, glue sticks, some old Valentine's napkins which we've just about used up. M and E have always brought homemade Valentines to school, though it's sometimes a travail (I feel that I've blogged the travail: ah yes, here we go) (this year I was pleased to see that three other kids in E's class--girls, of course--made their Valentines too, and she was really quite cheerful, self-motivated, and creative about the process).

We all make family Valentines, and because S always works in the evening, we give each other Valentines when we wake up in the morning (these days E is creating episodes of a TV show, E's Excellent Experts, on the Macbook, and she filmed Episode Four this morning, the Valentine's episode, where she gave out Valentine awards, in envelopes, a la the Grammies--S won Fastest Valentine Making, I believe I won Most Creative, and M won Best, which came with three pieces of chocolate gelt and a dollar).

And, you know, I get into it. I like cutting out hearts and choosing stamps and arranging stickers. I like writing little notes. OK, so I only made four Valentines, but they were pretty good: a tiny one for S, and another all in white, and an inside-out one for M, and a pretty one for E. So what is it about the Valentines that suddenly makes the arts and crafts bearable? I think maybe it's that the effort is so contained. The materials are there, and you don't need to think too much, you just need to arrange them. Limits: when it comes to art, I like clear limits and activities that demand no skill but cutting and pasting. Actually, I kind of like making collages too. So there you have it: the uncreative nature of my sole creative facility.

As for baseball, I don't quite have a post's worth of material, but I will say two things:

1) Spring training!!

2) It seems quite clear that Roger Clemens is lying, which just kind of boggles my mind, though it shouldn't--see Marion Jones--but the gall, chutzpah, etc. is just remarkable, though, then again, that's the nature of Roger Clemens, who seems determined to give everyone--except a pathetic collection of congresspeople--ever more reasons to despise him.

More on Hillary

Not a big fan of Maureen Dowd, but she's good today. (And it's interesting, because her style is very straightforward, none of her usual snarkiness, which suggests that 1) she realizes how complicated and important these issues are, and that it's not appropriate to steamroller them with snark, and 2) she may be more thoughtful, even subtle, than the last couple of years might make us think.) (Hmm, might there be a parallel between Maureen Dowd and Hillary Clinton? Probably, but I'm too lazy to fully develop it.)

I So Totally Do Not Get Election Results

Or rather, how and why the media calls them. Right now, at 9:47, they're calling Maryland for Obama, but showing 0% of precincts reporting, and in that 0%, Clinton has 50% and Obama has 33%. Meanwhile, 49% of the vote in DC has been reported, and Obama is ahead with 76% to Clinton's 23% and they haven't called it. Huh?? Maybe they know that Friendship Heights hasn't been reported yet... I know it's all exit polls, but I thought they'd been scared off from exit polls, after the last few years. Where is D with reasoned explanation when I need him?! Oh yeah, he's on an exotic vacation, along with the rest of my nearest and dearest...

If you can't even find time for date night,

how on earth will you manage to come up with novelty dates? Then again, sounds like crawling back and forth pushing a ball with your wrists and ankles bound together will do the trick, and that shouldn't take much time. (If that doesn't make you want to read the article, then you have no curiosity. Except, it's a really stupid article, so maybe you should just go Lacanian and stick with the desire.) (I tell you, I am so tempted these days to make this blog all Lacan all the time, except then I'd surely lose the few readers I've got...) [link from Jezebel]

My Blog As An Airborne Commercial

E got a nasty cold. Nasty in its coldness, but also in its whininess. Whininess is one of the criteria we use to judge how sick our kids are: it usually goes in inverse proportion to actual illness, i.e. the more they whine, the less sick they really are, because when they're really sick, they just lie there and are pathetic. However this cold, which is pretty bad, is accompanied by pretty bad whines, which doubles the unpleasantness.

At any rate, E was sick, and then she got better (luckily, nasty as it is, this cold lasts only about three days).

I felt like maybe I was getting sick. I took Airborne, maybe twice. I was fine. A few days later I felt the beginnings of a few symptoms. I took Airborne, this time for a little longer. I'm fine.

S started to feel like he was getting sick. I made him take Airborne. He had one day of dragginess and a bit of whining, and now he's fine.

M started to feel sick. She pointblank refused to take Airborne. She said it tasted yucky. I urged; I cajoled: no dice. Now M has the nasty cold. She is hot, she has a headache, she is blowing her nose constantly, she feels terrible, she is whiny. She also has agreed that next time she will take the Airborne, because it's better to taste terrible for a few moments than to feel terrible for days.

I tell you, that company should hire us as shills! Only they don't even need to, because we're doing it for free.

(Placebo or remedy, I don't care: it works.)

Whiny Posts I'm Sparing You Today

- the one about the weather

- the one about other people's exotic vacations

- the one about family members with colds

- the one about pale, flaky skin

- the one about work

- the one about the sky (mooted today, because the sky is blue, but nothing has changed)

- the one about computers

- the one about Lacan (I actually may write that one, but I'm waiting to see if its impetus is in fact a function of current circumstances misrepresenting themselves as bedrock fact)

- the one about boredom

- the one about February (which probably would suffice for all the rest, but I'm not going to write it either)

If you clicked through to that Grammy post before 11 Sunday night,

well, there's now more. A lot more. Really, a ridiculous amount more. So if you thought it was enough already, don't go back.

I'm Sorry, But I Just Cannot Resist Some Grammy Live-Blogging

Now, who thought of pairing Rihanna with The Time??????? And were they brilliant or had they just been on meth for way too long?

Loved the umbrellas.

But then the segue into Tom Hanks, awarding a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award to the Band? I mean, I LOVE the Band, and they totally deserve anything they get, but was that weird and undernourished, or what?

And then the BEATLES??? WHY???

But it only gets weirder: Miley Cyrus and Cyndi Lauper???? The one with black hair and white dress; the other with white hair and black dress???

Then we're outside with Jason Bateman (M: "THAT'S THE HUSBAND WHO ADOPTS HER BABY FROM JUNO!!!") and a bunch of electric violinists?

Why, oh, why didn't I take my acid tonight? Oh yeah, because I don't even need to.

OK, Amy's won her award, and I need to put E to bed. I don't know, though, if it keeps going like this, I may be back.

Edited to add: S thinks I'm overreacting, but I don't know...

I'm back. And Kanye West has a tail. But singing for his mom is nice. Though the angel mother floating over him is a little freaky.

Are we the only ones getting this hiccup in the feed? Not so good, for the Grammys...

OK, singing for his mom is really pretty beautiful. But the angel is still freaky.

Fergie. Cannot. Sing. Even in an evening gown.

M is excited over the Best Compilations nominees. Wow. Ringo. All I can say is wow. No, I must say: Wow, Ringo in sparkles. Last man standing. (OK, Paul is standing too, but not on the Grammys stage.)

Coming right up, Cher, Beyonce, AND Tina Turner? Be still, my beating heart! (S says I'm being too cynical, but that is TOTALLY sincere!!)

By the way, M and I are both strongly opposed to "Hey There Delilah." On any and all fronts. But M is torn between "Umbrella" and "Rehab." Luckily, I don't think she'll be staying up long enough to feel pain or pleasure either way.

Cher. Botox. That's all I have to say about that.

Beyonce. Green hot pants. Wow. Love the tribute to Black divas.

Oh man, Tina Is The Coolest Ever. Ever. I mean, Ever. Silver lame bustier and...what are those things anyway? Knickers? (M: "That is an outfit.") R.I.P. Ike. (Uh, I'm afraid we need to say Botox again, but still, she's TINA!) Those dancing girls have some serious abs... Damn hiccup in the feed.

Beyonce back in the shortest silver sparkles ever. "We like to do it nice and...ROUGH." Beyonce and Tina taking it to the streets on "Proud Mary." THIS IS AWESOME. (Seriously, if you didn't see it, search this one on YouTube, people, you will not regret it.) Love that last bit of Beyonce air guitar.

OK, now we're back to the wack combos: Nelly Furtado and Andy Williams?? (and someone I've never heard of, but who cares)

Amy again. OK, parental decision: do we let M stay up to see Amy live by satellite from London? (M: "YES!")

S, in a moment of fashion heroism: "Pedal-pushers!"

Dave Grohl looks exactly as he looked in 1992. "Except healthier," says S.

S again: "Rock is dead." Laughs at me typing as soon as he speaks. Amends: "Not really, but at the Grammys."

George Lopez goes edgy with the election jokes.

Brad Paisley makes M flee the room (she'd already been booted, but was lingering in the doorway). Brad Paisley looks like this guy I used to know who always carried a guitar...hmm, wonder if anyone reading this blog would know who I'm talking about--C from college, do you remember that guy from back around 1986? He showed up again this summer, still carrying that guitar...

M comes back in for one last kiss goodnight: "I love you. I'd like to check you for ticks." (You know, this post so needs links...) (Because I'm too lazy for links, but doubt anyone who reads this blog will get that reference, I'll just tell you it's a line from the Brad Paisley song.)

Good for Kanye, talking over the music trying to cut him off. (S: "He's insane.")

Feel like I should have something to say about this gospel medley, but I don't really. It's nice. Aretha's dress is chartreuse.

I'm glad I'm not an audience member in that weird cage box in front of the stage.

More sparkles on Carole King. This is one sparkly night.

Oh, cool, I finally get to hear Feist.

Hey, I like Feist. Though she's no Amy.

Of course we have her CD, and I had no idea.

Uh, wait, is she standing on a giant scrambled egg?

Kid Rock and Keely Smith? OK. You know, I'm not quite sure if I think Kid Rock is totally disgusting or kind of excellent.

Shot of Bonnie Raitt in the audience.

S, on seeing John Fogerty nominated for Best Rock Album: "Good God."

Keely is confused.

Foo Fighters over Bruce and Wilco?? Wouldn't have been my call... Wait, why are all those people on the stage? Keely looks really confused, and not quite sure why she's on the stage.

S calls it a night (he's not feeling well). Now the question is whether I'm going to stay up for Amy. Especially now that we have YouTube.

Naomi and the lizards...of course.

Stevie Wonder has won 25 Grammies? Think he'll do an Obama plug? Nope: Berry Gordy. Another bizarrely flat tribute.

Alicia Keys: sparkles. And really big earrings. With sparkles.

Ringo and Dave Stewart in matching facial hair and sunglasses. Giving the Best Country Album award??

I must be getting tired: Yitzhak Perlman and Max Roach seems like a reasonable combination--oh, they're just making yet another Lifetime Achievement acknowledgement. Some serious cost/time-cutting in these "tributes."

Reeeaaallllyyyy long piano thing that I'm not paying attention to. Sorry, I just want Amy, but I'm having a feeling that discretion is going to triumph over valor and I'm going to be seeing Amy on YouTube tomorrow...

Oh yeah, Rihanna and Jay-Z for "Umbrella." I'll be happy for M. She's cute. Rihanna, not M. Though she's cute too.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Amy!!!!!! Look at all these people sitting in a club in London at, what, must be 4 in the morning?

OK, gratuitous dancing boys. Amy is vertical. Looking cute. Holding onto the beat, barely.

And she nails it. And even dares to sing "Rehab." With a bit of a smirk. And a real smile at the end. She done good.

Natalie Cole and Tony Bennett? Time for me to go to bed. Oh wait, it's Record of the Year: AMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Looking so cute and shocked and disbelieving. Crying in the arms of her back-up dudes. Man, I hope she can stay alive. Is that her mom she's hugging? Kicks it in her speech, and now I am going to BED.

I hope you have enjoyed our time together...

Class, Race, Gender

Today the paper printed the election results by town. In our little white corner of Blue State, the results were pure class: Obama took the affluent towns; Clinton the less affluent.

Town is an interesting case. We are in the middle of a newcomers/townies class war--also involving unions--that to date has largely been waged in School Committee, but just carried over into an important local race. The old guard won (to the disgust and despair of the rest of us--the guy they ran was really a placeholder for rage, not a viable candidate). Clinton also beat Obama--by 200 votes.

But here's what I'm wondering: how much of the class thing is in fact a race thing? That is, are the white lower-middle/working class/union voters who are going for Clinton going for her because they believe in her (as she is spinning it) or because they don't want a black man to be president? And, on the flip side, how much of the race thing is a gender thing? Are the white men who seem to be turning to Obama suddenly realizing that they could end up with a woman president?

I hate to think the worst of people, when this election has the potential to bring out the best, but I'm not quite sure we're all where we should be on these issues--actually, I'm quite sure we're not.

(Obviously I'm speaking in generalizations that don't hold for all, or even most, individuals.)

Holiday Cards

I've gotten two in the last two days. Maybe it's not too late.

For Libby: Our Six-Word Memoirs

I wrote two; M, E: one.

#1: East, west, middle, east: still me.

#2: Potential. Lived up to? Don't know.

M: Born. Ate coffee ice cream. Eleven.

E: Best younger sister in the world.

(Assuming hyphenated words count as two.)

Howling Rain and Thunder

I'd really prefer four feet of snow.

(How did I get into the habit of these multiple daily blog posts? I tell you, it is simply RIDICULOUS.) (I think it has something to do with how much work I have--and how much work I am doing, which is really an outrageous amount. Like when I was writing my senior thesis in college and read a Joan Didion book every day [which I know I have blogged about before] [see? here--and I did read The Year of Magical Thinking]. I still finished on time. A few days early, I think, because I had to go out of town for some reason--could it have been Passover?--and resolved to hand it in before I left, and did. There is some kind of relation between work and non-work that could be explored but won't.)

Enter Michael Jackson, Stage Left

Have you noticed a sudden profusion of Michael Jackson quotes? End of "Don't Stop the Music" (current Rihanna hit, for those of you who don't live with a middle schooler)? Naomi and the dancing lizards in that Super Bowl ad? Yep, it's time for the 25th anniversary Thriller re-release, and the tentacles of corporate cultural America are reaching out as far as they can (credit for insight and information goes, of course, to S) (or rather, I noticed the phenomenon; he furnished the analysis).

Remember the first time you heard "Billie Jean"? I do. I was in City Center, in a car, with a friend who is now a famous poet (yes, Jenny, that one), and a friend who is now in a top position with a major politician (hmm, the accomplishments of my erstwhile friends was not at all the aim of this post, and neither was a severe blow to my self-esteem...). I think there must have been another friend or two, though now I'm thinking how could we have been in a car? We were never in cars, except, well, sometimes we were in cars, though when we were, we probably shouldn't have been, and the political friend actually did drive, though none of the rest of us did, us being the girls of my grade--the boys of the grade above us, who were the boys we hung out with, did drive, because they lived in leafy suburbs, while we lived in City with lots of public transportation. Wow, where on earth am I going with this? OK, the point is that I have an absolutely clear memory of being in this car, right in the middle of City Center, in front of the diner and the newstand, hearing "Billie Jean" and having my mind blown. That's all.

Our Tax Dollars

Goodness knows, hanging out at People.com and TMZ is not the best use of my time, but is driving Britney to the hospital and investigating where Heath got his drugs really the best use of time for our law enforcement officers and agencies? Surely there are missing people to be found (maybe a few missing black women??), inner-city homicides to be solved, prostitution rings to be busted up? You know, maybe protect the powerless, instead of pressing the paparazzi faves?

Done

I've never wanted to vote for Hillary. This makes me sad.

I wish I loved Obama as much as I love the idea of Obama.

I think Obama might be able to beat McCain. I think McCain will crush Hillary.

I've never seen so many people at the polls. It was 4:15 in the afternoon.

The Last Minute

Heading out to vote early, I was suddenly seized with indecision.

OK, I just was laying out my indecision, and even I got bored, so I deleted it. I know what I'm going to do, later, I think, and I know my reasons, but I'm suddenly struck again by how complicated it is, for all the reasons that everyone has been saying that I'm not going to repeat here. It's a good kind of complication, especially given how many people are arguing and thinking and voting, but it's still hard to walk into that polling booth and actually make the mark. For me, at least, today.

Electoral Agon

I really do like Rebecca Traister: she is articulate and intelligent, two of my favorite characteristics, especially when it comes to politics (and Matt Damon). (Just to tie it all together, don't you think Matt Damon should play Tom Brady in the movie?)

Politics and Sports: Specious Correlations

In the first days of November 2004, after the Red Sox had won the World Series, but before the election, it seemed like maybe the laws of real-life narrative had been rewritten and the happy ending could triumph. Then Bush won.

So if those few days created a law of mixed return, so to speak, perhaps the Pats loss bodes well for Obama?

Then again, it could be argued that the Giants' win is a triumph of happy endings and underdogs, which could also bode well for Obama?

Oh, if only narrative law and the rules of interpretation could consistently apply to real life.

Tune in tomorrow...

In Which I Catch Up With the Rest of America

I have not been a big Sarah Silverman fan to date (I know everyone thought she was the funniest one in that movie about the joke, but she did nothing for me). However, I may have to change my position, because the Matt Damon thing is incredibly funny. (M, DO NOT TOUCH that link. Mom, you should probably take a pass too.)

Update 2

Accomplished one work task, very successfully, if I do say so myself. Folded one more load of laundry. Bathed sick child (who seems to be reviving). Got diverted by a circumstance. Off to Super Bowl extravaganza.

Update

Kitchen clean (forgot to mention that part). Three loads of laundry folded; one in dryer; one in washer. Healthy kid fed and packed off to waterpark extravaganza. Back on futon with sick kid. Goal: accomplish two essential work tasks before picking up healthy kid from waterpark extravaganza and heading to Super Bowl extravaganza (with sick kid drugged). Realistic goal: accomplish one essential work task and start second, to be finished after returning home early from Super Bowl extravaganza with sick kid.

Current Conditions

You know when you have so much work that it simply will not be physically possible to do it all, but you have to do it anyway? And you also have a sick kid and five loads of laundry to fold? And you're sitting on the futon next to the sick kid, and you write a ridiculously long blog post instead of working, and your anxiety level starts to ratchet up, and there's nothing to do but go on?

Yeah, I thought you did. (And if you don't, be glad.)

If You Make It, They Will Come: A Chocolate Cake Saga

There was no reason to bake a chocolate cake (note barely recognizable gratuitous Victorian novel allusion). Yet there was a recipe: the Mile-High Chocolate Cake in January's Gourmet. And there was the vague sense that a chocolate cake had not been baked in long time. There was baking interest on the part of children. By Thursday there were even ingredients purchased, including a 9.7 oz. bar of Scharffen Berger Unsweetened.

But Thursday night there was swimming and homework and not enough time. Friday night there was a choice between movies and cake, and movies won (Ice Princess, which was unobjectionable to all and enjoyable enough, though M threated to stop watching movies with me if I kept verbalizing my predictions, which are pretty much always right, because one of the weird gifts I have is to pretty much know what will happen in most movies, especially an ice skating tween chick flick, where if you're an hour and a half in, pretty much all that needs to happen is the final competition and kissing the boy, which sure enough happened).

Finally it was Saturday and the conditions were right: ingredients still purchased, no alternative temptations, still no reason, but that was OK. So we baked, and I do mean we. M chopped the chocolate in the tiny cuisinart. E buttered the pans and sifted. M broke the eggs (after I, uh, dropped three eggs--and have I mentioned recently that either I should not be allowed to bake or all those people who say that baking depends on precision are wrong? Because I do things like spill half an egg so the cake ends up with 3 1/2 eggs instead of 4, and it would have been 2 1/2, if I hadn't glanced at the recipe one more time and seen that it was 4, not 3, and then there's the matter of discovering that we had been using the 1/3 cup measure instead of the 1/4, but I figured that 2/3 cup flour and 1/3 cup cocoa is the equivalent of 3/4 cup flour and 1/4 cup cocoa, and if you don't have light brown sugar, well, I see no reason not to use dark brown sugar, and--spoiler alert--the cake came out just fine). M helped add ingredients. E ran the mixer. M held the bowls while I scraped the batter into the pans.

And what a batter it was, really a paragon of batter, in a lovely bluish-brown hue (I don't know why I'm describing it as bluish-brown, because that sounds hideous, but that's really what it was, and it looked perfect). Fluffy and stiff, it just screamed out, "I am a serious batter, a batter to be proud of." And it was. Except for the pans. The batter that went in the 8" springform pan (remember that 8" springform pan, oh it is such a good thing, that pan) rose up into the most beautiful 8" chocolate cake layer you've ever seen. The batter that went into the regular 8" pan, well, it spilled out a little over the sides and sank a little in the middle and just looked generally pathetic next to its springform cousin. But it was fine. Everything was fine.

All I'm going to say about the frosting is: six sticks of butter. And, being the person who either should not be allowed to bake or disproves all baking laws, I, as usual, didn't have enough patience to let the chocolate mixture cool sufficiently, so the butter got a little melty, but it was fine.

So, round about cooling layers and beating butter, K called. K and D have been in town for a while (yay!) and they were supposed to come over for some kind of dinner that would not be cooked by us because I have cooked dinner for K twice this week, which is some kind of adult record. Truly, I do not think there is anyone besides my children who has eaten food cooked by me twice in a week--except maybe my dad--and I was done for the week. S had been cooking dinner for other people all week, so he was done too. It was going to be restaurant or take-out. But, K said, R and R wanted to have dinner with them, and there was much "whatever YOU want" back and forth, and a few more phone calls, and we ended up with K, D, R, R, and R and R's daughter coming over for take-out and...yes! a reason for chocolate cake!

In case you didn't click over to the recipe, you should know that putting the cake together involved slicing each layer horizontally in two so there were four layers to be held together with copious amounts of frosting. By now it was just me, no children. I used some pretty tricky moves, like the "put strips of wax paper under the cake so that you can be sloppy putting on the icing but still have a clean plate once you pull out the wax paper" move, and the "oh dear, one 8" pan seems to have been bigger than the other 8" pan so I'm just going to trim the edges of the bigger layers so they are the same size as the smaller layers" move, and the "my impatience made the frosting a little melty though still stiff enough but let's put the cake in the refrigerator to firm up" move.

It was a delightful impromptu dinner party. We ate Chinese take-out and enjoyed high-decibel Hillary-Obama discussion and the children played board games in the living room. And the cake? Well, a lot of milk was drunk. It was definitely mile-high and quite attractive, on its clean plate. And it was very good, though not in a particularly distinctive way. The recipe's claim that it "may just render all your other chocolate-cake recipes obsolete" seems a bit overstated. But everyone liked it. And I will say that a thin slice straight from the refrigerator this morning (last night I took it out before dinner so it wouldn't be too cold) tasted just like Sara Lee, which may be one of my highest chocolate cake compliments.

Pop Culture Proves Lacan Right Again

It was so much more fun to speculate about Carla Bruni and Sarkozy than to have the deed done.

My Life In Algebra

Remember those early algebra problems where one train leaves a station going 60 miles per hour and the other leaves its station going 40 miles per hour and you have to figure out where they will meet?

Yesterday morning, I had to meet someone at 8. It was too far to walk, but I had time to walk some of it. So I got on the bus at 7:30 and was trying to figure out where to get off so that I could walk as much as possible and still be there at 8. I knew it was 13 minutes from where I used to live, and about half an hour from where I used to work, which meant I should get off somewhere between the two, but I didn't know how long it would take the bus to get from where I used to work to where I used to live. And then I realized it was one of those algebra problems!

***
OK, I kept writing this post as follows.

If X equals distance traveled and Y equals distance walked, bus speed times (X minus Y) plus walk speed times Y equals 30 minutes. Otherwise known as B(X-Y) + WY = 30

Only I didn't know the distance, bus speed, or walk speed, so I got off where I used to live and was early.

Then I posted it, reconsidered, and wrote.

If X = distance, Y = distance walked, and Z = time walked, X = Y times Z plus 30 minus Z times X minus Y. Otherwise known as X = YZ + (30-Z)(X-Y).

Only that doesn't seem right, because I need the speed. So I tried again.

If X equals distance, Y equals distance walked, and Z equals time walked, bus speed times (X-Y) equals 30 minus Z AND walk speed times Y equals Z. Otherwise known as BS(X-Y) = (30 - Z) and WS(Y) = Z.

Since I have two equations, I can solve for two variables (right?). To solve for Z (time walked) and Y, I would need to know the same variables as above: distance, bus speed, and walk speed (which is what those old train problems always gave you).

***
This was my original conclusion.

I'm actually a huge believer in the value of algebra, both mathematically and in relation to higher order thinking (see Algebra Project), but I'm afraid the real-life application in this case was solely theoretical.

I would still hold to that, but I would add that I can see why people find algebra frustrating, even though I quite enjoy it. And I'm also wondering whether I look like a total idiot here for screwing up or at least over-complicating reasonably simple math..

Maternal Regret

I wish I were taking M and E to see the Spice Girls.

(I was going to subtitle this "A Post Without Irony," because the sentiment expressed herein is wholly in earnest, except that it is simply impossible to reference the Spice Girls without irony: of course the actual title of the post, while not inaccurate--I do regret it--leads you to expect something different, which places it in the neighborhood of irony, and Posh, I would argue, and M would agree, though S does not, thinking her absolutely frightening, is our current avatar of postmodern self-consciousness, itself a cheap relation of true literary irony. At any rate, M is fascinated by Posh, and, truly, how fun would it have been to see the Spice Girls with M and E? For my mom, no fun at all; for me, ultimately fun; and that is why my girls are so lucky to have both their grandmother and their mother.)

(Have gone back and forth between "were" and "was" in that non-parenthetical sentence. The subjunctive in English is just too much for me.)

(When we were in England when M was two, the Spice Girls were just hitting it big, though All Saints were giving them a run for their money. We were at a posh [ha! didn't even do that on purpose!] party where M ate all the hard-boiled quail eggs, and there was one other child, an eight-year-old girl, who preferred All Saints but had a solid grip on the Spice Girls, and that was the first time I got an inkling of what was happening. M, of course, was clueless, mainly just entranced with this glamorous big girl, doing Spice Girls routines at midnight when both were giddy with exhaustion, and who would have thought that today she would routinely email me news of Posh and her fashion doings?!)

What Is This Politico?

And why had I never heard of it before yesterday? And why, since yesterday, has it suddenly become omnipresent? And do I have any interest in reading it?

Hmm, after brief perusal, probably not regularly, although the comments on who won the debate are fascinating--wonder if the Obama folks were sent out to spin, or if it's real. It was striking at the end when he went to shake hands with the swarming mob while she chatted with Chelsea and Wolf. He's catching up fast in CA, CT, MA (too lazy to check more--and that link will change daily, so I'm just noting what it shows tonight).

Watching My First Debate

I know: ridiculous. How could I not have watched a single debate? Well, I don't watch TV so much, I don't have so much time, and I suspected that debates would be boring, which, you know, they kind of are.

But, I must say, Hillary is impressive. And boring. She keeps starting off great, and then she goes on and on, and I drift away. Obama is fine. Good content, OK delivery. If I were undecided (which I suppose I'm not, kind of, pretty much), would this help me make a decision? Mmm, hate to say it, maybe Hillary? But then she goes on and on, and the moderators have to interrupt her, and while she's talking I think of her husband (who is no longer an asset, I would say), and her proclivities for secrecy and paranoia, and maybe not.

Back to Britney

This article offers insight into this video. (I got the link for the article somewhere, can't remember where, but it's pretty much everywhere. It's pretty good, too.)

Retitled Post

First half of post deleted because it was obnoxious.

(And in contractor news, there must be a recession, because both contractors called us back, and now we have two consultations scheduled for next week. More obnoxiousness deleted.)

(Did anyone wonder what made me finally do it? It was the arrival of the new guitar gadget S ordered. I don't even know what it does--something about recording the guitar directly into the computer--and it's not even very big--maybe the size of a lunchbox--but it was sitting on the dining room table, and I thought where the hell is this thing going to go, and if we had already renovated, and the tiny guest/TV/CD sunroom was now just the tiny music sunroom, it could go in there, so I better call a contractor, because this guitar gadget is going to make me lose my mind.)

(Edited to add: You know, I have no idea where that guitar gadget went, so maybe I can cancel the contractors!)

More on Jerry Springer

Great review. I can't speak to the performance, but this is totally insightful about the show. The thing is, the protestors think the show (and probably, by extension, Jerry Springer, though only secondarily) is the problem, but I would argue (not particularly originally, but certainly passionately) that the protestors are the problem. I do find it interesting that they started protesting in London only after the show had been running for years, and I wonder whether the instigators were American. One of the most refreshing things about living in England was the complete absence of evangelical Christianity from the public discourse. I hope that's not changing.

Santana to the Mets

And I'm (KNOCK WOOD) fine with it. I like the Mets, want them to succeed, and our current pitching roster is pretty stellar, especially with those young pitchers whom I would have hated to lose. (Anyone missing the Red Sox blogging yet? First spring training game is less than a month away!)

Pregnant Angie?

Picture, thousand words, and all: the internet is agog with rumors that Angelina and Brad are with biological child--and maybe two. So here's where I'm not quite sure whether to get all judgemental about them having ANOTHER when they've already got four under six--I mean, can those children possibly get all the attention they deserve? and I'm sure Dawn could wax emphatic about adoption and attachment and such matters--or whether to wish them all the best, because they've certainly got the money to hire the nannies, and it's their right to do whatever they want with their bodies, and it's none of my business anyway.

Guess What I Just Did?

Made an appointment with a contractor.

Congratulations will be accepted in any form.

The Other Kennedy

D sent today's Brooks column to me five minutes after I read it. My first reaction was "YES!" My second was the anxiety I always feel when David Brooks seems to make sense and support my side: what's he up to? what card of irony or undermining is he playing this time? But D is the master of liberal realpolitik, so maybe it's OK?

I do have to wonder what kind of effect Ted Kennedy's endorsement has in the real world (as opposed to the media world). S shares Brooks' opinion that lots of Catholics will follow Kennedy's lead, but I have no idea.

Several decades ago, when I was young and political and had lots of time, I was working desperately and frantically on a campaign (desperate because truly we had no hope of winning, frantically because what else can you call fifteen hours a day in campaign headquarters). One day, a week or so before the election, we were notified that Kennedy was coming to town for our guy--in two days. There were advance people, posters, press, phone calls, even less sleep. I finally slipped out of the office, just as he arrived, and into a far corner of the venue.

This was back when our idea of Kennedys was still young and virile, but he looked terrible (he still looks terrible, but now we expect it, and back then he was fat as well as grizzled, so he looked even worse). He lumbered into a room filled with people seeking the smallest reason to hope--OK, so it was the faithful, but still--and he brought down the house. He was one of the most inspiring speakers I've ever experienced in person. When he finished talking, we were all ready to get out there and fight to the bitter end, knowing it was worth it. You could see in him what his brothers must have been, and you could only wish he hadn't misspent so much of his youth. Except that I think Brooks is right: being a senior senator and the eminence grise of the Democratic party suits him. He has accomplished an enormous amount on his own terms, not as the pale shadow of his brothers.

So maybe Kennedy getting out there and stirring up the faithful will help galvanize the not quite sure.

My god, do you think David Brooks is thinking of voting for Obama?!

[D's most recent email: "He may be a conservative, but he remains a Jew." Hmm, that's bracketing about 40 years of cultural and political history, but I'll take it.]

Whenever I bring my lunch,

I end up eating it before 10:30, which somehow seems to obviate the effort.

I wasn't going to read it,

because I figured I knew what it said, but then I did, and I have to say that Caroline Kennedy's op-ed is awesome. Now I suppose I should watch some of Obama's speeches, because even though I figure I know what he says, my mom and K keep telling me they are awesome.

Time Flies

My grandmother would have been 110 today.

The Day After, Yet Again

What continues to fascinate me about this campaign is how absolutely certain everyone is--each time everything changes. If I were a responsible blogger, this would be a long post full of links, but I'm a blogger with a huge money-paying project that has suddenly entered my life and demands all my attention, except when my brain is momentarily fried and I must surf the internet for details of Heath Ledger's memorial service (definitely one with Naomi Watt in LA last night, but was there really a small service in NY with Michelle on Friday?) and what people think about the Obama South Carolina landslide. And what people seem to think is every which way: she's doomed, he's permanently tarred (purposeful language) as the Black candidate and thus doomed, Caroline Kennedy's endorsement will make all the difference, or not, California is definitively Hillary's, California is definitively Obama's. Aren't the only things that are abundantly clear at this point that: 1) outrageous numbers of people are voting, and 2) nobody knows what will happen? And I, for one, happen to think this is very cool, though I am increasingly invested in an outcome (the Clintons are disgusting me, and I wish Edwards would throw it in and endorse Obama).

(Narcissistic) Reflections on the Screen Time Conundrum

As usual, it all comes down to me.

This morning E woke up long before the rest of us. She brought a book into my bed and read for an hour. Then she played dress-up games on the computer and emailed her grandmother. S finally got up, made her breakfast, and got her dressed. Since then, as the rest of us have staggered into the day, she has banged on a drum, composed a song, had a parade, and now she is playing teacher, writing the daily message and various other instructional communications on the giant pad of paper and reading them aloud to invisible students.

Not exactly the picture of a mindless drone enslaved to the computer.

I decided to try the limitless strategy. M and E basically are on the computer whenever they want, and my only response is to tell them to turn down the sound because it's driving me crazy (I fear that in years to come, when asked what their mother said most often during their childhoods, they will say, in unison, "you're driving me crazy).

E is now leading the invisible students in rehearsal for "The Land of Sweats" (which refers to candy, not workout wear), a play based on the song composed earlier.

All indicators suggest that my children are just fine. They swim two or three times a week, love gym, walk to school (M takes the bus, but there's walking on each end), wrestle, dance, and happily engage in any physical activity we propose. Their grades are as good as it gets. They have lots of friends (M's in good part facilitated by the endless IM conversation). They both read every day (when I suggested to M that the unlimited computer time seemed to be cutting into her reading, she pointed out that she spends hours at school every day reading under her desk, so by the time she gets home, she's a little tired of reading--alas, it is true, and her grades are still as good as it gets). S makes all these points, as well as the winter argument: once the weather is nice, they are outside, and computer ebbs away: another fine indicator.

So what's wrong with this picture? Obviously, me. And while a piece of my problem is aesthetic disgust (MY children spending hours on stupid girl websites, putting pixelated babies to bed and dressing up Hayden Panettiere?!), a bigger piece of it is guilt and the inevitable sense of maternal inadequacy. I'm not sure whether I know it or feel it, but it seems to me that if I were an more engaged mother, if I did art projects and cooked dinners they could help with and played board games more willingly, not to mention pretend games, they would be old-fashioned non-cyber children and everyone would live happily ever after. Even worse? I know that when they are on the computer I can do what I want without being bothered, and I kind of like that. Worse still? I am on the computer way too much, and I fear that I am the negative role model, and yet I can't seem to get off the computer. Really, I should be sent to the reform school for bad mothers.

Proof? Last night we got home and everyone was on the computer. Then M said that she was waiting for me to knit, so that she could knit with me. Now, I did not know this, but it was further proof of this all being my fault. And, indeed, when I settled in to knit, everyone came over to knit, and then E stopped knitting to have a minor tantrum, but that was followed by much singing and dancing on the part of E, as M and I knitted on the couch, and then wrestling by M and E, as I knitted on the couch. Domestic non-computer bliss.

The moral of this story: hmm, not quite sure. Maybe I should engage the children in doing what I like to do (knit, girls reading party, yoga, make Valentines [I do love making Valentines, despite my general art project aversion]) and not worry about what they do the rest of the time. Hey wait, that IS what I do. So maybe everything is indeed fine, and I should just stop worrying about it.

OK, Let's Get That Meta Thing Off The Top

Harvey Keitel starring in Jerry Springer: The Opera? Be still, my beating heart! We saw the show when we were living in London, and it was absolutely mind-blowingly over-the-top fantastic. Just thinking about it makes me happy. And I said at the time, there is no way this will ever play on Broadway, and looks like, so far, I was right. (Warning: the link has a huge spoiler in the second paragraph--maybe everyone else knows the plot, but I didn't, and not knowing it felt like a big part of the enjoyment, because at the end of the first act I was thinking, eh, this is going nowhere, and then the second act blew my mind in its epic transgressiveness.)

Going Meta

One of the ways I have reconciled myself to blogging--at this point I no longer threaten to give it up, since such threats have proven fruitless--is by refusing to engage blogging itself as a blog topic. I find my own blog angst inherently unappealing, and surely as uninteresting to others as it is to me, so I refuse to reify it in pixels, and I prefer not to engage in it at all. This blog is, I've come to realize, part of my life, so long as it stays part of my life, and when it's not, it won't be (yes, that is a conceptually if not syntactically Beckettian if not Steinian sentence, and I find it quite humorous that I have alluded to Beckett twice this week, when really I am so not the Beckett type, despite the nominal off rhyme) (clearly, to assay blogging in a meta kind of way, which is what I am about to do, albeit briefly and with little insight, requires me to gird my loins in pretentious discourses that signal the meta) (that's the self-conscious "look, I do know what I'm doing here" moment) (in case you didn't notice).

I've read a few blog posts recently that probe questions of identity, self-revelation, and audience with respect, explicitly or inferentially, to blogging (see here and here). What's interesting to me, given the level of angst I have about so many aspects of existence, is that these questions don't particularly bother me. There are things I don't blog--the content of my work, my intimate relationships except in a humorous or loving way, things that would embarrass or upset anyone besides me--and there is my (surely transparent) anonymity schtick. But aside from that, I feel like I'm pretty much me. Indeed, one of the reasons I don't blog under my real name is that I don't want random people who know me (as opposed to random strangers) to see how much time I spend thinking about hopelessly trivial matters.

Part of this comfort with my blogging self may have to do with the fact that I have consciously made this a "what I think" blog, rather than a "what I do" blog. I certainly talk about some things I do (I recall a string of posts, probably in the spring of 2005, because we were still in No Longer Red State, about the girls being sick and me losing my mind), but for the most part it's not a diary kind of blog. I don't care about keeping anyone updated about what's going on, unless I feel like it. I'd rather bloviate about the Red Sox, Britney, Ian McEwan, and politics, which are indeed, basically, what I think about (I also think about work, and the issues surrounding my work, an enormous amount, and sometimes that is a frustration, not to be able to blog those issues in the way I really think about them, but I can live with that) (and of course I think about my kids, who sort of bridge the think/do divide, in life and in blog).

Hmm, now I see why I don't get meta. This is indeed boring and not very insightful. I was just thinking about it, and, you know, this is a "what I think" blog. And now I'm having a meta-blog-anxiety moment, because I really want to end by putting out the question of whether the blog me seems like the real me, but then there's the awkwardness of the unanswered blog question, and the blog question's implicit goal of pulling in comments....ack, must stop now so as not to fall into abyss of blog angst...

Edited to add: So I just skimmed the last few weeks of posts and of course the think/do divide is fallacious, but, whatever...

Edited again to add: It should go without saying, but clearly won't, that this is all about me and my blog (sometimes non) angst, not anyone else's blog, blogging, identity, or angst.

About Face

The whiny post that is my life is just too same old same old to spend more than a moment contemplating, let alone writing (think winter, screen time, shoes in the middle of the floor, M's school, tween attitude, too much work, not enough sleep, oh god, even a parenthetical list is too dreary to continue) (though really this is just today: yesterday was quite delightful, and today's dreariness is probably erected upon a base of exhaustion).

Instead I decided to try some narrative therapy and make a list of things that have recently made me happy, such as:

- Hearing "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" and "Karma Chameleon" yesterday morning, courtesy of the human jukebox I live with who programs the iPod and plays crazy old school CDs in his car. (The first time we heard "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" was on one of those interminable drives from East Coast Big City to No Longer Red State Capital City. I have no idea why we were listening to country music, except presumably we were in a road trip radio wasteland. It took us a moment to get what we were hearing, but ever since I have just loved that song, and having it come up on the iPod at the gym yesterday morning pretty much made my day before it had even started.)

- The people I work with. I've worked with a lot of difficult people in recent years. These days I work with a lot of people, and the vast majority of them are fabulous: smart, effective, fun: people I'd choose to spend time with even if I didn't work with them.

- Coming up with great solutions to some work problems.

- Successfully finishing a work project that has been hanging over me.

- The Chili Radish (basically kimchi) and Gourmet Anchovies (the tiniest fish you've ever seen, fermented with soy beans) that we got at the Chinese supermarket which I've been gobbling by the spoonful, even though they were supposed to be a present for S.

- Hugs and kisses from M and E. (OK, they made me write that, but it's true.)

- The Palestinians breaking down the fence and storming Egypt.

- Deciding that I am going to do some yoga, read a bit, and go to bed tonight, instead of working.

That Kind of a Night

K and Post-Academic emailed me pretty much simultaneously to say they were going to the gym (on opposite sides of the country), right around when I decided to cope with my rising work anxiety by doing some yoga (though perhaps doing some work might have been more sensible). I quite loved today's Yoga Today video, "Mental Clarity and Stamina," which I very much need, even though it was all about standing poses, which usually I'm not too fond of (OK, just lunges and warriors, except she made them OK), but I was very much amused by the opening commercial for security systems, which was about as un-yoga as it gets.

For Post-Academic: Heath Ledger

If you click TMZ every five minutes (not that anyone would do such a thing), you get a new post each time: he was naked on the floor, no he wasn't, Michelle Williams is devastated, and, oh, a little Britney for the purposes of distraction.

I don't know about you, but I'm thinking River Phoenix: shocking sudden death of popular young talent. But the difference is the media cycle, which is now minutes, not days. With River Phoenix, the paper said he died and nobody knew what happened. And then a day or so later, it was an overdose. A few more days and we learned that the vegetarian poster boy was in fact something of a junkie. This time it's minute by minute: he was in Mary Kate Olsen's apartment, no he wasn't.

Who knows whether Heath Ledger's death was an accident, suicide, signal of drug problem, complications of pneumonia...though presumably soon enough we'll all know (top story on CNN and NY Times) (does this really matter more than the American soldiers and Iraqi civilians who died today? I still force myself to read the names, every single one, each time I see the list of this week's dead).

A young actor's death, a young father's death: tragic, yet also, at this point, banal. Our obsessions (corporate push/personal pull): pathetic.

A One-Question Quiz on Parenting Guilt and Responsibility

You are supposed to be where you are supposed to be at 8:30, which means leaving at 7:30. However, your significant other has to leave at 7, so you have to take younger child to school, which means leaving for where you are supposed to be at 8:15. At 7:45, older child calls and says she needs her Latin book and folder, and she has already forgotten them once, and if she forgets them again her teacher will be mad and she will get a 0, and you have to bring them to her after you take younger child to school. Older child's school is ten minutes in the opposite direction from where you are supposed to be.

Do you:

a) Bring her the book and folder, because the most important thing is your child's education and happiness.

b) Tell her she's the one who forgot the book and folder, so she needs to deal with the consequences, because she needs to learn a lesson.

c) Tell her you will write a note to the teacher, because your work is more important than her grades.

d) Berate and lambaste her but bring her the book and folder anyway, because you operate on no principles except getting through the morning.

e) Other.

Oscar Nominations

For perhaps the first time ever, I am 0 (as in zero) for everything (as in I have not seen a single movie nominated for a major category). Including Juno, which I am afraid I have lost all desire to see, if I ever had any, given the number of blog posts and articles I have read about it. Hmm, tempted to just leave it that way...

The Berkshires Seemed Dreamlike on Account of That Frosting

Or, Relaxation, Hospitality Professionalism, Conceptual Art, Post-Industrialism, and, Because We Don't Want to Stray Too Far From Narcissism, My Hair

As previewed, children were deposited and we took off for scenic North Adams, Massachusetts to stay at The Porches. We spent much of a day at Mass MOCA, where we had, ridiculously, never been, and we ate at Jae's (because everyone said it was the place to eat), Cafe Latino, and Mezze (Mezze was great, Cafe Latino good, and Jae's fine--more about Porches and Mass MOCA below). We took a hot tub under a full moon; it was 15 degrees and my hair froze. I worked out twice. I read Ian McEwan and S read David Mitchell. We listened to Miranda Lambert, X, Wilco (of course), and Okkervil River. If you didn't know better, you would think we were pretentious artsy rich people, probably from New York. OK, so we're just pretentious artsy people, but at least we're honest about it.

We are also increasingly picky and cranky people. Really, we SHOULD be rich New Yorkers. Except that I think part of the reason we are so picky is that if we're going to splurge, we want things to be right. Some things that were right at the Porches were the incredibly comfortable bed and, oh my god, the sheets (could some of the rightness come from the fact that they were, uh, clean?). Also the fitness room with great machines and enough of them. The hot tub was most excellent, and the decor was hip--didn't thrill me off my rocker (that's kind of a Porches joke), but certainly was what it should be.

The service, though? Not so much acceptable. What's going to happen on a holiday weekend at a destination hotel? A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE GOING TO COME. So what do you need to do? MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH STAFF ON DUTY. To do things like HAVE ENOUGH COFFEE CUPS AT BREAKFAST and RESTOCK THE TOWELS IN THE POOL ROOM. I tell you, next time there's an opening for a cranky rich New Yorker, I am so there. But seriously, a hotel that nice and expensive should not be making me notice that the croissants on Sunday morning look like bad airplane croissants (and then what's with the perfect croissants Monday morning? uh, you know, you're a weekend kind of hotel, you should be serving your BEST croissants on SUNDAY MORNING, and if the baker takes Sundays off, well, find a new baker). OK, even I am getting disgusted with myself, so I will spare you the rant on the restaurant that wouldn't find space for us Saturday night even though half its tables were empty, and anyway S does that rant much better than I do, having the professional angle and all.

As I said, it's just ridiculous that we've never been to Mass MOCA, given all the time we've spent driving back and forth between the middle of the country and the right side of the country over the last several years. But now we've been, and I will say upfront and thoroughly sincerely that Mass MOCA is brilliantly excellent and we loved it. Oddly, both S and I had envisioned it in the middle of a field, but it is right there in the middle of town, a huge old mill complex, which is just fabulous for big art. And I love that there is no permanent collection, which means it really can be a museum of contemporary art.

We loved Spencer Finch's exhibit, What Time Is It On The Sun?, from the first piece, which is a pair of black-and-white photos, labeled, that mark the two ends of a rainbow in Brooklyn, I think in 2004. You know how there are supersmellers and supertasters? Well, this guy is clearly a superlooker. The show is all about light and color and time. Like, there's a piece that is 100 paintings of pink circles, all different pinks, and the title is something about trying to remember the color of Jackie Kennedy's hat. And as soon as you start looking at the paintings, you think, what color WAS her hat, because of course it was round and pink, but which pink? And several other paintings are colors at different times of day. And there are these fabulous window filter installations which are also about capturing color and light at precise moments. So this was where I had my insight about conceptual art, because there were some pieces that did nothing for me. One was a circle of fans, and the title was something about the wind at Walden Pond for two hours and 22 minutes on some day, and the fans went on and off to capture the direction and speed of the wind that day. It was technologically and theoretically interesting, but aesthetic pleasure in the moment? None. So, for me at least, conceptual art works if it engages me in perception, not just thought, and that's my insight.

There were also mind-blowingly amazing Anselm Kiefer paintings which that link barely captures. Really, if you have any chance of going to see these paintings, you must, and you must think of Waterloo and Jay DeFeo's "The Rose," and, wait, maybe I can find better links for those paintings, yes, try here and here, but truly they barely capture them either, so you must just take my word for it and go. There is also a Jenny Holzer exhibit (good link on that one) which is behind a closed door and I said to S, as we went toward it, "This I am so not interested in, she has done nothing new since the mid-80s," but it was actually kind of cool: the banal words were projected and moved across the enormous room and there were giant bean bags to lie on and watch them move, kind of like The Weather Project at the Tate Modern a few years ago, only not nearly so fabulous (I tell you, the pretentiousness meter is rising, rising, rising). And then there are giant paintings from military PowerPoints about the plans for the war, which are pretty compelling and make an interesting counterpoint to Kiefer's war paintings at the other end of the building.

But enough about art, what else was on my list? Oh yeah, post-industrialism. Hmm, I'm getting tired, and I can't imagine anyone besides Jenny is still reading, but I must go on (I can't go on, I must go on). I don't really know the abandoned factories of the midwest or the abandoned mines of the west and southwest, but, to me, the abandoned mills of the northeast have always been one of the most powerful symbols of our collapsed economy. Not the mortgage collapse of last year or the stock market collapse of this week, but the utter collapse of an economy of production into an economy of consumption that seems at best decadent, at worse hopelessly unsustainable.

We used to call North Adams the armpit of Massachusetts. It was a bus stop and a place to get through as quickly as possible, happy you didn't live there. Mass MOCA is an amazing thing, truly, as is the recuperation of mills everywhere--whether they are condos, community spaces, high-tech companies, artist's studios, whatever. And yet, I found myself asking, again and again, how much of the renascence of North Adams via contemporary art is really trickling down to the descendants of the people who worked in those mills. Surely there are jobs: service jobs, for the most part, though also secretarial, security, construction. But are there enough jobs? Are there real opportunities? Is there anything for the kids? I hope--and I am not going to try and figure it out, this is not my problem--that Mass MOCA has a great educational program, that they are employing high school students in putting up exhibits, and bringing every North Adams elementary school kid into the museum at least twice a year, that they send their visiting artists and interns out into the schools, that they are championing art education for the masses, not just art consumption for the elites, because that is what has the possibility to make a real difference for North Adams which, frankly, aside from Mass MOCA and the Porches and a few nice restaurants, really does not look so different than it did back in the day.

Am I done yet? Oh yes, my hair. My hair actually looked fine this weekend. Which could be because 1) I have gotten used to it, 2) it has grown out sufficiently to look reasonable, or 3) the real issue is less my hair than the exhaustion in my face so that on a relaxing weekend my hair was free to look fine. Whatever, we'll find out soon enough, and I'll be sure to update.

Longest post ever?? And I didn't even talk about the pathetic tweed-jacketed professorial type we saw both Saturday and Sunday night, clearly trying his hardest to get laid on a college town holiday weekend. Way too depressing, and not my problem. Truly, though, it was a lovely break.

The Psychotic Workaholics Take a Break

S and I are depositing the girls with their cousins and heading to a nice hotel to eat, drink and sleep for a few days. If we wake up, we might take in some art and/or nature, but no guarantees. Hooray for long weekends planned in advance!

Recycled Books

I just love this article. And I love that Tony Judt is their example.

What's the Opposite of Aftermath?

I know it must be some totally obvious word. Pre...something?

Last night I saw the before and after(math) of an accident. I was driving home from a meeting in Next State Up, going a reasonable 65-70 in the middle lane of the freeway, when a light-colored sedan flew by me in the slow lane. Both G and I commented on it immediately, it was going that fast, on a fairly crowded freeway, must have been at least 85 or 90. G had been saying earlier that evening that she was going to learn to drive this year, so we talked a bit about how not to drive, and how fast he was going.

After a few sentences of that conversation, we went back to our previous conversation for a few sentences, maybe 30 seconds, a minute, and all of a sudden the traffic was stopped. "What the hell," I said, and then we both realized there was an accident, and as quickly realized it must have been him (why the gender assumption?). There were three cars on the side, the middle one a light-colored sedan, and first I thought that was it, but then we saw people getting out of their cars and looking over the guardrail. G saw a piece of car on the side of the road. I think he went right off the road and over the edge.

We didn't stop. There was nothing we could do, it was late and we wanted to be home, the idea was too upsetting. We called 911, G on my phone, and me chattering at her: which freeway, which exit, what we saw. They said other calls were coming in and they took G's phone number. We tried to remember how high up that part of the freeway is. There were tops of trees.

I dropped G off and went home. There was nothing on the news, nothing in the paper this morning, I can't find anything online. How do you find out what happened? Sometimes I wonder if it even happened. I know we saw it, but did he really go over the guardrail, when we'd just seen him speeding down the road? Did those people getting out of their cars try and rescue him before help came? Is he in the hospital? Dead? Did he have a family? Was there anyone else in the car? Why was he driving so fast?

All we know is what happened right before and right after.

The briefest intersection of lives, and ours just go on.

A Guest Post from E

[Assignment: December is the 12th month of the year. Then we start again with January. But what if there were a 13th month? What would it be called? What holidays would be in it? Write a description of the 13th month and use your imagination!]

The 13th month of the year is Docomenty. It is in a one month season called Waling. A hallidays in it is Hassover. At Hassover you get presents and celebrate the jews leiving Egipt. In Docomenty you expect weather of all kinds. In this particyular month every one celebrates their birthday for the second time that year.

What Is Worse Than Being Rejected for a Job?

Being rejected for a job you didn't apply for.

(Actually, it's probably not worse in a real life sort of way, as, not having applied, there would be no investment in the job itself, but it truly is a deeply existential kind of rejection: to not be desired even by those you had no thought might desire you.)

Hair, Alas

It has been three and a half weeks now, and the time has come to accept the fact that I hate my haircut. I have blowdried and airdried. I have combed, brushed, and barretted. I have raked my hand through my hair countless times a day, in fruitless attempts to casually rearrange. And still I feel hideous.

Mind you, only one person has even noticed I got my hair cut (that was you, J, wasn't it?). Which means either that I am fundamentally hideous, and have only just noticed it, or this is all in my head, which even I can admit is most likely the case. Nevertheless, my head is an inseparable element of myself, psychically and materially, so I must live with its illusions, no matter how untethered from reality they may be.

What is it I hate? I'm not quite sure. The right side is OK, the layers blend in fine, but the left side seems too choppy, almost shelved. As usual, the bottom layer seems to be cut awkwardly right into a wave, though if that is the usual, perhaps my hair awkwardly half-waves right where it is cut? At any rate, the length (just above my shoulders), though what I asked for, seems completely uninteresting and in no way flattering.

Could part of the problem simply be winter with its inevitable pallor, and it's not-so inevitable, but nonetheless present, cold sore at the edge of my mouth, the one that had two delicate friends this weekend delicately gesture at me to indicate that I had food on my mouth? Uh, no, that is reddened and inflamed skin, slowly puckering into whitish scab. Attractive, eh?

But back to the hair. I fear there is nothing to be done, because this is really as short as I go, so the thought of "fixing" it which would inevitably, I assume, entail going shorter, is absolutely impossible. I suppose I must wait for growth, which may in itself prove an improvement, but then will come the inevitable (can you tell how doomed I'm feeling, from all these inevitables?) decision about the haircutter.

I quite like the haircutter, she's very nice, and we've just followed her to a new salon, and, most importantly, she does an absolutely fabulous job on M and E, you just can't imagine how adorable they both look (don't they? really, they do! M has this super bob, shingled in the back and curving around her chin in the front, and E's is shoulder-length with a bit of a layer, and they both look so great, even in winter). So can I keep taking them to the haircutter, without getting my own hair cut? Or do I sacrifice my vanity on the altar of my children's appearance? And how would I even find a new haircutter? I've had so many and they never get it right. Oh, the woes...

Maybe I should just drink a lot of vodka and cover the mirrors till spring.