Friday, May 25, 2007
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.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
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.
***
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.
Monday, May 21, 2007
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.
- 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.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
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).
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).
Saturday, May 19, 2007
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.]
[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.]
Friday, May 18, 2007
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!)
(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!)
Thursday, May 17, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
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.)
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.)
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
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).
Monday, May 14, 2007
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.]
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.]
Sunday, May 13, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, May 11, 2007
DeLillo Meets 9/11
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.]
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.
OK, everybody, repeat after me: corporatizing government DOES NOT WORK.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
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!
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