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until then, congratulations to my friend lisana!
and, a shout out to shelly, who seems to have disappeared from m&p.
a demain!
and now, welcome to 100 things about me!
(mostly because if I write about what’s on my mind today I’ll depress the entire internet (and haha, look at me being all big-headed that the entire internet is thinking about me me meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!))
1. i have no idea where to begin with this list, i mean, how do i pick the single most telling thing about myself?
2. i’m currently writing my 16th book.
3. the first 13 were travel guides.
4. i love the process of writing books, but once they’re published i rarely open them.
5. i’ll write anything as long as someone will pay me to do it.
6. that makes me a writing whore (an authwhore--thanks, T).
7. i’m okay with that.
8. i love to knit and can’t wait to be done with this book so i can knit something.
9. i used to read under the covers with a flashlight when i was a little kid.
10. i was in nine different schools by 9th grade because my father's job moved us around so much.
11. i like to paint and will be painting the girl’s room as soon as i’m done with the book.
12. the girl still sleeps in our room because i haven’t had time to move us downstairs.
13. part of me loves having the girl in our room because i love to snuggle her up in the middle of the night when she cries out.
14. part of me hates having the girl in our room because i’m tired.
15. i’ve never been this tired in my life.
16. before i had kids i used to stay up half the night and sleep late in the morning. now i just stay up half the night.
17. i’m terrified of doctors and avoid them at all costs.
18. well, really, i’m terrified of doctors’ scales because i used to have an eating disorder and i hate having to go through the embarrassment of explaining it every time i go to a new doctor.
19. my ob/gyn is a friend and i’m fine with going there.
20. i really want another baby but i’m just not up for the whole subfertility/infertility struggle again.
21. nor do i think we can afford another child.
22. and J’s head might explode if we got pregnant.
23. i have a bad back.
24. it’s gotten worse with each pregnancy.
25. about halfway through my pregnancy with the girl my hips started to hurt.
26. they still hurt.
27. i live within walking distance of the ocean.
28. this summer i spent less than an hour on the beach.
29. i own a kayak.
30. it didn’t get used at all this summer.
31. i’m a professionally trained chef and i still love to cook.
32. i was valedictorian of my class in culinary school.
32. i blow people’s minds during snack week at the boy’s school, which is pitiful on a number of levels.
33. i once ran a small artisan chocolate business.
34. i love turtles. the animal, not the chocolate.
35. i don’t like my name because it’s too common.
36. because of that i gave the girl a very unique name and just found out yesterday that there will be another child with the same name in her preschool class.
37. i believe in omens and am very superstitious.
38. during my pregnancy with the boy i carried a Sacagawea dollar in my shoe every day.
39. during my pregnancy with the girl iI carried a small leather bag containing an apricot pit that i got in New Mexico 14 years ago.
40. i gave it to J when he was depressed after the girl was born to bring him luck during his search for a new job and then i forgot about it.
41. two days ago the boy found it in J’s desk and absconded with it.
42. J was visibly upset but let him have it anyway.
43. i was secretly very amused because he has always scoffed at my superstitions.
44. except for when i have dreams that predict future events—then he is freaked out.
45. i don’t believe i’m psychic in any way and neither should you.
46. my favorite color is orange.
47. my eyes are dark hazel and i never knew that until i went to college and a lover told me my eyes are dark green. until then i always thought they were brown.
48. the girl has the same eyes, but they boy’s eyes are grey-blue.
49. my hair is curly and because it’s short right now i spend a lot of time straightening it.
50. i’m growing it out.
51. i have it highlighted. it’s my one and only hair indulgence.
52. i love expensive bath and body products but currently own none.
53. i most often wear Crabtree & Evelyn spring rain because i like the scent and it doesn’t give me a headache.
54. most perfumes give me a migraine.
55. i like cats but have a dog because the boy is allergic to cats.
56. i have a love-hate relationship with the dog.
57. i went to an all-women’s college and loved it.
58. i was an English major and had no idea how I would support myself when i left college.
59. when i was fourteen i tried to sell poetry to the new yorker and reader's digest and the new yorker sent me a very nice handwritten note, which i still have.
60. i lived in manhattan for four years while working at a major publishing house before heading up to the Woodstock area where i bought a tiny house at the edge of a river.
61. right after i met him, i lured J home with the promise that we would fish in that river.
62. we did fish in the river, but we did other things first.
63. the house had a wood-burning stove and i miss it.
64. i also miss long walks at the reservoir there.
65. we moved to Vermont after that and quickly moved back because it was not a friendly place.
66. the boy was born in the same town, but not the same house, where we first, ahem, did it.
67. i have a fear of people dressed in costume—no idea why.
68. even kids at Halloween freak me out a little so i make J answer the door all night.
69. even though i have two children i still consider myself infertile because no one ever figured out why i have such a difficult time getting pregnant.
70. my sister had twins with icsi ivf because of male-factor infertility and insisted that her pain was greater than mine because she was “facing a lifetime without children,” but she wasn’t really because they knew what was wrong with her and knew how to fix it and her first ivf cycle worked, and i still get mad about the way she acted sometimes even though i know it was hard for her.
71. i still secretly get jealous when someone turns up pregnant on the first try.
72. i love beans.
73. and scented candles.
74. i have intense fears about something happening to my kids—so intense that i wonder whether there is something wrong with me.
75. i am not a girly girl.
76. i wear black and white too much.
77. i often wonder what i would be doing now if my parents had been more supportive of my weirdness as a child.
78. i was a secret thumb-sucker until age nine.
79. i am not a shoe-a-holic.
80. most of my shoes are black.
81. i love working out.
82. i haven’t had time to work out since the girl was born.
83. i used to have a very adventurous sex life.
84. people are often afraid of me.
85. they later admit that they were at first intimidated by my self-assuredness.
86. i’m not all that self-assured.
87. i used to be painfully shy.
88. i never spoke in class—even all the way through college.
89. now i don’t shut up.
90. and neither does my son.
91. i wonder whether i would have been a talker like he is had i been more allowed to be myself as a child.
92. this is a no-hitting household.
93. i’m always surprised that people still do hit their children.
94. i’m all about organic.
95. i would like to stop writing altogether and just relax and be a mom because i think writing makes me too tense.
96. i live in a traditional cape cod style house with no garage.
97. i envy people who have garages.
98. all the trim in the downstairs of the house is called “nantucket grey,” but it’s really sage green.
99. i love flowers.
100. i just realized i’m totally boring.
what i need to explain, i think, is why you're now in the house of condiments. it's because my parents have carried out their annual refrigerator emptying in preparation for their winter journey south. and the condiments, they are now living in my refrigerator. my parents are huge consumers of condiments. jellies, jams, the usual mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup, relishes, fruit butters, and pickles. of course, there's also a healthy assortment of cheese--brie, cranberry, ginger and apricot, feta until you can't stand the thought of it another second, jack, parmesan, and bleu. we also scored pounds and pounds of frozen sea bass, two racks of pork ribs, a whole huge turkey, chicken parts, premarinated sirloin strips, a quart of vanilla ice cream, a pint of vanilla frozen yogurt, and the dregs of a quart of coffee ice cream. and an apple pie. and some leftover bean soup. i hadn't even realized the sickness of it all until i tried to cram it all into my refrigerator. there were dry goods too, but i won't bore you with the details.
i've slogged my way through the first four chapters of the book, plus the intro. yes, they are complete, save a few boxes of info that can be inserted later. the recipes look good and the nutritional analyses are accurate as best i can tell. ingredients are in the order in which they are used in the recipe directions, and tomorrow i will conquer chapter five, which completes the recipes. the final two chapters are due december first, so i'll be able to relax a bit after tomorrow.
sort of.
the boy's birthday is november 18th and i have to figger out the where and when of it all. he wants a hotwheels cake, which may seem simple, but since i have boxed myself into a corner with extravagant three-dimensional cakes
i'm feeling a little screwed. he wants fat tires in the back, small tires in front, and a huge spoiler on back. and i've actually given some thought to how i can create the spoiler (thank god for chocolate). but the fact that i've spent time contemplating this is evidence of my illness where cakes and other desserts are concerned.
*sigh*
and to think, this is what i looked like at this time last year
and there's the girl's cake to consider too ferchrissakes.
that woman is a goddess among us. i couldn't stop thinking about her all day!
me: ack! your room is a pigsty—it will have to be cleaned up this weekend.
the boy: [minor utterances of protest]
me: i’m serious. it’s time to clean.
i give goodnight kisses and head downstairs to work. it’s 8pm, which is the time i start working every day and it is also the moment i most look forward to all day. no, not because i’ll be working, but because there is silence. except that one night.
J comes down from reading to the boy looking puzzled.
J: he’s wigging out about cleaning his room. he thinks he can’t do it all by himself.
me: do i need to go up there and clarify things?
J: no, i think he’s fine.
and that’s where i made my mistake. i should have gone with the mommy instinct that was nagging at me to go up and make sure he was fine. instead, i sat down to work. the girl was making minor complaints into the monitor, which was unusual, but i figured she’d settle down. she didn’t. in fact, she got louder.
and then i heard it.
the waiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggg
immediately i was in a blind rage. this was MY time. why was he doing this to ME?
so upstairs i fly, yelling, “WHAT IS WROOOOOOOOOOONG WITH YOU!”
the boy: i can’t clean my room all by myseeeeeeeeeeeeeelf….wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
me: um, hello, FIRST OF ALL, use your words when you’re feeling nervous about something and secondly, stop the SCREAMING ALREADY AND GO TO SLEEP!
[insert slamming door here]
[insert baby screaming more loudly than ever because she has now been frightened by the slamming door]
i pluck the baby from her crib and stomp downstairs where i yell at J
me: HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO WORK WITH THESE KIDS BEING UP LIKE THIS???? I NEED THIS TIME TO WORK! I HAVE A BOOK DUE IN TWELVE DAYS! WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKKKK? WHY DIDN’T YOU HANDLE THIS WHEN YOU WERE UP THERE EARLIER?!
J: why don’t you give me the baby. she’s not going to want to go to sleep as long as you keep screaming.
me: [stony silence] but yelling FUCK YOU in my head.
J: will she go to sleep if i lay down with her?
me: um, NO, she’s wired. you’ll lie down, fall asleep like you always do, she’ll crawl off the bed and we’ll be in the emergency room for the rest of the night. and then social services will come because we already had to take her to the emergency room once and they’ll think we’re abusing her and will try to take her away. i’ll deal with her. neverMINDuh.
[muttering as i go up the stairs]
i nursed the baby for the third time in an hour and was literally sucked dry. there was nothing left. she was crawling all over me and i finally just gave up and put her back in her crib and left. she was pissed, but i didn’t care, i needed to work. and i felt guilty and angry all at the same time.
finally, at 9:30, i sat down to work. the girl fell asleep and the boy wasn’t heard from again. J turned into the couch cushion that he normally is and in defiance of myself i read blogs for the next two hours.
the next day was back to business as usual.
this is unabashedly a mommy blog. everyone knows that. and my kids are cute and do cute and funny things, but there’s only so much to say about that without boring myself and all of you. originally i’d intended to blog about the truths of motherhood and womanhood and what happens to a lot of women (and more specifically, me) when motherhood and career collide. so today i’m reaffirming that commitment.
but first i need to say something:
they’re serving beignets and café au lait at café du monde again and that is the best news I’ve had all week. the only thing better would be if they were serving them here, in my kitchen.
and now back to our regularly scheduled programming….
so, i’ve been kind of thinking a lot lately about this rage that boils up inside of me when i get copied on emails from my agent to my coauthor blowing smoke up her ass about how great she is and the publisher is so happy to be working with her, etc. it’s not as though my coauthor treats me like garbage—the opposite is true. she always makes sure i’m compensated well (we always split, but on the last book, for example, the advance wasn’t so great and she gave me the entire thing since she wasn’t doing much work on the book anyway and she didn’t have to do that. i mean, morally, yes, probably she did, but legally, no) and really never argues with me about anything. she is sympathetic when i need a time out because of family stuff (which is really great of her because she doesn’t even have kids so there’s no way she can truly understand how hard it is, but she is very respectful). i mean, i guess what i’m saying is that it’s really about what’s going on with me, not what’s going on with the coauthor or the agent or whatever.
i feel wrenched sometimes. and i know i’m not the only mother out here who feels like this. i think on a certain level all of us who have worked and gone to school and generally had lives before the babies came feel like this. i want to be home with my kids and yet i want to be able to say that i’m doing something meaningful as a career too. and i found this compromise, which is all about being home with the kids and still doing what i do best, but there’s a critical part of it that’s missing—there’s absolutely no glory. and i’m a leo. a certain part of me thrives on the glory. and since there’s very little in the way of compensation in the book writing world the glory is a big part of why we all do it. the book tour, the book signings, the hobnobbing and dinners out. all of that. and the coauthor does that and i stay home, trapped behind this screen. watching from the sidelines while everyone tells her how fabulous she is.
it’s not just her, either. i feel the same way about the husband and his glory. you know, he’s out there happy-houring it up, basking in his own glow while i am microwaved by the blue glow of the computer monitor.
bleh. i don’t even know what i’m trying to say, except that we women have to make these decisions all the time. and a lot of the time the solutions are unsatisfying. i mean, the same can be said for my childless friends because they’re childless and want kids and even though they’re jetting all around the world gathering up a bouquet of degrees they’re not satisfied either.
i’m not as mad as i used to be about the great feminist lie foisted upon me by my all-women’s college, but i wish they’d not been so steadfast in their mantra that we could have it all and that it’s easy to have kids any old time because the truth is no one really gets it all and for a lot of us having kids has been a very long journey dotted with some breathtakingly difficult moments.
i wonder all the time what i will tell the girl when the time comes. and i wonder what she and the boy will ultimately think of the job i’m doing now and the example i’m giving them about what it is to be a mother and a person all at the same time.
there’s a lot going on here what with all the recipe testing and chapter finishing plus all the usual nutty running around that we do from one activity to another. the boy said today that he can’t wait for swimming to start again and i cringed at the thought of adding one more thing to our week. but of course by then the book will be finished and things won’t seem quite so crazy.
the girl took two steps the other day. by accident. and she was angry about it. so i don’t think she’ll be doing that again any time soon. although she practically runs while she pushes the fisher price walker thingy. she talks in complete baby talk sentences, which leads me to believe that she’s going to talk as much, if not more than, the boy. and she climbs things. this weekend i found her here. 
the picture is blurry because i was torn between taking the picture and running over to grab her before she fell. oh, and i think it was set on the flower setting, which means close up, but i wasn’t so close, which is really crazy, since i was worried she would fall, right? she also grinds her teeth at me when I tell her no because she’s a comedienne.
the boy is loving school and his teacher called to tell me that he’s the big man on campus. apparently all the kids want to be with him doing what he does (like the other day he drew some trains and taped them to himself and before the day was over the entire class had drawn things and taped things to themselves). he gets frustrated that he can’t work alone sometimes. friday he came out of school wearing his baseball cap backwards. i left an almost five year old there in the morning and when i came back that afternoon he had morphed into a teenager. oh, and there’s a brouhaha brewing at his school that i can’t really get into, but suffice it to say that we’re rethinking our commitment to keep him there through sixth grade, which is upsetting for a lot of reasons.
J has been having better luck the last couple of weeks (did i tell you that he had a bad patch where a bunch of people didn’t qualify for their policies after the fact? well, he did and he was really bummed, but then last week he kicked ass and felt better), and this week could prove to be a good one for him too. he’s also been helping out around the house more lately without having to be asked (that last part is the really important part!) and he’s been stable now since february, which is good. his doctor wants to see him get a whole year under his belt before he feels comfortable. J and i both agreed that we want not just a year, but the rest of his life stable. a novel idea here in the house of crack-ups.
not much else going on, really. i’ve got twenty or so recipes left to test and some cleaning up of the first five chapters. we’ll miss deadline, but only two chapters remain. and when i’m done i think i will sleep for a hundred days and nights. just the thought of it...ahhhhh.
i'm sorry for eating an entire 12 ounce box of whoppers in 2 days. really. i am. at least we're still breastfeeding, right?
rationalization: 30% less fat!! and breastfeeding!
1. proud flesh. sounds yummy, doesn’t it? after the boy was born i started growing what the doctor described as “unusual” and “rare.” i like to refer to it as scar tissue gone wild! (picture that in video, will ya?) because i have yet to figger out what is proud about it. i discovered it one morning while attending to the nether regions and had to describe it to the nurse over the phone to get an appointment:
me: “um, well, it’s a protrusion of sorts.”
nurse: “a protrusion?”
me: “um, yes. like a tiny tongue, or the beginnings of a penis or something.”
nurse: [insert howling, crying laughter here] “is that what i should tell dr. J?”
2. the ability to eject tampons without pulling the string. well, okay, not exactly eject them, but all but the extra super giant ones just fall right out. really. i’m not kidding. after two kids apparently i’m the grand canyon. i can’t imagine what would happen after a third. good thing we’re not going there.
3. and my personal all time favorite, snatchulence (thank you Sisyphus for that marvelous descriptive). not the regular kind, either. these were actual farts that would take a detour while I was sleeping and when I would stand up in the morning it was like a combination of the morning after at a fraternity full of bingeing beer drinkers and the boston pops on the fourth of july.
between all of that the stretch marks, constantly rumpled clothes and baby-food-smeared hair, and saggy everything i'm astonished daily that J still finds me even remotely attractive. i'm not saying that he shouldn't, just that i'm not sure i do, so it amazes me that he does. know what i mean?
doh!
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