Oy! Motherhood.

strange stellar alignment?

i don't know what happened in here this morning, but things went so smoothly it was like i was dreaming.

first, the boy got up and got dressed before breakfast. then he actually *ate* breakfast at the table, without argument.

the girl ate too--heartily--and then when i said, "go lay down so i can change you," she actually did it. and stayed still while i changed her diaper and her clothes.

when i went upstairs to make the beds and straighten up there was no screaming from the girl, no yelling from the boy, nobody got hurt or fought about anything.

as i descended the stairs the girl was at the bottom waiting for me with a big smile on her face and her shoes in her hands. she then sat down and started trying to put them on by herself. i helped her out, and this is the most unbelievable thing of all, while i was putting her shoes on, the dog, the very same dog whose reason for living is to irritate the shit out of me on an hourly basis, WALKED INTO HER CRATE AND SAT DOWN because she knew we were leaving to take the boy to school.

that's when i said, out loud, "is there a sudden hole in the universe?" which confused the boy who kept asking me about the hole and how it got there and how can that happen and on and on.

we were in the car, with seatbelts on, by exactly 8:30, which is usually the time i start yelling at everybody to HURRY UP WE'RE LATE!! i was home from the drop-off before i'm normally pulling away from the curb at the boy's school and the girl slept the entire way there and back. she is now chirping happily to herself in her crib while she reads some books and prepares for another nap (which she asked for!).

i'm almost afraid to go out of the house later because i have a hard time believing i won't have to pay for the morning's good luck somehow.

oh, and last night i finished knitting the girl a sweater that i hope doesn't end up featured on You Knit What?

she looks unbelievably cute in it. like a little inuit baby.

T had her baby!

congratulations to my friend T who had her baby thursday at 4:54pm 20 minutes (TWENTY MINUTES!) after arriving at the hospital.

at birth john (jack) oliver was an enormous 9 lbs, 13 ounces and 22 inches long.

she does this so easily (and without drugs) i think she might as well just keep having them.

bamboo

okay, don't tell anyone, but i killed my mother's "lucky" bamboo. yeah. lucky my ass. if it were really *lucky* bamboo it would still be alive. i didn't do anything to it, i swear. nothing at all. which is why it's dead. the thing is, my bamboo is still alive and i hardly do anything to it. i guess the difference between hardly and nothing is the key.

frankly, i'm surprised my kids are still alive if my indoor gardening skills are any indication of my ability to nurture living things.

oh, and to add insult to injury, when i was transporting the bamboo back to my house in hopes of reviving it, it crashed over sideways and suffered even more damage. luckily i live across from a garden center. maybe that's the lucky part.

speaking of my nurturing abilities, or lack thereof, my son has got to be one of the most sensitive and forgiving people on earth and i'm absolutely CERTAIN it has nothing to do with me. the other day at school he was doing the hundred board, which is a montessori work wherein the child places tiles numbered one to one hundred in rows of ten. it's a big work. a major step in the life of a montessorian. and his friend M was helping him. M is not my favorite person in the world. he's fresh and argumentative and the kids all seem to want to do everything he does (or doesn't do, as the case may be). anyway, M realized part way through the hundred board that the way things were going the boy was going to get to put the 100 tile up. he tried to convince the boy to do two rows at once, thereby allowing him to do the final row. the boy would have none of it, and by the time they got to that last row M was not happy. so not happy that he wrecked the whole thing. (i know all of this because the teacher told me what happened).

and my boy, he was upset, but he looked at M and said, "i know you're just tired."

holy crap, i would've taken that kid's head off. he so did not inherit his patience genes from his momma.

life's lessons

things like, "don't put a fork in your ear/eye" and "buttcracks are not for action figures," are easy lessons to teach. they're concrete and they make all kinds of sense, even to a small child, but there are other lessons that i'm going to have a much harder time with down the road.

while i was out on a 6+ mile training walk with my friend S yesterday we were talking a lot about body image and it occurred to me, yet again, how tragic it is that most women are in a constant war with their bodies, even from pubescence. how it's impossible for so many of us to appreciate the strength and sexual power our bodies hold until well after it has faded. all because we're trained to wish for smaller (or bigger) hips and thighs and waists and breasts from a very young age. i remember so clearly the horror i felt in my own body as an adolescent and yet i look back at old pictures and realize i'd give a million bucks to look like that now. and then i see pictures from just five or ten years ago and have the same thoughts and feelings. there is never any sense of physical satisfaction.

no one sits us down and tells us how beautiful our bodies are and how we should celebrate and enjoy them while we can. instead we are taught to cover things up and feel shame about our femaleness. the vast majority of us are either the victims of strict parenting or negative social stereotyping. or worse. i was so busy covering my femininity that i never realized how much fun it could be until after i was married and it was, for all intents and purposes, too late.

so i'm wondering how i'm going to give the girl the gift of being able to celebrate her physical self without sending the exact wrong message. i know i've got some time to ponder this, but i think it's going to take time to figure out.

the great anti-climax

book writing is a long, drawn out torture sometimes. i think that's true of any type of book, though i would imagine some are more torturous to write than others. the kinds of books i write fall on the easy end of torture, and if i had no distractions i could probably write them in under six months. with kids running around they take at least a year.

there's all kinds of stress around these deadlines that have nothing to do with the rest of one's life and the onus (ha! i used that word i so loathe!) of creating a schedule that works is completely upon the writer. a contract is signed and a deadline announced, one-third of the advance is sent, but all that time in between, which seems like a near eternity at the beginning, is left open. for a writer like myself, whose best work comes out of a pressure cooker, this scheduling thing isn't so easy on the nerves under the best of circumstances. throw in a five year old, an infant, and a bipolar husband and trouble looms.

so, long and short, i spent the better part of a year under extreme work and family stress (for those who don't know, J had a major depressive episode and changed jobs during this past year). i slept very little and didn't allow myself the small indulgences i should have (like working out and spending more time with friends), and when i sent that final bit off to the publisher there wasn't a rush of happiness, but rather a release of everything i'd held inside for the past year. all of my fears, anxieties, frustrations, and yes, even happinesses, came tumbling out at once. contacting the squeaky old shoe was just one tiny part of it all and the emotion that small opening released was overwhelming because it held a greater significance than a simple reconnection with an old friend might. it was as if i finally felt like it was safe to allow myself to reach out beyond the family unit i've been working so hard to hold together. like i could finally let go with one hand and it all wouldn't come tumbling down around me. it was, in fact, a significant reaffirmation of my needs as an individual.

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thanks to everyone for the kind words of support. i think things have settled down now that a few days have passed and i've started working out again (yay!). the avon walk has inspired me to jump in with both feet and so far i feel great. annnnnd i've knitted nearly an entire sweater for the girl!

the day before yesterday i sent the squeaky old shoe a copy of my last book with a long letter. we shall see where it goes from here. either way i'm happy with what's transpired thus far and will be okay with whatever happens going forward.

raw

no, it's not about food, it's about feelings--mine, to be exact (as if you would have expected to read suddenly about someone else's feelings on my narcissistic little blog!).

i don't know what's happening to me, really. i feel like i'm falling apart at the seams. i'm just so open and yes, raw, that every little emotion seems magnified by one thousand percent. examples? yes, i have hundreds of them, but i'll limit them here to just a few so you don't go crazy right along with me.

after i contacted my squeaky old shoe i spent a lot of time crying. everything would make me cry--music, something i remembered from our past friendship, writing a letter to him, a commercial on tv (no, i don't have PMS). those few emails seem to have opened me up in a way that i haven't experienced in a long while.

and then there's the time in the car with J driving. i burst into tears the other day because i thought he was going too fast and i wanted to live long enough to see my kids again. talk about draaaaaaaama. even for a leo this is a bit much. J was baffled in the way that men often are by the women in their lives.

when we went to his company party and he won an award i was so overcome with emotion--all happy--that i nearly cried right there too. it was so good to see him in a place that is healthy and upbeat where people love him and genuinely appreciate who he is. it allows me to relax just a little bit, to let go and know that he's okay there.

i don't know. maybe some of this is because now i'm really and truly done with the book. i've answered the first big round of queries and my coauthor will do the rest. it's the first time since i was pregnant with the girl that i've actually had nothing to do. nothing at all. i mean, except the usual mommy/wife stuff. and J is in a pretty good place and my guard can come down just a little.

so i haven't been posting much because i haven't known what to say about all this. i still don't, really, but it felt like a good idea to start writing about it a little to see where it leads.

squeaky old shoe

for some reason that i have yet to figure out with any certainty, there's a person i contact just about every year at this time. for the last few years.

i fell in love with him about 20 years ago. in love in the way that a teenager falls in love with an older man. i hung on his every word, his every glance, his every everything. i'd tell my friend lana every detail of every passing encounter. in the hallways, near his office, in the classroom, at an afterschool event. my heart seemed to jump a dozen beats every time he approached. i bought him an umbrella hat once because he so loved lily tomlin's one woman show. he was the only friend i had who drank scotch. good scotch. on the rocks. he was gay. and i knew it and it made no difference--a crush is a crush and a girl's just got to go with it.

and then, with a *screeeeeeech,* i grew up.

a little, anyway.

and we grew closer. we talked and shopped and decorated and drank and smoked and shared holidays and milestones and talked. we once met at the helmsley hotel for drinks. for him, scotch. for me, gin. gin? who did i think i was? dorothy parker? yes, probably, because that's where my head was. oh, it could have been worse--i might have been trailing long scarves a la isadora duncan or sticking my head in gas ovens like sylvia plath. we got stoned in the warm glow of the fire in his living room that was filled to bursting with lamps and chairs. because, as he used to say, one can never have too many lamps or chairs. we watched mondo beyondo and laughed ourselves sick. we amused ourselves with a hot water bottle and a pot of "reducing" mushrooms. somewhere there are pictures of me with my head very nearly inside an uncooked thanksgiving turkey.

my love for him grew from that crush-y sort of silliness into something true and steadfast. something that felt real and unshakable. more than an average friendship. it was, at least for me, some serious kinship.

but it did all come crashing down in slow motion about ten years ago. i'm still not entirely sure what happened. i mean i know what caused it, but not what has sustained it. it wasn't dramatic. nobody yelled or cried or carried on. we just stopped.

and so now every year i email him around this time. and we talk about his squeaky old shoe and tell each other how much we miss each other and how we think of each other often and then the conversation gets hard or old or something and we both grow silent again. until the next year when the dance begins again.

this year i hope that we are able to sustain the dance long enough to get beyond it.

i agree

i suck. i have been so bad about posting lately. something happened to me when i stopped working. (and believe me, i shouldn't have stopped, i've got queries coming out my ass right now.) two days ago i wanted to take a shower and there were no towels. J wanted to get the girl dressed for bed and there were no clean onesies. dust bunnies are running wild, and bills have piled up next to me. apparently i stopped doing *everything* when i stopped working--including posting here. i'm much more organized, it seems, when i have eight gajillion things to do.

yesterday was J's birthday. the boy decorated the cake and it was stunning! he's really getting good at cakes. even put dots of color all around the outside edge. unfortunately i forgot to snap a picture before the pigs got at it. and then the assdog stretched her tongue an extra three inches just to be able to lick the frosting off one whole side.

the girl has been on a very tiresome pre-sleep screaming bender. it's getting shorter and shorter, but it literally came out of nowhere and has been very disconcerting. she fights sleep like crazy and then when i finally give up after an hour or so she screaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaams like the hounds of hell are biting her butt. this is a kid who used to love being in her crib. she could sit up there for an hour after her nap just singing and reading and playing with her babies.

last night she went down okay but woke up screaming at 3:45 am, at which point i brought her in our bed and nursed her, which usually puts her right out again, but last night she had other ideas. kicking me in the head was more fun than sleeping. after an hour of kicking and head butting and mwa, mwa, mwaaaaaaaa-ing i gave in and tried the boob again. she was almost out when i heard the pitter patter of bigger feet heading our way. after a brief detour in the bathroom our door opened and in came the boy. at 4:45 am. he'd had a bad dream about storms and disappearing rivers and he wanted to come into our incredible shrinking bed too. J and i clung helplessly to the very edges of the bed while the two little people tossed and turned and yap yap yapped until i finally just put the girl back in her crib. and she actually fell asleep. but the boy kept coughing and sniffling and moving around for another 45 minutes or so before making the decision to revisit his own bed. and then poor J had to get up. i was able to sleep another hour or so before we all had to get up.

today i will endeavor to take down all the xmas decorations and shove the tree out the back door while the girl endeavors to drive me to the very edge of sanity. wish me luck.

cappuccino muffins new zealand style

yeah, so i started the new year on kind of a strange note.

we were invited to a pot luck brunch on new year's day and i decided i wanted to bake something different. something new for the new year. so i consulted chef google for some ideas and i ran across a cappuccino muffin recipe that sounded tasty and interesting. i got up early that morning and started measuring and mixing. and things just weren't looking too good. the batter seemed too tight and it was rising right before my eyes in the mixing bowl. the 150 grams of butter seemed a bit dubious, but i converted it and moved on, never once thinking about the recipe's origin. well, it turns out the recipe was from new zealand where they measure things differently. for one thing a tablespoon is 20 ml as opposed to our 15 ml. i tossed the entire mess in the garbage and set out to convert everything to american measurements.

with no time to clean bowls and pans and then mix up a new batch i just started using more pans and bowls and cooking implements. by the time i was done i had mini muffins that blew up to the size of regular-sized muffins and a stack of dirty dishes in the sink that rivaled any i've seen in a restaurant kitchen. unfortunately, in the end, the mess was more impressive than the muffins, but i served them anyway.

perhaps this means i should spend less time in the kitchen this year?

2006

happy new year everyone!!!!