A General Sense of Well-Being, With A Few Exceptions, But No More Than Usual

Except for the all too frequent moments like this, I have been feeling pretty good. Since my diagnosis a week ago, I have been diligently taking my antibiotics twice a day on an empty stomach with a full glass of water. I was hoping to feel like myself after the first dose, but it wasn't quite that fast. I seem to be pretty much recovered with only a lingering desire for an afternoon nap now, so I really can't complain.

And since the weather has been awesome (which I totally just jinxed by mentioning it) I will leave you this evening with the good kind of lime:


Please help yourself and go make a nice stiff summery drink to celebrate my health. Actually, make two and drink one for me since I'm not allowed any booze until the end of my three weeks of antibiotics. Bottoms up!

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night/Day/Whenever

Why is it that when I start thinking about writing something, I will do almost anything to avoid actually having to sit down and write something? It's kind of like when I tell Matilda to pick up her toys or go to bed, and she whines, pleads, begs, and cries until, finally, after an hour of avoiding both cleaning and bed, cleans and is then happy as a clam.

Or maybe it's not like that. Maybe, just maybe, I have nothing to say. Maybe my creative juices have evaporated, maybe I am just a dried up sack full of shriveled cliches, plot lines that go nowhere and characters who lack substance.

There's this nagging feeling that if I could just carve a hour out of my day and keep it entirely to myself and then use that hour to write something (anything) that the rest would be better. That that one hour would somehow balance my life and bestow upon me infinite patience and the will to clean muddy footprints off my previously clean floor. But then, if I get that hour, and if I am able to use if for something other than grocery shopping or returning overdue videos, all I want to do is eat ice cream sandwiches and stare at the ceiling, or drive across town and wander around Target sipping overpriced coffee and not-buying things.

You know those portable charger things that you can get for your car, so if your battery dies in the middle of nowhere you're not completely screwed? I need one of those, but for writing. Do they make them? And if they do, can someone please tell me where I can buy one? I'll even take one slightly used, a hand-me-down writing charger, if you will.

And another thing, given the fact that I have so little time, how is it that I am able to waste so much of it?

So Tell Us, Nell, How Fucked Up Is John Milton?

I know I said I already started Paradise Lost, but today I really started it. It took a while to get into, what with the whole epic poetry aspect and all, but by the time I got to the part I am about to explain to you, I was hooked. Completely.

The premise (for those of you who haven't read it or read it so long ago that it has vanished from memory) is that after Satan and his crew of ragged roustabouts have been banished from Heaven, Satan goes off to find God's new world and corrupt Adam. Basically he just wants to piss God off.

So Satan sets off on his merry way through the fiery pits of Hell and when he gets to the gates he finds them guarded by two creatures. The first is a woman whose body (from the hips down) is a mass of writhing snakes, and the other is a man-thing that is dark and shifty and ill-defined.

They try to stop Satan from leaving and he is about to smote the black shadowy thing when snake lady jumps between them. She then explains to Satan that she is his daughter who sprung from his head (like Athena) back when they were in Heaven together, and apparently Satan was so pleased with her at the time that he knocked her up. Then he fell to Hell, and she was banished, still pregnant, to guard the gates. She gave birth to the shapeless dark thing (who, it turns out, is Death) and when she had him, her insides turned inside out and that's why she's made of snakes now. And since the fall she's been raped (hourly) by Death and forced to give birth (also hourly) to nasty Hell dogs who bite her and bark incessantly. Oh, and also Death eats the dogs babies.

Satan promises her a spot next to him in Heaven when he gets back there and so she unlocks the gates of Hell for him. Since he's her daddy and all.

How can I not love seventeenth century epic poetry with this level of violent hellishness? Dude, this book is fucked up, yo.

Sometimes, when they want things...

...they look at me with their big eyes and freakishly large heads and I am forced to feed them cupcakes before breakfast.

In Which I Explain My Aversion to The Princesses

I didn't used to have a problem with The Princesses. I liked the Disney movies with their slender waisted heroines and dashing Prince Charmings. Sure, I'd heard the stories about the animator's dirty tricks and secret hidden messages in the clouds, but whatever, kids are too little to really catch those evil subliminal messages and if teenagers want to watch Disney movies stoned, what business is it of mine? I didn't let Matilda watch the movies, but it had more to do with a General Dislike of All Things Commercial than any real moral objection to pretty princesses.

But when Matilda hit 2 we were suddenly inundated with pale pink and baby blue princess things. They were everywhere - on her clothes, her toys, in her food. She wouldn't wear pants, even if I begged. All of her games suddenly revolved around being a princess and waiting for her prince. She would lie down and close her eyes and wait. Literally.

After sputtering around for a few months, trying to figure out where the hell she had even heard the Disney songs she was now manically singing, I set about trying to counteract the pinkness. We read The Paper Bag Princess and watched non-princess movies like Wallace and Gromit and The Muppet Show, anything to break free from the stereotyped Disney Girliness.

Some of my friends and in-laws didn't get it. (My mother got it, because if there's one thing I am, it's my mother's daughter.) They didn't see the harm. They bought her cardboard boxes of shiny Princess dresses, bright pink Sleeping Beauty bikinis and puff sleeve t-shirts adorned with trios of smiling princesses. Total strangers would use cute little girl voices to ask her, "Are you a princess?" or say knowingly, "You must be a princess."

My countermeasures took on an almost desperate tone.

"Disney is evil," I would whisper to her.

She would look at me, her head to one side, and then say, "Okay, I am Cinderella and you are the Prince," thrusting a dirty mary jane into my lap.

It wasn't that I hated Disney, or that I wanted her to be a total tomboy, I was just trying to give her some balance. Soon it became clear that I was not even close to getting through to her. Every. Single. Day. It was the same thing, over and over. Sure, there have been times when I used this to my advantage, but mostly I just tried to subvert the whole thing.

I started reading the real fairy tales to her, the Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Andersen. I was amazed at how much I had forgotten and how much Disney has managed to change the way we remember fairy tales. Of course most fairy tales have been told so many times that it's hard to say which version is "real" and which is altered, and I'm not saying that the overt Christian morals of the Grimm brothers are better or worse than Disney's equally overt patriarchy, just that they don't get the same kind of media play.

In the Grimm brother's version of Cinderella, there is no fairy godmother and her father's not dead. Cinderella's father brings her a twig, which she plants and weeps beside every day, mourning the loss of her mother. The twig grows into a tree and becomes the home of two doves, who give her the dress and shoes for the ball and later peck out the eyes of her jealous step-sisters.

And it's not just Cinderella - The Little Mermaid is all about unrequited love, in Hans Christian Andersen's version, she commits suicide at the end of the story, because the prince doesn't love her back, and Mulan? The girl kicks ass, true, but in the original legend, she kicks ass long enough to become a general in the Chinese army, one of six top advisers to the Emperor, while in Disney's version she is found out and marries her commanding officer. (Okay, we don't actually see the ceremony, but it's implied.)

Last winter one of my dear friends gave me a copy of this article in which Peggy Orenstein talks about how the Disney Corporation's marketing tactics are intentionally targeting girls exactly like Matilda. And while it was nice to know that I'm not imaging the sudden surge in All Things Princess, it was kind of disheartening to be reminded just how vulnerable our children are to the marketing tactics of mega-corporations like Disney.

Lately I've been feeling a little more relaxed about the whole Princess thing. Partly because Matilda is beginning to out-grow it, and partly because it looks like Freya might escape unscathed. She loves the movie Cars (yes, I know it's still Disney, but it is far from Princess) and this morning she was walking around banging on her head, pretending to be the Corpse Bride, and talking to the worm that lives in her eye socket. No frills for this one!

So at this point I guess you could say that my Princess Aversion is residual. It represents a fight of three years to rescue my daughter from being just another princess and my deep mistrust of large corporations and people who think they know what's good for me. I know that many, many people love the Princesses, some in a nostalgic kind of way, others because they are simply harmless bits of fluff, a welcome distraction from the grit of everyday life.

But what kind of message do these princesses, and their masses of princess gear, really send to our girls? That they should wait, and look really pretty and then someday a prince will come and save them? From what? From themselves?

I'm not saying that the messages that exist for boys are any better than the helpless pretty princess message is for girls, just that I think that it's dangerous for our children to be drilled repeatedly with a single message. Even if all of the little pink princesses out there grow up to be strong independent women, and even if all of the bionicle-loving boys grow up to be sensitive well-adjusted men, it will not be because of their early childhood indoctrination into societal norms, but in spite of it.

I want my girls to be able to look past the shiny pink veneer and say, "Yeah, she's pretty, but it must take forever for her to get her hair like that, and how come she has to stay home while he gets to go out and have fun? What's up with that?" or "Yeah, sure. Some guy's just gonna show up at your house and marry you. Right. That'll happen." This is something that is hard even for me to do. I am a sucker for pretty packaging and it takes work to be able to look past the slick exterior and see what's really underneath all that gloss.

But I want my daughters to grow up to be strong and independent women, who will live lives full of advertising and see through it, who are willing to work for what they want, not wait for it to fall into their laps. And because there is so much of the Princess Stuff out there, it's my job to provide some balance via rebel alternatives - like strange picture books and sarcasm and punk rock.

Here's how mean I am...

...SO mean.

A few months ago, after a spending several hours cleaning the children's toys and getting rid of as many as I could possibly justify, I joked that I was going to lock the closet where all of the toys are kept. Ha ha! Funny, Mom.

On Wednesday, I really did it. That's how mean I am. I have locked up all the toys and you can't have them until... What? You want to play outside? Well, sure, of course...

Since then the girls have not asked for their toys at all. Not once. There are a few things that got left out of the closet - a couple of dress-ups, a couple of dolls, the wooden blocks that live in a wagon downstairs - and they have been happily playing with (and then cleaning!) those few things.

Guess I need to reevaluate my rationalization for why we keep all those other toys around.

Perfect Weather and Happy Children

You (And By You, I Mean I) Have Waited Long Enough

I know I promised not to inundate you with posts about how cute the kittens are, but it's been weeks since I mentioned them, so here we are.

They are enormous now, practically cat-sized, and this is their new favorite place to sleep:


Which is fine with me, because it is the dirty laundry and not the clean laundry.

In addition to sleeping at irregular intervals they also like to scurry around when other people are sleeping, pee right next to the litter box, eat, and be tortured by the girls (I'm thinking this will be a big selling point when they are ready for new homes: Pre-Tortured Kittens! Free!).


As with most young animals, it's a good thing they're so damn cute. Otherwise, well, have I mentioned that we live right next to a river? Okay fine, I wouldn't really drown them. Mostly because Matilda would never forgive me. You should see the look I get for just kind of jokingly hinting that maybe I will kill one.

It's Official

Yup, I've got Lyme Disease. On the plus side I now have a Really Good Excuse for how whiny I've been lately. The down side is, well, I have Lyme Disease. This sucks. I am trying not think about all the horror stories I've heard about Lyme and focus instead on the fact that my wonderful doctor told me I'd feel better in a few days and that three weeks of kick-ass antibiotics should knock it right out.

The weird part is I didn't even know I had a tick. The bite was on the back of my leg, not the most visible spot, but still, they're supposed to be attached for about 36 hours before they can transmit Lyme, but I don't even remember having one! Guess I should have gotten the bite checked out two weeks ago when it first showed up. I've been less vigilant since we moved to a more rural area, and since it's only May, I hadn't really gotten into full tick-checking mode yet, but the girls are getting a full body check every night now (their favorite part of the day).

In other news: We went and saw Shrek the Third last night (yeah, that was me over-doing it yesterday) and it was pretty good. Steve didn't like it as much as the other two, but can I just tell you how satisfying it was to see Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty get all bad ass? It. Was. Awesome. I've mentioned that I have this thing with The Princesses, right? So, yeah, that was fun. Altogether I thought it was pretty good, the usual fart jokes et al.

The Worst Sick Person in the World

Yep, that'd be me. Both yesterday and today I have felt mildly better in the middle of the day, so what do I do? You got it - I push myself too hard and then crash, even harder.

I made an appointment for the morning to find out what horrible illness I have. I'll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, Steve is bringing me hot water bottles and tea. He's so great. And I am such a terrible sick person, I think it must be because I almost never get sick, so when I do, I'm pretty sure that whatever I have is permanent and I react accordingly.

Paradise Lost and The End of the World

Okay, I'm being a little dramatic, it's not really the end of the world, but I do sincerely feel as if my head might tumble off my neck and shoulders and roll under my bed any minute now. I woke up feeling like I was submerged in a tank of water, thick, body ache inducing water. If I don't feel better tomorrow I think I should go get tested for Lyme Disease because maybe it wasn't a spider bite after all.

When I told Matilda that I felt like poop, she thought that was about the funniest thing she had ever heard, but then she was a very good nursemaid all day. She took excellent care of me, only filling my water glass halfway because she "didn't want me to drink too much, too fast."

Freya on the other hand informed me that "little girls are not nice to sick mommies."

I started reading Paradise Lost by Milton today. It is the first on a very long list of works that appear multiple times on the GRE English Subject Test. Most of the top ten are epic poems, boy, am I in for a fun summer! This is what happens when you graduate with a concentration in Creative Writing and then decide to pursue a graduate degree in Literature.

So What Is a MommyBlogger Anyway?

After jumping over from one of Plain Jane Mom's "Go Read This" posts a couple of days ago, I read this post at citizenofthemonth.com and found myself wondering what it really means to be a mommyblogger. Is there a list of defining characteristics? Do we all chatter incessantly about our children? Post non-stop pictures of them, day after day after day? I don't do that, do I?

The mommybloggers (self-proclaimed or otherwise) that I read all have something else going for them: they have personality, talent, and humor, something that makes their blog different and, at the same time, familiar. There is a sense of community, the kind that I don't really have in real life. There is camaraderie, a casual atmosphere of support and friendship, based not on mere playgroup proximity, but on shared interests, and that dark, wry sense of humor that all of my favorite mommybloggers posses.

We share a common experience. Okay, maybe your child didn't throw up on you in the supermarket yesterday, just as you had piled the last item into your brimming shopping cart, but you can understand why my first instinct was to catch the vomit in my hands, right? (Why? I don't know, I just did, and no, it didn't help.) And sharing that lovely little detail with all of you makes it less embarrassing, less icky, and ushers it into the realm of the laughable.

Besides, there are a million different reasons that moms choose to write blogs in the first place. For some, their blog is simply a practical way to keep long distance family and friends up to date on what's happening on the homefront, like my friend at Chickpea Journal, whose baby might actually be the cutest one in the world.

Or, maybe you already had a blog and then had a baby - mommyblogger by default - like my friend Annika. (With whom I spent many crazy teenage years and who I have recently reconnected with via blogging.)

Or maybe, like me, you write because That's What You Do, and having kids around means that blogging is the best way to do that right now and without it your head might explode. Since I've been blogging, I have been calmer in the face of child-created disasters. I think to myself, ha, I am so blogging about this tonight! and it helps. It takes the edge off.

Being a mommyblogger means that there are other people out there who are having the same feelings of joy and resentment and pride and despair that I am, and that together we can share these things with humor and empathy. And it almost doesn't even matter why, or what kind of wacky content ends up getting posted, because being a mommyblogger means that I am not doing this by myself. And when I read posts like this one from Jenn at Breed 'Em And Weep, I know that I am not the only one who fantasizes about running away sometimes, and I don't feel so guilty when it happens.

And there are a million other reasons why each one of you is also a mommyblogger, and well, I'm glad I found you people. I love you, my virtual friends, I love you very much. So regardless of whether we, as a collective, are misunderstood by some other non-mommybloggers out there, regardless of whether or not we are "easy targets," we know who we are, we know what we are capable of, and ultimately, we're in this together.

So, that's why I am a mommyblogger, because I have to write to survive and because knowing that I'm not the only one is just about the best support a mommy like me can have. Well, that and a glass of wine at the end of a long day. Did I mention that she threw up on me in the supermarket?

UPDATE: See? This is what I'm talking about.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation Day

I can't seem to formulate actual sentences tonight, so here is my day in list form:

1. Left Freya alone for 30 seconds
   


2. Cleaned up paint mess
   


3. Left Freya alone for 30 seconds
   


4. Cleaned up broken glass
   


5. Left Freya alone for 30 seconds
   


6. Threw away three formerly sterile tampons
   


7. Chose not to vacuum my living room
   


8. Casually suggested to Steve that maybe we don't really need two children
   


9. Admired my kitchen approximately 108 times
   


10. Fended off a sudden whipped cream attack after the best strawberry shortcake I've ever had
    


11. Took a shower
    


12. Drank the wine that Steve brought me

There was more, but if I can't even write sentences, you can hardly expect me to remember everything that happened to me today.

I [heart] My Kitchen or How I learned to stop worrying and love the creamsicle.

My kitchen has been miraculously transformed from this:


into this:


For the last three days Andrea has driven all the way over here and tirelessly painted and painted and painted while I helped (sometimes) and did work (part of the time) and attempted to distract the children (mostly).

I wanted the two kinds of green, with a cream for the large sections of wall and a dark red for the back-splash behind the stove and sink.

But unfortunately:


Christmas every day was not really the look I was going for. I thought the light green would be enough to make it not-too-christmasey, but, um, well. Steve was right. He cautiously posed the suggestion that perhaps the red was maybe a little much.

After hanging on for as long as I reasonably could (too long, way too long - I knew it was doomed before he said it) to my color choice, I finally yelled across the house that he was right and I was wrong. He asked if I'd repeat that on tape, and of course I refused. But I did paint it, photograph it and post in on the world wide web.

The creamsicle orange was his idea, and damn if it wasn't a good one. It makes the whole kitchen feel fresh and bright and huge. (Which, if you can't tell from the pictures, it is not. Huge, that is.)

Matilda helped:


Freya helped too. She painted one of these:

I didn't take a picture of hers, but if you come over, you can tell which one it is because the finish is still a little lumpy.

We took a ridiculous number of in-progress pictures, none of which are nearly as exciting as the final version. Every time we did something new I was so excited, I had to take pictures, but now that it's done, the in between pictures seem so much less exciting than they did at the time. So if you want to see The Transformation ad infinitum, click on over there. Otherwise, there's really only one thing left to say.

Thank you, Andrea!

You are a wonderful friend, and this was the best present you could ever have given me. I love you and I love your family and I am going to miss you all so much.


You're not really leaving in this picture. You'll be back. That's how I want to think about you moving across the country too, even though I know it's not quite the same as leaving for the night. A girl can pretend, can't she? I love you.

There's no time! NO TIME!

It has been three days, and it feels weird to have been not blogging for that long, strange that I have only been doing this for a few months and already if I don't write every day I feel that something is missing.

But I swear I have a good excuse, not only did I start my new job on Monday - a real job - but Andrea and I have been transforming my kitchen from a dirty pukey green with oak cabinets into... well, you'll see. We have taken approximately a million "before" and "in-progress" photos, and today (I hope) we will be able to take the final "after" pictures.

This week is the complete opposite of my lazy post-finals haze last week, but soon I will be back, and with pictures! Just wait, you're gonna love it.

Not the greatest picture of me, I know, but it's me, my mother and my youngest daughter so it seemed kind of perfect for Mother's Day. More pics here.

I love you Mom!

your little graduate

Tired, but happy, and never to be an undergrad, ever, ever again.

There are so many things (and pictures) that I have to post, but I am a little tipsy and a lot tired and it has been a long, hot, happy day, so here are the highlights:

• My mother referred to me as her "little graduate," to a total stranger.
  
  
• Lunch after graduation with my parents, my children, my best friends, and my favorite professors.
  


• Being announced as "Neil" when I walked on stage. (I corrected the announcer, but too late.)
  


• Matilda brought me flowers (really from Tim and Andrea, but have I mentioned how in love with floral bouquets my daughter is?)
  


• Freya playing with Tim and referring to him as "my daddy" over and over again.


• Planting my new Lilac tree in the front yard (a graduation present from my parents.)

* Details to follow. *

I Have No Clothes (and not in the metaphorical Empress kind of way)

...more like the I Am A Total Drama Queen kind of way.

I finally made it. I've worked really hard, studied my butt off (especially the last two years) and now, after ten years of creeping towards this day - often at a painstakingly slow pace - I will graduate summa cum laude tomorrow, and I have nothing to wear. Nothing.

Okay, well, I will not be going naked, but I did just spend almost two hours hopelessly scouring the mall for something both affordable and cute to wear tomorrow. No luck. I did find a totally adorable pair of sandals, but they cost too much and hurt my feet. I almost bought them anyway, but I was good and put them back.

And did I mention that the place was crawling with tiny little teenage girls?

Little ones, not even tween ones. It was kind of disturbing. There was a gaggle of them in the bathroom, swearing up a storm, and a mother with her young daughter gave me That Look. You know the one, the I Know You Are Thinking The Same Thing As Me look. And I kind of was. I had leaped forward in time to the day when Matilda (suddenly age 13) was giving me a different look, one that said, God You Are The Most Pathetic Mother Ever Because You Won't Let Me Go To The Mall Alone.

We commiserated for a moment and then parted ways. I never did figure out where the parents of all of the various groups of girls (there were a lot more girls than boys) were. Probably cowering in a dark corner somewhere, continuously shaking their heads and muttering to themselves. I know this because that's where you'll find me when I cave to Matilda's evil stare and let her go off by herself just so she'll still like me.

(Of course, my scenario is flawed because caving to her iron will can only bring the God You Are The Most Pathetic Mother Ever Because You Are So Easy To Manipulate look. You can tell I spend way to much time dreading thinking about my daughter's teenage years.)

*Sigh.* I'm freaking out. Can you tell? I'm going to go pour myself a glass of wine now. Yes, please, by all means, join me. Drink on my behalf, it's good for you.

My HUGE Freakin' Spider Bite

Here's what the back of my leg looks like right now:


It was itchy yesterday, but it's on the back of my leg, right above my knee, so I couldn't really see it. Then Matilda spotted it this morning, and it was BIGGER. and kind of hard. and huge.

So I made Steve look at it and he kind of shrugged and said, "Well, it's probably not necrotic."

Um, excuse me? Necro- as in death? PROBABLY NOT NECROTIC?! You mean my flesh is PROBABLY not going to just DIE? Thanks, honey.

we will be mean to you so hard

INT. MY ROOM - AFTERNOON

Matilda has dutifully climbed the stairs to begin cleaning the playroom (no easy task at this point). I take Freya onto my lap.

Me: Freya, you really have to try and clean, okay?

Freya: Okay, but mom. I have to tell you something.

Me: What?

Freya: If you be mean, we will be mean to you so hard.

Me: Yikes, so hard?

Freya: Yeah, because you can't be mean or we will be mean to you so hard, so... (gives me the big, meaningful eyes look)... you can't make us clean.

What does this even mean you ask? Does she beat her children? Whip them with sticks? Oh no, the extent of my meanness is quarantining them to their room and refusing to provide them with ice cream cones. What a life.

On my way home (to the loony bin)

Further evidence that I am losing my mind. Here's a conversation that took place on our way home last night:

(note: The previous evening after I put Freya to bed, Matilda stayed up helped me fold the giant mountain of laundry on my bed while we watched House [I know, I know, it's, um, educational].)

INT. CAR - DAY.
I'm driving, Steve's riding shotgun, the girls are in the back.

Matilda: Mom, can I stay up and help you fold laundry again?

Me: We did it all yesterday, we don't have any more laundry.

Matilda: PLEASE! I really want to fold more laundry!

Me: Oh, honey, I wish I had some more laundry for you to fold!

[Steve gives me a look that says, "who the fuck are you?"]

Me: What?

Steve: You wish you had more laundry?

Me: Well, no, but...

Steve: You know I live to make you happy, [shrug] if more laundry is what you want...

Me: Stop.

Steve: I'm sure I can work something out.

Me: You wanna walk home?

Steve: Would that make more laundry?

Me: Shut up.

Who the hell wants MORE laundry? Not me! Please God, not me!

The First Day of The Rest of My Life

It's been a long time since the girls and I had a really good day together. All too often lately I get cranky or they fall apart, usually both, we have a very symbiotic relationship like that. But yesterday was one of the good ones. We took a picnic lunch to the park and played for over an hour. When we got home they drew me pictures and I washed the dishes that have been sitting in the sink for more days than I care to admit. I think perhaps my period of Total Sloth following the end of school is coming to an end. Thank God. Or whoever.

Today I will embark on my One Year Plan to transform myself into the ultimate Grad school applicant. Step One is to purchase and read Milton's Paradise Lost since out of six sample GRE English Literature Subject tests, it appeared 27 times.

I also should really work on writing something other than this blog.

I Post Kiddie Porn!

Okay, this is serious, really. I was messing around with my Flickr account and looking at which of my photos are most popular. Man, people are fucked up!

This pictures (sans-big-black-X) has been viewed 240 times:

Usually my photographs are each viewed between 8 and 14 times, not 240. The rest of the photos on the most viewed list were similar - naked baby butts, kids in the bath, one of a seven-year-old friend of ours at the beach in her bathing suit. YUCK!

I immediately screened and changed the permissions on all of my photos that could even remotely be considered kiddie-porn-ish, but I thought you all should know about this. I know I'm not the only naive person thinking that putting cute pictures of my children online is harmless.

240 times. She's two for Christ's sake!

Life sucks when you're having fun.

I spent the weekend (actually, Saturday through Monday, which has thrown me all off, I have no idea what day it is right now) at Tim and Andrea's house in Albany. Tim and I decided that it would be a good idea to sort through the hundreds of letters that we, along with a handful of other friends (Annika), wrote to each other as teenagers.

The back story here is that we all met at Powell House, a Quaker retreat center in upstate New York where we would go for weekend conferences on Peace and Love and other such fuzzy topics. I started going when I was about ten, and by the time I reached high school age and was home schooling and had no friends where I lived, they were all I had. Long story short, the friends I made there are the people I know I will be friends with until I am dead, no matter how long that takes.

Spending the weekend sorting and scanning letters, so full of teen angst that I cried laughing more than once, was interesting. While it seems to have made Tim think about his children's fast approaching teenage years, all it did for me was make me miss what we used to have together. Nights spent dying our hair pink, staying up all night, waiting for vampires on the roof outside my window (yes, there was a serious Anne Rice obsession, very angsty) and refusing to drink apple/orange juice for ill defined moral reasons.

I like being a grown up, I'm happy (more or less, depending on the day) with the choices I've made since then, the partner I chose, the kids I love, the school, the evolution to grown-up dinner parties in place of teenage silliness, but still. Nostalgia, *sigh.* Why is it that when we're teens, all we want to do is grow up/drive/stay out all night/drink beer/have sex/be free/complain about not having these things, and then in retrospect we look back and say damn, we didn't know how good we had it? Just thinking along these lines makes me feel old.

10 Things You Must Know About Me

I have been tagged! And yes, I'm all excited, because it's my first time. Jennifer over at Playgroups Are No Place For Children has tagged me with a 10-Things-About-Me meme, so here they are, 10 completely true, pretty random things, in no particular order:

1. I am a high school drop out, but took the GED as soon as I was able to. At the time, you had to be 18 to take the test, probably because a smart 10 year old could pass it without too much trouble.
   
   
2. After I dropped out at 16, I lived in London for 3 months working as an intern in an architecture firm.
   
   
3. When I was 5, I lived in Texas to be near my grandparents, but moved back when my father's business failed.
   
   
4. My career as a writer began when I was very little. I submitted a short story to Cricket magazine and was thrilled to receive an Honorable Mention. Being 8 at the time, I didn't realize that every entry received an Honorable Mention.
   
   
5. My father lost me in Ireland once and didn't call my mother for days so he would have to tell her that he had misplaced me. Meanwhile I called her every few hours to see if he had called her yet.
   
   
6. The town I lived in when I was 18 was so small that once I got pulled over for having a taillight out and after giving me a warning, the state trooper asked for directions back to the interstate.
   
   
7. My friend Kira and I used to make our little brothers eat algae. I have no idea what kind it was or whether it was even safe to eat. No one died.
   
   
8. From the time I was born to the present, I have never lived in the same house for more than 3 years. And no, my father was not in the army, in fact, he's not even a citizen of the US, he's Irish.
   
   
9. I handle change badly. Incorporating the unexpected into my carefully laid (but often poorly articulated) plans is hard for me, but I'm working on it.
   
   
10. Out of the four serious boyfriends I had before I met Steve, there is only one that I prefer never to mention. It is the same one that my brother reminds me about on a regular basis - usually by saying something like, "Thank God you didn't have kids with [blank], huh?" in front of everyone.

And now, it's your turn:

Ready...go!

Through the Looking Glass
Chickpea Journal
Ewokmama
The Queen of Shake-Shake
Problem Girl
Stepherz
me rite gud
Don't Change Your Plans
Quarter Life Crisis
021434!

Well, that's it, thanks for playing!

Too close to summer to wait any longer.

The ice cream cones just had to come out. (Besides, they were on sale!)

The three of them sitting there together reminds me of a picture of myself and my brother with one of his friends eating Popsicles. I was about Matilda's age at the time, if I can find it I will post it.

Whatever happened to separation of church and state?

The new hate crimes bill that passed the senate and is set to be vetoed by our amazing president has me a little worried.

I can understand being concerned about first amendment rights, I am all about first amendment rights, censorship is wrong. Period. But that's not what this is about. This bill is about hate crimes, physically hurting someone just because there's something about who they are that you don't like.

Adding sexual orientation and gender identity as unacceptable reasons to assault someone seems long overdue to me. And the fact that the religious right is getting a ton of press about their opposition to the bill is kind of scary. Sure, it's their right to believe what they want and/or advocate for those beliefs, but freaking out about secular legislation designed to protect another group of individuals? WTF!

Where do they get off? They don't run this country yet... oh wait.

Housewife's Lament

The carts are lined up next to each other. Full of expired bags of candy and discontinued toothpaste, they dare me to look at them.

"Come," they say, "fifty percent off, everything in here, everything." And then in a whisper, "some are even seventy-five percent off."

They know what this does to me. I stroll over casually, glancing around to see if anyone is looking judgy, prepared to share a knowing smile that says I don't usually pick through the remaindered items in the stray shopping carts, or the plastic shelves near the employees only bathroom. But I do, usually pick through that is.

This time, two small purple bottles of bubbles catch my eye. Beside them, a hand-drawn sign says, "Bubbles - 19 cent." It should be cents, I think, and pick them up. Put them in the cart.

They are only 19 cents each, 38 cents taken together and still, when the cashier starts to ring up all of my other items, fruits, vegetables, milk, cereal, a $1.49 bag of pretzels, a bottle of soymilk that I have a coupon for and so it's almost free, I think for a minute, do they really need bubbles? Should I put them back? The total rises, steadily, as I watch. With each beep the lead in my stomach condenses.

I didn't used to spend this much on food. I used to be able to get a week's worth of groceries for under $100.00. It wasn't that long ago. Now I hold my breath when the cashier swipes my member card, and as I sign the check, I feel physically ill.

Why does food cost this much? Why does it cost so much just to feed my children, that it would make part of me feel better to deprive them of bubbles? 19 cent bubbles?

New Developments in the Grad School Saga

Yesterday, Annie gave me a copy of an article by Azita Osanloo entitled "Is the PhD the New MFA?" published in the May/June issue of Poets and Writers in which she discusses several newish PhD programs in creative writing and the impact they might have on writers (with or without MA/MFAs) in the future.

As you can imagine, I got all excited. Then I did a little research and once again I am kicking myself for taking 10 years to get to the BA. It now looks like if I want to get a PhD in creative writing instead of literature I have to suck it up and get the MA/MFA first. Not that this is a huge problem, I'm just impatient, and I have no money, and two kids, and don't want to move twice for school, and I feel old.

This constant influx of new information into my plan is mucking me all up. I wish I could just download all of the available information about grad schools into my brain and then move forward with confidence. I'm tired of adjusting.

UPDATE, FIVE MINUTES LATER: Talk about impatient. I couldn't even wait for an email reply. Turns out I can apply to the program at USC with a BA. Ha!

Like me... please like me!

In the shower this morning, I am suddenly sixteen again. I catch myself thinking, nay, planning what I will say to my New Friend from the research conference when I see her in class: Should I act casual, be cool, not act like I really liked her? Or should I just lay it out there, ask for her email or something? I image myself saying, "hey you," or "hello new friend." Without warning, my thinking takes a self analytic turn: am I really this desperate for friends?

We moved last summer. New house, new town, new playgroups (wherever they are) and I've been too busy with school to get out and find (never mind attend regularly) knitting groups or book clubs or something. Things People Do.

Time to get busy, find people, seek them out. I will make it my mission. I will not stop until I am surrounded by people, at least one of whom I feel a genuine connection with. The Internet is a good friend, but it can't laugh with me over a glass of wine, make brownies when we should be making dinner, or spontaneously decide to take the kids on a road trip.

I make a decision. I will ask New Friend for her email, maybe even her cell phone number. I will call her. I will tell her that I like her and that I would like to hang out some time.

All Hope Is Not Yet Lost

This morning, before I left, Matilda and Freya were playing "Shrek." Their motley cast of toys filled the necessary roles as follows:

Polly Pocket as Fiona.


small plastic zebra as Donkey.


red dragon as Dragon.


Calico Critter as Lord Farquad.


and Cinderella as Shrek:


Let me repeat, Cinderella. As. Shrek.

I love my children. Why do I even worry about the evil influences of Disney and the whole Princesses-are-passive-and-don't-do-anything-cool thing? In a world where Cinderella can be Shrek, anything is possible.