Bridget Asher

November 2008

Some Days Go Like This:

One of your kids is playing the piano. "Hot Crossed Buns."

You didn't know that they knew it.

They play the first three notes.

Hot, crossed buns.

Then the second three notes.

Hot, crossed buns.

And then they play:

Hot, crossed buns.

And then:

Hot, crossed buns.

And in your head, you think, "One a-penny..."

And they play:

Hot, crossed buns.

And in your head, you think, "Come on one a-penny!"

And they play:

Hot, crossed buns.

You think: "ONE A-PENNY!"

And they play:

Hot, crossed buns.

And in your head, you say, "It's okay. They only know that much. What's wrong with that? I can live in a dimension in which we only get to..."

And they play:

Hot, crossed buns.

And this goes on.

And on.

Hot, crossed buns.

Until, much later, you're crying on the phone to your husband, saying, "I don't know why I lost it ... I just started screaming ONE A-PENNY TWO A-PENNY! ONE A-PENNY! TWO A-PENNY! And ..." You lower your voice. "It felt so good."

* * *
Chinese Medicine

My son, Finneas, is recovering from a long virus -- having missed 5 weeks of school.

Since traditional medicine was just kind of shrugging at us, we decided to take him to a guru/acupuncturist/herbalist/specialist in Chinese medicine in town -- someone who usually takes months to get in to see. (I did the hysterical high-pitched mother thing and got booked in a week.)

The doctor asked a lot of questions, even about his time in utero. She taped tiny beans in the dip of one ear to help with nausea. She gave us a few teas and something to spray under his tongue for the aches. (The spray was made in Oregon, which I was thankful for.)

And finally she asked the real question. "Does he eat vegetables?"

"He eats lettuce and green apples," my husband said.

"And ketchup!" my son added, having counted it ever since he heard of the Reagan pronouncement of the ketchup vegetable from my youth.

The doctor said, "He must eat three vegetables -- steamed -- every day."

Of course, this was the wisdom we'd been seeking. Of course it also sounded pretty familiar.

My 90-year-old Southern grandmother has been telling us this for years. My mother has been trying to bribe Finn to eat vegetable since he was little. (He once gagged on mashed potatoes that she'd offered him a dollar to swallow. Guilt-ridden for the gagging, she paid him off anyway.)

We wrote a monstrous check and sadly escorted our pathetic selves home.

Finn has since gagged on carrots. He's learned to withstand broccoli. He drinks Fruit Fusion with vegetables in it. He's sticking with his apples and occasional lettuce. Tonight, he will move onto asparagus.

But as a mother in the new millenium, I just figured I'd be saying something different than: Go eat your vegetables.

On Why I Haven't Written

I warned you that there would be times when I wouldn't write much for this blog.

It's my job to create something from nothing. As a writer, you have a blank page and then you add smudges of ink. And, in the end, there's a world filled with people and their entire emotional freight where before ... there was nothing.

And sometimes in a country, there's hope where before there was no hope.

I have been standing in awe, quietly.

Joe The Plumber

Our plumber is actually named Joe.

(We have him on speed dial -- our rickety house has pipes made of tinfoil.)

October 2008

In the Midst of Financial Collapse, My Father Becomes a Broadway Hopeful

On a recent drive to the Berkshires, my mother asked my father what he would do if he had to go back to work. They're both in their seventies. My father was a lawyer for Dupont when I was a kid. He opted for as early a retirement as possible.

"I don't know," he said, but he'd think about it.

That weekend, my parents went to Kripalu, a yoga center in the Berkshires, and took a Danz Kinetics class. I've taken these classes with them in the past. The room smells of lentils and an earthy funk and incense. The people there are all ages and body types, and when the music hits them, well, they just move. It's not always pretty -- this moving. It often entails flailing and jostling and jubbling and tossing of wild hair.

My father, Bill Baggott, former corporate lawyer, loves it. He's always prided himself on his dancing. He does a fine jitterbug, an awkward moonwalk, and he's even tried to learn a little ballet in the kitchen from me as a kid. He's been the lone man in too many Jazzercise classes to mention. But his deepest love is MODERN DANCE, because of its rogue, rule-ness nature.

My father is a shameless dancer. At over six-feet-tall -- an Alan Alda type -- the man can float. Does he have perfect rhythm? No, he does not. Does he have slick moves? Again, no. Does he have much formal training? Alas, zero. But he has a lot of joie de vivre -- sometimes too much. Hence, he must dance!

And so it came as a surprise to everyone -- except Bill Baggott -- that a Broadway producer came up to him after Danz Kenetics. He told my father that he was gathering interested partners in a possible broadway show that would focus on how a love of dance has affected so many people's lives and, get this: He wanted my father to be in the show (if they got enough backers etc ...)

The broadway producer warned my father that he'd have to learn a few extra moves.

My father said, "Well, of course." And he took the man's card. My father no longer has cards.

Now he and the broadway producer are in touch. My father is on tap. He's practicing his joie de vivre, and luckily, now, he has an answer to my mother's question.

If he has to go back to work, it'll be on broadway, baby!

* * *

Soccer Mom PLAYS Soccer, Earns Humility

My husband played college soccer and then semi-pro (this was before MLS existed), and, recently, against his better judgement and without really any consultation, he signed me up to play on his co-ed team.

Once upon a time, I was an athlete. I played field hockey and lacrosse. In other words, there's part of my athletic ego that's still intact ... despite all lack of athleticism for the past, say, twenty years, give or take.

And so it is a lesson in humility. It is a humbling lesson in humility. It is a humiliating lesson in humbility.

Did I score a goal? Yes. A hand ball. It was retracted.

Was I outplayed by a sixty-year-old man named Pastor Yun who, in lieu of a team jersey wore a white v-neck undershirt inside out? Again, yes.

Did I get a penalty for aggressive play? Um, well, yes. I was a little pissed about the retracted goal and who wouldn't be aggressive with Pastor Yun breathing down their neck?

To sum, I am a better person now. A humbler, freshly humili-fied person. And this is good for my soul. Right?

* * *

September 2008

Quote of the Month:

My 13-year-old daughter says to a kid in her class who was acting badly.

"You have ZERO brain capacability!"

(She's in on her own joke, gets the humor.)

Another Quote of the Month:

My 11-year-old son, says in a super sarcastic voice:

"Well, today has been really excellent so far and I'm only being mildly sarcastic!"

* * *

ANOTHER Conversational Snippet
(September 26th update)

I find a homework sheet filled with what seems to be an Asian language of some sort.

I pick it up. "What's this?"

"Theo's learning Mandarin," one of the kids say, sauntering through the room.

I turn to Theo, my eight-year-old. "Are you learning Mandarin?"

He stares at me as if to say, Um duh! and says something in Mandarin which, without knowing Mandarin myself, seems to be a loose translation of Um duh!

* * *

Conversational Snippet
(September 26th update)

My 13-year-old daughter walks in the kitchen.

"How was school today?"

"Good."

"What did you do?"

She sighs, ho-humishly. "Miss Shana and I picked out virgins."

I pause. "Um, are you preparing a sacrifice?"

"Oh, did I forget to say fruit-flies?" she says, cocking her head. "Virgin fruit-flies."

* * *

It's Like That
(September 13th Update)

The dog's head is stuck in one of those cones.

The pipes in this old house were constructed out of something like tinfoil and, thousands of dollars later, need to be fixed.

A backhoe is in my front yard.

One of my kids just threw up.

We have guests who are on their way.

I'm getting emails with German titles about penis enlargement. I don't speak German, but I can figure this much out.

(And I won't even START on politics.)

As the French say: C'est comme ca. For those of you who were smoking weed in your IROQs during French class in high school, the translation is: It's like that. The French say it often, because sometimes there's nothing else to say except: It's like that.

And, right now, for me, it's like that.

* * *
Book Bash Benefit
(September 9th update)

My daughter has taken all of my husband's neckties and made a skirt out of them. That's fine. He gave the okay -- while I was out. He's a stay-at-home dad so what does he need with neckties?

Fast forward a week. We're throwing a fundraiser September 19th - Book Bash Benefit -- and someone asked me what the appropriate dress might be.

I thought a moment. No more neckties in the house. It has to be casual -- although my daughter will be wearing an interesting skirt.

* * *
Super Mom
(September 4th update)

My mother's superpower: She can hitch her voice in just such a way that she can get anyone a doctor's appointment for anything. If a (grand)child of hers is, say, itchy, she can bump someone with double pneumonia.

It's a voice that's part-hysteria (a little I'll show up screaming if you say to wait another day) but also part-steady force-of-nature (I'll sue you but good if something is actually wrong with the perfect child you refused to see immediately) ...

It's something that has to be honed -- not just a gift but a craft. I am but an apprentice -- a grasshopper before the master!

* * *
Our Dogs Don't Love Us
(August 28th update)

I grew up surrounded by very high levels of neurotic energy. My mother was an Olympic-level neurotic, and no one paid the price as much as our dog, Dulcie. That dog developed a serious palsy. My mother -- who'd trained as a concert pianist -- would play and that poor thing would sit under the baby grand and just shake. (If you heard certain composers, you'd know to turn around and head right back out the front door.)

Dulcie also was a bolter. She bolted at every occasion -- any small wedge in the door, any lazy boards in the fence. And I always blamed this on my mother. But now that I have two bolting dogs on my hands, I've changed (or at least am reconsidering) my tune.

My dogs -- Tilly and Sophie -- were pound dogs, both abused. Tilly came to us so beaten down that she didn't bark for the first three months. (I was secretly kind of thrilled thinking that we may have one of the world's few mute dogs. She now howls like the hound she is.) But she became an outgoing alpha when Sophie showed up -- scared of the sound of her nails on the hardwood floors. The kids put blankets down on the floors for her the first week.

Now, Tilly used to bolt and then run across the street and jump the fence INTO the neighbor's yard. They didn't have any kids yet -- she's a vet and he's a dog-whispering philosophy professor. Fine. They're better than we are. It's obvious. I get it. Recently, however, Tilly bolted from a hole she'd dug (POW-style) under the fence. Where did she go? Back to the pound.

She literally ran for miles, back to the animal shelter. I know we're not perfect dog-owners. There isn't a special pillow. There aren't doggy toys wrapped up under the Christmas tree. But, also, there's no grooming -- which has to be humiliating. There are lots of messy kids who don't clean up after themselves so that the dogs can eat happily just cruising the house. Back to the pound? Really? Was she that desperate for a clean slate?

The ride home was coldly quiet. She was riding in the back seat with her nose out a crack in the window, her ears flipping, and I was behind the wheel, eying her through the rearview mirror.

"Don't you love us?" I finally asked.

She looked at me level-eyed, as if to say, I have a few demands. But, fact is, she doesn't speak English, and I don't speak dog. And so we looked at each other in the quiet car, rippling with wind.

* * *

My Mother and Faulkner's Mother -- BFF?
(August 27th update)

I've just posted a blog at A GOOD BLOG IS HARD TO FIND about my mother's near-insane kinship with the mother of William Faulkner -- whom she's never met.

Here's the link:

southernauthors.blogspot.com

* * *
Julie McCoy, where are you now?
(August 21st update)

At a certain low point in the day, I made a reference to The Love Boat. Not atypical. And my husband became bent on finding out the current whereabouts of Julie McCoy -- not the actress, not the character -- the name.

Julie McCoy is at www.juliemccoy.com. She's a real estate agent in Danville, California. She is also Certified Loss Mitigation Consultant.

This isn't as sexy and sassy as we'd been hoping for -- although everyone has loss that they'd like to mitigate and why not have a consultant for that?

Luckily we also found this little cruise director gem -- which is plenty rrrraaarrrr!

* * *

Emotional Candy
(August 19th update)

Last night my husband tried to explain how he feels since returning from our trip to France, which he thought might alter his (sometimes) [parentheses his] fragile emotional state. He said, "Okay, imagine you find a box of those little circular candies that you pull off a piece of paper, and you open the box, and there's only the paper inside. And there are little circular colored smears -- pink and yellow and blue -- where the candies used to be. I'm not even THAT side of the paper. Turn the piece of paper over and lick it. It tastes like nothing. THAT'S how I feel."

How could you not love this person?

(He feels better today. Not like the actual candy. But the side of the paper where the smeary leftovers are. This is a move in the right direction.)

* * *
Skull and Crossbones Glitter Shirt -- Surprisingly -- Backfires!
(August 15th update)

My husband needed new t-shirts. This didn't seem possible. The man is a stay at home dad and lives in t-shirts. Every once in a while, I'll say at the end of a long dingy t-shirt day, "I feel like a button-down would be ultra sexy." And the next morning he'll be wearing one of his old button-downs from his working days ... And I'll have forgotten and stare at him, completely baffled and a little afraid that someone has died and I've forgotten a funeral.

"Sexy, huh?"

And I'll say, "Oh, yes, right. Very." Sometimes you just need a button-down without a funeral to occasion it.

So, we go to a discount store and we sort through cheap and odd t-shirts. He picks out a black t-shirt that has a skull and cross bones on it. Stay at home dads sometimes need a dark edge to their wardrobe. Only later, at home, did we notice that the skull and cross bones were lightly dusted in glitter. It's hard to explain. It's like Harley meets Barbie.

Anyway, we promptly forgot about it. Life's too busy to deeply contemplate certain things.

Today, we noticed that the baby was covered in glitter. Had he gone out to some club in body glitter and not told us? No. He's a baby. Slowly we put it together that Dave was wearing his glitter skull and cross bones shirt and he, too, was covered in glitter. A light glittery spray barf, really.

What does this mean, metaphorically?

It's hard to say. Maybe it's just that we live a complicated suburban reality and we must accept that fact, glitter and all.

* * *
Age-Spot is the New Black
(August 14th update)

I went to my new dermatologist -- who is very young -- and he told me that my age spot was called a wisdom spot. Mmm-hmm.

When I got home my husband tried to cheer me up by saying, "Age-spot is the new black!"

This did not cheer me.

He said, "Maybe think of your age spot as a decoration!",

"Like someone's used an age-spot bedazzler on my face?" I said.

"Yes! Just like that!"

His appointment is scheduled for three weeks from today. I'm taking notes and will turn all of this on him.

* * *

Quote of the Month -- Shopping with my 13-year-old daughter
(August 13th update)

I try on a pair of bad pants. "These pants look awful," I say.

"Yeah," she says, "I was going to tell you -- they look like the designer was inspired by cacked-up hairballs. Those pants are antagonistic!"

Descriptive, detailed, perceptive, a nice simile thrown in, and a strong vocabulary. What more could I ask for?

* * *

Having Been Married for an EXTREMELY LONG TIME, There Are Still Surprises
(August 12th update)

So, come to find out that when my husband was sixteen, he bought a smoking jacket (okay, it was just a robe, but still) and took up pipe-smoking. Nothing bong-ish. No, no. This was the real deal. He was, for a short time, a pipe-smoker -- a la someone old and British or certain kinds of golfers. It was all very Master Piece Theatre of him. I wonder now if he was trying to refine himself, make himself more eccentric?

Did you speak in a British accent when you smoked the pipe? I just asked, shouting from another room.

He says, Yes!

Really, all the time?

He says, Of course!

He was living in New Hampshire where there weren't many role models for refined eccentricity. And so he was doing the best that he could, really. I, on the other hand, at sixteen was walking around blinded by mascara, so who am I to talk?

* * *
What I have in common with a former president...
(August 11th update)

Okay. So I've just found out that James Madison, former president (4th president, I believe) of these United States was exactly my height and weight. But did he also wear platforms? His platforms being little Puritan-chic boots, perhaps, and mine having flowers on them?

And Then, We Ate Spain
(August 9th update)

After Italy, which was strenuous (see EL DUOMO, below), my husband and I decided to eat Spain. To translate, I'll put it this way. We'd decided to take a three-day jaunt to Spain, as well as Italy, but then, after Italy (which included a hotel filled with an American youth group and a night of being lost and unable to find a hotel and our kids spotting a transvestite prostitute at a gas station, etc) we were tired, and so we took the money that we'd set aside for Spain and blew it on an amazing restaurant -- Les Sarments -- just for the two of us.

Les Sarments is tucked away in the tiny village of Puyloubier. The streets are so narrow that only one little car can fit through at a time and just barely. (I once saw a Buick on one of those streets, but it seemed to be sucking in its gut.) The name of the restaurant is on a placard hidden by ivy and leads up to a narrow set of stone steps. (I'm going to stop using the word narrow because everything is narrow in this village that you should just assume it from here on out.) We were seated in an outdoor patio area and handed menus made out of black chalk boards.

I was the one to translate the options -- which consisted of two multi-course meals. I said things like, "this dish is made out of the cuttings of avocados or ... lawyers, I'm not sure which." We ordered everything on the menu -- literally. And everything was astounding. We started with a mousse of mushrooms. Because we were in Provence, there were incredible things done with eggplant. The cheese plate came with four cheese lined up in a row -- all the same kind of cheese at different ages. The waitress explained that the first one was four days old, the next one week, then three and then the hardened one on the end was one month old. The four-day-old cheese was called "nude," because it didn't have much of a casement. The final cheese was deliciously stinky, the kind of stink that embeds into your fingers and lingers on ... I was a three-week-old cheese lover myself. The chocolate dessert was light in texture but dark and rich and almost dank in taste -- in the best of ways.

There was only one real faux pas. At the beginning of the meal, I asked if I'd be able to get a to-go box, but first I had to explain the concept of the to-go box. The waitress assured me that it was possible, but the to-go box is a coward's box really, in France. I mean, you should come to Les Sarments ready to eat -- truly eat! And I was scared. By the look in the waitress's eye, I knew this cowardice, deep in my soul, and so I ate, heartily. There was one thing that I didn't finish, but only one. At the end of the meal, no to-go box arrived, but I was so drunk and happy that I didn't realize it until the next day.

I don't know anything about Spain, but I enjoyed eating it.

* * *
Snapshot of Smoke in a Paris Hotel -- with mini portraits of our European night clerks
(August 8th update)
In our Paris hotel, the windows were those massive European windows -- old, heavy, thick, with tight locking mechanisms, built to muffle the sounds of war. But we kept them wide open to let in the breeze. The air was cool enough, and you could smell food cooking late into the night -- nearby cafes and apartments, their windows open too.

One night, I woke up and smelled smoke. I knew that it could be wafting in an open window, but still I am nothing if not a cautious woman. (Have you been reading the blog, my friend?) And so I tiptoed through our adjoining room, where the children slept, and I still smelled smoke. So, in an oversized T-shirt and my husband's boxers, barefoot, I walked out into the stairwell. Each stairwell had a landing with big windows, these were open, too. I still smelled smoke and so I wandered down to the lobby where the night clerk was dozing.

I'd like to say a thing or two about our European night clerks -- I kind of love them. They are a blur almost by this point but I know they have been tired and patient. They've woken up from their lobby armchairs. They've marked maps when their hotels were full. They've pretended not to notice a prostitute or two. They've been so weighty that they breathed like buffalo. They've told us about the free breakfasts and the markets. They've told us our baby is beautiful. They've helped us ice the bump on the baby's head.

This one though, this one was the best. He walked the halls with me, sniffing for smoke, one landing after the next. We walked the halls and lingered in the open windows. "No, no," he finally said. "It's out there in the city. The smoke. You're safe."

And sometimes that's all you need to hear.

* * *

Snapshot of my Thirteen-Year-Old Daughter
(August 7th update)

In the cathedral at Saint Maximin, my daughter and I sat on a pew. We both looked up. "It's so high," she said. "I feel like I'm swimming."

* * *

Snapshot of my Eight-Year-Old Son as a Bird at Bay Window
(August 6th update)

In the cathedral at Saint Maximin, there are the remains of Mary Magdalene - or so it's claimed. They're down a small flight of stairs in the middle of the cathedral, in the crypt.

(Parenting note: children are more interested in monuments when dead bodies are involved.)

My eight-year-old flew down the stairs, paused for a moment when he reached the bottom and saw the glowing halo-like container, and then charged -- and smacked right into the plexiglass -- like a bird into one of my mother's bay windows.

* * *

EL DUOMO -- Florence -- A Phobic's Hell
(August 3rd update)

At El Duomo, I hit an all-time parenting low. I lost four children and my husband who was with the baby. To boot, El Duomo has something for every phobic.

For the claustrophobic: It has a tight winding staircase with tiny windows that seem like they're about the size of a deck of cards.

For the agoraphobic: Oh, it's got crowds in summer. Tons of people. Enough to make you think Pink Floyd Concert.

For the microphobe: And all of those people have been running their hands along the same ancient walls for centuries!

For the acrophobe: You eventually reach spectacular heights where you can look down on teeny, tiny people.

I happen to have a little of all of the above. Plus a fear of losing children in public places. A lowlight of the trip, I'd have to say was when I took off my shoes and started running around the outside of El Duomo, hurtling gypsies.

* * *

French Thieving
(August 1st update)

I'm not going to get into the robbery. Just suffice it say that when we pulled in to park in this one small village, my husband noticed the two guys getting out of the car next to us. He was immediately suspicious of them, and, for whatever reasons, maybe the matching man-capris, he assumed they were gay German tourists. And then, in a small internal monologue, he hated himself for being suspicious of gay German tourists.

"What's wrong with me?" he said to himself. "Why can't I just be more tolerant?" And so he set aside his suspicions and even forgot to lock the car, and off we went. They cleaned us out -- computer, cameras, some passports, etc -- and they might not have even been gay or German -- they certainly weren't tourists.

* * *

La France -- with Requisite Promises, Warnings, Contrite Hand-wringing and No Slide-Show Projectors!
(August 1st update)

I realize that talking about a trip to Europe has the effect of the deathy pall of boredom that descends over a dinner party when the hosts decide to set up the slide-show projector -- or whatever the contemporary equivalent of the death pall of boredom is today. (A solid part of my psyche didn't quite make it out of my seventies-eighties childhood where there was always the threat of a slide show projector.)

And so it's with great trepidation that I confess the following ... Here goes: Okay. So we're just back from five weeks in France -- with five kids in tow: my thirteen-year-old daughter, eleven-year-old niece, eleven-year-old son, eight-year-old son, and one-year-old son. And there will be stories about France. Sorry about that.

I've got two promises.

One. I'll try not to be too gratuitous about exotic cheeses (of which I ate my weight), wine, or the glorious French tradition of shoving chocolate into everything -- I think I saw chocolate ham and chocolate shampoo and chocolate floss.

And two. Likewise, I'll try not to bemoan the French idiosyncratic behaviors that chafe me -- the shutting down for two hours to eat lunch, the stringent social rules of French pharmacies (why can't we just peruse the constipation medications ourselves? why do they have to stay behind the counter? why is EVERYTHING behind the counter?), the miniature EVERYthing -- shower stalls, elevators, and men's swim wear.

We really are de-Frenchifying as quickly as possible here. So before it all wears off -- or is scrubbed off -- I'd like to at least hit a couple of odd moments -- the highlights, lowlights and just plain oddlights of the trip -- in brief.

* * *
July 2008

QUOTE OF THE MONTH:

My son got a camouflage pencil as a gift from his teacher.

"Isn't this great!" he said, holding it up in the kitchen. "You can't even really see it!'

* * *

AH, WELL, ANOTHER QUOTE OF THE MONTH

"That reminds me of my amnesia." -- my husband said, pretty randomly.

* * *

I'M RAISING A ... WHAT?

One of my greatest fears:

My children becoming memoirists.

I'm thinking of founding a national organization: M.A.M. -- Mothers Against Memoir.

Email me to join.

* * *

THE GOOD NEUROTIC

Elective Surgery.

Two words that any self-respecting hypochondriac would never put together.

* * *

ON CUPID

Cupid -- I'm Against the Whole Idea.

Why would anyone arm a fat baby -- with poisonous arrows or anything really ...

Babies lack basic eye-hand coordination. They're disproportionately bigheaded and therefore wobbly and probably poor at aiming. They don't have the most sound judgment. In fact, they can be downright irrational.

I don't know what the NRA says about this. But I'm against giving babies weapons -- holiday or not.

* * *

MY YOUTH

For a few years in my early twenties, bars became my homeland. I imprinted on them the way an Englishman does the White Cliffs of Dover. The way my father did on poor air quality from coal mining. And now when I walk past some bar being aired out midmorning, and I smell the wafting doobage and the cacked beer being sprayed off the steaming sidewalk, I get all misty-eyed. Oh, my lost youth! How I miss thee!

* * *

ON NATURE

When I want to commune with nature, I stand on a screened-in porch and take deep breaths.

* * *

June 2008

Good-bye Cyndi!

Today I had to officially erase Cyndi Lauper from the pop-culture reference portion of my brain. It's just made it too easy to pinpoint the year I graduated from high school. I had to rip her out quickly so that it wouldn't be painful. But now it's done. I can still vaguely recall the name -- but I can't start talking lyrics and making Mad About You trivia references. No. The end.

There will be harder calls to make in the future. Much harder than Cyndi Lauper. Baby steps, I tell myself. Baby steps.

* * *

Happy Anniversary -- I WIN!

I've been married forever. It was a neanderthal wedding. Some of the guests still had gills. And my husband and I just hit (crashed into ) some big anniversary. I mean no more gifts of like paper or silly putty or aluminum foil.

No.

We're onto serious weighty materials which I cannot disclose -- because it would date me (see Cyndi Lauper above). But we didn't give into marketing! We celebrated as we always do: the contest. Whoever remembers it's our anniversary and says it first wins. This means that usually my mother wins. She always remembers and she usually calls and then I usually win because I usually pick up the phone first. But she was rebounding from a bug, and so she was delayed. This left me on my own. I remembered it was our anniversary when the dogs were barking and the pest control guy had just shown up. (I don't want to do the psychological digging to figure out the trigger here.) I had a phoner schedule for this exact moment. The phone was going to ring any second.

I yelled for a kid -- any kid.

One came running. (This is why people should have kids, you know. More on this later...) I said, "Go tell your father these exact words: "Mom says, 'Happy Anniversary. And she wins!" The kid did so. Basically, I kid-ed it in. My husband later tried to dispute my win, claiming that it had to be said in person, with some measure of love. I disagreed. "That's not the way we've ever played it in the past."

He acquiesced, and that's the true measure of love -- right there. Letting me win. And I felt a gush of love for him.

* * *

Reason #397 for having children:

In case you can't find the remonte.

* * *

Have you picked up the JUNE Issue of REAL SIMPLE? If so, check out page 310 for a shout out to My Husband's Sweethearts -- and read "A Day In My Life: The Scented Candle Version."

It stinks -- in a way that's oh-so-familiar!

* * *

Time Flies and All Those Various Cliches:

Can I just say that it's sometimes hard for me to figure out what YEAR it is?

I've started dating my checks: Early Part of the 21st Century. That's just as close as I can get, and if the banks want to get prissy on me, then fine! Have at it! I don't have time to figure out the year, let alone month, let alone day.

And I'm happy to explain how just yesterday my daughter poured orange juice into the answering machine because it sounded thirsty and now owns an IPod and cell phone and wants me to buy her a kiln. A kiln!

And toddlers don't want kilns -- so what I'm saying is she's all grown up and that's disorienting and time flies and all of those cliches are cliches for a reason and and ... it's hard.

* * *
Quote of the Month:

"I think the coffee maker just said the F-word!"
-- my 8-year-old son

* * *
Find of the Month:

While digging through old backpacks, my husband found a dead bird in an old tennis can. Now, my kids can be little scientists and hoarders, but this is a bad combination at times. We looked for one of them to fess up and it was the eight-year-old. We explained why messing with dead birds is a bad idea, why you shouldn't shove them in tennis cans -- even if you want to observe (good vocabulary word!) a dead bird.

"You gotta admit, it was pretty well preserved!" my 13-year-old daughter said to me later. "And he's quite an interesting kid."

* * *
How to Get New Shoes:
We're going to la France for five weeks, all four of my kids in tow. And my husband told me today that he wants to do a dry-run packing.

"Are you kidding me? You know, you'll be lucky if I get around to a real wet-run packing."

I'm a known bad-packer. It's not unusual for us to get somewhere and I say, "Can we stop off at a mall if you see one? I think I forgot to pack shoes." (Maybe this is just a subconscious ploy to get more shoes, but it's grandly inconvenient and annoys everyone -- including myself. But I am myself and so what can I do?)

Still, he has a point. Since we're going to be driving around all over the place and hitting hotels and family and friends before we get in the actual plane even, he's creating one cross-over suitcase -- in which all six of us will have three outfits each. This is to avoid the constant suitcase explosions that happen every time we take our suitcases out of the car and into a hotel room or someone's house. Only ONE suitcase will explode -- not six.

And then he wants the kids to pack a main suitcase that they won't touch until we get to the place we're renting in France. This sounds brilliant and crazy -- and I'm not saying it won't work. I'm just saying that:

a. the kids will invariably want -- and desperately so -- what's in their no-touch suitcases.

And b. I happen to know they sell shoes (and clothing and accessories) in Paris -- so my packing will be strategically spotty.

We are who we are.

May 2008

In MY HUSBAND'S SWEETHEARTS, Lucy's mother is full of little gems of maternal advice. Things like:
* "You should marry your first husband for his genes; the second for his money; the third (or fourth or so) for love."
* "Never let thine ass give into gravity."
* "When dealing with a belligerent hairstylist, you must embrace your inner bitch."
* "...I like feminism except, of course, when it asks me not to wear a support bra."
* "We love who we love -- even when we hate them.

And if you've cruised the Chapter Headings in MY HUSBAND'S SWEETHEARTS -- otherwise known as:
Sayings Your Mother Never Cross-stitched Into a Pillow -- you may have run across:

* "Happy strangers can bring out the worst in anyone."
* "Your mother is a woman you don't have to become."
* "You can't always eat your way out of a bad decision, but if you want to try, begin with chocolate."
* "A family can be tied together by an unlikely series of knots."

I was thinking that I should try to add to this collection. And so, here and there, I will blog either riffing off of one of these topics or adding to them. I won't blog religiously or even regularly or even semi-regularly. I know myself. If I could do things religiously and regularly or even semi-regularly I'd be the proud owner of a pair of well-toned thighs.

The bad news is: I am not the proud owner of a pair of well-toned thighs. The good news is: I no longer care. (Ever since well-toned thighs slipped to 1,842 on my list of daily priorities, I've led a happier life.) And so my (sporadic) blog will be punctuated with extra little gems of the things-your-mother-never-cross-stitched-
into-a-pillow variety. And that brings me to today's gem (drum roll): Ever since well-toned thighs slipped to 1,842 on my list of daily priorities, I've led a happier life.