the modernity ward

So, Better.

An emergency poultice of successful TJ Maxx shopping, friend visitin', and lunch-out-havin' made a happy difference in my state of mind. Yes, I now have some expensive-ass skinny jeans, a slinky comfortable cardigan, and a flattering black skirt -- seriously, the shopping gods smiled upon me -- but more important, I spent four hours talking to a friend.

And then I went home and poured a glass of iced tea over my head, in front of my new neighbor.

I pulled into our driveway and there she was, sitting in the car with her kids, getting ready to pull out. I gave a friendly wave; she responded in kind. Cool as ice, I removed my giant styrofoam cup of tea dregs, ice, and lemons from the cup holder, and reached up to place it on the roof of the car. Because why waste a perfectly good cup of ice? I smiled inwardly, thinking it was just what my mother would have done, getting out of our old station wagon.

I leaned my head out in preparation to exit the car. And, well, see, the thing about a Honda Civic is that it is not a 1986 Caprice Wagon, and rather than being flat as a mesa on top like the Caprice, it is rounded, both back to front and side to side. The iced tea upended itself directly onto my head, pelting me with ice, lemons, and finally a styrofoam cup.

After a minute of laughing so hard I wept, I looked up to see New Neighbor recovering from her own laughing fit. And internets, I can't tell you how happy that made me. Any lady who can let loose with a serious guffaw after some unintentional Chevy Chase* action is okay in my book. It was a moment worthy of a china teacup of Suisse Mocha. Total bonding. And a reminder from the universe not to take myself too seriously.

You helped too. You and Eudora Welty. And the promise of a knitting project and maybe some hair dye. Thanks for reminding me, internets.

*insulting the comedic ability of women

Mrs. Mojo Fallin'

First of all, I busted out the Baby Safe Feeders recently, so as to entertain Teethy McSquirmalot for five-for-the-love-of-Trader-Joe's-minutes so I could take things out of the hot oven, and got to chuckling over my hilarious idea for a post.

Which, as it turns out, I had already written. In 2006. Enjoy.

The main reason I was digging around in the archives in the first place was to make myself feel bad about how I used to get sixty comments on a post and now I get four. No, no, that isn't it. No, it was to make myself depressed about how much funnier I used to be! And how much tighter my...well, moving on. I was actually sifting through the sands of internet time to see whether the Post-Baby Dog Days phenomenon had made it onto the blog. (As what did not?) I don't know if it can rightly be called postpartum -- how long can I chalk things up to postpartum status? Six weeks? Six months? Until I can blame menopause? -- but I have a hazy recollection of chomping at the sartorial and career-planning bit, right about Sophia's eight-month mark.

Very little of that actually ended up on the blog. There is an awful lot about the dangers of plastic from around that time, and some descriptions of Sophia as a baby that 1) cast some light on the state of her personality today and 2) remind me just how easy I have it with Daphne, but not so much otherwise. I mean, it's funny. It's a period of good writing for me. Today, not so much. As we will discuss in a minute. Anyway maybe you should click over to the original blog and start reading around March instead of wasting your time with Droopy Dawg over here.

I do remember that's about the time I started babysitting, though. And seriously jacked up my blogging efforts. I think that was about when I started dropping all the pregnancy weight (I think I weighed about twenty pounds more then than what I weigh now, for reference purposes).

Eh. I don't know. Part of it is living in a new place and being knocked off-routine; part of it is the inescapable shackles of being a stay-at-home mother of two small children. Very fine shackles they are. But I don't feel like Daphne is even ready for the free daycare at the gym yet, and certainly not ready for full-time daycare so I can take my stupid prereqs, so...yeah.

So I feel like I'm spinning my wheels a little bit (in a lovely, predictable way), but the other thing is that we're sort of low on the discretionary funds, like for buying houses or whatever, and what we do have is going to go to my fancy new braces. I feel like a leech who somehow tricked my husband into marrying and then procreating with me -- again! and again! -- and then letting me stay home with the progeny instead of working in the data mines.

Which is patently ridiculous.

I just feel like I'm never going to get my prereqs done and then into nursing school and then finished and then a job and maybe a house eventually and my hair is a mess and none of my clothes look right or feel like ME and OH MY GOD.

It's pretty minor, I know. I just sort of...need my mojo back.

How would I go about that, exactly?

Real Purty Mouth

Look upon my open bite, ye mighty, and despair -- of eating a sandwich with a shred of dignity. Or lettuce.
Yeah, that's me biting down. My four teeth that touch -- two top molars, two bottom -- are together here.

A fun parlor game might be to see what-all can be wedged into my mouth while I'm biting down.

On second thought, no. That would be fun for you. Not so much for me.

A Glamour DO!

Does she look like she should be hosting a cocktail party in about 1961? I'm going to hunt up a pair of clip-on earrings from a thrift store. And request that she make some kind of meat balls on toothpicks in sugar sauce.

Finally: the Pompeii cake! "Are the sprinkles...the people?" she asked me.

The only possible answer to that one is: "Why yes, of course, honey! Now since it's your birthday, would you like some extra people on your cake?"

Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

If they've run off down the street, become absorbed in various tasks that may or may not involve drawing elaborate murals on the walls of the rental house, or just headed off to the bathroom for a long, contemplative poopoo, here is a surefire way to round them up. No yelling -- promise!

Simply pick up the telephone and become engrossed in a conversation. Preferably one involving the phrase "critically ill" and necessitating the repetition of lurid, grim medical details. The kids'll come running, appearing spontaneously like flies around a fresh dog turd.

Then they will insist you color them a picture of Pompeii, whine for forbidden foodstuffs or a fourth round of those damn gummy vitamins, climb on your back and kick you in the kidneys, and swing an expensive camera perilously close to your heavily lipsticked cat.

I highly recommend it.

Also it wasn't the cat's fault there was lipstick all over her back.

Two Absolutely Unrelated Issues

One:

Every time I hear on the news that Hurricane Bill is gaining strength and heading for the Bahamas, I wish it were true of my own personal Bill. I still don't know how much I want to blog about it (although what does it really matter? Either you know my dad and you already know about this, or you don't), but my dad is really sick. How sick exactly? I wish I knew. In the old familiar fashion, he tells everybody a different story, lies to make it seem like things aren't so back -- or is he confused? It sounds like the encephalopathy has cleared enough that it's a deliberate deception. Possibly he underestimates our ability to understand medical speech. Or maybe he just doesn't know about Google.

So he's sick, and there's no way to tell how bad it is, and we're all far away, and he gets pretty nasty when we start talking about coming out there. I honestly think that if I showed up on the porch tomorrow, he would not open the door to me. There's one person he'll talk to, who happens to be out of the country. In the meantime he's "just fine" and "has things under control" and is "too weak to stand" and "shaky"; he "just went to the store" and "hasn't been up off the couch", and eats "tuna salad" and "Furr's cafeteria" and "can't eat but through a straw" and "lives on Ensure." He's "going in to work" and "has been on disability for six weeks."

But I know how to interpret his test results, and the answers are pretty much unequivocal. He needs to be on the transplant list. He can't go on it yet. Thanks to my genetic tests, I know that I share with him one of the genes causing half the problem; the other half was absolutely, one hundred percent avoidable at several different turns. Thirty years ago, twenty. Two years ago I marked the onset of symptoms. He probably went to the doctor oh, six or eight weeks ago. Oh, by the way, he's a physician.

It's a helpless, frustrated love I'm left with.

Two:

I went to the dentist, who is of the Old School of Gentlemanly Behavior and called me "Cutie." As a feminist I am...well, unbothered. Anyway, he did a thorough exam, going so far as to inquire about the provenance of the ugly scratch on my cheekbone (baby fingernail gouge), and then sat back and looked at me.

"How do you eat?" he asked.

People keep asking me that. Obviously I manage. But he has a point; there are only two contact points in my whole mouth, and those four molars are wearing down fast. He gave me a referral to the orthodontist to whom he sends his grandchildren, and suggested that we might be able to avoid surgery through the judicious use of serious orthodonture -- the dental equivalent of removing the side chairs to make room for the outsize sofa. Or something. Anyway it sounds gruesome and expensive but markedly less so than the Giant Skull Nutcracker surgery.

I used to daydream about getting a do-over of sixth grade, except Knowing Then What I Know Now. This is kind of the same thing, no?

The Interrupting Cow

The cow paid a thirty-minute visit to the dinner table last night. Sophia would NOT stop insisting that we interrupting-cow each other -- something about Mama and Dada being overtly, hilariously rude to each other is just ten kinds of Birthday Awesome.

But the best birthday awesome? Grandma came to town, and you know what she brought?

Real lipstick.

High heel shoes.

Powder. Blush. Tiny press-on nails.

And a LONG-HAIR WIG.

There are pictures, as soon as I find the MOOOOOOOOO

USB cable.

The Maury Paragraph* of Awesome

I. People of Nashville

    A. Extant Friends or Similar

1. Friend from birth who magically happens to live in Nashville. It's been about ten years since we saw each other last, and ten years can accordion down to about six minutes when you've known somebody that long. When you recognize a facial expression from someone's toddlerhood on her adult face, when you can tell which family member's voice she's impersonating, when you can talk about art and Obama and fishing and certain members of the cast of 21 Jump Street over Italian subs and Diet Coke, well, it's deeply comforting. It's also a little goosebump-making when you remember your six-year-old plans to grow up and be neighbors and realize that it has actually happened, in an absolutely unforeseeable way.

2. Awesome blogger Aunt B. who exists in non-pixel form, and who is a hoot in person, and with whom I hope to, you know, pound some 40s or whatever it is you kids do for fun here. And who arrived bearing a zucchini the size of a newborn baby. A nine pound ten ounce newborn baby.  Oh, and who knows why you shouldn't eat the homemade popsicles at our house.

    B. Business Associates

1. Sean's work folks, who have been uniformly helpful and pleasant in helping us locate doctors, dentists, et cetera.

2. The office staff of said dentists et cetera, who spent many minutes on the phone with my Yankee ass trying to help me figure out whether getting dental insurance was even worth it (the consensus: no). And man, am I going to dental work the shit out of my busted mouf.

3. Landlords and attendant handyman, who showed up bright and early to start on the list of things what need fixin'. Sadly the carpenter guy was buffaloed by the weird basement wiring, so until the electrician comes we have, instead of a single switch-controlled light for the basement, no basement lights at all. The landlords also brought us homemade cookies on move-in day. Nicest people EVER.

    C. Strangers and the Kindness Thereof

1. Nice folks everywhere to chat with while the kids play. Sophia is now of a developmental stage where she can play with strange kids, and where she can tell a kid to back off when necessary.**

2. Lovely neighbors, including the lady who grows tomatoes in the front yard and always insists I take some, the man who hangs out on his awesome foot-treadle porch swing and has invited us to use it any time, and the nice family with little kids moving in next door.

II. Nashville Activities

    A. Walking

1. Dragon Park, yo. 'Nuff said.
2. Amazing coffee and food.
3. Grocery, hardware, army surplus, and a wealth of funky shops I can visit when my children are in middle school

    B. Driving

1. Oh my god, the fast food! I could just drive around all day eating pizza and tacos and Checkerburgers and Krispy Kreme and Starbucks! Damn, no wonder people like driving places!
2. The gym with child care (see II B 1)
3. Downtown Library. Ho-lee-crap.
4. Nobody honks. Ever. Except to say hello to their neighbors.

    C. Ass-sitting

1. Cable. Cable I don't have to pay for. Look, I had no idea things had gotten this bad in reality TV! It's basically porn in clothes, all dingdang day, and CNN I am talking about you. Thank goodness King of the Hill is never not on.

III. The Children

    A. Sophia

1. Has had some sort of developmental leap wherein she is eminently more sensible and tractable. And talks differently too -- more mature-like. Her mannerisms are changing too -- less babyish, more kid-like, very self-confident. Very cute and gratifying. So much easier to be around.

2. Still devoted to her little sister.

3. Constantly informing me that I FORGOT something. Usually something about which I had never been made aware. Like that she wanted to make popsicles.

4. LOVES her new preschool. Wants to go everyday. Finds it restful and fun instead of stressful. Impressed by uniforms of "big kid school."

5. Makes friends with other little kids. Very cute also.

6. Sings the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (from the TMBG Here Come the 1-2-3s CD) thusly: "L-O-C-K-E-Y! L-O-U-S-E!" When I told her how to spell "Mickey Mouse" she chuckled knowingly and said, "They're singin' it wrong, then, Mama!"

7. Insists her name is Amelia, going so far as to tell Offending Boy's mother, through sobs and tears, that the boy should apologize to Amelia.

8. Refers to Krispy Kreme as "the donut place that is better than Dunkin' Donuts." SUCK IT, BOSTON.

    B. Daphne

1. Giant. Cute. Happiest baby ever. Adores Sophia. A fan of humanity in general.

2. Extremely ticklish under arms.

3. Loves splashing in the pool. Unperturbed by water in face.

4. So close to crawling. Squirmy as all hell as result. Unable to tolerate Mama out of sight for more than .013 seconds.

5. Seriously loves food. Chicken bones, applesauce, baby "pasta dinner" from a jar, giant carrots or whole apples, she is happy. And will cry if you take it away. Does not tolerate being fed from a spoon; must clutch and mouth spoon under own power.

*I attended the Matthew Fontaine Maury High School, and boy howdy did they teach you to write an essay. (Don't bother reading past the free part. You get the picture.)

**Although I am most unhappy to relate a horrifying incident in the stupid McDonald's playplace, visited under extreme parental guilt and duress after the pool was closed: an older boy, first grade or so, got up in there and SLAPPED and ROLLED ON my girl, who screamed bloody murder and was so freaked out she couldn't find her way out of the maze. Offending Boy's mama did a good job handling the incident, and was clearly freaked out and upset at her kid's behavior. Poor Sophia, man. How utterly terrifying! She seemed to recover pretty quickly, but I bet dollars to donuts she'll have a nightmare tonight.

   

Sophia Says

On Hebrew Names:

Sophia: I know your name is Shifra, and Daphne's name is Hadas...
Me: What's Dada's name?
Sophia: (deadpan) Is it...PENIS?

Then she called me "Penis" for a while.

On moving away from home:

Sophia: Will we ever move away from Nashville?
Me: You'll probably move somewhere when you go off to college.
Sophia: Like India.
Me: Well, if...
Sophia: Or Mars.

On birthday presents:

Grandma: And what would you like for your birthday?
Sophia: Real lipstick.
Grandma: Ah.

Sophia: And high heel shoes. And...a fancy dress. With no straps.
Grandma: Oh?
Sophia: And a LONG HAIR WIG.
Me: Mom, why don't you just bring the Frederick's of Hollywood catalog and let her pick out an ensemble?

Brain Barf.

The second I type that "the baby is taking an extraordinarily long nap" it'll come to an end, so I won't tell you that. See, it's in quotes, and that means it doesn't count, so I'm safe. Anyway, three loads of laundry, a nasty basement organized, three more boxes emptied, knocked down, and deposited in the tremendous stack of wet cardboard in the basement, um, some other things put away, grocery list made, craigslist perused (because we need a dehumidifier and a sandbox).

Got to go to Trader Joe's. Last night was a strange little thunderstorm that popped out of nowhere -- I thought it was a camera flash (since the radar was all clear) until the cat came hurtling up the stairs puffed out into a sphere making weird broken-electronic noises. First time I've heard rain on the roof in years.

Um um um...Sophia at preschool, about which she is simultaneously excited and dubious. They feed them there, which is nice, but they feed them absolute crap, so...yeah. Two days a week I can suck it up though. Whatevs.

What else...I made a dentist appointment, and it was so nice to have that done I went ahead and made another one with a different dentist. The stress of moving and of the other big stressful family issue I'm not ready to blog about have catapulted my jaw issues into Constant Pain territory. I relish the thought of a mouth of metal; I'll be thrilled to have the whole jobby wired shut. Go ahead and take out some bones! It's cool!

Man. I can't tell you how nice it is to look out the window and see trees. And a one-eyed alley cat making for my open garage door. Check you later.