the modernity ward

Free Lancing

You know, like a boil. Or something.

I have elected to become a freelance content-generating robot, and it's nice to have bubblegum money, but it's taking away from my blogging, a little bit. Well, no. That's not entirely true. It's taking away from my worthless dicking around on the internet, is what it's doing, which is a good thing -- but man, I'm tired. Tired enough that I have a persistent eyelid twitch, and the theme from "Night Court" permanently, insistently, playing in my head.

Our neighbor across the street died day before yesterday. It wasn't unexpected, coming at the end of a long agonizing illness, but... she had two little children, just a little older than mine (respectively). So we had to talk about that, since the kids are always playing together. Sophia looked up from her coloring like somebody'd goosed her with a cattle prod when I said "died." This woman, we had never even met her, she'd been ill since before we even moved to town, but -- ach. We know the kids, we know her husband, we know her father and the neighbors who have known her. Like I've said, this block is a pretty tight-knit community.

My heart aches for the family, and for those kids, and I feel a little extra ferocious in my love for my girls. Sophia wanted to know what it feels like to die -- something we've been talking about for a while now -- and I told her that nobody really knows, but that when a person has been in pain for a long time, when they die they don't hurt any more.

And that's about all I've got this morning. It's a beautifully bleak end-of-November day (I really do love this weather!) and there's going to be a lot of soup this week. How y'all doing?

Joanna Leery Polyp...

is feeling kind of...irrelevant.

For fun I Googled myself with the word "hate" hoping to turn up some nasty trollin' action, but nothin'. And pretty much anything re: Jo Leery Polyp surrounds those halcyon days of infertility, early pregnancy, and finally Sophia's rollicking good time of a birth story. After that, it's all dead air.

I think I may have cashed in my fifteen minutes. Which is a little bit of a relief, as it was utterly painless and largely unremarkable save for the cadre of friends, in-person and online, that now surrounds me. Net gain: neato.

What now, though? What makes an interesting blog? I started in the enviable niche market of infertility blogging, and then I had to go and kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Yes, I'm being flip, because oh my god, those days were torment, and I have no wish to return to them. The blog quite literally kept me sane; it funneled all that energy that, left to its own devices, compelled me to purchase thirty pregnancy tests from the dollar store and then use them...all...in one weekend.

It seems crazy unless you've been there. Then you know it's crazy, and you know exactly how it happened.

Anyway, I'm kind of blundering niche-less through parenting bloggery. I was thinking of making a career of writing insulting letters to local newspaper columnists criticizing their grammar and including a copy of my own resume and a suggestion that I be allowed to replace them, but, you know, meh. There's already a "mom blog" column in our paper (yes, that's right: a print "blog". That is indistinguishable from a "column". A "really dull column". That reads like a retread of the Parents magazine letter from the editor.) and honestly, in this town, if Keith Urban isn't somehow involved, you ain't getting far. I don't know, he kind of has mommy hair. Maybe I could make money off that somehow.

So, internets. What would you suggest? What would you like to read about? Should I shut things down until I hit nursing school and crowbar open some new niche for myself? Keep on keepin' on? I guess Mimi Smartypants blogs about nothing-and-everything and is, like, totally famous and shit now, but she is Mimi Smartypants and I am me. I'm the middle school basketball coach in Hightstown, New Jersey, and she's Shaquille O'Neal. He plays basketball, right?

I guess I really don't want to shut down, if only because I'm not ready to burn up my diary, especially since this diary periodically compliments my writing. It's that aimless time of life, when the ambition starts gearing up again but the babies are too little to do anything sustained. Where's this whole internet thing going, folks? What do you think?

Skree! Blaaah! Raaah!

Those are Daphne's big words right now. She sounds like a pterodactyl having a chat with Godzilla. I forgot how nine months is kind of the zenith of cuteness for babies. It also happens to be the nadir of Personal Baby Safety, which means she spends most of her waking hours attempting to backdive off the bed, stick one hand in the dog's water and the other in a socket, and eat tiny poisonous chokeable things, preferably all at once. Because the nasty, it wasn't enough -- why stop at a wad of cat hair and dead leaves when you can also have something that is either a pill or a mint? While you are rolling down a flight of stairs?

As I recall, it's all downhill from here.

Anyway, so what's new with you guys? Nothing much here. Just, you know, trying to process the whole Terrible Illness of Parent thing while simultaneously absorbing the news that Your House, It Is To Be Sold and Torn Down and looking for a new house. And, look, I know that it's a sensible investment and blah blah equity but Holy The Prophet Elijah in a Rhinestone Golf Cart, that is a LOT of money. And if you don't pay it, well, then you end up on the news in the financial version of the Headless Fatty, with close-ups of your big old Foreclosure sign and a rain barrel with suspenders where your pants used to be. 

The good news is, I stand to win a sizable cash prize in the secret blogger contest of How Many Stressful Life Changes Can You Undergo in Six Months Without Anybody Actually Dying?. If my horrifying face surgery goes as scheduled, I'm just laps and laps ahead of the competition.

Back. And, A Question for You

I just don't even know where to begin. The default setting seems to be eating toast and watching Pomplamoose videos on YouTube, so...yeah. I guess I should start with the overdue library books and the baskets of clean folded laundry, the diapers waiting to go in the dryer, the breakfast dishes. I should start with the real estate agent who's waiting for me to schedule viewings (on which subject more below). I should start with getting some things together to send to the people who were so generous while we conducted our whirlwind tour of Tornado Alley. But all I really want to do is sit in a quiet tidy place and not do much of anything at all.

Visiting a gravely ill parent is sort of unspeakably difficult, especially if you missed out on a lot of the intervening decline. Emotional tectonic shifts combined with the riptide drag of a bunch of little kids who want you right in the here and now, providing crackers and strawberries and little plastic toys, they cause you to kind of lose your train of thought permanently. That train derailed and rolled down an embankment and took out a rusted old water tower on the way down.

It was way harder because Sean was away until the day before we left -- I've been on solo parenting duty for nine of the past eleven days, I think. Boo frickin' hoo, I know, but it contributes to the overall...wha? (Although there was a high point: Jenn came to visit, and Sophia has requested her immediate return.)

So that's what's going on. My tether to the right-now is pretty thin, so I have to do just one thing at a time: put a dish in the dishwasher. One folded shirt in a drawer. One email. One library book in the car. Making the choice to be here, to stay here, that's the thing that can keep you alive.

* * * *

In other news: I need your wise consult, internets. We recently learned from our landlords that the house we live in is going to be sold to someone who will most likely tear it down and build new on the site. Our lease will be honored through its end in July, but not renewed. There is also, the landlord mentioned, the possibility of the buyer providing some sort of financial incentive for leaving before the lease runs out.

Hmm.

What kind of incentive, we asked -- and got back "Well, what were you thinking?" as a response. And what I'm thinking is that the buyer is hoping that we'll open the bidding pretty low. And I want to make sure we get as much as is fair out of this, because we were really not as ready to buy now as we were going to be in a year (we'd thought about renting for 2 years to save up a down payment).

So we're wondering what to ask for. One suggestion was to ask for the amount of our rent per month, for each month that we leave early. So if we left six months early, six months' worth of rent money goes to us. No, it's not entirely logical, but it's a starting point. Clearly we'd want to prorate it so that the sooner we leave, the more we get, but how much per month is fair? 

For reference purposes, if someone is buying a house in this neighborhood for a teardown, the lot alone will run you upwards of $200K, and probably closer to $300K. Our rent is $1350 a month (and we will NOT be buying in this neighborhood, as much as I love it -- gentrification hath progressed too far). Would $1350 per month early be too much? $1000? What do you think?

Skeletons

Every time a picture of Zachary Quinto pops up on my screen (why, internet? I haven't seen a movie in years and no, I do not want to receive his "tweets," unless that is a new slang term you kids are using for Thin Mints) all I can think is "Skeletons of Quinto." For the rest of the day. You're welcome.

BUT it's nearing Halloween, and there are skeletons everywhere, including in my own family. Nothing about which we didn't have a general idea, but urgh, the specifics. Anybody who's dealt with an addict for a loved one probably knows the combination of gut-drop and forehead-slap when you kinda knew, but you didn't know. You didn't know about that.

I hate it when people allude to fascinating prurient details and then won't share, because why the hell did you bring it up if you weren't going to deliver? Come on! If there's anything the internet is for, it's the divulging of humiliating specifics! Well, that and YouTube videos of people lancing their own boils. So, um, sorry. Even I have my limits.

And you know what I like to do when I skate too close to my limits? Distract myself! Yes, I like to distract myself with fun, shiny, twirling pinwheels of sparkles and harpsichord music! Whee! This time around the pinwheels are made of real estate listings, and boy howdy, can they suck up an afternoon. Boring old settled married folks like myself can get about real estate, I am learning, like freewheeling single ladies get about the dudes. 

I never stalked a guy, but I drive by houses of interest on a daily basis.

I check their online profiles obsessively; I zoom in on their pictures to deduce key information from the background detail. I pay attention even to the ones that are taken already -- hey, you never know. Somebody might take a job out of state. Somebody might go to a nursing home. Things happen. When they do, I'll be there with my earnest money.

Yeah, yeah, the analogy kind of has its limits. What crazy thing have you done in the name of real estate?

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

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.

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.

Hello There! Didn't See You Come In.

Oh, me? I'm just dicking around on the internet -- hello, internet! Haven't seen you in a while! -- while my gigantic baby rolls around on the floor in the one room with a more-or-less clear floor.

The move was...ah. How to explain? I'll just say that it was so wonderful that I wouldn't want to sully the memory by repeating the experience any time soon. Don't want to overwrite the good times, you see. I will note that the cat certainly earned her kibble during our overnight stay in a "pet-friendly" "motel"; we awoke to a large dead mouse draped over the mini-fridge. The place was actually one of the cleanest motels I've ever seen, but some helpful person had sprayed the room generously with what smelled like a mixture of Simple Green, roach spray, and Perfume Factory on Fire. I think it leached into my bones and dissolved them a little.

The drive was pretty nice, though. I'm glad we got to go through the Blue Ridge. The children were suitably impressed by the "long mountains."

Our house is better than I remembered, having several hidden linen closets and decent appliances, and -- this is the weirdest thing -- when I walk around barefoot in here, my feet don't turn black. I forgot how utterly grimy Philadelphia is. You know what else is nice? Central air. A variety of interesting birds. And lots and lots of bats. And yard possums. And alley cats. And an honest-to-goodness GORGEOUS neighborhood.

But it's Nashville itself for the win, really -- it's so pretty here, and people are so nice! A man carried my gigantic Cokes all the way out to the car for me, and people poke along in their cars and don't honk or try to go around you or rear-end you if you aren't midway through the intersection the second the light turns green. I keep thinking people are staring at me funny, then I realize: people here make eye contact!

Well, the baby is restless, and our house still looks...um...well, just don't look at it. There are untold household tasks awaiting my attention, and a freezer full of turkey figs waiting to be made into conserve (my mom lives, basically, inside a fig grove, and you better believe I spent our Norfolk stopover up on a ladder in those trees). Soon, internets. Soon.

OH MY GOD, Y'ALL

The cat was urinating blood so we took her to the expensive-ass vet hospital in the neighborhood where they gave us a bottle of antibiotics that haven't made a difference so now after seven days of harassing the cat with a syringe of Clavamox we got to go to our regular vet who did x-rays and gave us new antibiotics and some probiotics and a bottle of herbal tincture, because he is the hippie midwife of vets. The cat has stones in her bladder, by the way, which may or may not be a problem. ALSO in the meantime Daphne had her first food ever, which was marinated bean salad with apple cider vinegar and olive oil, and no I am not kidding. I mashed up the beans and fed her little mush-balls and she LOVED that shit. Then I gave her pears from a little jar and she loved that too. Sweet potatoes not so much, but today I gave her banana and she loved it, and then I noticed she'd finally cut a tooth.

Also she weighs 22.5 pounds. And has plummeted down to the 95th percentile for height and weight. I lost a few pounds myself but am probably gaining it back because food is an adequate temporary substitute for sleep. Like a moron I decided to chaperone a preschool field trip to the aquarium in Camden, which entailed a ride on a school bus, disembarking at the ferry which turned out to be broken IN THE RAIN so then we got back on the bus and rode the rest of the way and walked around in roiling crowds for three hours, and by walked I mean got alternately dragged by and impeded by preschoolers attached to hands. All this with Giant Baby strapped to my chest.

It was actually a lot of fun; Sophia walked into the shark tunnel and declared it "eternal sharks." She also told me she is a "Permanent Fairy," which I think is a great name for the next album of the band "Mister Woman." Mister Woman is what she called Daphne one day, except it was "Mister Woman: Nom Queen!" with the punctuation and everything. She has forgotten this, sadly, but continues to adore her sister, who for her part is either replicating Sophia's shrill yelps or the dog's shrill yelps, but either way there is a lot of joyful shrill yelping going on.

I need to stop eating fast food but I just get so hungry. And unless I pack five or six bologna sandwiches with me at all times, there's no way I can keep myself fed. I don't understand how a person can eat 3000 calories a day, give or take, and slowly lose weight, but maybe the 23-pound baby strapped to my person and sucking calories directly out of my body has something to it. All I know is I can pick up packed dish crates like they're full of bubble wrap and clown farts. I'm a brick house.

And so very, very tired. Six days to go! Woooo!