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?

Fun with Dirk and Jean

Up until a few weeks ago (has it really ended?!), Sophia was...not herself. Same whale-tail hairstyle, same chirpy little voice piercing the silence of a car ride to inquire whether we could stop at a drive-through, or what it might feel like to be a dead chicken. But she wasn't Sophia.

She was Amelia, dammit. Or Maria. Not Sophia. And never Sophie.

It was probably three solid weeks where Sean and I were corrected every time we used the hated original moniker; we thought it was cute, if a little aggravating because she would yell at us every time we screwed up. But she took it to the next level. Nice lady in the store wants to know your name? It's Amelia.

She even managed to keep it up after surviving an assault in the stupid McDonald's Playplace tubes; the mother of the offender, in enforcing an apology (and doling out several of her own), asked my daughter what her name was.

"Ah-huh-mee-huh-lia," she said through sobs. "Amelia."

So the little boy apologized to Amelia, and his mother apologized to Amelia and Amelia's mommy, who was trying to rein in the gape-jawed look of astonishment she'd given her kid. Kid was serious.

* * * *

When my sister Gretchen was maybe five, we watched some Saturday morning show involving the San Diego Chicken. Gretchen adopted the name, and informed the children at the pool, when they asked her to play and what her name was, that she was called "Sandy Eggo Chicken."

She also wore invisible underpants and a plastic Tom (as in, And Jerry) mask on a regular basis. But I digress.

Me, I always wanted a more solid, somewhat androgynous name. Jean, maybe. Robin. Possibly Joan. I don't know what glamorous life I envisioned living with this newer, spiffier name, but that was the dream. I was able to work some of it out by naming all my baby dolls Jeff or John, and thankfully my children today are not saddled with matching four-letter "J" names, Duggar style.

* * * *

Amelia has fallen by the wayside, though Maria still puts in an occasional appearance. It's Sophia most of the time now, and to hell with your baby nicknames, Ma -- there's no more Phidie, there's no more Beetle. Sean and I were talking about it, this weird impulse to craft some other identity besides the one you're given, even at an early age, and I asked him if he had a name he always liked better.

Oh sure, he said. There was a clear favorite. Left to choose his own name, he would be -- I would be married to one Mister Doctor --

Dirk.

Spaced

For some reason I didn't have spacers before I got braces the first time, but for Bracin' Two: Electric Boogaloo, I am the proud recipient of a bunch of little blue rubber donuts jammed down between all my molars. It's a sensation akin to having a giant string of pot roast stuck between those teeth, or a piece of floss on its way out with a seriously funky payload: something mildly uncomfortable, but about to be satisfying. Except the satisfaction never comes. It's like the sneeze that never quite sneezes. Or that Coldplay song that never quite...gets there, if you know what I'm saying.

Flossus Interruptus. Anyhow.

So I have these rubbery things in my mouth, and all was well until I tried to chew a tough-skinned muscadine from the farmer's market and WHOO BOY that was not so much fun. Next week I get the serious metal mouth, and will totally show you pictures.

In other news, both kids fell asleep in the back of the car on the way home from Opry Mills, and you know what I did? I drove my ass to Starbucks drive-thru and got an iced coffee and listened to NPR. And! Speaking of which: I was bemoaning the lack of talk radio (the good kind, we've plenty of the other here), when I heard that NPR is dropping their all-classical, all-day programming in favor of Grownups Talking on the Radio. Seriously, my sanity depends on that shit; I'm like a Dust Bowl farm wife.

The reason we were at Opry Mills, by the way, is that Sophia learned how to tie. On Wednesday she asked for some "tyin' shoes" so I told her sure, when you learn how to tie. So we sat down together and...she learned. Right away.

And OH MY GOD! The baby is crawling RIGHT NOW! About two steps, but she finally JUST NOW figured out how to get back up from a sprawl!

Tempus fugit, huh?

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?"

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.

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?

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!

It Deepens Like a Coastal Shelf

Reading Philip Larkin's This Be the Verse as a parent is so very different from reading it as a college student. Instead of an brash indictment, it's a wry apology, hands palm-up, whaddayagonnado. Go tell it to your editor, kid, go tell your therapist.

I find that becoming a mother has both honed my criticism of my own parents, and softened my eyes. The latter mostly in the hope that as my own daughters reach their thirties, they might look with forgiveness upon me.

I can spend an entire day handling meltdowns with aplomb, providing vegetables and cut-up hot dogs, engineering pleasant activities, and then wreck it all in one fell swoop at the end of the day. Which counts for more? The successfully navigated wobbleboard of a day, or the devastating mishandling of an evening? I'm not sure if I get a sticker on my chart, or my name on the blackboard.

In any event, one of the links to the above-referenced poem contains a comments section. A comments section! On poetry! So very delightful! So rife with disapproval! So utterly hilarious and depressing!

P.S. The Germans are the funniest. The Americans are pompous.
P.P.S. Yes, I am aware that it is not very nice to make fun of innocent people on the internet. However 1) I was under the impression that that was what the internet was for, and 2) dude, people getting all up in arms, in writing, in a public space, about poetry they don't get is really fucking funny. And 3) I feel better already.

Haircut: Check

Real job: not so much. Ah, not that the full-time mama gig isn't real, you know what I mean, it just doesn't come with life insurance and merit raises. There's hazard pay, but it's in the form of chocolate zucchini cake you eat by yourself whilst hunched over a keyboard when everyone is in bed.

The guy from the moving company was out here to look over our earthly possessions, and lo, he did describe a moving process that passes understanding, in which we don't have to do anything but get out of the house for a few hours while they pack everything but the beds, and then the next day just...go. It sounds wonderful, and it also sounds like they're trying to find out exactly how much moving benefit Vanderbilt gives its new hires before they hit us with a quote. At this point I'd sell my unwashed skivvies on the internet to cover the cost, but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.

So, what else, what else...I got a haircut from Kateri today, a very short little acorn cap of a haircut, which I like, and my daughter has one to match, kind of. She got jiggy with the scissors (thanks, Grandma Janet, for finding those sharp scissors sized for tiny hands!) and ended up with a fashion mullet, which I thought was awesome, but she begged a pixie. I obliged, and she loved it for about three minutes, after which she HAAAAATED IT I HATE IT IT IS NOT BEAUTIFUL I WANT MY LONG HAIR.

Well, hair grows, kiddo. Come Hanukkah, I told her, it'll be to your chin. She went dancing away after that. Still, I like her little elfin cut, and am actually considering purchasing an overpriced fairy dress in green and silver, because she looks like a forest nymph.

You know what's creeping me out? Three-year-old self-hatred. That's a bit of an overstatement, but she told me the other day, "I DON'T LIKE SOPHIA! IT IS NOT A BEAUTIFUL NAME!" (She speaks only in capitals these days.) "Oh?" I said. "IT IS A VERY BORING NAME!" she said, with all the venom she could muster.

"Okay," I said. "Well, you have a middle name Hazel."

"NOOOOOOOO!"

Sigh. She's also obsessed with having "straight" hair, although it's unclear what she means by that. And now she scowls at herself in the mirror because of the hair. Argh. Is it too soon to move to a yurt in the forest?

NOW WITH PICS! 

Me:

These are just before and fashion mullet, of Sophia -- tomorrow I'll take some current pixie pics.

Before. Bindi, outfit, and pose of model's own device.

And then after.

Considering the Quiver

I always envisioned myself as the mother of many children. Not a Duggaresque line of baby quails trailing one mother, but maybe three, or four. Five was not out of the question.

Now? Not so much.

As Marta put in in the comments section a few posts back, heck, I could have a baby a year, every year, but when they get big? And kind of mouthy? I would require a phalanx of Julie Andrews clones to help manage the lot, and maybe some sort of kitchen staff as well. Except, no, I like the kitchen part. Maybe a housekeeper. Because apparently some people consider wet-mopping a more-frequently-than-annual event.

I could handle the cooking, because with my Trusty Julie Andrewses to amuse the crew, it could be a solitary activity. I like solitary activities. I like them an awful lot. And -- surprise -- that's something you don't get a lot of when there are small children about.

I also have less tolerance than I imagined for the whim and whimsy of childhood.  Especially when that whimsy involves pouring a glass of tea into the sofa and climbing on top of a large plastic car to unlock the deadbolt and leaving the apartment door cracked for most of the morning. Hi, neighbor! Hope you didn't mind the frank and loud discussion of the stinky poopoo!

These things are enjoyable in retrospect, and I'm glad they happen to me because they make good stories (and what else is the point of mildly unpleasant human experience?) but in the context of a day, sometimes they're more than I can handle, especially when the almost-four-year-old is screaming about some goddamn thing every ten minutes.

I like the baby part. Babies are easy for me -- the constant physical need doesn't trouble me in the least, I'm happy to nurse and bounce and change all the day long. Where some see unformed larval humans, I see expressive aware beings -- and I love it. Some women absolutely HATE that stage, though. But they love their three-year-olds! Now, I love my own personal three-year-old, and every day there are moments of breathtaking awesomeness, but every day, no matter how awesome, I feel like I've been through a wringer washer. It literally takes all my reserves to get through almost every day.

As a result I stay up 'til midnight, tanking up on solitude -- I'm tired the next day, but the idea of going to sleep right after putting the kids down is like the thought of crashing into bed unshowered after a ninety-minute aerobics class.

However: I still have this weird judgy voice in the back of my head telling me that unless I have more kids than X number, I can't win. At mothering. I know; slap me a little. Being a content yet exhausted mother of two is not NEARLY as good as being an equally happy and tired mother of three. Or four. It's stupid calculus, no? And yet I didn't realize it was in my head until about last week. I don't know where I got it from, but there it is.

Reality itself is slapping me around a little bit, though, and I'm realizing that I have to reconfigure the expectations. I love being a stay-at-home mom, and I want to someday be a going-to-nursing-school mom, and thence a working-outside-the-home mom -- that part of the plan is intact -- but it may need to happen on a rather different time scale than I had originally intended. Like, school sooner. I'm not taking the possibility of a later-in-life child off the table -- after I've started working, several years down the line -- but I'm painfully aware that you can't bank on fertility at any given point, let alone after 35.

But oh, what luxury to get to choose anything at all! We didn't get to start having kids when we wanted to (if we had, we would have an eight-year-old!), but other than the "when," the "what" is pretty much exactly what I wished for. I'm so thankful every day for that, even when I'm being kicked in the shins by a tiny furious person. Sometimes especially then. As much as her inner fire drives me bananas, I'm so glad Sophia's the pistol she is -- as a formerly docile, terrified-of-not-behaving child myself (can you believe it?) who only later in life found her voice, I'm hoping she'll be better equipped to deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous middle school. She's an intense, careful person who feels things deeply, and I want to be able to tune into her and give her what she needs.

I'm the same kind of person. And I need to feed my own needs too. I was raised in the culture of the completely self-effacing mother, and let me tell you, there is no good outcome possible there. I can't do it -- and I'm finally starting to realize that I shouldn't.