I stumbled across this book in a store, and as I was already buying a bunch of stuff that was not, strictly speaking, absolutely necessary, I did not toss this one into the cart. However, the concept has been haunting me, and I find myself wishing that I had written this book.

Or, at least, wishing I had written the book that I want this one to be. It appears, from this introductory excerpt, to actually be a self-help parenting guide; one which truly believes that adults have a right to their adult space even when raising children.

Which is probably a more valuable book than the one the I want to read. What I want is the book that Dorothy Parker and Fran Liebowitz would have written. The book that looks frankly at the huge job of parenting, and then advises vodka as the first line of defense. I want to read someone who is witty, so that when I feel pulled under from all the family demands, at least I know I am not alone. If that wetty someone is willing to exaggerate and represent herself as downright neglectful, I can feel like I am a better parent than I think I am.

After all, don't you really want to live by the rule: "Take care of luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves?" Goodness knows that there are entire days, weeks, months, years even, where the only response to the cry of "Mama" is Parker's stock response to the telephone ringing: "What fresh hell is this?"

And wouldn't raising a family be less psychically taxing if you could simply approach discipline with an attitude like Fran Liebowitz's: "No animal should ever jump up on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation."

So, I have in my imagineation the Platonic ideal of the "Three Martini Playdate" which is not a guide to easing parental guilt over taking time away from children. I want to see what it would look like to be completely amoral about maintaining one's pre-child life. That would be a delightful book to read, and wouldn't we all appreciate the opportunity to feel smugly superior?

Moonlight

So, I ended up taking the puppy for a walk last night. He'd been out in the yard a few times, and I'd even taken him to the puppy park, where he wore himself out running with the big dogs. Still, he really wanted to get back outside, and when anybody is working the cute that hard, you kinda need to reward it.

So, Bermondsey and I were outside in the dark. The project to reconnect the streetlights after all the road destruction this summer is not yet complete. Very few people were home just after dinner on a Saturday night and all was quiet. Only the house for sale up the street had many lights on, and the moon was full.

Sometimes, if you can catch it on the horizon, the full moon looks enormous and red, like something out of a Shakespeare play. I imagine a bolldy red moon like that signaling MacBeth's guilt, or goading Regan and Goneril to blind poor Gloucester. But once it's perched high in the sky, as it was last night, it seems smaller and purely white, like a gleamingly lusterous pearl. On full moon nights, even here in the city, the moon throws shadows, and you can understand how travel was so dangerous for escaping slaves under the full moon.

Last night the air was still, and the pearly moon was riding nearly overhead, casting a clear and cold white light across the sky. The light was so bright that it created a corona...like a moonbow. Bermondsey was busy with his dog business, and I stood and looked closely at the moon and its ring. It was a complete circle around the moon, standing out from its source with a diameter about 30 times the diameter of the moon itself, a perfect halo.

Yet, as I looked, there was something else at work, because there were clouds being illuminated as well. The longer I watched, the more it appeared that part of the halo was created by a bank of clouds curving along the line of the corona, creating a three dimensional halo that perfectly matched the optical one.

Sometimes we get a glimpse of what we miss by living as we do, in cities, with lights and homes and well lit streets. Sometimes the silence and the dark invite us back from our modernity into the mythic sources of humanity.

Day Five--and Dreaming

I promise I won't belabor this, and tell you every boring detail, but OMG what was going on in my brain last night? I was dreaming this incredibly elaborate dream, that involved me being Julia Roberts, dressed up for Oscar night, with Dennis Quaid as my date.

(Mmmmmmm...Dennis Quaid...)

Some how, I ended up singing Karaoke with Bette Midler, while Cher hung from a trapeeze on the ceiling, wearing a fishnet outfit.

I don't know what it was. Sometimes my brain frightens even me. But you know, while my life might look quiet and lonely from the outside, it's apparently a real circus over here!

Words To Live By

I saw this, attributed to Dave Barry, who has offered many tips for Living Right over the years. I thought I'd incorporate this into my daily life, and hope it will offer you some guidance as well.

Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative at the same time.

Don't forget!

An Attempt At World Peace

I was at the gas station when a boom truck pulled up. It was a Ford Explorer with such loud bass speakers going that my car started shaking. Just walking past it to the station gave me a headache. The driver of the car had gone in ahead of me, but god forbid he turn off the stereo, when he could just keep listening from INSIDE THE BUILDING. The girlfriend also went inside to buy soda, so as an act of....what should we call it...consideration?...he LEFT THE DAMN STEREO ON while he pumped the gas.

Once I got out of the building, I could hear cats fighting to the death...I mean the hip-hop/rap thing going on over the unceasing bass.

THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA

You know, it's nice when people are willing to share their musical taste with you. You know, the opening of musical doors and the community of humans in the universal language. Music being what soothes the savage breast and all. I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, and the song we'd start with goes like this:

THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMPA THUMP

"The Prestige"--Here Be Spoilers

The trailers looked excellent, and Mr. Sweetie is half in love with Scarlett Johansson, so last night we went to see the movie. Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman play rival magicians whose grudge escalates and threatens to overtake their lives.

Made by the Nolan brothers who also made Memento, this is a stylish movie. The look is rich and somehow gaslit looking, and the pacing is like that of a magic show, slightly ominous with the promise of an eerie surprise at the end.

Which The Prestige delivers. The end of the movie is set up very early, when Christian Bale's magician, Alfred Borden, is performing in a largely empty hall. He has made the bird in the cage disappear, and a young boy in the audience breaks into tears. When Borden pulls the bird out from behind his back, the boy will not be consoled. "But where is his brother?" Which is the secret to the trick, we soon see, as Borden empties the bloody body of the dead bird out of the collapsed cage, and says to the other one, "You were the lucky one tonight."

Hugh Jackman's magician, Robert Angier, lost his wife to a badly performed trick, and blames Borden for his loss. When he sees Borden with a wife and child, to all appearances happy, Angier is furious and mourns his own half-life. When he attempts to steal Borden's signature trick, he is forced to do it with a double, but insists there is more to the trick than that, so he sends his mistress to work for Borden and get the secret. She tells him Borden has a double, that she's seen the false beard and other items around, but Angier won't believe her.

Of course, it is a movie all about doubling, and as a consequence, of halving as well. Borden does have a double, a twin, and they take turns being Borden or Borden's assistant. They are so dedicated to their magic that they take turns living Borden's entire life: between the two of them they only have a single life. One of them is in love with Borden's wife Sarah, the other is in love with Scarlett Johansson, the mistress. When the trap closes, and Borden is hanged for murder, it's irrelevant which one it is--like the bird in the first trick, it's whichever one was unlucky that time.

Angier finds another way to complete the trick: he gets Nicholas Tesla to build a machine which actually duplicates him, so at the end of each night's show, the duplicate disappears through a trapdoor and falls into a watertank where he is drowned. The tank is removed each night, under wraps, and at the end of the movie we see the degree to which Angier has sold his soul to be a magician: there is an entire warehouse of "the Prestige items;" the tanks with their corpses floating within.

Nice literary touch: After Tesla has built the machine that creates clones, "Edison's men" arrive in town and torch the place, evoking the image of torch wielding villagers from Frankenstein.

Favorite (inadvertent?) humorous moment: Angier speaking on stage to the audience at his magic show (paraphrased): "You may be amazed at what you see, and I assure you it is quite real" as the camera centers the shot on Scarlett Johansson's bosom, balanced precariously on a push-up corset. Issac Mizrahi surely agrees.

Day Four--And The Thin Line Between Hobby and Mental Illness

So, today I indulged my love of shiny things, and took a class in Precious Metal Clay Charms. PMC looks like a blob of white Sculpey, only gloopier. It's made of water, organic binder, and fine silver powder. "Fine silver" is a form of silver, higher purity than sterling silver, and thus easier to work with, although more prone to scratches.

Each of us in the class got a half ounce of this stuff, which we rolled out and shaped, stamped, and otherwise decorated. We then heated it to "hard leather" stage, when we filed off edges and burrs, then fired it in a kiln.

It emerged white, and looked terribly brittle--the way clay would be if it were fired in such thin strips. A few swipes with a metal brush, and Hey Voila!--shiny silver. I ended up with about seven or eight tiny little charms--kidlets' initials, shaped made with stamps. Already, I know some things I would do differently--make the charms thicker, for one thing. We were resting our rollers on stacks of four playing cards, so we didn't roll it too thin. Next time I'd use at least six cards, and maybe more.

I'd pay more attention to smoothing out the surface before placing my image on it. I didn't know that the charms only got harder when baked--there was no "plastic" stage when the clay leveled out. I'd also smooth the edges more carefully.

But the result was not bad, even for a first shot. The images are a bit off-center, and the shapes are not uniform: the squares are a bit round, the rounds are a bit oval, but the overall effect is of handmade jewelry, which is not a bad look. I think I'll hang them on a bracelet with some interesting colored beads, which should make for some interesting jewelry.

Just what I need--another hobby! I'd only need the PMC--which runs about $1 per gram--plus the tools to work it, plus a whole bunch of tiny stamps for designs, and some letters and numbers, and then a kiln...

Or, maybe not.

Day Three--and Halloween Costumes

Sadly, the Bunny graduates from lower school this year, thus this was the last year for the Halloween Costume Parade. We've been going for eight years now, and it is still just as darling as ever. Although I think they are making kindergarteners tinier this season. Seriously, there is NO WAY my kidlets were ever that short.

Saleslady: Um. Ma'am? You might want to get a bigger size--kindergarteners tend to run small.

This might explain why Bunny went straight into first grade.

Anyway, the parade goes by so quickly, and the costumes are sometimes tough to "get" and the next thing you know, you've missed your child's best friend, who came as "Static Cling." This is a costume that consists of socks and underpants festively affixed about one's person--or so I'm told, because I missed it.

Harry Potter and his pals were seriously underrepresented this year--only one or two kids in Hogwarts robes this year, while in past years it's been a good 30% of the school. Lots of girls in "Pop Diva" costumes--shiny lame, platform shoes, feather boas, goofy hair. Very few of them were able to cop the appropriate attitude--they tended toward being giggly and a bit embarassed about it all.

"Goth" is not a look I would have expected to appeal to 5th grade and under, but there were a few. Back in the olden days, they would just have been vampires. New Math: vampire + punk clothing + black fingernail polish = Goth.

The boys are typical--just as boys don't care much about what they wear, they also don't care about costumes so much. Lots of faceless wraiths, devils, whatever was available in the Party America store. Not a lot of effort to be original...although one boy was a "Cat Burgler," wearing black clothes and stuffed cats all over. This is the same boy who was a "Cereal Killer" in 3rd grade, with cereal boxes and bowls and spoons attached to a sweat suit.

Teachers dress up each year, which requires a certain je ne sais quoi--treading the line of being clever and appropriate without sacrificing one's authority. One teacher, whose name is "Bob" has played on that over the years. By wearing a tool belt and hard hat, he was magically "Bob the Builder." (And yes, he can!) A few cleaning supplies made him "SpongeBob." This year he got decked out in St. Louis Cardinal gear and was the Assistant Coach. Is there really a Cards coach named Bob? (Yes, there is! #45 Bob Gibson, Special Instructor!)

Bunny's 4th grade teacher was Charlie Brown--with the holey sheet over his head and a bag of rocks. One teacher wore a black dress with white lines and Matchbox Cars all over. There were clowns, a gardener, an angel, and the new principal looked like she'd walked straight out of Williamsburg or Mount Vernon.

Several years ago the former principal and the vice principal were Charlie Brown and Lucy--complete with the football. What a great working relationship that promised!

I'm still holding my idea in reserve for the next adult party I'm invited to. I'm going to Ragstock and getting a white lab coat and a long skirt, and I'm going to line the coat with glow sticks and be Madame Curie.

Oooooooo! Spoooooooky!

The Unbearable Flyness Of Being

I like to think I'm in touch with pop culture. Sure, I'm now officially old enough that I get a headache when listening to KDWB and I couldn't tell you any songs in the Top 40. So being in touch is sort of a loose description of where I am. You know, born after the Boomer Generation, too old to be Gen X, with kids not old enough to be immersed in the current culture.

Yet not entirely out of it.

So, I can start a new cultural meme...right?

I owe this one to SueFunky, but since she's not posting, I'll preserve it for posterity.

SueFunky was looking for sunglasses with a friend of hers, who was suggesting things that are totally NOT Funky-ish. SueFunky is kind of an Ann Taylor, elegant classic kind of gal. If she were a "Friends" she'd be Jennifer Anniston. If she were on "Sex and the City", she'd be Charlotte. And I mean that in the nicest and best of all possible ways.

So, the Funky Friend was urging the purchase on increasingly odd sunglasses, leading to an exchange something like this:

SueFunky: I have never worn anything like this in my life!

FunkyFriend: Well, no offense, but you're not really very fly.

Can you believe it! SueFunky--not FLY? We are shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED by that comment.

Eventually, a compromise was reached, and sunglasses were purchased, which were agreed by all the Funky Posse as being just a little more fashion forward--that is, "baby fly."

And what is a baby fly? Maggot of course.

Look for Maggot to be the next Derelicte--coming soon.

Day Two--and--Why I've Not Replaced My iPod...Yet

I miss my iPods. *sniff* I had a mini, bright apple green, which was just a happy-making machine. It just made me smile to see it. And to have so much music all at once! It was amazing!

To get the proper context, however, you might need to have a brief history of my non-cutting edge audio history. My first stereo was...$100 when I opened a bank account. Yup--it was a premium/giveaway. Over time, I added a tape deck, larger speakers, and upgraded the turntable. That's right, you young whipper-snapper--that was back in the day when we played RECORDS, which were as big as a pizza, and you could listen to ONE side, and then you had to walk over and manually TURN THE DAMN THING OVER to hear the other side. That was back in the day when men were men, and album cover art was something you could see without a damn jewelers' loup. When they even sometimes put POSTERS inside that you could hang on the bedroom wall so that you could show everybody that you OWNED something.

You youngsters, you don't know what you are missing. Back in the day, when I was in the 8th grade play, and we needed props to stand in for mug shots. We used the four glossy prints of the Beatles that came in the White Album--just TRY to do that with your CD inserts. I dare you. And STAY OFF MY LAWN!

Ahem.

Yup--I really feel that old.

Anyway--that "stereo" served me well into my married life. It's kind of embarassing to realize that I had a 8-track player--built in!--in the receiver until the 1990s. We didn't have any kind of CD player for YEARS--we played the ones we had on the computer until i finally bought a 5 CD bookshelf system...with tape player and radio TOO!

This was my world until the iPod, which I got in 2005? Roughly? And, OMG--it rocked my world. Lots of music! At the touch of a button! Music that didn't get scratched and have to be replaced. Music that I could carry with me and listen to in my ears, or could play in my (no CD player) car! A machine that weould hold the entire text of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which I could listen to while walking the puppy. What an incredible invention! What a happy-making machine it was!

Until I discovered it couldn't hold ALL my music. And not even ALL the music, since I would cut only my favorite tracks onto iTUnes. I needed more room, more memory, more music!

And I discovered a clearance sale of an old--maybe 3d generation?--40GB iPod on sale for $185. And that bay DID hold all my music. Sure, it was so big that it felt like I was carrying around a brick. Sure, it was thick, and heavy, and had only a black and white screen. Sure, I found an old case, that fit it, sort of, but not quite. It still played! ANDplayed and played and played...

Until the day came when I inadvertently left both of them in an unlocked car inteh garage with the overhead door up. And by the next morning, they were gone. The two ipods, the case, the car charger andthe FM broadcaster. I hope whoever stole it finds her/himself hearing nothing but Grandma music--or goes deaf,or something.

But, I haven't replaced them yet. Sure, the video iPod looks cool, and I love the color display that's now available. I've even heard rumors of a new generation iPod that is entirely screen, with touch screen controls. I'm not sure that's the one for me.

I figure it's just a matter of time before they come out with the Implantable version, and then Ill never have to be without it.

And remember all those years of teaching kids not to put their fingers into electrical sockets? I figure we'll just need an unoccupied USB port.

Voices In My Head

So, as I'm bustling* around this morning, picking up for the cleaning ladies, something about my pace sets up a sort of Marine chant in my head, and the longer I go, the more I start to get the words going in my head. By the time I changed the sheets on the Pony's bed, I've got actual words running in my brain.

And it goes EXACTLY like this:

We are smart and we are sweet
We're the girls who can't be beat.
We laugh loud and we laugh gaily
We remember to floss daily.
We work smart and we work hard
They'll hire us at Scotland Yard.

At least the voices are benign.

*And isn't that just the best word? Yes-it DOES mean that I was dressed up in my 1893 house dress, with the bustle in the back.

Day One--and--Whiny McShut-Up

Day one of the new regime! Daily postings--NEXT month we'll try brushing twice a day and not going to bed with make-up on.

As regards Whiny McShut-Up: I was posting my Pity Party over how hard October is, and how many birthday cakes I have to eat...um...bake, and how much trouble it is for me to get to do anything because of all the constant partying...

THEN I noticed the archives list with 55 posts for October.

I guess one is never too busy to blog.

Mr. Sweetie Had A Birthday!

So, Mr. Sweetie had a birthday! His actual birthday was on the day Pony celebrated hers with her friends, so Mr. Sweetie got to go rollerskating and have a sleepover with 7 of the Pony's friends.

So we decided that one didn't count.

Sunday night we managed to assemble a nice Pile O' Presents and I was planning to make a cake. Sadly, homework reared an ugly head, and so I bought the most beautifully decorated cupcakes from the gourmet grocery. Besides, we still had some of the Pony's SECOND cake hanging around, so it didn't seem prudent to add a THIRD cake in a week.

We got him some music on CD, some DVDs, a board came to play with the family, and Stuff For The Boat. Bunny gave him an event guide for boating on the upper Mississippi and St. Croix, complete with drink recipes and maps and dining guides. It's your full service guide for reading over the winter months.

And he got flags. And by "flags" I mean "FLAGS!" Gramma Sweetie sent a lovely ensign flag for the back of the boat. I got him a set of 40 signal flags. Traditionally used for communication at sea, the flags include the alphabet, numbers 0-9, plus some additional message flags. In this era of wireless communication, I don't see us needing to display messages--rather, I thought, we might just string them from bow to stern for a festive fluttering display.

So, we tried it out, as you can see above. Does it surprise anyone at all that the first thing we tried to spell out was "Lady Cliff?"

October 31=Day of the Walking Dead

So, here we are, finally, on Halloween night--which means that the month of October is over. And, frankly, so am I.

October here at Chez Evil has the distinct ring of "party party party!" Our anniversary, Pony's birthday AND birthday party, Mr. Sweetie's birthday, Halloween--it seems like I spend the month buying presents and decorating the house for one event after the other. Not to mention the birthday cake and candy that hangs around the house for the duration of the month.

Each one of these events is important, significant, and an opportunity to convey to the people I love the best how much they are loved. It's just--piled up like that, by the end of the month I am at the end of my extroversion. It's time to hibernate; or, since I can't actually do that, it's time to settle in front of the fireplace to read and write.

Fortunately for me, the weather here is turning cold, and the tempo of events is slowing down. I am looking forward to having the chance to take down all the party decorations, put away the presents, and simplify my life for a month.

Until we do it all again for Christmas.

Halloween Happened

As I have gotten deeper into parenthood, I have discovered the wisdom of Bill Watterston--many of his Calvin and Hobbes comics had to do with what parents will say to kids to keep their own brains occupied.

The Bunny decided a couple of weeks ago to be an old fashioned news boy. She had the news cap--denim, with blingy rhinestones on it. All she needed were suspenders and a jeans jacket. Mr. Sweetie helped her with her costume, and even managed to find a way to tuck her pants legs into her socks to look like old fashioned breeches. But she didn't like that at all. And it is her costume, so she gets to decide what it should look like. So, as Mr. Sweetie put it--she had a hat, suspenders, and ATTITUDE!

Pony didn't definitely decided until about five days ago, and then she decided to be "a desert island." Not one you go out to buy, by any means. So, after tossing around ideas, we came up with a plan. Mr. Sweetie bought some lightweight wood--like pegboard, but without the holes. He measured Pony's head and cut a circle out, and then shaped it into an island-y shape. We used spray adhesive and sand to make the "island", and polyurethane to keep the sand from all falling off.

Then came the fun part--what goes on the island? I found some plastic palm trees which were just the right size, and bought Crayola Model Magic, in white, to fashion the rest of the island. Model Magic is very expensive, but it air dries to near weightlessness. So--what do you put on an island? Well, you put a castaway who has spelled out "HELP" on the beach in sticks. Speaking of castaways, aren't there some famous castaways? With a famous shipwreck? So I built a tiny model of the S.S. Minnow, as well as Ginger and Mary Ann for the island.

Hmm...castaways...castaways...Castaway...Tom Hanks? AND the volleyball he named Wilson! Also, and island needs pirates, and SOS spelled out in rocks, and a mermaid, and sea creatures and messages in bottles. We glued blue metallic fringe around the edge of the island for ocean.

But what about the Pony's head? Tiki goddess, of course! We got a picture from a party store site and made her up to be the looming supernatural presence over the island. Which meant that she had to have some worshippers, bowing and offering fruits to their god.

She entered the school costume contest, and with a friend who dressed as a tourist, won the "Best Group Costume" category. Which is great, but the Truth is--the value of that costume to me was all about amusing myself.

What Movie Character Am I?

So I took a follow-up to the Dating Styles test--this one is designed to show you what movie character you are most like. Look who I got!

Harry Potter You scored 45% outgoingness, 69% intelligence, and 88% goodness!

You are the problem solver of many situations. Love, however, doesn't seem to going your way at this time of life. It's time to put your intellect in the mix; you will be better appreciated.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on outgoingness You scored higher than 99% on intelligence You scored higher than 99% on goodness

Link: The Which Movie Character Are You Test written by 5934 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

I Have A Confession To Make

When you travel around the web, sometimes you do things you shouldn't. Which I just did. It didn't mean anything--really--it was just a stupid thing to do to pass some time. Okay, plus I was curious. I wanted to see where it might go--and I totally hid my name and age and stuff, so it's not like I wanted to move it into Real Life or anything.

But I did it, and so, in the interest of a full confession and getting it off my concience, I will share the results of my "Dating Style Quiz."

The Sonnet Deliberate Gentle Love Dreamer (DGLDf) Romantic, hopeful, and composed. You are the Sonnet. Get it? Composed? Sonnets want Love and have high ideals about it. They're conscientious people, caring & careful. You yourself have deep convictions, and you devote a lot of thought to romance and what it should be. This will frighten away most potential mates, but that's okay, because you're very choosy with your affections anyway. You'd absolutely refuse to date someone dumber than you, for instance. Your exact opposite: Genghis Khunt Random Brutal Sex Master Lovers who share your idealized perspective, or who are at least willing to totally throw themselves into a relationship, will be very, very happy with you. And you with them. You're already selfless and compassionate, and with the right partner, there's no doubt you can be sensual, even adventurously so. You probably have lots of female friends, and they have a special soft spot for you. Babies do, too, at the tippy-top of their baby skulls. ALWAYS AVOID: The 5-Night Stand, The False Messiah, The Hornivore, The Last Man on Earth CONSIDER: The Loverboy Link: The 32-Type Dating Test by OkCupid - Free Online Dating.

Plus, I totally did NOT sign up for the dating service.

...Because "Mad Cow" Was Already Taken

According to a dear friend, "PMS" stands for "punish men severely." Now, they have the opportunity to defend themselves! Just check out this cheeky DIY project from Schmutzie.

I received the following from JoMama, courtesy of a cousin of mine. I love the diagram. The Man in My Life has long ago learned these lessons!

The Hormone Hostage knows that there are days in the month when all a man has to do is open his mouth and he takes his life in his own hands! This is a handy guide that should be as common as a driver's license in the wallet of every husband, boyfriend, or significant other!

DANGEROUS:	SAFER:	SAFEST:	ULTRA SAFE:
What's for dinner?	Can I help you with dinner?	Where would you like to go for dinner?	Here, have some chocolate.
Are you wearing that?	Wow, you sure look good in brown!	WOW! Look at you!	Here, have some chocolate
What are you so worked up about?	Could we be overreacting?	Here's my paycheck.	Here, have some chocolate.
Should you be eating that?	You know, there are a lot of apples left.	Can I get you a glass of wine with that?	Here, have some chocolate.
What did you DO all day?	I hope you didn't over-do it today.	I've always loved you in that robe!	Here, have some more chocolate.

November Looms

Silly me--when Fussy invited readers to participate in her National Blog Posting Month, it never occurred to me that there were THAT many bloggers who were either reading or being "mommybloggers." So I just dropped a comment at the end of the post that I wanted to join the challenge.

There are, as of today, about...oh...a gazillion posters who have signed up for it, and Fussy is now offering prizes too! Incentive to actually achieve!

It's not really that I don't have enough to post about--really. It's that I'm noticing that this past weekend, for example, I had exactly NO TIME to even turn on my computer, much less sit and compose a complete sentence.

But now, I've publicly declared my intentions, and now I can be mocked for failure. Nothing like humiliation to encourage participation--far more effective than prizes for me.

Halloween Ideas

My current favorite candidate for the Pony's Halloween costume is a "Music Pirate." As in, someone who downloads music illegally. Said costume would probably entail an eyepatch that said "iPatch" on it. I found some great skull and crossbones tights, and there is great pirate costume paraphenalia about this year. I guess Johnny Depp can make ANYTHING cool.

Looking for further inspiration, I discovered this, which cracked me up.

It's Ironic...

It's ironic that the fear of long words is itself a long word:

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia

They say that to name your fear is the first step to conquering it. Sadly, those people suffering from hippoptotmonstrosesquippedaliophobia CAN'T name their fear, due to the fear itself.

Silver Lining

So, after a fantastic start to yesterday, the weather turned grumpy here. For some reason, I found myself in the shower, nearly crying over how much I DID NOT WANT to be the Mom any more. And I love being the Mom.

It was not an existential crisis so much as it was the utter boredom and hatred with which I view having to make dinner. What is the deal with this thing we call dinner? Why does it have to happen EVERY DAMN DAY? And why won't the people in my family just eat normal food? I was looking at a magazine at the dentist office the other day, and fully 3 out of 4 Quick and Easy Family Dinners they showed, my family would not eat, even on a deserted island where the alternative was coconuts. AGAIN.

So, I'm feeling bitchy about the fact that we have to keep eating, so I have to keep planning and shoppng for and cooking and setting the table and washing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen for the DAMN DINNER...and things just kind of slid from there. Think mudslide kind of "slid." Think homes toppled over and buried under the unforgining slime of a mudslide, with irreplaceable photographs and Aunt Sadie's bone china and even the dog trapped inside while you Just Know the nice man from Allstate is NOT going to be Dennis Hastert and is NOT going to be terribly sympathetic because even if your house was architecturally unique, the median rate for replacement of houses in your area is only about 30% of what yours was worth, as measured by what you paid for it EIGHT YEARS AGO and WHY did ANYONE build a house on a damn denuded hillside where there are no more tree roots to hold the soil in place and at least the Oakies didn't have MUDSLIDES, their land just dried up and BLEW AWAY which meant that at least you didn't have to WASH everything you salvaged and all your CURTAINS and RUGS and BEDDING and CLOTHES weren't RUINED not to even mention the heirloom cuckoo clock from Dusseldorf...

It was that kind of an emotional day. The kind where the thing that is going to help you make it all the way to bedtime is a serious rum drink, and there is no rum in the house and you can't get any because the kid's sport playoff game goes until after the liquor stores close.

So, cursing my lack of preparation, and being disappointed in myself for letting things get this bad without speaking up to Mr. Sweetie to ask for the help I so clearly (to me) need, I finally went to bed.

And it was like a locked door opened and people started coming out of the cold storage and came out to talk to me. To tell me their stories. To say "Hell, if you think you really want to be a writer, then go write this stuff down." And the characters that I have been trying to capture onto paper for a long time suddenly were there: they showed me the structure of their emotional make up, they set the emotional tone--the language-- for me to capture their lives.

The tone was the biggest gift. It was like showing me where the vein of ore is inside the mountain, and my job is no longer to randomly dig up the mountain, but to follow the vein as best I can. Sure, there are still minor details, like--oh, I don't know, maybe PLOT?--that aren't clear to me at all. But surely that is less important to what I am trying to do than the tone and the language to tell these stories.

So, as I'm lying there in bed, twitchy and not ready for sleep, this avalanche of character development starts to fill up my head, and I ended up getting out of bed and coming here to the computer to get it all down before I forgot it all. When I finally went back to bed--at a unholy time in the early morning--I discovered the Pony was taking up my spot in the bed, and I had to go sleep in her room. So, now, this morning, I am really tired. Three hours is just Not Enough.

I've done my morning obligations: got the kids up and dressed, helped the Bunny clear up a backlog of Spanish homework that she had forgotten about until she was in bed last night, got the circus on its way. I'm now going back to bed. My bed. To sleep. Because now I'm no longer grumpy or twitchy, but those emotional states gave me a creative gift that I needed. So there is a silver lining to the grumpy clouds of yesterday.

In Which We Ponder The Standards Of Beauty

So, occasionally--or, in this case, frequently--I find myself wondering something. Lucky for you, I have this blog to muse out loud, as it were. (This is secret code, alerting you to you skim quickly and then RUN AWAY!)

Anyway, the whole concept of shaving one's legs has me troubled. On a metaphysical level, on an anthropological level, not just on the level of sheer inconvenience. Although I bet that has a lot to do with it.

Why do women shave their legs? In the larger sense, I mean--why are hairless legs a beauty standard? Its just odd, isn't it--it's not permanently deforming, like foot-binding; it's not crippling and hygenically suspect, like female circumcision (and isn't THAT a euphamism). It doesn't add definition or visual emphasis, like tattoos or cosmetics; it doesn't demonstrate economic status, like giant necklaces and earrings. Its very essence isn't to create prominence to some feature--it's a subtraction rather than an addition.

Which may be the point. Humans who reach sexual maturity develop a number of secondary sex characteristics. Some we label desireable--female curves, male muscle development, the like. Others are undesireable--acne comes to mind. But body hair is uniquely undesireable for women. And, by subtracting the dark hairs, leg depilation subtracts years. Meaning that women--who spend a lot of time and effort to look young, and I'm one of them (okay, maybe not so much effort, but you know)--are spending the effort to look pre-pubescent.

And this kind of squicks me out. And it's made even worse by the whole bikini and Brazilian wax thing too. In this case, women's beauty is about looking TOO young to be an acceptable sexual partner. What does this say about our cultural acceptance of desirable sexual partners? And is it in some way enabling of soemthing we would never support outright?

Mark Foley is going down in flames because he made questionable propositions to underage pages on Capitol Hill. Sexual predators are barred from schools and parks and forced to notify the public of any change of residence. And yet. At the same time. We obsess endlessly about eating disorders and underfed runway models and "heroin chic" without taking the next logical step and realizing that there is a deep undertow of psychosis about sexual maturity in women.

Models are thin because why? Because then they look like barely pubescent girls? Or like barely pubescent boys? (I have heard a theory that runway models are thin because the standard was set by designers who are gay and don't want to look at women's bodies.)

Kate Moss's life is in ruins because why? Because she was launched to supermodel status by her rail thin "heroin chic" look, but then she grew up and got curves and nobody wanted her to be curvy, so she is a heroin addict now because she's trying to stay as thin as she was in her (very) early teens.

Women shave their legs and underarms because why?

Anorexia and bulimia are distorted attempts to achieve an "ideal" of thinness--why?

Breast implants are popular--and now LOTS of celebrities look like ironing boards with bowling balls stapled to their fronts--and that thinness is important why?

It doesn't mean I'm opting for the crunchy granola, liberal lesbian, all natural look any time soon. It does mean that I'm thinking about why I'm shaving while I'm doing it--or, in my case--often--not doing it.

Come on, if God had meant women to shave their legs, She wouldn't have invented dark hose. And opaque socks.

Heavy Equipment

So, the signs are back. It's street cleaning time, plus the city is finally repaving our street. By "finally" I mean both that "it's about time" and "I think they are done with ripping it up." Very LARGE trucks and pavement melters and steamrollers and equiment haulers and supervising vehicles are rolling slowly up and down the block, shaking the house and causing things to fall off shelves. It's a bitch, because they do all the streets at once, meaning that...

Oh. Wait.

I don't care.

Because I have a GARAGE! HAH! Take THAT, construction suckahs!

Halloween Costumes

We are in the throws of indecision, as October nears its end. It's a terribly indecisive month, here at Chez Evil--primarily because of the opportunities for choice. Pony's birthday happens, and she needs to provide a wish list, which is difficult because she can usually think of about two things she wants, and that's about it. Similarly, Mr. Sweetie is naturally modest and shy, and feels somehow inauthentic and grasping if he indicates what he might want for gifts for his October birthday.

(Ha! I'm getting smarter, and this year, I pulled requests out of both of them. How? Well might you ask! I simply warned them that if they didn't make suggestions lists, they would get gifts off of MY list of suggestions---which tended toward the shiny, the purple, and the mid-height heel. Sure, Mr. Sweetie has nice legs, but I bet he's really not interested in a pair of round toed platform pumps.)

The last of the crises is upon us not--what to be for Halloween?

Bunny has hers down--she's going to be a newsboy. She already has the hat, because she's a STYLIN' fifth grader. The real bonus is that she's going to get to adverstise the latest headlines: "Extra! Extra! Kindergarteners shorter than 5th graders!" "Extra! Extra! Candy expected later this evening!" "Extra, extra! I have no idea what I am talking about!"

It's harder for the Pony, because to wear a costume to school as a 7th grader requires an ineffable mixture of attitude and cool to pull off. No more fairies, angels, or princesses--they must have an edge. Trampy fairies, perhaps, or slutty princesses, maybe--there must be some dash of camp or irony. Boys have it easy--they can always dress up as girls. That's always good for a laugh.

Last year, Pony pulled off a clever costume--"Ra-punk-zel." Black nail polish and lipstick, a long black wig made out of yarn, an old prom dress from Ragstock worn with combat boots, fishnet stockings and fingerless gloves. She was a hoot.

But how do you top that?

Some friends of ours went to a Superhero Costume Party last year. He went as "Silent E," the retro superhearo from the old "Electric Company" PBS series. "He can turn a rob into a robe." She went as "SuperMom." Upon her "Cloak of Invisibility" (because, sadly, so many moms are invisible) she listed all the jobs that moms perform: cook, housekeeper, personal assistant, wardrobe consultant, chauffeur, etc. I thought that was fabulous.

Me? I don't need a costume for Halloween--I dress up every single day in my pretend "I'm a Functioning Adult Who Can Be Relied Upon" outfit. It fools just about everybody!

Girlfriend Beauty Hints

So, after spending a couple of nights at a fancy Hilton hotel in Chicago this summer, I discovered something I cannot believe I've lived without for so long: an magnifying mirror.

The one at the Hilton was hand mirror sized, mounted to the wall on an extending arm, and was illuminated. It was an amazing tool--who knew you could see so many eyebrow hairs that needed to be tweezed?

It was especially useful, as my eyes continue to age faster than the rest of my body, and the magnification worked even better than bifocals, which do tend to get in the way of actual tweezing. It's an age old problem--or maybe I mean an "old age problem." How do you put on eye makeup when you need your glasses to see what you are putting on?

So, I haven't (yet!) yet found a sufficiently attractive wall mounted illuminated extending magnifying mirror. But I did find a little compact sized one. And I used it. And it was amazing the difference it made in the final look of my eyebrows.

Sure, a 10x magnification might be a bit much. Maybe I really didn't need to see all those pores looking like divots, or the flakes of skin pulled loose when the hair was removed. So, I guess I'll not be ordering the Amazing Electron Microscope Magnifying Mirror either.

(This is an electron microscope image of a mascara brush, courtesy of this site. If I told you what all you were seeing, you'd never use mascara again, which would lead to a pandemic of pale eyelashed people. And no one wants to see that.)

Volleyball Playoffs

Well, despite staying home from school today, it turns out that both girlies had a playoff volleyball game today. Pony didn't go at all, so was ineligible to play, so we went to cheer on the team. Apparently, we didn't cheer hard enough.

Pony has now played for three seasons, and the growth of the team has been fascinating to watch. Even tonight, they were a great team, backing each other up, calling the ball, serving solidily over the net, then WHAM! Everything falls apart, and the girls are suddenly playing each others' positions, missing balls in their area, running into each other as they all run to get a ball, and then --at the last minute--deferring to each other.

That game ended at 5:30, giving us half an hour to get across town to the Bunny's game, plus feeding everyone, plus stopping at the library to get a book Pony needed for her homework tonight. Through the miracle of cel phone and 411, we called ahead to the library to get the book set aside for us, and called a Vietnamese take out place for dinner. I tell you, that was some AWESOME MamaGrooving going on.

And then the Bunny's team won! Which was very exciting, except that their next playoff game is tomorrow night at 7:45. Which seems incredibly late for 10 year olds, if you ask me. But no one did--ask me, that is. So, tomorrow night is another night of volleyball excitement.

Yeah! Volley Ball EXCITEMENT, I said! Can I get a "whoop whoop"?

The Napping House

It's after 10 o'clock, and I am home with two kidlets sleeping upstairs. Yes, it's Tuesday, and school is in session. Yes, school starts at 8. Yes, this is not an error.

Everyone had trouble waking up this morning, kidlets most of all. There were tears and stomach aches and nausea. Mr. Sweetie and I questionned them closely, then sent them back to bed. Because I don't think they are really sick: I think they are just really tired.

I have a lot of sympathy for that kind of tiredness. I have a slow metabolism ("Oh, you think?" snarks the bathroom scale) and it takes me 20-40 minutes to fall asleep at night, and the same to wake up in the morning. In between, I need a minimum of 8 hours to feel human.

Mr. Sweetie, bless his untroubled conscience, is exactly the opposite. He can fall asleep like someone hit his "off" switch. I have personally observed him fall asleep WHILE HE WAS STILL TALKING! Plus, he seems to only need about 5 hours of sleep a night, routinely staying up to midnight, then waking up before his alarm goes off at 5:30. I don't think I've actually met 5:30 a.m., I only know it by reputation. But, because I feel like a failure for needing so much sleep, I try to match Mr. Sweetie's hours. And with insufficient sleep, I end up in some really bad places: nauseated, dizzy, overeating to stay awake, depressed. I also think some of my mediations have drowsy side effects. So many days I will see everyone off to their work or school, and then go back to bed to catch up on that sleep.

So, what do you do when you can't tell if your kids are sick? Are we pushing them when they shouldn't be pushed? Are we enabling them if we let them stay home? Do we strike a decent balance by sending them back to bed, and forbidding any tv or computer?

On edit: well, they both went back to bed and were asleep for the better part of 2 1/2 hours. Bunny woke up and came down looking her usual sunny and sparkly self: she needed more sleep! That was the right thing to do!

Pony woke up and stumbled down and didn't look at all like herself. So, Bunny went to school, and Pony stayed home. Guess we did okay in the Parenting Olympics today.

Meanwhile...

Meanwhile, The Edge continues to look desperately cool and yet somehow warm and twinkly. Kind of like Sean Connery, who is far sexier now than he was as James Bond. Hey--maybe that explains why Mr. Sweetie is so sexy!

Separated At Birth--Love Hurts Edition

Okay, so I asked the "Ginger or Mary Ann" question for women: Bono or Edge?

This, however, may make the whole thing moot. Sorry Bono. Believe me, I say this out of love, and it hurts me to say it. But especially since you cut your hair--shaved it, actually--you look like that formerly cool, currently schmaltzy actor, Robin Williams.

Pssst: It's NOT a good look.

There is a terrible joke, which I first heard from my mother in law. (I am assuming there is no hidden information in her telling this joke. Please don't tell me I am wrong.) It goes like this:

A man and his wife are out at dinner, when an acquaintance enters the restaurant with a gorgeous young woman on his arm, who is most definitely NOT his wife.

"That's just disgusting," says the woman. "Just who is she anyway?"
"Oh, her?" says the man. "That's his mistress."
"What?!?!"
"Oh sure," he says calmly. "Most of the successful men I know have a mistress. I have one too."
"You do?"
"Of course. In fact," he points across the room at a stunning woman at the bar, "there she is."
"Oh." She lets this fact sink in a moment, then leans across the table and whispers "Ours is prettier."

Which is what it is like to be married to a man who has a wooden boat. He is walking around with a glow of happiness, which is slightly tempered with some guilt for having such a mistress. Around here, we call her "L.C."--which is not just the initials of Lady Cliff, but is a reference to a Monty Python sketch where Michael Palin is caught with a scantily clad woman, and attempts to pass her off as "your Grace."

To which she replies "I'm not your Grace. I'm your Elsie."

But it is so wonderful to see Mr. Sweetie being so darn happy. Really, every little thing about this boat makes him happy. L.C. was pulled from the water for the season this week, and Mr. Sweetie went down to do some winterizing. He found himself scooping out slimy water from the bilge, just so excited and happy to have a boat with a bilge to clean. It's like every flaw and inconvenience is just another adorable quirk for him to love.

I'd be more jealous, but since that's how he treats me, I can't complain.

Puttin' On The Hits!

So, the first day results are in: karaoke is a good gift for a new 13 year old.

Turns out that, despite my long lived desire to sing karaoke, I am not as good as the Pony is--man, girlfriend totally nails it, even songs she doesn't even know. You would be amazed at how quickly she picked up "Start Me Up"-and she's not even that familiar with anything by the Rolling Stones.

It turns out (no surprise) that I'm an "80s Diva," some of my best songs being by Cyndi Lauper and Joan Jett. I'm okay with that--that's my era.

We dragooned Mr. Sweetie into singing too. We let him pick a song, and since he is a Classy Guy, he picked "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" by Tony Bennett. The learning curve is really steep, and by the end of the first song, Mr. Sweetie was nailing the notes beautifully. Then Pony made him sing "Material Girl." Which, of course, he totally aced. Pony could hardly breathe, she was laughing so hard, especially since he was singing in a falsetto, but between verses, he put on his deepest, most resonant baritone, and channelled Barry White.

However, the scores were telling, and as suave and cosmopolitan as he is, it turns out that Mr. Sweetie is a better Madonna than Tony Bennett. This is so WRONG! And I guarantee he's going to demand a rematch.

Parenting Is Trying

A friend of mine was sharing how hard it was for her when she first became a mother. Her husband went off to work each day, leaving her at home with a colicky child, who cried for hours without stopping. She was thousands of miles from any family or friends she could ask for help, and she was losing her mind.

She went into the pediatricians, and asked for help. The doctor said "Just let her cry. Don't pick her up or try to soothe her."

"But! I can't do that!"

"Sure you can. Look, when you pick her up, does she stop crying?"

"Um. No."

"So, since it doesn't make any difference, give yourself a rest. Just let her cry."

Which my friend totally could not do; it felt negligent. If your baby is crying, don't you at least TRY to calm her? Don't you get points for at least trying? Can you truly accept that you won't make any difference by trying?

I mean--for the first 9-10 months, you are that baby's world. Everything you eat and drink, you evaluate as to what affect it will have on the baby. Then, the baby is born, and there is still almost nothing that baby needs beyond its mother--to be held, to be fed, to be changed...babies need mothers and not much else.

How can you even wrap your head around the idea that you could make NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL? And how could you NOT EVEN TRY?

Maybe the doctor was right--but that's one of those times that the pallid Truth has no authority over the maternal instinct, wrong as it might be. I wouldn't have been able to just let the child cry, no matter who logical the argument.

Which just goes to show you that we new moms are SO whacked out on hormone cocktails that we cannot think straight. It's probably a good thing for the survival of the species that we don't.

More Comedic Stylings Chez Evil

So, Pony and I were walking the dog the other day, and all along the route were small orange signs saying "No Parking This Block--Police Order." The date was Pony's birthday.

Without missing a beat, Pony noticed them and said:

"It's because they are having the parade."

Of course! The Pony Birthday Parade! I bet there's one in your town too!

School House Rant

The Hobbled Runner has a post about his frustration with public schools. I feel his pain, even though the kidlets are in a private school--it doesn't solve everything. Sure, it's a First World Problem, but that doesn't make it less important to my life and my kids.

School has been a wonderful thing for the Pony--taking her to kindergarten was like releasing a fish into water. She just swam away into her element. And the school has continued to be an excellent fit for her; academically challenging, good social support, teaching style that matches her pencil-and-paper strengths.

The Bunny, not so much. She's more "hands on" in her style. At the Science Museum, for example, Pony would read the instructions and then perform the experiments: Bunny would push buttons to see what would happen. She's plenty smart, and very capable, but if it doesn't capture her interest, it's hard for her to stay focused. We're working with some excellent psychologists on the ADD thing, and she's doing just fine. It's just not the perfect fit it is for the Pony.

But, when you have your kids in private school, sometimes the sense of entitlement gets magnified. You find yourself saying things like "I pay $xxxxx a year for this?!?!?!?" Whatever "this" is--it rankles to be paying for something that is unsatisfactory. Bunny's school was closed for two days this past week due to a malfunctioning boiler--and some parents were absolutely furious. One parent even took the annual tuition divided over the instructional days and calculated how much it cost him for the school to be closed those two days.

Sure, it's sad that he was that bitter, but I can understand it. It is expensive to pay for tuition, and if you kid isn't getting what s/he needs, you might as well not get it for free. In public schools. Because then you can spend that $xx,xxx per year on enrichment opportunities. Which happens a lot even which the tuition payments.

Some people hire tutors to get their kids up to speed in specific academic areas. There's private music lessons, language lessons, art classes, dance, sports, all kinds of opportunities to get what your kid doesn't get in school. Or doesn't get enough of. Or is simply interested in getting more of than is available during a school day.

And there is an eerie pressure to do so, since so many kids do. I'm no Type A parent, but when your child comes home and says that "Susie is taking riding lessons, and can I too?" I, at least, want to say "yes." And there are plenty of Type A parents in the school--usually women who have left high powered careers to parent full time, but still carry their Fil-O-Faxes (TM) for playdates and afterschool activities. Which, if you are going to do anyway, you might decided to just save the tuition and send the kid to public school for the basics.

Which is a perfectly valid option, and one that we have looked at. I mean, some of our friends have looked at the annual tuition, converted that into a mortgage payment (in a good school district) and have decided to invest in property. Which does appreciate. Unlike tuition, which is pure consumption, really.

But--it's the right place for us for many reasons. It's not perfect, and sometimes it's imperfections are particularly galling because we are paying for the aggravation. But, it's been outstanding for the Pony, it's been very good for the Bunny. Both girls are well behaved and smart, and are the kind of kids who don't really make trouble--and so would probably be overlooked in a public school classroom. At their school, they are SEEN and KNOWN. There are two full time teachers in each of the K-5th grade classrooms, plus specialists for music, art, Spanish, computer, gym, and library. They start and end each week with school wide assemblies, where they are exposed to activities in classrooms and mini-courses where they are not themselves involved. The kids are from well educated families, most of which are intact--there are surprisingly few divorces in the school community, and even where there are, all the blended parents are usually involved in conferences and school stuff.

If there are things that are troublesome, there are fewer levels of bureaucracy to work through to get changes--if they can be gotten. Some things just take a long time--and if change does come, it can still come after your child is no longer at the school.

So, is there an answer? Home-schooling, but let me tell you, you do NOT want a depressive woman trapped at home with her kids...it's a recipe for homocide. Plus, if there is something I can NOT do, it's recreate the social atmosphere of a room full of peers--it is just not possible. And there is much to be learned about getting along in the world that comes with a school full of similarly aged kids.

Academics are important, no question. And part of the importance of properly challenging kids is so the don't become bored (or, conversely, overwhelmed) so that they learn to hate learning and school. Because, unless the world changes radically in the next few months, our kids are going to have to face a minimum of 17 years of school, plus graduate work. But academics are really only part of the story. This year, it seems, all the Pony's teachers agree that only about half of school is about the academics--at least for 7th graders. The other half is social, and that is JUST as important as the academics.

Boy, this was a long post--but it is about something that all parents think about, long and hard. Back when I was a kid, you just went to the school that was in your neighborhood. In some cases, you maybe went to the Catholic church in your parish. Some people moved in order to get into certain desireable districts, but there was not all this hand-wringing about getting the "right" education. Maybe our generation needs to lighten up--our kids will learn something, and there's no telling what they'll really need to know 15 years from now. Fifteen years ago, there were no Website designers, no content providers, no e-commerce gurus...fifteen years from now, what our kids will need to know might just be what they can learn from being in a school environment--how to think critically, how to decided what they want and how to get it, how to operate in ossified bureaucracies. Maybe the best thing we can do for our kids is to just get out of their way and let them find their own paths.

Yeah. Right.

More Karaoke Fun

There is no way to adequately convey the true level of culture clash we are experiencing at this exact moment as out kids are playing the karaoke game. Right now they are singing "Play That Funky Music White Boy." In between actual songs from the machine, The Bunny sets the microphone onto "reverb" and hums either the Darth Vader Theme, or Andrew Lloyd Weber's Phantom of the Opera.

The other current favorites are Madonna's "Material Girl," followed by "That's Amore."

Hey, when you're 13 and 10--they're all Oldies.

Thirteen Years Ago Today

So, I've now been a mother for thirteen years. Am I any better at it now than I was thirteen years ago? I'd answer that with a definite "maybe."

Sure, I have some more experience now, but does it really translate? Each of my two kids is such a personality, and they have such different strengths and weaknesses, that any problem solving I do with one is, by definition, not applicable to the other one.

The Pony is now a teenager, which doesn't call for ANY of the skills I have mastered over the years. Sure, I got pretty good at changing diapers, and getting my kids to sleep through the night, and using carseats.... Like I said, not much call for those skills these days.

The Pony remains a delightful girl. She's growing so much socially, with an expanded group of friends, and such insights into why seventh graders behave the way they do. She finds a lot of humor in what goes on around her school, and laughs at most of it.

She is still very very kind and patient, even with her parents. If I told her we were having stewed monkey heads for dinner, she'd sigh, roll her eyes and say in an aggrieved tone: "But we had that for lunch."

Tonight, she opened birthday gifts. Among them were a karaoke game and Dance Dance Revolution, which she is currently doing with her little sister. She's invited Mr. Sweetie and me to try it out too. She still enjoys us, which is such a gift. We still get to have good family times. She is truly a great kid and a joy, and I feel lucky to have gotten her in my family. Happiest of birthdays, Pony!

However, I have to complain to someone. Who loads "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond onto a karaoke Playstation 2 game? It's like Grandma's Karaoke Night.

Everyone's A Comedian

I was driving with the kidlets in the car today, and we drove past an appartment building with a large sign on it.

The Bunny turned excitedly to her sister and said "Let's go get one and pretend he's our grandpa!"

The Pony (and I) had no idea what she was talking about, so she pointed to the sign and said:


"See? It says 'Senior Rentals!'"

In case you are wondering, that was a deliberate joke on the Bunny's part--she takes after her mother that way. I'm so proud!

Thirteen--Not the Movie

So. The Pony has a blog. It's a little bit daunting, seeing what I say or do showing up on her blog--seeing myself from her perspective.

Although, so far, I think I come off as rather a cool mom. At least, a funny one. But she turns 13 tomorrow, and all of this can change.

Time to Update the Research?

Maybe you heard about the "monkey mother" research from the 1950s--where scientist Harry Harlow gave newborn rhesus monkeys a wire "mother" that held a bottle, and a terry cloth "mother" that did not. The infant monkeys spent many hours cuddling the soft "mother" approaching the wire one only for food.

This was a remarkable rebuttal to the childcare experts of the time who warned that children must not be cuddled, or picked up when they cried, at the risk of spoiling them. This may have been the start of science of touch, and the root of such current practices as "kangaroo care" and placing a newborn on the mother immediately after birth to allow them to bond.

This, however, scares me. It looks like Harlow's research all over again. You know, sometimes it's just as well my kids are much older--I'm not sure I'd want to have these lying around my house.

Sister Cate Chardonnay

My nice neighbor asked me if I would be interested in assisting at a local Catholic hospital, and she invited me to attend an annual meeting. Which I did--mostly because Mr. Sweetie was out at a dinner meeting and the kidlets were at a friend's for the evening.

It turns out that the invitation to assist was to come onto the board of the hospital Auxilliary, and this was their annual meeting. Which, since I'm neither Catholic nor medically inclined, seemed like a bit out of my core competency. But, I went anyway, and ...wow.

I ended up at a table of 5 retired nurse/nuns, plus my friend who is a retired nurse. Some of the coolest woment in the world are nuns over the age of 65. The evening started with an hors d'oeuvres dinner--cheese, crackers, little barbeque sandwiches, seafood wontons, California rolls, salami, skewered shrimp, and egg rolls. And wine. Who knew that Catholic hosptial meetings would have wine? And nuns are good drinkers? We each had a tastefullly sized glass of chardonnay at our table, and one of the nuns noticed, and suggested--"they should just give us a bottle." So, as the youngest one at the table, I got a bottle. And a corkscrew. And I filled all those nun's glasses. Again. And the designated driving nun was the biggest drinker at the table!

One of the other nuns started introducing all of us at the table to someone else as "Sister [Name on the Name Tag]. So, I was made a nun--which I think takes the obligations of volunteering a little bit too far, and will certainly be a surprise to Mr. Sweetie.

So, are these my people? Is there room at the table for a non-Catholic, non-medical white wine drinker? If I do join this group, I'm going to suggest that "Auxilliary" needs to be changed. It is a hopelessly old fashioned name--it's as dated as being called "Mrs. Hisfirstname Hislastname." Which is, of course, how someone was introduced. But, let's face it--this organization was started at a time when all the doctors were men and their wives raised money for the hospital. The Auxilliary still does that--which explains a lot of things, such as:

• why it is still called "The Auxilliary"
• why the average age in the room was about 74
• why the only men in the room at any time were the chef and the two presenters...and at least two of them were gay
• why it felt like I was at a meeting of the women's group at my church.

Apparently, some organizations have truly made themselves independent non-profit organizations, and have developed professional fundraising efforts. The library, for example, has a separate organization that raises money for acquisitions and capital improvement, and lobbies for more public money--which has an executive director, separate office space and full time staff, all independent of the library system itself.

In quaint old Saint Paul, however, the model seems to be that the fundraising happens through the Ladies' Auxilliary--still!--holding luncheons and fashion shows and running the gift shop. There is part of me that just loves that about Saint Paul--if it worked for our great-grandparents, by God, it will work for us!

Part of me thinks that, perhaps, it's time for the Ladies' fundraising to move to a more professional level?

But hey--keep serving the wine!

My Newest Goal

The gauntlet has been thrown by Fussy. We are taking back the month of November from the NoNoWriMo folks. Why? Because it is just impossible to write an entire novel in 30 days. Because I have a family and responsibilities that are not willing to excuse us for a month. Because by refusing to participate in NaNoWriMo, I won't fail at it--even better, if I have a DIFFERENT goal for the month, I won't just feel like I'm refusing out of fear of failure.

NaBloPoMo: Coming soon to this space!

Neighborhood Renewal

Our neighbors up the street had a baby--a little boy who is now three months old. They live in the house where some other friends lived, and we had dinner in that house when the Pony was about a year and a half old.

It's hard to believe that it's been that long--Pony is now in seventh grade and is taller than I am. Back then, she was so little, that when the little boy came to show us his Halloween costume, she couldn't say "Thomas the Tank Engine."

"It's Thomas the Tikken!"

Now, she's the elder statesman of the neighborhood, and the new parents are keeping their eyes on her as a future babysitter. And she's the same age as the babysitters we used to hire. These things happen when you live in one place for fifteen years: babysitters go off to college, the babies grow up and start sitting for the newest neighbors.

Our neighbor mentioned that the baby would be able to say "bye bye" in about nine months. And the incredible thing is that when my kidlets were three months old, I absolutely could not imagine that much time ever passing. Parenting is hard hard work, and one of the hardest things is how time absolutely DOES NOT pass. Dooce describes it as struggling to make through ten minutes, in order to then struggle through the ten minutes after THAT. I remember thinking that I was going to die before making it through the first two weeks of breast-feeding--two weeks felt like an eternity.

But now--hey! Nine months--that's no time at all! Nine months from now is next summer, and we already have theater tickets for farther ahead than that. Nine months is nothing at all anymore. I feel like I'm living in sync with the rest of the world now--but I still got a visceral kick of remembrance about how long nine months can be.

The Joy Factor

I know you've seen the calculators of how much it costs to raise a child to age 18. It's an amount of money that could otherwise be spent on fast cars and dashing dates...but as one acquaintance said to me "they left out the joy factor."

And really, the joy factor is entirely non-monetary, and it is totally the reason to have kids. This morning, in fact, the Bunny was making her breakfast, and happily humming a tune. Not just any tune. She was humming the "Darth Vader Theme" from Star Wars, while toasting her Cinnamon Toaster Strudel with Cinna-bon Cinnamon and Brown Sugar.

Interplanetary terror: it's not just for breakfast.

Who Wants To Eat Bread Pudding?

So! I'm sure you all want to read about my continuing self-improvement efforts, right! Right! Sure! If you have to! Which you do!

The greatest sister in the world, suefunky, has passed on a thought that is my newest mantra: if you are planning to share a dessert with your dinner partner, and you say "Go ahead and order, I don't care"--you might not get the dessert you wanted. Or, as the mantra now goes: "If I don't ask, I won't get the chocolate."

Doesn't that just summarize the whole situation perfectly? Sure, I hate to assert myself, sure, I'm hopelessly blocked about asking for what I want or need--but hey! If I don't ask, I won't get the chocolate! And really, is there anything better than the chocolate choice? I'll answer that for you--no. Or, at best, rarely. Are other people going to offer me something better than what I want for myself? Again--rarely.

Or, as my therapist said--If you don't take care of yourself, no one else will. Which is true about being an adult, isn't it. I have the best vantage point for my needs and my desires and how to get them all met--so if I'm hiring the best person for the job, it would be MEEEE!

So, repeat after me:

"I'm sorry, that doesn't work for me."
"If I don't ask, I won't get the chocolate."

Repeat.