More Than You Ever Wanted To Know

Silence of the clams

2012-02-04T10:27:00.000-08:00

I wasn't born with a naturally perky, outgoing personality. I'm not shy; I like people fine; I'm just not chatty unless I know someone fairly well, and sometimes not even then. The up side of this is that people confide in me because I'm a good listener. The down side is that a lot of them have said, "Wow, when we first met, I thought you totally hated me!"

(Did I slash your tires? Spit at your feet? Eye you meaningfully while spraying myself with Eau de Loathing cologne? No? Then I probably didn't hate you.)

Because I've been told this so many times, after an ordinary interaction like the passing chat I had with a neighbor yesterday evening, I walk away all paranoid, thinking "Did I seem friendly/happy/enthusiastic enough? Did I end the conversation too soon? Shit, did I forget to smile? I'll bet I forgot to smile. Great! Now they think I hate them. They're going to point out my house to visitors and say, 'That's where the witch lives.'"

Long story short, if you meet someone who's not bubbling over with small talk, please don't think they're snobs or jerks or that they wish you would die in a fire. They're probably just like me and will talk when they have something to say.

Maybe.

End-of-year survey

2011-12-29T11:10:00.000-08:00

What did you do in 2011 that you had never done before?
Well, for one thing, I kept a list of things I did that I'd never done before, specifically so I would know how to answer this question at the end of the year. :-) Here are the things I did: Tried Peruvian and Ecuadorean food, visited Medieval Times, saw live performances of Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night, entered an original story in a writing contest, became the parent of a junior-high student, built a costume prop from scratch, and turned 40.

Did you keep all of last year's resolutions?
My only resolution was to try new things, so yes.

Have you any resolutions for next year?
Keep working on doing new things. I was thwarted in some of what I wanted to do this year because I had a lot of unexpected expenses.

What countries did you visit?
None.

What would you like to have in 2012 that you didn’t have in 2011?
Last year I said I wanted a refrigerator and an air conditioner that work, and I now have both of those things - go me! I also said I'd like to have a sense of personal fulfillment through some sort of creative endeavor, and that still applies. I'd like to get all the broken stuff around the house repaired, too.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Surviving it.

What was your biggest failure?
Not finding that creative endeavor. Although, I did verify that I still suck at art, so I can scratch that one off the list of possibilities. :-P

Did you suffer any illness or injury?
I pulled a calf muscle in July. That was really the worst of it; I had the usual allergy and migraine issues, but nothing out of the ordinary.

What was the best thing you bought?
The new refrigerator, my MacBook Pro, theatre tickets.

Where did most of your money go?
Aside from living expenses, most of it went to car repairs.

What did you get really really really excited about?
I don't think I got really really really excited about anything.

Compared to this time last year:
i. are you happier or sadder? About the same.
ii. thinner or fatter? Fatter.
iii. richer or poorer? About the same.
iv older or wiser? Older. I'm pretty sure "more cynical" doesn't count as "wiser."

What do you wish you'd done more of?
Traveling, reading, anything creative.

What do you wish you’d done less of?
Procrastinating.

How will you be spending New Year's Eve?
At home with G - I tried to convince her to go to a local all-ages event, but she doesn't want to.

What was your favourite TV show?
Sherlock - it may have come out in 2010 but I didn't see it until this year.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No, but my opinion of some people has gone way down.

What did you want and get?
A new laptop, a refrigerator, an air conditioner, various DVDs, theater tickets.

What did you want and not get?
Travel. We really didn't go anywhere except for a couple of short weekend trips.

What was your favourite film this year?
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

What was/were the best books you read?
To Say Nothing of the Dog, and all the Terry Pratchett books I read in the first few months of the year.

What was your greatest musical discovery?
Florence + The Machine

What did you do on your birthday and how old were you?
Went out to lunch with friends from work, then G and I went to San Diego and saw Twelfth Night at the Old Globe. I was 40.

What one thing would have made your year more satisfying?
Less stress - this year was intensely stressful for a variety of reasons.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
About the same as last year. In fact, it is the same because I barely bought any new clothes all year long.

What/who kept you sane?
Who said I was sane?

Which political issue stirred you the most?
None I can think of. I try to avoid politics because they decrease my already tenuous faith in humanity.

Did you fall in love in 2011?
God, no! I'm trying to reduce the stress in my life, not add to it.

Single greatest moment of 2011
Hmm...probably G's promotion from sixth grade. She had just finished first grade when her father died, so I really got her through almost all of elementary school by myself. I may not have done everything perfectly all the time, but I did do it.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned.
I seem to keep learning again and again that it's a bad idea to rely on other people for just about anything.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year…
I´m breaking through
I´m bending spoons
I´m keeping flowers in full bloom
I´m looking for answers from the great beyond

- R.E.M., "The Great Beyond"

Making Christmas

2011-12-18T14:00:00.000-08:00

This year, my goal is to put some effort into Christmas again. Holidays aren't difficult for us anymore, but during the two or three years when they were, I got into the habit of doing the bare minimum, and then inertia took over and I never bothered to ramp back up.

On top of that, for a couple of years now G has been in the Preteen Killjoy phase that most of us went through at the same age, during which you don't want to do anything that might be remotely embarrassing or make you look childish. (She was mortified that her school had "Santa's Village" out in the quad last week, until I said "They don't actually think you believe in Santa, it's for fun. Remember fun? That thing you'll have again once you're old enough not to worry that someone will think you're immature?") This eliminated most of our traditional leading-up-to-Christmas activities, such as visiting Santa, riding the Polar Express train, making snowman crafts out of cotton balls, etc., and made it even harder to get in the Christmas mood--a condition that a friend of mine described last year as "lack of Christmas foreplay."

With these things in mind, this year I'm taking a combined approach of:

1. Not being a lazy slug. I put the tree and lights up in early December and have plugged them in every night; I went out and bought new ornaments to replace the ones we lost, and I'm actually sending a few cards for the first time since 2005. I also bought an additional, tiny, real tree to put on a high shelf in hopes of infusing some pine scent into the house--we can't have a full-size real tree because one of our cats likes to eat greenery--but somehow I managed to choose a totally odorless one. Oh well, it looks nice.

2. Finding acceptable Christmas activities. In G's defense, she's right: a lot of local holiday-themed events are geared to very small children--we had the same problem at Halloween, when she would have loomed like Gulliver among the Lilliputians at the various face-painting, pumpkin-decorating, costume-parading festivals, but was too young for haunted houses aimed at teenagers--and she doesn't have younger siblings to give her a reason to attend anyway. Instead, we've been watching more grown-up Christmas movies, listening to Christmas music together at home, and drinking hot chocolate and apple cider, all of which she's enjoyed. Hopefully we'll get around to baking cookies sometime next week.

This year is also a little different from previous ones in that for once, there's no place we're required to be on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. G, whose idea of a perfect day involves pajamas, video games and not much else, is ecstatic, and I'm looking forward to spending the time quietly at home. I may be putting more into "making Christmas" this time around, but I'm still all about doing things my own way.

Things to be thankful for

2011-11-23T12:50:00.000-08:00

In honor of tomorrow's holiday, here's a short list of things I'm thankful for - in no particular order, and mixing the momentous with the mundane.

G, with all her many gifts and talents
Our pets (but not their messes)
The 12 1/2 years I got to spend with P
Having a job and a place to live
Health
That my parents brought me up to be independent
That I live in a society where women can be independent
Friends, both online and in person
Literacy
Things that are vanilla or coconut-scented
Chipotle burritos
Hot coffee and tea
My iPod (it's old, but it works) and my MacBook
Rainy days
Central air conditioning
Netflix instant streaming
The smell of coffee brewing
Air travel
Black nail polish
Mountains, oceans, forests and deserts
All the different languages in the world
Green glass bottles
Books, bookstores and libraries
Vaccinations and antibiotics
Indoor plumbing
Digital cameras, especially the one in my phone
The sound of a full orchestra...and a single instrument
Electric lights
The Arnolfini Portrait
Silly cat videos and pictures
Calvin and Hobbes
My new favorite website
The entire Internet
Poetry
Flannel PJs
Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman
Texting and email
Loving v. Virginia
Sparkly white Christmas lights
The increasing availability of vegetarian food
Having lived in so many different places
New office supplies
Tim Burton's movies
Freedom of religion (it may not be as free as I'd like, but at least you're not going to get shot for it)
New York City
Birds in flight
Dark and milk chocolate
The smell of wet pavement
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume
Museums

Happy Thanksgiving!

40

2011-11-14T22:38:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday, I woke up feeling a little congested, and by late morning, I had the headachy, feverish, slightly unreal sensation that is usually the harbinger of some hideous virus o' doom. I felt so rotten that I went home after lunch, slept, woke up long enough to collect G from school and order pizza for her dinner, slept again, got up to feed the cats and make sure G went to bed properly (i.e., not with unbrushed teeth and still wearing all her clothes) and then went back to sleep.

I don't know what miracle my immune system pulled off during the night, but somehow by the time I woke up on Thursday morning, I was completely fine--every trace of whatever had been ailing me the day before was gone. Which was a good thing, because Thursday also happened to be my 40th birthday.

(!!!)

I went to work, where friends had baked homemade brownies for me and turned my cube into a mystical black-draped tent lit inside by battery-powered tealights, and then after being taken out to lunch, I left early (again) so I could pick G up immediately after her last class. We had tickets to see Twelfth Night at the Old Globe in San Diego's Balboa Park, and it's a good thing we got on the road as early as we did, because the traffic was so heavy that it took three hours to make a trip that usually takes an hour and a half at most. Luckily, G and I are good traveling companions--we like lots of the same music and usually pass the time by singing along loudly to the favorite artist of the moment-- and we still got there in plenty of time to check into our hotel and relax a bit before heading over to the theater.

The director had decided to set the play in India during the British Raj, and it made me a little uncomfortable to see some of the cultural appropriation that involved, but the production was so good I couldn't help loving it. It was a black-box theater, and we were in the front row, so there were several occasions when the actors came right up near us or actually sat just offstage beside us to watch the action. In fact, thanks to our position, I suddenly found myself part of the show during the closing song, when the actor playing Feste zeroed in on me in the front row, climbed up on the raised area surrounding the stage, and sang this verse directly to me with a hand outstretched:

But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive
For the rain it raineth every day

This raised a roar of laughter from the audience and nearly caused G, seated to my right, to spontaneously combust with a combination of hilarity and tween-girl embarrassment. After the lights came up, I leaned over to her and said "Apparently I'm the Fool's girlfriend," and she said, still laughing, "I'm glad it was you and not me!" Hee.

The next morning, we had room-service breakfast and then hit the highway again, stopping along the way to do some shopping for G, who had earned a pair of coveted, trendy Toms shoes by doing work around the house, and also for me, because it was my birthday and I intended to indulge myself. :D We had chocolate cake at Corner Bakery (can't have a birthday without cake, right?) and finally got home in the late afternoon, tired but satisfied. All in all, a good birthday, and while it wasn't the crazy over-the-top celebration you're "supposed" to have for a milestone year, it was just right for me.

A day in pictures

2011-11-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

It was raining when I went to the supermarket yesterday.

I got my coffee for free because I had to wait five minutes for them to finish brewing it. I didn't mind, but the guy said "This is Starbucks, we should always have coffee ready" and gave it to me on the house.

It seemed like a good day to make soup, so I did.

I had to go back out and saw these pretty sunflowers outside the natural-foods store.

G made Catherine pose for a photo.

The two of them spent the afternoon watching anime in G's room.

Meanwhile, Malcolm chose to watch the BBC's Sherlock with me.

Eventually we ate soup for dinner.

The end!

She so did

2011-11-01T23:51:00.000-07:00

Me: Did you eat breakfast?
G: Yeah. I didn't eat breakfast food, but I ate it at breakfast time.

(pause)

Me: You ate leftover Halloween candy, didn't you?
G: ... Maybe.

Commotion

2011-10-23T21:51:00.000-07:00

Last night G and I watched Iron Man 2, which was quite good. It ended at about 11:30, and I sent her off to brush her teeth while I filled a glass of water in case she got thirsty in the night. When I brought it in, she was already in bed, and I could hear voices in the driveway below her window. We live in a condo complex, so imagine two rows of townhomes with attached garages facing each other and a long driveway (actually a little street with its own name) running between them and then letting out onto the main road.

As I switched off G's bedside lamp, the voices erupted into a full-blown argument:

Man (screaming): Fuck you, bitch!
Woman: [unintelligible]
Man: [unintelligible] Don't you ever [unintelligible] again!

At this point I heard the sound of several loud slaps and ran upstairs to my own bedroom to get my phone. When I came back about 30 seconds later, the argument was still raging and G said "Mom, what is it?" I said "Sshh, I'm going to call the cops" and pulled aside her curtain just in time to see the man reach through the driver's-side window of his car and shove the woman, who was standing just outside the car as if he'd thrown her out, so that she fell into the driveway with the contents of her handbag spilling around her. Then he peeled out onto the street and roared off, leaving her lying there in the dark.

I thought of going outside, but didn't want to rush out there right away in case the jackhole in the car decided to come back and perhaps beat us both up, or worse, run us over. So I opened up G's window and called down to the woman, who was starting to move around a little, feebly, "Are you okay? Do you need me to call anyone for you?"

She sat up, seeming stunned. "I think I'm all right."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah...I just need to pick up my stuff. It's okay. Thanks."

"Okay, if you're sure," I said.

I closed the window, but kept watching through a gap in the curtain while she slowly collected her fallen belongings and put them back into her bag. G said, "What happened?" and I said "That guy was an ass, he hit her and pushed her down. Never have a boyfriend like that." She said "What are you going to do now?" and I said "I'm going to wait and make sure she's really okay."

After a minute or so, the woman got all her things together, stood up and walked out into the glow of the streetlamp just outside the driveway. At this point I finally got a better look at her--she was youngish, maybe 30 or so, with dark hair, and dressed the way you would dress to go out on a Saturday night, in a black tank top and black pants, with heels. She stood there in the pool of light for a moment and then turned left and disappeared from view, digging through her bag as if she were looking for her phone.

I thought about calling the police anyway: even if the guy was long gone, they could have caught up with her easily since she was on foot, and perhaps taken a report or at least found her a ride. But it also crossed my mind that there was a small chance it could be a prostitution-related thing--I didn't think it was, but having grown up in a terrible neighborhood where prostitution was rampant, I knew it wasn't impossible either. If that had been the case, I could have caused her a lot of trouble by getting cops involved, and she was already having a hard enough night, so I let her go. I hope she got home or to a friend's house all right--our area is quite safe, so she was almost certainly in less danger walking, even alone at night, than she would have been with the guy who smacked her around.

G has an unshakable belief that I can handle just about any emergency that might arise (zombie apocalypse? no problem, Mom's got it) so she stayed calm through the whole thing and went tranquilly off to sleep afterward, but I was full of adrenaline for a long time. The most worrisome part is that not a single other person in any of the surrounding buildings so much as looked out a window to see if this poor woman was alive or dead. It wasn't even midnight yet, so I can't have been the only one awake. It's nice to know that the neighbors would be right there for me if I ever screamed in the night. Jeez.

Gimme a [letter of your choice]!

2011-10-15T15:44:00.000-07:00

G's school had tryouts for the middle-school cheer squad last week. G wanted nothing to do with them because she prides herself on being a sort of anti-cheerleader--if you remember your early adolescent stereotypes, G is the Artsy/Goth Girl, although she hasn't yet embraced the music that goes along with it--and also because, as she accurately observed, "I can't do a split to save my life." The newly anointed cheerleaders appear to include the usual complement of popular girls, with one exception: G's friend "Penny," whom I think made the cut due to sheer dance/gymnastic ability.

This fascinates me for a couple of reasons:

1. How do the cheer coaches know, six weeks into the school year with a brand-new crop of seventh graders, who is popular and who isn't? Does it show somehow, or do the popular girls just tend also to be the bouncy, outgoing type who have taken lots of dance lessons?

2. If you become a cheerleader because you have actual skillz, does this automatically make you popular too? Can you be a cheerleader and be socially shunned by the other cheerleaders? Penny is a cute, sweet little girl, but kind of like an overeager puppy who does whatever she thinks will please whomever she's with at the time, and I can imagine the cheerleading crowd dismissing her as a wannabe.

To show her total rejection of cheering and all that goes along with it, G instead used last week's club rush to join the newspaper, which is much more her sort of thing. The meetings happen during zero period, which means she'll have to be there by 6:45 a.m., but she's pretty motivated and I think she'll do fine. She's been like a different kid this year in terms of the morning routine: where last year I had to drag her out of bed and she was late a shocking number of times, this year she gets up on her own when her alarm goes off, gets dressed without being told, finds her own breakfast (not the healthful bowl of whole grains and fresh fruits I'd like her to eat, but at least she does it herself) and is usually downstairs waiting at the door to the garage while I'm still brushing my teeth. I don't know why this happened, but I'm glad it has. We had quite a few no-holds-barred cage matches over getting ready last year, and I wasn't up for another 10 months of that.

Said is NOT dead

2011-10-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

Last night G informed me, "Mrs. M (her English teacher) told us we shouldn't use 'said' in the stories we're writing," and then showed me this handout she got in class:

ARGH.

"Well," I said, trying to be diplomatic, "I see what Mrs. M is getting at, but I don't actually agree. It's fine to throw in a different dialogue tag here and there, for variety or emphasis or color, but 'said' is really the best one to use. It's straightforward and not distracting, and if you're writing your story and your dialogue well, you won't need anything else 90 percent of the time. Also, if every other line of dialogue ends with 'he laughed' or 'she divulged' or 'he nagged' or 'she smiled*' it's going to sound awkward and overwrought. This is my professional opinion, by the way."

"Really?" she said.

"Yes," I said. "And not only mine. Here, look at this." I grabbed the nearest book--it was The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones--and showed her that in three pages of mostly dialogue, the only attribution other than "he/she said" was one instance of "he roared," and that one was used when it was really called for. Then for good measure, I showed her places where DWJ had written some of the dialogue so as not to need a "he/she said" at all, and explained how that worked. I did tell her that of course her teacher is the boss in her classroom and she has to follow these instructions at least somewhat or she'll get marked down, but not to go overboard with it.

I suppose what they're trying to do is teach the kids that there are other words available if they need them, but kids are literal, even in their early teens, and most of them are probably going to take this handout to mean that "said" is evil and they should never use it. This is why so many adults are convinced that it's wrong to write in the second person and that starting a sentence with "and" or "but" is verboten--their seventh-grade English teacher said so and they've never forgotten it. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that's really forbidden in writing is doing it badly (she pontificated), and even that isn't true if you happen to be entering the Bulwer-Lytton contest. Save the droning, drawling, giggling and stammering for then.

*I have a special hate for "smiled." I used to read a decorating magazine that used it at least twice in every article with an interview--"'We love our kitchen's new look,' smiles Susan"--and it nearly drove me around the bend. Not only does it sound smarmy, it's impossible; you can say something with a smile, but you can't smile your actual speech any more than you can hammer it or swim it. Gah!

Sometimes you win

2011-09-21T22:52:00.000-07:00

In the autumn of 1985, I was a freshman in high school and my younger brother, J, had just started kindergarten. To say it hadn't been a good year for our family would be an understatement; I've had other bad years since then, but that was my first glimpse at just how wrong things could go, and how quickly.

Now it was Halloween, and J and I both wanted to carve a jack o'lantern, the way we'd been used to doing in previous years, but our mother said, regretfully, that she didn't have any extra money to spend on a pumpkin. J was crushed as only a five-year-old can be, and I wasn't too happy myself. But I was also a stubborn kid who didn't like to be beaten at anything, and I wasn't planning to give up yet.

"Don't worry," I told J. "I'm going to fix this."

I dug through my pockets and my school bag and scraped together all the change I could find, and then I took J by his sticky little hand and marched him to the supermarket down the street. There, I read the price on every kind of squash in the produce department and weighed them until I found one I could afford--it was a yellow spaghetti squash about the size of a Nerf football, with a nice flat bottom so it could stand up--and I paid seventy-nine cents for it and walked J home again. Standing in our dingy kitchenette, I cut that spaghetti squash open, and I scraped out the seeds and pulp, and I used the point of a steak knife to carve a miniature face with triangle eyes and nose and a gap-toothed mouth, just like a jack o'lantern. Then I stuck a single skinny birthday candle inside and lit it with a match, and I said to my brother, who had been watching the whole process with ever-increasing delight, "Here you go. It's a squashkin."

In the quarter-century since then, I've carved many real jack o' lanterns, and I'm sure J has too. As adults, we don't talk much or see each other often--it's been more than five years since the last time--and I don't know if he even remembers the squashkin. But I do. I remember it, and sometimes when everything is rotten and I feel as if I can't do anything right, I think about it and smile. It may have been a tiny win, but that day I won at life.

So far so good

2011-09-16T18:22:00.000-07:00

Here we are at the end of week 2, and school is still gliding along as smoothly as can be. G was bumped up into honors biology this week, putting her in all honors classes except for math, and we've had no issues with homework - she's been finishing most of it during her tutorial period or while she's waiting to be picked up, and what she's had to do at night has been quick and easy. It helps that the assignments she's getting are more creative than in previous years; instead of "write these 20 spelling words five times each," it's "use this list of geographical features to design and draw your own island." I know which one I'd rather do.

She also asked earlier this week if we could go to New School's football game on Thursday night, which was not a request I'd ever expected to hear from my determinedly non-sporty child. I would have taken her, even though I have zero interest in football myself, but we had tickets to see a cinema broadcast of Shakespeare's Globe's Henry VIII that same evening, and Shakespeare trumps football in our house. Now is when her father, a devoted fan of anything involving a ball, should be here; he'd not only take her to the football games, he'd be over the moon that she wanted to go, and patiently educate her in the finer points of the sport. I know I wouldn't know anything at all about football (or basketball, or baseball, or golf, or or or) if it weren't for him.

Anyway, while walking out of the theater last night, G and I agreed that we're going to try to see all of Shakespeare's plays together. We've seen this one, The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing, we have tickets to see Twelfth Night in November, and if I can swing it (tickets are expensive), we'll also see the Globe's touring production of The Comedy of Errors the same month. She wants to see A Midsummer Night's Dream after that, so I'll have to look for a production that's not too far from home. There was one at our local repertory theater back in January, but we missed it. Rats!

Time keeps on slipping

2011-09-10T16:29:00.000-07:00

If I'd needed something to underline the fact that we've entered a new era in G's life, I got it by seven a.m. on the first day of seventh grade. At her small, familiar old school, the first day always meant a stream of parents walking hand-in-hand with little girls sporting braids and fancy barrettes, little boys in new, dark-blue jeans, and tiny kindergartners laboring under backpacks bigger than they were. At her giant new school, I drove past a crowd of unaccompanied teenagers who looked old enough to be driving themselves, stopped, and waited as G gave me a casual "see you later," hopped out of the car, slung her bag over her shoulder and walked away in a pair of my knee-high boots that she'd successfully campaigned to borrow. I'd warned her that those boots would hurt by the end of the day, but she didn't believe me. When I picked her up late that afternoon, the first words out of her mouth were "OMG, my feet are killing me. I'm never wearing these again." I suppose when it comes to some things, experience is the best teacher.

Aside from sore feet and a broken P.E. locker, her first week as a seventh-grader was supremely smooth and easy. She has six classes--biology, honors history, honors English, P.E., pre-algebra and vocal music--and already seems to have mastered traveling between them, as well as using the library and navigating the food service lines at lunch. (That said, I think I'm going back to packing a lunch for her, because on three out of four days, the only vegetarian item was pizza, and on the fourth day she had to get pasta and pick out the bits with no meat sauce.) She says her teachers are nice and is happy about all the subjects she's taking, so from her perspective, everything is roses.

For my part, there's been some emotional adjusting to do. I'm not sitting around sniffling soppily over her baby photos, mind you. If anything, I'm excited for her, because it became obvious to me last year that she'd outgrown the confines of elementary school and was ready for something new. But at the same time, this transition has really driven in the fact that she's getting older and the number of years she'll be at home with me is dwindling fast. Of course I've known ever since she was born that one day she'd get her driver's license, graduate from high school, go off to college, be grown up; but these always seemed like things that would happen far off in some hazy, half-imagined future. Now they seem like real events that are coming soon (very soon - she can get her learner's permit in less than three years) so I'd better start mentally preparing myself for them, not to mention figuring out what I want to do with myself after she flies the nest.

Of course she's only in seventh grade and it's not as if she's moving across the country tomorrow, and I don't want to spoil the next few years by constantly focusing on what's going to happen later. But time has a way of sneaking past faster than you think, and I don't want it to catch me off guard, either. Looks as if she and I both have a lot of work to do.

Daybook

2011-08-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

Outside my window... the sunlight has made that subtle shift from summer to autumn.

I am thinking... I'll go mental if this week is as boring as last week.

I am thankful for... having the money to get my brakes fixed, even if I would much rather have spent that money on something more fun.

From the kitchen... I'm planning to make this vegetable curry for dinner tonight (for my dinner anyway; G won't want any and will probably have pasta).

I am wearing... black capri sweatpants and a navy blue tank top.

I am creating... a new look for G's bedroom. She wants all black furniture, so I've slowly been replacing the light wood stuff she's had since she was two. This weekend I bought and assembled a bookcase; now all she needs is a loft bed, which will probably be her Christmas present this year.

I am going... to see some Shakespeare later this week.

I am reading... Neverwhere

I am hoping... that G has an easy transition to junior high.

I am hearing... Ben Harper singing "Diamonds on the Inside" from my laptop.

Around the house... I think G is still sleeping (I've been in to wake her a couple of times, but she just goes right back to sleep). One of the cats is in her room and the other one is lounging on the floor of my room.

One of my favorite things... believe it or not, is cleaning the house. I don't like everyday chores like vacuuming and dishes very much, but I love when I can do the really detailed cleaning that I rarely have time for.

A few plans for the rest of the week: We have the aforementioned Shakespeare play to attend, plus an orientation and dinner for incoming seventh-graders the following day. I've been talking to P's cousin about getting together with her and her daughter on Friday - we haven't seen them in more than two years, even though they only live a 30-minute drive away - but I don't know if it will actually come to fruition.

Here is a picture for thought I am sharing...

This photo is exactly what I wish my life were like. I don't play the double bass, or any instrument, but in my fantasy world, I would, and I'd have a room just like that and sit around playing Beethoven symphonies all day long. Except between three and four o'clock every afternoon, when someone would serve me tea and cookies on the terrace that I imagine is right underneath that window. I guess in my fantasy world I would also have a maid. And a cook who knew how to bake shortbread.

Vacation, all I ever wanted

2011-08-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

A short review of the first week of my end-of-summer vacation:

Had car problems
Was without a car for 48 hours
Registered G for junior high
Paid $450 for new brakes
Had repair crew in house for an entire morning*
Did work
Found BEES IN MY HOUSE**
Watched a week's worth of groceries vanish in four days
BEES. IN MY HOUSE.
Did more work
Went nowhere except grocery store and post office
OMG BEES

* The good part of this is that our air conditioning finally, finally works. It works so well that yesterday I thought "Wow, it's nice and cool in my bedroom; I think I'll lie down and enjoy it." Next thing I knew, I opened my eyes and an hour and a half had passed. I went downstairs and G was huddled under a blanket, shivering. Do your worst, California autumn! We're ready.

The bad part is that one of the repairmen asked to use our upstairs bathroom while he was here, and let's just say it wasn't a Number One. I know when you've got to go, you've got to go, and I could hardly send the poor guy to the service station down the street, but the idea of a total stranger taking a dump in my bathroom really bothered me at a visceral level. (Yes, I know, I use public restrooms that thousands of total strangers have used before me. It's not the same.) I need to go in and sanitize now that some time has passed - I couldn't bring myself to do it earlier.

** Yesterday morning I was lying in bed, drinking my coffee and reading my email, when I heard a loud buzzing/humming noise. Investigation revealed a large bee/wasp/hornet thing bumping around the inside of my bedroom window. I managed to trap it with my empty cereal bowl and release it outside, and then I heard the same noise coming from inside the wall behind my bed, near the electrical outlet where my bedside lamp plugs in. While I was taping up the open space in the outlet so nothing winged and many-legged could squeeze its way through, G called "Mom, there's some kind of insect on the wall down here, and I don't know what it is, and I'm not going close enough to find out." I went downstairs, and sure enough, it was another flying stinger. I couldn't catch that one, so I sucked it up with the vacuum hose of doom. I haven't seen or heard any more since then (the one in the wall buzzed a bit more and then stopped) but I did find about 30 of them lying dead on the little balcony outside my bedroom. If I don't post again, it will be because a swarm carried me away in the night and made me their queen.

Hot air

2011-08-17T23:24:00.000-07:00

On Monday, I telecommuted so I could be at home to deal with the air conditioning repair guys, who were supposed to arrive at 9 a.m.

At 8 a.m., I got a phone call saying that the delivery truck with the new condenser unit was delayed and wouldn't come until 11.

At 11:30, I got another call saying that it might be as late as 1 p.m.

At 1:15, the phone rang again: "They'll be there within 45 minutes."

At 1:50, two guys finally rolled up and got started.

At 3:30, they announced that they had to leave (WTF?!) but the company's owner, who'd done the initial estimate, would be there in about 15 minutes to finish the job.

At 5 p.m., the replacement guy called me outside and explained that everything was hooked up properly, but that mice had eaten all the wires and insulation that ran under the deck and connected the condenser to the furnace in the garage. He said he would have to come back with a crew and crawl underneath to fix all that and install a rodent-stopping screen before the system would work. So, to sum up, the air conditioning still doesn't function, the furnace is now disconnected as well (not that we need it at the moment, but really) and I can't have the repair guys back until next week, when I'm on vacation and have time to deal with them. Oh joy.

During the course of this long, long day, we also discovered that it's like freaking Wild Kingdom under the deck. In addition to the wire-and-insulation-loving mice, the first two repair guys found a possum skeleton; and when one of the guys stuck his hand into a hole in the wooden steps leading down from the deck to the condenser, a gray cat came shooting out and nearly scared us both to death. (Apparently it was using the hollow inside of the top step as a hideout. Sorry about that, cat.) Thanks to our own two cats, none of these creatures have ever entered the house proper--if you were a mouse, you'd need testicles like cannonballs to dare poke your nose out with that pair of bloodthirsty killers on the loose--but just the thought of them lurking around out there gives me the shivers. Ugh.

Mind you, we haven't had A/C for any of the three summers we've lived in this house (the old condenser was the original c. 1985 model and was already defunct when we moved in), so we're in no worse shape now than a week ago. It's just having the promise of cool air dangled in front of us and then yanked away that makes it seem worse somehow. A friend of mine suggested that when the system is finally working, we should crank the thermostat down to 55 degrees and have a party with parkas and hot chocolate. Sounds good to me.

Welcome home

2011-08-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

Thirteen ways to know you're at our house:

1. The area near the front door looks like a shoe store on clearance day.

2. You can't get a hamburger for dinner, or any other type of meat.

3. Fruits Basket is probably playing on TV somewhere.

4. Cats are watching you balefully from high places.

5. The shelves are stuffed with books, and all around the house you find open, face-down books in various stages of being read.

6. You can access the Internet in at least three different ways at any given time.

7. The reading material in the bathroom is a copy of Archaeology magazine, open to a page with a photo of a hideous unwrapped mummy.

8. Black is clearly someone's favorite color.

9. Someone else is clearly in love with jewelry.

10. The kid-drawn art on the fridge is anime-style.

11. It's an all-female house, but the older family photos include a tall, dark-haired guy with a nice smile.

12. It's okay to randomly burst into song if you feel like it (and if you wait long enough, someone will).

13. Someone will probably still be awake at midnight.

Mr. Sandman

2011-08-07T03:41:00.000-07:00

Apparently that three-hour nap I took this afternoon was a bad idea, since it's 3:41 in the morning and sleep is nowhere in sight.

I wasn't intending for the nap to stretch out that long, and indeed when G was younger she would have woken me almost as soon as my eyes closed. But now she's twelve, and twelve-year-olds are crafty enough to know that if they wake you up, you might make them stop watching TV and clean their rooms or take a shower or something equally heinous. So, if I happen to doze off, she leaves me unconscious until I wake up on my own. In fact, she has literally tried to lure me into napping in the past by covering me with a blanket when I'm lying on the sofa, which seems all sweet and solicitous until you realize it's like throwing a towel over a parrot's cage. Hey, you're annoying me. Stop squawking and go to sleep.

The worst part? It works!

Injurish

2011-08-04T07:18:00.000-07:00

Four weeks ago upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He kicked my leg from under me

...at least, that's the only explanation I've got for how I managed to pull a calf muscle, not by skiing or parachuting or zip lining, but by climbing the stairs in my own home.

I should say first that climbing stairs is hardly an uncommon activity at our house. It's a townhome with four levels connected by three flights of stairs, and you can't so much as get a glass of water without going up or down some steps. We've lived here for two and a half years and I have legs of iron. Or so I thought.

Ha ha! That'll teach me to think!

So on this night, I'd just sent G off to bed and was on my way upstairs to my own room. As I reached the third step, she called "Hey, Mom, come and look at this," and when I pivoted to go back down again, something went ping in my right calf. Imagine a big, thick elastic band breaking inside your body, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what it felt like. All at once, I couldn't put any weight on my leg, and it hurt like nineteen different flavors of hell. I said "AARRGHGHGHGH!" or something like that, and went hopping and stumbling into G's room, where I sat on her bed and tried to stretch and massage and do anything that might make the pain stop.

After a bit, it improved enough for me to hobble into the kitchen for some ice and then upstairs to lie down with my leg propped on pillows. While I was lying there, it occurred to me that if this was a really serious injury--which seemed unlikely, given how it had happened, but then there I was, immobile--I was hosed. It was after ten on a weeknight, I was home alone with a not-quite-teenage kid, and there was absolutely no one I could call to take me to the ER. The idea of teaching G to drive the car fluttered across my mind, and then I decided that since there weren't any actual splintered bone ends sticking out of my leg, I would wait overnight, and maybe my Jedi mind powers would heal me while I slept.

I wouldn't exactly say that brilliant plan worked, but I was able to get around better by the next day, though I still couldn't put my foot flat on the ground. I thought of gritting my teeth and toughing it out, but finally gave in and went to urgent care, where I saw a doctor who looked as if he'd just graduated from high school. (Does this mean I'm getting old? Probably. Dammit.) I described how I'd hurt myself and what the pain felt like, and then we had the following exchange:

Doctor: Are you a scientist by any chance?
Me: No, why do you ask?
Doctor: You're very meticulous about details.
Me: I'm an editor.
Doctor: That explains it.

He was a hilarious guy and I kind of enjoyed the appointment, even though he scolded me for not wearing proper walking shoes while injured--I had tried my best to choose a reasonable pair that morning, but was hampered by the fact that my closet is full of three-inch platforms and spike-heeled stompy boots--and suggested that I go out and buy some New Balance or Saucony trainers. Er ... no. The corporate dress code does not allow for that sort of thing. He also said that it would take four weeks for my leg to heal completely, and at the time I nodded and smiled and thought Yeah, sure. I'll be fine in a couple of days, tops. Well, he was right, because it's been four weeks today, and the last tiny lingering bit of soreness is finally leaving me. (Which probably also means I'm getting old. Dammit!)

So, to sum up what I've learned from this experience:

1. You can hurt yourself doing nothing.
2. Leg injuries take longer to heal than you think.
3. Doctors sometimes know more than you do.
4. It's bad not to know any of your neighbors when you might need a ride to the hospital.
5. I'm getting old.

Unsupervised

2011-07-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

Seven things I did while G was at overnight camp for most of a week:

1. Spent pretty much an entire day lying on my bed and reading.

2. Took myself to see Captain America.

3. Had French bread and Salsa Verde Doritos for dinner two nights in a row.

4. Belted out "Rehab" repeatedly at the top of my lungs while cleaning the kitchen. (RIP, Amy Winehouse)

5. Borrowed one of G's shirts so I wouldn't have to do laundry.

6. Used my laptop, uninterrupted, for hours at a stretch.

7. Ate the last fudgsicle.

I know, wild and crazy, right? It's like Lord of the Flies if the protagonist were a middle-aged suburban mother!

I can't help myself

2011-07-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

Today I went to Subway, and while I was waiting to pay for my order, I looked to my right and saw a laser-printed notice that read:

THIS LOCATION OPEN 24 HOURS
BEGINNNING JULY 15

"Do you know your sign has an extra letter?" I asked the teenage cashier.

"What?" he said.

I pointed. He started to laugh.

"Hey, [name]," he called to the manager, who was showing another employee how to clean the drink machine. "You put an extra 'n' in 'beginning.'"

"What?"

"In the sign. 'Beginning' has an extra 'n.'"

"Oh," said the manager. To me, he said, "That's been up for two weeks and no one else has noticed."

"I'm sorry," I said, starting to feel like a jerk. "I'm an editor. It's my job to notice."

"It's in all of them," giggled the cashier, who had gone to inspect the identical signs stuck in different locations around the shop.

At that point, I grabbed my sandwich and my Diet Coke and escaped, because the manager was looking a little too angry for my taste. Hey, buddy, I usually charge people money for my services. How about a free cookie or something instead of a glower?

Aging ungracefully

2011-06-19T18:29:00.000-07:00

Shopping for a dress for G to wear to her sixth-grade promotion ceremony:

Me: You don't want that one. It's going to make you look like a 40-year-old woman.
G: You mean...like you?
Me: Yes. And I don't even want to look like a 40-year-old woman, so I'm pretty sure you don't either.

Mathletes

2011-06-03T18:49:00.000-07:00

G: We had our math placement test for junior high today.
Me: Oh?
G: There was stuff on there I've never seen before. What are those problems with the number between two lines?
Me: I don't know, draw one for me and maybe I'll recognize it.
G: It looked like | 25 |
Me: I have no idea what that is.

(pause while both of us look at it, baffled)

Me: Maybe it means, "Twenty-five, YAY!"*

We both got a good laugh out of that. Clearly neither of us will be medaling in the Math Olympics anytime soon.

*Like this emoticon: \o/

A visit to the past

2011-05-09T20:48:00.000-07:00

G suggested going to Medieval Times for Mothers' Day this year. As it happened, I'd never been there before, which made it an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone by celebrating the holiday and adding an experience to my list of new things, so off we went.

I was secretly expecting it to be cheesy tourist crap--which is why I'd never gone, despite living in the area for 30 years--but I was wrong. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. The idea is that you're at this tournament in medieval Spain, and the section you're seated in is represented by a particular knight, and you cheer him on in battle. It's easier to get into than you might think; even G, who is usually too full of almost-teen self-consciousness to participate in that sort of thing, was screaming and clapping and yelling "Boo!" and "Get him!" during the final epic battle between the Yellow Knight and the evil Green Knight. There are displays of dressage and falconry, and tournament games, and jousting, and hand-to-hand combat, and it's really pretty neat. (And it didn't hurt that three of the knights, including ours, were smoking hot. Wow.) Here are a few photos:


The arena before the show started.

Dressage display.

Our knight was the Black and White Knight.

This is a flower that he kissed and then threw to us in the stands. I've never seen G come so close to swooning before.


Galloping blurrily off to the joust.

Jousting!

They have the obligatory overpriced merchandise to buy, and people wanting to take your photo and sell it to you for $10, but we ignored all that and just enjoyed the pageantry. G is already longing to go back, so I suspect we may be spending her next birthday there. Definitely a good time.

One thing that bothered me a bit about the day--and in fact has been a general annoyance lately--is that almost no one realizes I'm G's mother anymore. She looks older than she is, mostly because she's so tall, and I look younger than I am, and so strangers assume that I'm her friend or elder sister, or sometimes her aunt. When we arrived at the castle, the person checking reservations at the gate wished the women ahead of and behind me a happy Mothers' Day, but not me. Inside, they were handing out flowers to the mothers; I wasn't offered one. Obviously with my 40th birthday only a few months away, it's nice not to look old enough to be the mother of an apparent teenager, but I am a mother and proud of it, and I'd like to be recognized as one.

It does sting a little, too, to think that if P were still alive, people would probably have no trouble pegging us as the parents and G as our child; it's G and me being on our own together that throws them off. But there's not much I can do about it, short of investing in some MOTHER and DAUGHTER T-shirts or sticky labels--and embarrassing as G thinks I am at times, I'm not that over the top. Yet.

Body follies

2011-04-11T18:09:00.001-07:00

We had an unexpectedly chilly weekend and I turned the central heat on a few times. This morning, I woke up with a split lip, a bloody nose and aching sinuses. Dry air much?

Also this morning, G had an adolescent complexion crisis. She came up to me in the kitchen, pulled her hair back and said "Look at this!"

"Hmm, looks like a breakout," I said.

"What do I do?! I don't have enough concealer to cover all that!"

"Well, there's not much you can do," I said. "You can't wear a whole face full of makeup, so you've just kind of got to deal. I'm sorry."

"Isn't there anything that can help?" she moaned.

"We can try buying some tinted moisturizer after I pick you up tonight," I offered. "That might cover it a little without looking all heavy like foundation. I know it sucks, but the reality is that for the next few years, breaking out is going to be a fact of life for you."

"I didn't know it was going to be this bad," she said as she went away to try artfully draping her hair over her forehead.

I didn't have the heart to tell her it can get a lot worse!

After years of experience

2011-03-31T20:30:00.000-07:00

G: Can I have a bagel?
Me: You just ate a huge dinner and dessert. You don't need a bagel.
G: I'm hungry though.
Me: Give your meal a chance to settle, and then if you're still hungry, you can have a bagel.
G: How long do I have to wait?
Me: An hour.
G: Are you going to start the hour over again every time I ask?
Me: You know me so well.

Stupid trees

2011-03-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

Or, as I have also called them over the last 48 hours, dumb trees, damn trees, rotten trees, and FUCKING TREES I HATE YOU.

Gah.

In case you hadn't guessed, I am allergic to trees, or at least to their pollen. In late March and early April, the trees pollinate like crazy, merrily propagating their DNA all over Southern California in a great big arboreal orgy, and I turn into a sneezing wheezing dripping coughing snorfling mess. Allergy medicine keeps it at least somewhat under control (when I was in college, before you could buy Claritin without a prescription, I thought I was going to get thrown out of my Asian American Lit class one spring for blowing my nose 39809849034 times in an hour) but it's still miserable.

The enemy.

On that note, why is it that when you have a cold, you're sick, but when you have allergies, it's "just allergies?" I would much rather have a cold than a full-blown allergy attack--at least with a cold, you don't get that maddening sensation of the entire inside of your head itching, from the roof of your mouth to the space between your sinuses and your brain. Plus, with a cold you're officially allowed to eat soup and lie in bed, whereas with allergies you're supposed to jump up and run a marathon because it's "just allergies" and you're "not really sick." Only you are.

Something is wrong with this world we live in, I tell you. I can't do anything about it right now, though, because I have to blow my nose again. And then go out and kick a tree.

It's not Fiction Friday, but how about a Manuscript Monday?

2011-03-21T00:08:00.000-07:00

Just for a change of pace, I thought I'd post the story I wrote for that Writers' Digest contest back in January. Entries had to be 750 words or less and begin with the sentence It was on a bright, starry night that the traveling circus rolled into town. I gave mine a title when I entered it, but for the life of me I can't remember now what it was, so here we go:

---

It was on a bright, starry night that the traveling circus rolled into town. Lydia and I were right there to meet it, all fizzy inside with excitement. We hadn't had a circus come in at least twenty years—-maybe thirty. I guess word gets around on the entertainment circuit.

“You remember the last time, Sissy?” Lydia asked as we watched the hubbub of people and animals. Two men passed in front of us, sweating, hauling a lot of striped canvas attached to ropes. A few yards away, a lady in a red-and-white leotard bent over backward, casually, and walked a few steps on her hands.

“I remember.”

“It was fun, wasn't it?”

I nodded.

“What was your best part?”

“The acrobats,” I said, knowing that wasn't what she meant.

Lydia giggled. “Not mine. My best part was when we--”

“Hey, you kids!”

We turned around at the sound of the voice—Lydia first, then me—and found a man just behind us, looming thin and tall and straight like a pine tree, made even taller by a top hat that looked out of place with his work clothes.

“That's the ringmaster,” I whispered.

“Aren't you girls out kind of late? Your folks know where you're at?”

“Yes sir,” said Lydia, looking up at him as only Lydia could, with those big eyes of hers as sweet and melting as brown sugar. “Daddy said we could come down and watch a while. You gonna set the whole circus up tonight?”

Like most grown-ups, the ringmaster clearly thought Lydia was cute as a button. “You bet,” he said. “By the time you wake up in the morning, it'll all be ready, and tomorrow night we'll do the show.”

“And are there gonna be elephants and horses? And a tightrope walker? And a lion tamer?”

“All that and then some.”

I was imagining it—the roar of cannons, the glitter of spangled costumes, the smell of animals and popcorn and sawdust—when I realized that Lydia was giving the ringmaster that look, the one she used to get when we were perusing the candy display at the old five and dime. She drew a slow, deep breath, like the first half of a sigh, and leaned toward him with yearning written all over her sweet little pixie face. Before she could get any further than that, I stuck out one of my brand-new Sunday shoes and trod on her foot hard enough to leave a crater in the soft black dirt.

“Oww! Sissy!”

“Oops,” I said. “Sorry. We've got to get going now, mister. We'll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“I'll look for you,” said the ringmaster, and ruffled Lydia's hair. “You girls be careful on the way home. There's bad things in the dark, you know.”

“We know,” I said. “Come on, Lyds.”

“We're going to get them all after the show anyway,” Lydia whined as I dragged her through the park, past the abandoned swings with their rusted-out chains . “Mayor Gibson said so at the town meeting. What difference would it make if I have this one now?”

“Because there's no show without him, dummy! He's not just some old carny, he's the boss of the whole circus. If you hurt him—if you so much as spook him—they'll pull up and leave, and then I won't get to see it. And I been waiting too long to let that happen.”

“But Sissy—”

“But Sissy nothing.” I curled my lip and showed her the tips of my teeth, gleaming in the moonlight. “If you mess this circus up for me, Lydia Jones, I will get up early one night and hammer a two-by-four right through you, just see if I won't.”

“Honestly,” Lydia huffed. “Anyone would think you didn't want to kill them.”

“I want to kill them all right,” I said. “But after the show. Don't forget whose fault it was that I almost missed it last time.”

That shut Lydia up. We trudged on, with my legs just outpacing her shorter ones.

“The stars are real pretty, aren't they, Sissy?” Lydia offered after a while, wanting to make up already, or maybe just hoping to avoid being staked in her sleep. “So close and bright. It'll be a nice night tomorrow.”

“Yes,” I said. “It sure will.”

----

That's all for now. Hope to be back in a day or two with a post of actual substance!

All right, I won't eat your baby, but your soul is fair game

2011-02-13T23:12:00.000-08:00

I had forgotten tomorrow was Valentine's Day until I went to the supermarket this afternoon and saw all the massive displays of merchandise. Good thing I did, because I was able to pick up some cheap packs of Valentine-themed Skittles for G to hand out to her class. Oh, lucky teacher, locked up all day with 35 preteens who not only are under the influence of raging hormones, but also have a metric ton of pure grade-A sugar coursing through their bodies.

In other news, today we made a special trip to my office to collect unsold Girl Scout cookies so we could return them to the "cookie leader." G was extremely annoyed about having to interrupt her Sunday-afternoon schedule of sloth and indolence to go with me (I needed her to help carry boxes out to the car) until I reminded her that they were her cookies for her Girl Scout troop. I don't know if she was any happier about it after that, but at least she kept her displeasure to herself.

I'm feeling a little miffed at Girl Scouts in general after once again being the recipient of judgey looks from Girl Scout mothers when I went to pick G up at yesterday's International Fair event. I was wearing more or less what I usually wear--black velvet jeans, long-sleeved black shirt, black shoes with a skull-and-crossbones design, and black sunglasses--and all the Girl Scout mothers I passed on my way into the building stared at me as if I were going to steal their souls and eat their babies. These are clearly very sheltered women, because while I was the only person there in head-to-toe black, my clothes were still completely mainstream by almost any standards, nor did I have tattoos or piercings or a hair color not found in nature (and if I had, who cares), and yet you would have thought they'd seen Marilyn Manson stomping up the sidewalk toward the high-school gym.

I wonder what it's like to be that uptight. I also wonder what sort of reception is doled out to people who do have tattoos, piercings, etc., and daughters who are Girl Scouts. It can't be very nice.

The long road to self-sufficiency

2011-02-13T14:50:00.000-08:00

Half an hour after lunch ...

G: I'm hungry. Feed me.
Me: Nuh-uh. You are 12 years old. You can make your own snack.
G: Feed me!
Me: Have an apple. Make yourself a sandwich. Microwave something.
G: *gets out a loaf of bread* Fine! Are you happy now?
Me: I'm delighted.
G: Elated?
Me: Ecstatic.
G: Thrilled?
Me: Over the moon.

Six things make a post

2011-02-02T16:46:00.000-08:00

1. G has missed two days of school this week due to a sore throat, fever and general yuck. She should be going back tomorrow, as a visit to the doctor today revealed that her throat is red, but probably not strep-laden. Her consolation prize for enduring the throat culture was a chocolate strawberry cupcake at the bakery next door to the doctor's office (which I'll bet just rakes in the cash from parents offering similar ~~bribes~~ consolation prizes), and then I decided I needed some consoling too and got an Oreo cupcake for myself. Mmmm.

3. A friend of mine texted me to see how G was and to say that he picked up a box of Ghirardelli brownie mix for me when he went to Costco at lunch. I texted back "thx for the brownie mix" and my phone autocorrected it to "thx for the brownish lox." G and I got a good laugh out of that one.

4. Last night, we whiled away half an hour by watching a DVD of this production of The Cat in the Hat, which was marvelously inventive and looked exactly like the book come to life. We then pondered the hypothetical answer to the question "If our mother could see this, oh, what would she say?" and decided that it would probably be "YOU TWO ARE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE" and perhaps also "WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT LETTING ANTHROPOMORPHIC ANIMALS INTO THE HOUSE?" (Although maybe not the latter since they do have a talking fish.)

5. Being at home for the last two days has motivated me to do two of my least favorite household chores: cleaning the bathrooms, and washing the cat bowls and cleaning the plastic mat that goes under them. I hate doing both of those things, but it's amazing how much better the whole place looks and feels after I do. Especially the cat area--something about spilled cat kibble on the floor creates very bad feng shui.

6. Being at home for the last two days has also apparently made me a very boring person who posts about boring things. Sorry about that. :P

New Things: Month 1

2011-01-30T15:01:00.000-08:00

So, at the beginning of this year I set a goal to do one thing every month that I've never done before. And for January, I got off to a good start by doing two things I'd never done before.

• I entered a fiction writing contest. I didn't win it, but considering that they had more than 1,000 entries and only chose five finalists, I don't feel too bad about this.

• I tried Peruvian food for the first time. It was chimbotanos (like a spicy potato stew) with brown rice and a side of fried yucca, and it was quite good, not to mention very different than what I expected Peruvian food to be like. Here's a photo:

I'm already eying a few potential activities for February, and will report on whatever I choose at the end of that month. So far, so good!

Esta es la hora del gato

2011-01-22T19:46:00.000-08:00

Last night G wanted me to lie down with her at bedtime. I agreed, and as I lay on her bed, half asleep in the dark, I suddenly heard a deep Spanish-sounding voice proclaim:

"This is the hour of the cat."

Needless to say, this gave me quite a start. Then I realized that it was this talking Puss in Boots, which we bought for G when she was five or six, and which she's long since outgrown and forgotten. Either Puss's batteries are finally running down after all these years, or he would like me to liberate him from the bottom of the basket of discarded stuffed animals in her closet. Maybe both.

On a side note, Puss's random speech reminded me of my mother's belief that P communicates with her through a similar battery-operated toy that she keeps in her family's car. She's been insisting for years that this thing speaks up at opportune moments and she knows, knows that P is somehow controlling it, to which I've always countered that a.) odd experiences aside (and I've had much odder ones than she has), I don't really believe that dead people can communicate with anyone; b.) if P could communicate with anyone, it would be with me and no one else; and c.) P was a direct-verging-on-blunt man who didn't fuck around, and if he had something to say, he'd find a direct way to say it. I imagine if I told my mother about Puss, she'd tell me that P was behind that somehow too. It's a good thing she can't see me roll my eyes over the phone.

Well, when you put it that way

2011-01-15T18:37:00.000-08:00

Me: You know, torturing Mommy is not a game we play.
G: But it is. It's exhilarating fun.

Darned smart kids and their big vocabularies!

The "torturing Mommy" conversation came about because G has lately rediscovered an interest in roughhousing with me. We used to do a lot of this when she was younger; it's something kids normally do with their dads, but because I was always the stronger parent, even when P was alive, I was the one who tossed her up in the air and wrestled with her and gave her horsey rides around the house. It was all good fun when she was little, but now she's 5'5" and weighs 125 pounds and she can just about take me down in a tussle. I've told her repeatedly that she's too big to play like that and she needs to stop before someone gets hurt, but she insists on running up from behind and tackling me, or trying to knock me down and sit on me. I'm at a disadvantage when it comes to defending myself because I don't want to hurt her by accident, so I deliberately hold back a bit. But she knows no such caution, and I usually end up yelling "I said STOP IT!" as I extract myself from a stranglehold.

It's a problem, not only because of the risk of grievous bodily injury (mine, not hers), but because it won't be long before she's bigger than I am, and I don't want her getting the idea that she can push me around physically. She's just playing now, like an overgrown puppy that doesn't know its own strength, but I can envision scenarios a few years down the road when she might not be. I guess my first step ought to be cutting her off as soon as she starts to play rough, and if that doesn't work, I'll have to think of some sort of consequence. This is certainly not an issue I expected to have when I gave birth to a little girl--though at 10 pounds, even newborn G probably could have played in the defensive line on a baby football team.

The year of many changes

2011-01-07T22:37:00.000-08:00

In thinking about 2011, I've realized that it's going to be packed full of milestones:

This month, G turns 12, beginning her final official year of childhood--not that she'll suddenly be grown up when she turns 13, but a teenager is not a kid in the same way a 6- or 8- or 10-year-old is a kid. (A 12-year-old isn't really either, but you've got to draw the line somewhere.) This is her last year of day camp, afterschool care, children's tickets at the movies, and all sorts of other things that have been fixtures in our lives for a long time.
Speaking of which, in June, G leaves the elementary school she's attended since her first day of kindergarten.
Hard on the heels of that milestone, in early July, is the fifth anniversary of P's death, and then a few days later, what would have been our 15th wedding anniversary.
In September, G starts junior high, which I expect to usher in all sorts of lifestyle changes for both of us.
In November, I turn 40. The idea doesn't bother me as much as you might think, because the alternative to getting older is being dead, and I'm not up for that. But no matter how you look at it, it's a huge milestone. Maybe even a monolith.

In keeping with this theme of change, I've only made one resolution for this year, and that is to accumulate more new experiences. This came about because just after Christmas, I was filling out one of those end-of-the-year surveys that circulate on Facebook. The first question was "What did you do this year that you've never done before?" and I couldn't answer it, because I hadn't done anything new. How embarrassing!

So, anyway, I thought it might be nice to pick one new thing each month and do it, so I'd have 12 different answers to that question when the end of this year rolls around. I'm having a little trouble getting started because I can't do anything unless I take G with me, and so far she hasn't been into any of my ideas. (I thought the Moroccan restaurant with belly dancers sounded fun. Sheeesh.) But I'm determined, and sooner or later I'll come up with an activity that interests both of us. Stay tuned for updates.

Optimism

2010-12-27T12:35:00.000-08:00

G: Am I going to get a car when I turn 16?
Me: If you save up some money, I'll put in the extra to help you buy a nice used car.
G: Can it be a Ferrari 458 Italia?

At least she dreams big!

Dear Rain

2010-12-21T07:14:00.000-08:00

Normally you are my favorite sort of weather. When I wake up to a sky full of black, lowering clouds, my heart sings, and I feel energized and happy. I enjoy going for walks when you're gently drizzling, and I love lying in bed at night and listening to you drum on the roof.

This time, though, we have a problem. This time you've been going on for four days straight, and you are causing the windows and skylights in my house to leak. As a result, I now have an 11-year-old roommate who can't spend the night in her own room because gross, dirty water is dripping from the wall behind her bed. I love the 11-year-old dearly, but she's 5'5" and sleeps diagonally, which means there's no space for me on my own mattress. Plus, I like total darkness and silence to sleep, whereas she gets nervous without light and noise. (In this, she takes after her father, whom I also loved dearly, but whose insistence on leaving ESPN Sports Center playing all night long drove me bonkers.)

In short, I want my bedroom back, and also all the pans and Tupperware containers and towels I'm currently using to catch and/or soak up the drips. So please stop raining, just for a while, and let us dry out. Thanks.

Holiday music and magic

2010-12-14T20:46:00.000-08:00

Today was the annual holiday music performance at G's school. They split it up this year so the upper grades performed first thing in the morning and primary performed just before lunch, and also flipped the order around so sixth-graders were first on the program. It really reduced the crowding in the auditorium, and also prevented the "disappearing audience" phenomenon I've witnessed at other performances: when younger kids are performing, the whole Mom-Dad-Grandma-Grandpa-Auntie-Uncle-baby-cousins family shows up, whereas older kids are lucky if they get one parent. These big packs of people watch their children perform and then get up and leave, so the last group in the rotation ends up playing to a nearly empty room. That didn't happen this time, and I was glad.

Because G is in band (she plays flute), she was part of the show from beginning to end: she sang with her grade, played with the rest of the band between each grade's performance, and also had a duet with her friend A, who plays the piano. They did Bert the Sweep's song from Mary Poppins, and it went quite well, I thought--not to mention that it was a huge deal for G, who has a very pretty singing voice but doesn't like being the center of attention, to grab a microphone and perform on her own in front of 200 people.

Watching her up there, all tall and confident and grown-up looking, I couldn't help thinking of her kindergarten and first-grade holiday shows, when P was still alive, and we couldn't quite believe we were the parents of a schoolkid. It doesn't seem like that long ago, but G herself reminded me just how far she's come since then. When I picked her up this evening, I asked her how the second show was (she played with the band at that one too), and she gushed, "Mom, the little kids were SO CUTE! They're just so little and young!" Yes, my big girl, they are.

La mauvaise influence

2010-12-14T19:59:00.000-08:00

G and I amuse ourselves with Google Translate:

Your face looks like a monkey's butt

Votre visage ressemble les fesses d'un singe.

A monkey put a banana in my ear.

Un singe a mis une banane dans mon oreille.

I said, "At least I'm smarter than a monkey."

J'ai dit: "Au moins, je suis plus intelligent qu'un singe."

The monkey cried.

Le singe pleuré.

And then flung poo.

Et puis merde jeté.

After we finished giggling over this, G said meditatively, "I think I'll take French in high school." I should probably warn her that high-school French involves lots of useful phrases, like "My aunt's house is yellow" and "Stephanie and Laurent are going to the disco," and little to no mention of butts or poo.

Sign of the times

2010-12-10T00:28:00.000-08:00

I need to mail a payment on my way to work tomorrow, and as I was addressing the envelope this evening, I had to stop and think hard about which corner the stamp was supposed to go in. I've been paying everything online for so long that I barely use the postal service anymore, and I'd forgotten.

It occurred to me then that I belong to the last generation of people who will remember getting that big stack of bills ready to mail out each month--G knows "paying bills" as something you do on the laptop, not at the kitchen table with a lot of envelopes and a checkbook. Similarly, going inside the bank is an unusual event for her: where I often went with my dad to deposit his paycheck and get cash for the weekend (if I was lucky, we'd use the drive-through teller, and I could watch the vacuum tube get sucked down and then shoot back up with money and a lollipop inside), she only knows that money somehow invisibly goes into my account and comes out again via debit card and computer, just as invisibly.

I'd never trade the convenience of the electronic method for the old hassles of waiting in line at banks and post offices, but it makes me feel a little like a time traveler to remember a world that doesn't exist anymore. I suppose it must happen to everyone sooner or later, at least in the modern world--if you lived before the Industrial Revolution, and certainly before the Renaissance, day-to-day existence didn't change much in the span of centuries, much less one lifetime. No wonder we're all so neurotic.

Disconnected

2010-12-01T18:28:00.000-08:00

On Monday, the cable went out at our house and took our broadband with it. This was annoying for me, since without Internet access I can't read blogs, waste hours watching old commercials from my childhood on YouTube, or enjoy Photoshopped images of Michael Bublé and a velociraptor. But for G, being Internet-less for the evening was a tragedy so epic that Euripides might have hesitated to tackle it. She didn't want to draw, or read a book, or write a story, or play video games, or watch a movie, or dangle toys for the cats, or do any of the myriad other activities that she normally enjoys--she wanted to be online, damn it, and nothing else would do. We got home at 5:30, she finished her homework by 6:30, and then we had this conversation over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over:

She: Is it working now?
Me: Not yet.

I hadn't slept well the night before, and by eight o'clock I was so tired my head was spinning, so I went upstairs to lie down for a while. It would have been great, except that G followed me and spent the next 45 minutes hovering over my semi-conscious body and asking "Is the cable working now? Is it working now? What about now? Can you check and see?" until I finally sat up and said "Look, kid, humans survived for 100,000 years before the Internet was invented. I think you can make it for one night. GO FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO."

"This is torture," she groaned, and moped off to her room, where she sat--surrounded by TV, DVD player, Wii, Nintendo DS, flip video camera, books, movies, art supplies, and various other amusements--and was grumpy until bedtime. I was strongly tempted to get out our copy of The Phantom Tollbooth and make her read the first chapter, where Milo has everything in the world and is still bored.

(Actually, if someone had delivered a phantom tollbooth to our house right then, I probably would have paid the toll and waved her on her way. She could have come back when she'd learned her lesson, or when the cable was fixed, whichever came first.)

Anyway, the next day we had Internet access again and all was right with the world. I'm starting to wonder, though, whether I ought to restrict her computer time more if she's that obsessed with it. I've never actually seen a crack addict in search of a fix, but if I had, I'll bet it would have looked a lot like G did when she was stranded at the side of the information superhighway.

Time in a bottle

2010-11-28T18:25:00.000-08:00

I used to be a pretty low-maintenance person. I wore makeup and shaved the parts that needed it and all that, but my morning and evening routines were simple and centered on face-washing and teeth-brushing.

Now, with 40 right around the corner, things are getting more complex.

- Before I walk out the door in the morning, I take my B complex vitamin for stress, my calcium +D for staving off osteoporosis, and my beta blocker for palpitations. I coat my face and neck with Age Shield SPF 55 sunscreen--it's too late to do anything about the sun spot that's already popped up on my right cheek, but I'm not getting any more if I can help it--and I smooth down my poor dry, flyaway hair with shine spray.

- Then before I go to bed at night, I wash with enzyme cleanser, coat my face and neck again with "Revitalift" night cream, use the Water Pik to hold the constantly lurking gum disease at bay, and attack my disgusting crusty heels with a grater. Once a week, I also exfoliate my face with sugar scrub, because no amount of cream seems to completely stop my skin from slowly drying up and flaking away.

- Not to mention that every three weeks, I buy yet another box of hair dye and cover up the grey that has taken over about 50 percent of my head.

And this is all just the basic maintenance work it takes to keep me from falling down dead, breaking my bones, losing all my teeth, or turning into someone who looks like she lures little children to her house of sweets and bakes them in her oven. It doesn't include anything extra I might want to do like painting my nails or putting on lipstick or doing something different with my hair. At this rate, in 25 years I'll only be able to leave the house for an hour a day, because I'll need the rest of the time to tend to my deteriorating body.

I love the Internet

2010-11-28T16:59:00.000-08:00

Clearly the work of people with too much time on their hands, but still damn funny:

Michael Bublé Being Stalked by a Velociraptor

The best ones are where the velociraptor isn't immediately obvious, or where you can only see its shadow or its reflection or a tiny part of it.

But this one is my absolute favorite. (I've stood on that exact street corner, BTW. I wasn't stalking Michael Bublé, though; I was taking a photo of P under the Late Night marquee.)

A pause for reflection

2010-11-25T13:16:00.001-08:00

Me: And what are you thankful for?
G: Ninjas.

Happy Thanksgiving. :-)

Live and learn and lose

2010-11-24T19:39:00.000-08:00

In a tangent to the ongoing family drama, last week I discovered that a lot of our belongings, which were put into storage when we moved just after P died, were auctioned off and sold earlier this year. I had meant to retrieve them when we moved into this house and finally had room to keep them, but when I asked the relative who'd arranged the storage for us about getting them back, I got a vague answer. I had a sinking feeling then that something like this had happened, and now I know I was right.

Among the things we lost were P's comic-book collection, which was extensive and probably worth upward of $10,000, and quite a lot of sentimental stuff, including G's baby clothes and toys--I gave most of them away as she outgrew them, but I'd kept a box or two of favorites--as well as all our Christmas decorations from when P was alive. The first Christmas after he died, I bought a tabletop-size artificial tree and a few miniature ornaments to go on it, and that's what we've been using ever since, waiting on the day when we'd finally have our "real" ones again. I suppose now I can stop waiting and just go buy actual replacements for this Christmas, although I can't really replace ornaments like the one we bought the first year we were married, or the year G was born.

What bothers me most of all about this is that it's my own fault. I'm not a trusting person usually, and I should have known better than to let someone else be responsible for anything I cared about. I did know better, but at the time, I was tired and distracted and this relative was offering to take care of things, so I let him, and I got burned. I'm not even angry at him, just at myself, the same way I'm angry at myself for moving into this house that we now may have to leave, all because of another person's irresponsibility. P would be shocked that I'm in this position--he said to me once, "You don't trust anyone at all, do you?" and I said "No one but you." I should have stuck by that credo. I should have rescued our possessions as soon as possible instead of waiting. I should have done a lot of things, but I didn't. I won't make that mistake again.

Advertising of the day

2010-11-21T17:56:00.000-08:00

Spotted on a display at the supermarket:

"Gift Cards Make Great Gifts!"

You don't say! I was planning to buy 1,000 of them and use them to tile my bathroom, but maybe I'll try giving them as gifts instead. Thanks for the tip!

The anti-Pandora

2010-11-13T14:38:00.000-08:00

I never quite finished unpacking when we moved to this house. I got about 90 percent of it done, and then I ran out of steam, or lost interest, or had other things to do, and the last few cardboard boxes got shoved into closets or banished to the garage.

One of those boxes ended up on top of the clothes dryer, where it sat for nearly two years, not only preventing me from putting anything else on that surface, but also partially blocking the controls. Assuming I do four loads of laundry a week on average, that's almost 350 times I had to lean over the dryer and reach around that box to set the dial, and every time, I thought to myself, I've really got to unpack this thing someday and get it out of the way.

Well, last weekend, someday finally arrived. I was straightening up the garage and decided that I might as well tackle the box as long as I was out there, so I heaved it down from the dryer and discovered that it contained:

1. A nearly empty detergent bottle from before we moved
2. A box of dryer sheets
3. Two half-crushed clay art projects G made at camp three summers ago
4. A bath mat that one of the cats had shredded
5. An cardboard sleeve that used to hold light bulbs

That's right. There was absolutely nothing in that box I really needed, and certainly nothing worth the hassle of reaching around it 350 times in 21 months. I saved the dryer sheets and chucked the rest unceremoniously into the trash, box and all, and suddenly the top of the dryer was a wide-open vista that led to the controls as if to the gates of Heaven. Every time I've done laundry since then, I've alternated between feeling gleeful at how easy it is, and wanting to slam my own head in the washer lid for being dumb and/or lazy enough not to figure out sooner that the box was full of junk. There's got to be some sort of metaphor for life there, don't you think?

Tag, you're it

2010-11-10T22:12:00.000-08:00

My friend Zandra asked me some questions in a game of blog tag:

1. What is one TV show you make a point of watching every week?
If you had asked a couple of weeks ago, I wouldn't have been able to answer, because at that time I hadn't watched TV at all for almost two years. But since then I've started watching The Walking Dead on AMC, so that's my one and only show. Ask me after it ends next month and I'll probably be back to not watching TV again. :)

2. Did you wear braces?
No, I won the genetic lottery--naturally straight teeth and no wisdom teeth.

3. How many cars have you owned?
Five--a white 1984 Chevy Citation hatchback, a green 1979 Mercedes something-or-other, a grey 1999 Toyota Camry, a grey 2003 Toyota Camry (yeah, I got boring there for a few years) and my current car.

4. I’m coming to your house for dinner, what will you serve me?
Spinach lasagna, salad and garlic bread.

5. Other than anything having to do with family, name something for which you are thankful.
I'm thankful that I live in a First World country with all the benefits that entails--clean water, plentiful food, sanitation, roads, schools and so forth. Even really poor people in the U.S. have a standard of living that is light-years ahead of, say, Bangladesh or Zimbabwe or Burkina Faso, plus it's unlikely that they'll die of some easily preventable or treatable disease, or that someone will drag them out of their homes at night and shoot them or club them or set a car tire alight and hang it around their necks. I try to remind myself of that whenever I start feeling like my life isn't so great.

---

I don't think I'll tag anyone specifically, but if you're reading and would like to answer a few questions, here they are:

1. What book will you always remember reading?
2. If you could change one mistake you've made, what would it be?
3. If you only needed two hours of sleep per night, what would you do with the extra time?
4. What place do you most want to visit?
5. What was your favorite meal as a child, and what's your favorite now?

Fair enough

2010-11-07T22:31:00.000-08:00

Me: Time for bed.
G: But --!
Me: It's ten o'clock. Little girls have to sleep.
G: No they don't.
Me: Yes they do.
G: Not if they're cyborgs.
Me: Okay. If you can prove to me that you're a cyborg, then you don't have to go to bed.

She's still working on that one.

And here I thought he never got west of Honduras

2010-10-25T00:28:00.000-07:00

While driving home yesterday, I noticed for the first time that the 10 freeway is also called the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway. Ah yes, of course - that'll be the route Columbus took in his covered wagon as he traveled with his intrepid Native American guide on his way to pan for gold.

"Marry, this is the short and the long of it"

2010-10-24T02:51:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I took myself to see The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica. It was a touring production from London's Shakespeare's Globe, which is a historically accurate recreation that sits more or less directly on the site of the original (c. 1600) Globe Theatre, and which not only mounts productions of Shakespeare's plays, but hosts ongoing exhibits and educational activities designed to teach people about his life, work, world and times.

With these credentials, I was expecting it to be about as close to the real thing as you can get, and I wasn't disappointed. I've seen several productions of Shakespeare over the years, including one of Merry Wives, and this was the best I've ever attended -- I think the humor in the plays often gets missed or muted, maybe because the language can be hard to follow, but this one was really laugh-out-loud funny. I especially liked Mistresses Page and Ford, who were thoroughly convincing as both conspirators and friends, and also Mistress Ford's insanely, hilariously jealous husband, but really everyone was excellent, from the fresh-faced young lovers to randy, gluttonous old Falstaff. I also loved the clever revolving set and the live music, which appeared to feature real shawms and sackbuts. It was worth every penny I spent on my ticket (I paid a little extra and ended up sitting smack in the front row, close enough to reach out and touch the stage) and I only wish it were in town for another week so I could go back with G.

Daybook

2010-10-19T21:40:00.000-07:00

Outside my window... it's dark and raining.

I am thinking... about all the things I still need to do before I go to bed.

I am thankful for... having the money to pay for the dental crown I need (even if I would much rather spend it on something else).

From the kitchen... one of us had pasta with roasted broccoli, shallots, garlic and Spanish olives for dinner. One of us had plain pasta with sauce. I'll let you guess which was which.

I am wearing... still in my work clothes: grey pinstripe trousers and black sweater.

I am creating... nothing at the moment.

I am going... to work tomorrow, assuming I feel well enough - I've had that ucky just-getting-ill feeling all day.

I am reading. Room: A Novel

I am hoping... that there's thunder with the rain tonight. I love lying in bed during a thunderstorm.

I am hearing... the cat licking his paw to wash his face.

Around the house... G is watching a Halloween episode of Penguins of Madagascar downstairs, and I'm on my bed. I have one cat with me and I think G has the other one with her.

One of my favorite things... my laptop.

A few plans for the rest of the week... G is camping with her Cadette troop this weekend, so we need to drop her gear off with her leader tomorrow evening. While she's camping, I'm going to see the Saturday matinee showing of this play. It'll be my second Shakespeare of the year - G and I saw Taming of the Shrew together over the summer, at the Old Globe in San Diego.

Here is the picture I am sharing...

This is G's drawing of a character she invented for a story.

Altercation

2010-10-18T23:20:00.000-07:00

I hear a commotion in G's room and go in to find her all tangled up in a disheveled bed ...

Me: What happened?
G: I got into a fracas with the quilt.

Scenes from a supermarket

2010-10-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

At the supermarket this afternoon, I saw a man standing in the bakery section, staring off into space and ranting at people who weren't there. He was a short, thin, seventyish man with a beige windbreaker zipped right up to his chin, and his voice carried all the way through the adjoining produce department, over the piles of broccoli and pomegranates and potatoes and bananas; loud and piercing, but curiously uninflected. I couldn't make out the individual words, but I could tell he was repeating the same few sentences over and over again, as if he were anxious to make sure that his audience got the message. No one in the vicinity said anything, though a few of us exchanged nervous looks as we grabbed what we needed and hurried away.

While I finished my shopping, I kept wondering how that man had gotten where he was. He was alone (I'd looked around for someone who might be escorting him, but there wasn't anyone), so obviously he'd been in touch with reality long enough to drive (?) himself to the store, get a shopping cart, and go inside like everyone else, but what happened after that? Did he get overwhelmed by all the different colors and smells and sounds? Had he forgotten to take some medication this morning, and it just caught up with him right then, between the vegetables and the bread? How was he going to get home again? He wasn't there by the time I got to the checkout - or at least I couldn't hear him anymore - so the situation must have been resolved somehow. I hope it was a solution that worked in his favor.

The worst part is, I suspect the distance between that man and the rest of us isn't as far as we think. All it would take would be a random chemical imbalance, or the onset of Alzheimer's, and you or I or anybody could be standing there and yelling at no one in the supermarket, and everyone around us would be too scared to approach and ask if we were okay. It's a sobering thought.

All quiet on the western front

2010-10-10T20:19:00.000-07:00

To my surprise, this past week has been quiet. (If we were in a movie, this is where someone would chime in with an ominous "Too quiet.") I haven't heard anything else about the house sale or the associated drama; the long-term afterschool care issue is still in limbo; and nothing has exploded in any of the other spheres of my life. Even the weekend has been unremarkable, with the highlights being yesterday when I successfully used these tips to make the toilet in G's bathroom stop running, and today when we went to a local Oktoberfest celebration to see the dachshund races.

There's nothing too dire looming up in the coming week either, except that I have to choose a new gynecologist so I can make an appointment. I've never had to look for a gynecologist before -- I got the previous one when my then-primary care doctor said "Congratulations, you're pregnant, here's a referral" -- and so far I've found it to be an odd process. I want a woman, not because I'm bothered by male doctors, but because I assume women are more likely to understand how annoying various female complaints are, and thus more willing to do something about them. I also want someone who speaks reasonably unaccented English -- whether it's her first or second or 15th language, I don't really care, just as long as we can communicate with each other. Those are pretty much my only criteria, so I've found myself reduced to browsing my medical group's web site, looking at each doctor's photo and trying to imagine how I would feel about her poking around in my business. It's like a weird sort of online dating, only instead of getting a free dinner, I have to hand over a $30 co-payment.

I wonder if people would be more excited about going to these appointments if there were some sort of reward involved -- like the "treasure chest" at G's dentist's office, only instead of Silly Bandz and stickers, it would have full-size Godiva chocolate bars and Starbucks cards. Maybe I should wait until I've been to the new office a couple of times before I suggest that.

Oasis

2010-10-04T23:29:00.000-07:00

Today I took a much-needed vacation day to try to decompress from the last few weeks. I wasn't quite sure what to do with the free time, but around noon, as I was looking out the window at the cloudy skies and drizzle - my favorite sort of weather - I decided that what I really wanted to do was take a walk in the rain.

So, off I went to the park. I was expecting to be the only person crazy enough to be there, but apparently ladies over sixty-five also like to go walking on rainy days, and I said hello to several of them as I wandered through the park's 350-acre expanse. Here are a few photos I took along the way:

This park and I have a long history together. When I first moved to California at age nine, my toddler brother and I played there. A few years later, my middle-school cross-country team had its meets there. Not long after that, I ditched high-school classes to hang out there (sshhh), sometimes with friends and sometimes by myself. I took G there for play dates when she was younger, and now that she's too old for slides and sandboxes, I can still occasionally convince her to go for walks there, or sit on a bench with me and people-watch.

It's been years and years since I was there alone, though, and I had forgotten how quiet and peaceful it can be, especially on weekdays when the usual soccer-playing, dog-walking, picnic-having people are at work. The deeper you go, the more you can forget that you're near strip malls and fast-food restaurants and busy streets, and the more you can imagine that you're someplace far away from your everyday life. It wasn't something I'd planned to do today, but it turned out to be exactly what I needed.

A new wrinkle

2010-10-03T01:08:00.000-07:00

The last 10 days or so have been quite interesting, and when I say "interesting," I don't mean interesting, I mean interesting.

Without going into too much detail, there's some family drama brewing, drama that, while it has nothing to do with me and G personally, will most likely lead to us having to move because the house we live in (rented from a relative) is going to be put on the market for sale. I'm trying really hard not to be bitter about this, especially because the relative who owns the house is also having her hand forced and isn't to blame, but so far I haven't been very successful. The realtor is coming over tomorrow morning to inspect the property and take photos, and I feel bitter every time I think about it. The idea of having photos taken seems very invasive, but I imagine it's nothing in comparison to how invasive it's going to feel when potential buyers are trooping through here, opening cupboard doors and testing the shower head. I'm sure I wouldn't mind if I owned the place and were selling it for my own benefit, but I don't, and the whole thing is harshing my mellow in a most unpleasant way.

I do have to give a shout-out to the B complex "stress support" vitamins I started taking when all this first went down: I started sleeping better and feeling less on edge almost immediately, and I'm still much calmer than you would expect under the circumstances. I freely admit that it may be a placebo effect, but I really don't care if it is. Vitamins certainly won't do me any harm, and $14.99 is a small price to pay for being able to keep it all together during a trying time. We'll see how well they work once the house actually sells and I have to find a new place to live, then pack up and move all our stuff for the third time in five years. Wherever we end up, we'll have to stay there for a while, because I'm running out of friends who are willing to keep lugging my 500-pound entertainment center and 39388404 boxes of books from one home to another.

This may be my new favorite poem

2010-10-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

Living the dream

2010-09-28T17:57:00.001-07:00

G: *hands me empty food wrappers*
Me: Why are you giving me your trash?
G: Because you like cleaning things.
Me: I don't like cleaning things. I clean because someone has to do it. It's not my hobby.
G: Yes it is.

Sometimes you have to fight dirty

2010-09-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

Today I insisted that G get dressed and go out with me for the afternoon. She wasn't thrilled, but gave in because she could see I meant it, and I wasn't going to let her get away with dragging her feet until it was so late we ended up staying home, which is her usual ploy when faced with the dreadful possibility of leaving the house on a weekend.

We had a nice lunch at Buca di Beppo - spaghetti for her, ravioli for me, cannoli for us both - and when we got back in the car, she asked, "How much of the afternoon is left?"

"That depends," I said. "Do you mean how much chronological time is left until the afternoon ends? Or do you mean how much longer am I going to keep you prisoner on this outing?"

"The latter," she said.

"Oh, about a couple of hours."

"Two hours! But --"

"There's no point arguing," I said. "We're going to spend some quality time together whether you like it or not. If you're nice, I might buy you the book you've been wanting. And if you're not nice, then we'll go shopping for new underwear for me."

"Oh no," she said, turning pale.

"Oh yes. I'll take you to Victoria's Secret and hold up every bra in the place and ask you loudly what you think of it. Maybe I'll even try some of them on over my clothes."

"I'd die of embarrassment," she said.

"I know," I said. "Let's go to the bookstore, shall we?"

Vomitus absurdicus

2010-09-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

Earlier this afternoon, I had finally succeeded in dragging G away from the computer, prodding her into the shower, prodding her out again, and making her get dressed so we could go out for the first time since Friday evening.

We went downstairs and she put on her shoes, and then I stuck my foot into my flip-flop and promptly yanked it out again. The flat surface and toe strap were both cold, wet and slimy, and that's a combination that never means anything good*.

I said, "What the ...?" and bent down to look, and one of the cats had thrown up in my shoe. Not a single spatter on any of the other shoes, not a drop on the floor, just a perfect blaarrrghhh that covered the inside of my flip-flop like a revolting custom-made insole. And as I hopped around, trying not to get any of it on the carpet, I thought, I would be a lot more upset if this didn't so neatly symbolize how the last couple of weeks have gone for me. It was like the universe punctuating a long joke with a rim shot.

There was nothing for it but to laugh. And then go back upstairs and scrub my foot with antibacterial soap. Ugh.

*Unless you're a frog on a blind date, but how often does that happen?

House of cards

2010-09-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

This school year began with high drama when, a week before the first day, I was informed that the city-run afterschool program had been cut for budget reasons. I had personally called the city's administrative offices the day before and received confirmation that yes, the program was on and would move ahead while the school tried to raise money to help pay for it, so it came as a surprise to me when I received a terse e-mail from the school that essentially said You are all fucked. Actually, I sort of wish they had just come out and said that. It would have added some much-needed humor to the situation.

I called the YMCA, which was the alternate suggestion provided in the e-mail, and was given a price quote for ~12.5 hours a week of "care" that made my head explode. After I'd picked up the fragments of my skull, I spent the next three days worrying and coming up with Rube Goldberg-esque plans for transporting G the two miles from her school to our house. I knew she would be fine on her own once she was safely at home with the door locked, but getting her there, in the absence of school buses, seemed next to impossible. Then, the Friday before school started, I got an automated message on my voice mail - actually half a message, as the first part had been cut off - that retracted Tuesday's e-mail and confirmed what the city had told me in the first place.

If you're imagining me being jerked around like a marionette on a string, that's more or less how I felt by that point. Hey, it's okay! I enjoy stress and uncertainty! They keep life interesting!

Only not.

Anyway, this experience highlighted just how much I rely on the routines I've developed over the last four years. I frequently get told that "you make single parenting look easy," and maybe that's true, but if so, it's not because I'm some sort of superwoman - it's because I have systems in place to keep everything running more or less smoothly. Throw a wrench into one of those systems, and instantly I become that single mother, the flaky, unreliable one who makes people roll their eyes and say uncharitable things under their breath. I've sometimes found myself in conversations where people say those things to me about other single mothers they know, and I always tell them to have a little more sympathy, because I know I'm just one broken-down car or canceled afterschool program away from being in the same position - and that's with only one child to tend to. I can't imagine what it would be like if I had two or three or four.

Talk about being pissed off

2010-08-28T15:56:00.000-07:00

Dear cats,

Look, I know you don't like the new cat litter I bought because it was on sale. I don't like it either. I don't know who thought it would be a brilliant idea to create a type of litter that smells of cat pee even when it's fresh out of its plastic jug, but someone did, and I bought it and brought it home, and now we all just have to live with it for another week until I can buy some more. Okay? Okay.

Also, I think you're both making entirely too much fuss about this. I have visited public restrooms that made your litter box smell like a field of roses drenched in essence of vanilla and topped with chocolate sprinkles, and do you think I responded by peeing on the restroom floor in protest? No! I sucked it up and went where I was supposed to go, and you can too. So quit being such drama queens, because if I find another puddle of cold, stale pee outside the litter box between now and next Friday, I swear I will not be responsible for my actions.

Signed,

Not Quite a Crazy Cat Lady Yet

Seriously?

2010-08-27T18:33:00.000-07:00

10 a.m. - G has a dentist appointment because a loose baby tooth has started breaking and coming out in pieces. In the waiting room, women in khakis and T-shirts, each with two or three little kids in tow, look askance at me in my work clothes with a gangly teenage-looking girl who appears years too old to be visiting "Dr. Sarah's Jungle of Smiles," even though she really isn't. After a few minutes, we're called to the back, where our kind and lovely dentist determines that the baby tooth has sat in G's mouth so long past its time that it's basically a hollow shell; also that the gum has started growing up around it. I pay her $60 to pull it out with a massive pair of pliers, and then we leave.

12 p.m. - I arrive at P's mother's house to drop G off with his aunt, who also lives there and is supposed to be keeping her for the afternoon. Auntie isn't there (later, I find out she had to go to jury duty), but Auntie's husband is, and looks startled by our sudden appearance. No one told him we were coming. Argh! I ask him if he's going to be home for a few hours and he says he is, so I say, "Well, I've got to go to work, she's already had lunch, you'll hardly know she's here, see-you-later-bye" and flee, feeling a little guilty about imposing on him. But only a little.

1-4 p.m. - My shoes, which I've owned for at least five years and which have never hurt before, begin to rub a blister on my left foot that ends up requiring a Band-Aid.

5 p.m. I pick G up again, and we go out to dinner because it's hot and I have no desire to cook anything. The restaurant we go to offers make-your-own s'mores, which I almost never let G get, but I figure after the morning's dental trauma and her afternoon of boredom, she deserves a treat. We're sitting there talking and toasting marshmallows when the tabletop fire pit spits a spark directly into my eye. If you've never had a spark in your eye, here's a bit of advice: Don't. It will sting and burn and make your eye water like a spigot, until your other eye finally starts to water in sympathy and you think you've gone blind, which is not a good finish to any meal.

7 p.m. At home, I enjoy my only triumph of the day when I successfully install a new toilet seat in my bathroom. I may have a blister on my foot and a second-degree burn on my eyeball, but I am aces with a screwdriver. Maybe tomorrow I'll take the hinges off all the cupboard doors, just because I can.

Or maybe not.

Call the police, there's a madman around

2010-08-25T18:29:00.001-07:00

We're in the car, and I'm torturing G by not only playing, but also singing along to, the Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls" ...

G: Oh my GAWD, do we have to listen to this?
Me: This is classic stuff. Classic! Pure 1986!
G: It's not 1986.
Me: Well, think of this as me giving you an education in great music from the past.
G: Aargh ...
Me: TOO MANY SHADOWS, WHISPERING VOICES
Me: FACES ON POSTERS, TOO MANY CHOICES
Me: IF, WHEN, WHY, WHAT, HOW MUCH HAVE YOU GOT?
G: This is so embarrassing.
Me: See, look at the sticker on that car in front of us, waiting to turn. The Sisters of Mercy. That's another fine eighties band.

(pause)

Me: Of course, you're probably thinking that this just means we're behind a car driven by old people.
G: You read my mind.

First of the lasts

2010-08-25T01:02:00.000-07:00

Tonight, as I was working on G's back-to-school forms, I realized that this is the last time I will ever do paperwork for elementary school. Next year she'll be in seventh grade, and while I'm sure there will still be a shedload of forms to fill in, they won't be for this school, the only school she's ever attended. It's the end of an era, or at least the beginning of the end.

Filling in this final round of elementary-school forms also represents the completion of a goal for me. I was determined from the beginning that G should have a stable, consistent school experience: by the time I reached sixth grade, I'd been to seven schools in five states, and while in retrospect I probably did get something out of all that diversity (if nothing else, I know that in Louisiana the cafeteria serves red beans and rice, and in New Jersey it serves shepherd's pie), when I was in the middle of it, it felt like endless chaos and upheaval. Just as I'd start to settle into a school, make some friends and feel as if I belonged, we'd move and I'd have to start all over. I remember begging and pleading to stay in certain places, but there was nothing my parents could do about it; we had to go, and so we went.

In contrast, G has grown up in the community of a single school, knowing what to expect each year from the kindergarten play to the third-grade bell choir to the sixth-grade chicken-mummifying experience, and I think it's been a calm center for her at times when other parts of her life haven't been as calm as I would have liked. I don't know if it'll have an enduring positive effect on her, but at least I know I've done everything I can.

Reunion

2010-08-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

G (flopping down on my bed) My legs hurt. Will you pull them for me?
Me: Sure. (pulling) It's no wonder your legs hurt. Grammy told me you spent so much time lying around at her house, she thought your muscles were going to atrophy. Do you know what "atrophy" is?
G: Not at all.
Me: It's when you don't use your muscles enough and they shrivel up.
G: Ew.
Me: And there you were at Grammy's without your regular leg-puller. (pause) So, did you miss me while you were there?
G: Eh.
Me: Not even a little bit?
G: Eh.
Me: Not even a molecule? Not even an infinitesimal particle?
G: Maybe less than that.
Me (pouncing on her): Yes you did! You totally missed me! Because you love me!
G (laughing): Ack!
Me (squeezing her and kissing the top of her head): You LOVE me! You LUUUUURRRRVE me! When you saw me, you wanted to yell "MOMMY!" but you didn't because it wouldn't be cool.
G (still laughing): You're crazy!

Yep. That's what makes me so much fun. :)

Me, myself and I

2010-08-19T23:29:00.000-07:00

Things I have learned this week:

1. It takes me four and a half days to generate enough trash to fill the kitchen can.
2. It takes half a day less than that to fill the dishwasher.
3. Filling the dishwasher would have taken longer if I hadn't used the big mixing bowl.
4. If I lived alone, it would be weeks before I ran out of clean forks and spoons.
5. Drinking glasses are another story.
6. I can eat for a long time on $25 worth of groceries.
7. I talk to the cats when no one else is around.
8. I'm not as bothered by that as I probably should be.

In case it wasn't obvious, G has been at my mother's house since Sunday. It's the longest she's ever been away from home - her previous record was three days and three nights, also at Grammy's Big Fun Resort for Kids - and at first I put off calling her because I was worried that it might make her homesick. On Tuesday afternoon, I finally got her on the phone, and when I was about to hang up, I said, "Bye, I love you," and she said ... wait for it ...

"Yeah, see you later."

At that point, I decided that since she clearly wasn't pining away for me, I might as well enjoy having the rest of the week to myself. (Well, the rest of the week minus the nine hours a day I spend at work.) I read and wrote a lot. I cleaned the house. I took myself to see Inception, which I really enjoyed. I drank Pyramid Audacious Apricot Ale and I ate chocolate-chip cookie ice-cream sandwiches, although not at the same time. It was all quite relaxing.

But relaxing as it's been, I'm looking forward to G coming home tomorrow. I'm an introvert and it's easy for me to spend time on my own - an accident of personality that I sometimes think is almost an unfair advantage, given my situation - but I miss my little girl. She's messy and stubborn and full of tween attitude, she can empty the fridge and cupboards in a matter of hours, and she resists showers with every molecule of her being, but she's also funny and quirky and creative and charming, and I love her to bits and pieces. Thank goodness I've still got seven years until she leaves for college.

P.S. When I talked to her on the phone this evening, I said "I love you" again, and this time she said "I love you" back. She probably won't admit it when I see her, but I know she missed me too.

High flight

2010-08-08T01:36:00.000-07:00

During the school year, when I'm on my way to pick G up after work, I pass a gas station that is also home to a sizable flock of birds. The gas station has a flat roof, and sometimes the birds perch along its edge, or on the power lines just above it. The rest of the time, they fly over the building and the intersection where it sits.

Because of the way the traffic signals are timed, I usually miss the green light and end up waiting there for five or six minutes each evening, which gives me plenty of time to watch the birds in their flight. I don't know how they do it (instinct? nonverbal communication? psychic powers?), but every bird in the flock knows exactly when to take off, when to flap, when to glide, when to land, and how much distance to leave between itself and the next bird. They wheel above that intersection in formation, sharp-edged black V-shapes against the rose and gold of the sunset, and something about them is beautiful enough to break your heart. Maybe it's their precision, or the grace of their turns and dives, or the way they clearly don't care that they live above a paved gas station and a busy, exhaust-choked street, and that no one but me pays any attention to them. They fly the way they're built to fly, the same way they would fly over an ocean or a forest or a mountain, in front of a crowd or without a single witness. And when I watch them for those few minutes, I always think how good it must be to be a bird: to know all on your own, without being told, what you're supposed to do and exactly how to do it; and to spend your days doing that thing.

The older I get, the less I believe that there's a God in the way most people imagine God; in the last few years, I've gone from theist to deist to agnostic, and I don't foresee a reversal of that trend. But if there is some sort of higher power or greater intelligence at work in the universe (which is possible, though not probable), I think you'd find it there, in the space between two birds' wings. I tried to explain this to a friend not long ago, and he just looked at me as if I had lost my mind. I guess you have to see it yourself to understand it.

The elusive male figure

2010-08-05T21:11:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me recently if G has lots of "male figures" in her life, e.g., uncles and grandfathers and so forth who have taken the place of her dad. I told him the truth, which is that G doesn't really have any male figures in her life at all -- many of her male relatives are out of state or in other countries, and we rarely see the ones who live nearby. P's middle brother does see her about once a month and sometimes takes her shopping or out for frozen yogurt, but as far as regular interaction with men goes, that's it.

However, the other side of the equation is that G doesn't seem to feel the absence of "male figures" in her life, or to have any interest in seeking them out. I've heard that girls whose fathers aren't around will often cling to any man who crosses their path, sometimes inappropriately, but G regards my male friends with suspicion and appears horrified when her friend C's big, bluff, friendly dad tries to tease and joke around with her. I know she remembers P, mostly from reading her school assignments, but I can't see any sign that she misses his presence from day to day*. After four years**, "normal" to her is the two of us together; she likes our life the way it is (that much, she's told me directly), and while she'd probably rather not have to explain her situation every time she meets someone new -- "Yes, I live with just my mom. No, my parents aren't divorced; my dad died." -- I don't think she sees it as lacking anything.

All that said, the fact that people even ask the question makes me wonder if I'm missing something, and G is secretly starving for some sort of male influence. But all I know is that from what I see -- and I spend enough time with her to see a lot -- she is a supremely, almost eerily well-adjusted kid. If you met her in real life, you would never know she'd suffered a loss unless she told you: she has plenty of friends and does well in school and is absolutely brimming with self-esteem that borders on cockiness. She's not the bubbly, outgoing type and tends to be reserved around people she doesn't know well (but once she does know you well and feels comfortable, prepare to have your ear talked off), but she's been that way since long before P died. I think it's just her nature, as it is mine.

I guess if she grows up and starts attaching herself to skeevy boyfriends out of desperation for male approval, I'll know I was wrong and should have hooked her up with a Big Brother. I can't really see her going down that path, though. Even now, she's not very motivated by anyone's approval, be they male or female, adult or kid. She is who she is and she likes what she likes, and she doesn't seem to care much what anyone thinks about it. How she's managed to reach that point in 11 years when it took me almost 30 is a mystery, but one I'm grateful for.

*For me, not a day goes by when I don't think of P (usually more than once), but 95 percent of the time, my "normal" is also just me and G together, and nothing feels awry. I'll go on like that for months, and then I'll suddenly find myself missing P very keenly for a day or two -- not weeping and wailing and falling apart, but wanting to look at photos and read old journal entries to remind myself of what life was like when he was here. Then it passes and I'm back to normal again. It's very strange.

**As she recently pointed out when we were discussing something else, four years is a third of her life. If you look at it that way, four years for her is the equivalent of 13 years for me. That's a long time.

Kryptonite

2010-07-28T19:58:00.000-07:00

Six Words That Need to Be Banned From the English Language

This immediately made me think of my friend Veronica, who shares the author's hatred of the word moist. I don't hate moist particularly, but I do have a personal shortlist of words I dislike, including veggies, ooze, spurt, congeal, panties, and greasy - that last especially when it's pronounced greezy, the way my high-school journalism teacher (a nebbishy little man with the worst dandruff I have ever seen on another human being), always said it. If you could combine those six words into one sentence it would probably kill me.

I do like pulp in my orange juice, though. I would totally buy a carton labeled "Holy Shit Pulp" if I could find one. G is completely grossed out by both pulp and OJ, and I enjoy walking into her room with a tall, cold glass and announcing "I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to drink my PULPY JUICE now. MMMM PULP." Hey, I've got to entertain myself somehow.

A night at our house

2010-07-25T00:41:00.000-07:00

It's 24 minutes past midnight, and I just crept downstairs, silent and stealthy as a ninja, and removed a box of cereal from the pantry. I eased the pantry door shut again so it wouldn't close with a bang, then slowly ran a finger under the sealed flap of the cereal box and teased apart the cellophane bag inside. Then, moving with the precision of a bomb-dismantling technician about to snip the red wire, I opened a cupboard, delicately lifted a bowl from the top of the stack, plucked a spoon from the silverware drawer, and managed to fill the bowl without letting cereal rattle against the sides.

All this so that G, whose bedroom is on the same level as the kitchen, and who is still wide awake even though I made her go to bed more than an hour ago, would not hear me and yell "HEY MOM, ARE YOU EATING SOMETHING? YOU'RE EATING SOMETHING, AREN'T YOU? WHAT IS IT? I'M HUUUUUUNGRY!"

It's hard living with a junior insomniac!

If you can't beat them, show them how it's done

2010-07-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

Me: *comment about something*
G: *eyeroll*
Me: No, no, no. You need to work on your technique. You can't be a proper teenager without a really good eye roll. Do it again, only more exaggerated.
G: *big dramatic eyeroll*
Me: Okay, now to really add some impact to it, you'll want to put one hand on your hip, like this.
G: *hand on hip, rolling eyes*
Me: See? I was your age once. And now add in some sound effects, like this: "Gah, Mother. Ugh." And maybe a tongue click and an exasperated sigh.
G: *repeats, giggling*
Me: There, that's much better. Now ... don't ever do it at me. Got it?
G: Right.

Four years today

2010-07-02T20:55:00.000-07:00

I have some thoughts to share later, but for now, I'll just repost this video from two years ago, and remember the good times. We had a lot of them.

What's for dinner? Pizza and sarcasm.

2010-06-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

Earlier this evening, G and I were in her lounge, sitting directly across from each other in identical pink-paisley butterfly chairs. I was reading e-mail on my laptop while she, a child of the new millennium, multitasked with Sims on her own laptop, Club Penguin on the DS, and a copy of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. I had ordered a pizza about half an hour before, and we were waiting for it to arrive when we had this exchange:

G (glancing up): Is the pizza here yet?
Me: ... Did you hear a knock at the door?
G: No.
Me: Did you see me get up and go downstairs to get the pizza?
G: No.
Me: Then I'm gonna have to say it's not here yet.

Belatedly, it occurred to me that if she were just a couple of years younger and less savvy, I could have had a lot of fun with that same conversation:

G: Is the pizza here yet?
Me: Yes. When the pizza guy knocked on the door, I froze time in a one-meter bubble around your chair. I went downstairs, got the pizza, ate, washed my dish, put the leftovers in the fridge, and then unfroze time again. Since you've missed dinner, I guess it's time for bed.

Or:

G: Is the pizza here yet?
Me: Yes. I got tired of waiting, so moving faster than light, I ran eight blocks to the pizza place, picked up the pizza, ate it all, and threw the empty box in a dumpster. Then I ran home and was back in my chair before you noticed I was gone. There aren't any leftovers. Sorry about that.

But, she's 11 and a half and has mastered the Look of Withering Disbelief, so it's probably just as well I didn't.

An anniversary of sorts

2010-05-30T15:32:00.000-07:00

Twelve years ago this weekend, I was feeling peculiar. Food tasted funny, I was a little queasy, and I had inexplicably blossomed by a full bra size almost overnight. I also hadn't had my period since March, but had thought nothing of it until then, since I skipped at least one month out of every three anyway.

"Wouldn't it be funny if I were pregnant? Ha ha!" I said to my dad when he came over to our apartment that Saturday.

"Ha ha," he agreed.

"Hmm," said P.

"See you later," I said, and left to spend the day at a festival.

The following day, P, who had clearly been thinking about all this, said, "You know, maybe you ought to take a pregnancy test."

"I'm sure it's just a false alarm," I said.

"Take one anyway," he said.

So I went out and bought a pregnancy test, thinking that it was probably a waste of money. P and I had vague plans to have a baby in a few years, after I finished grad school (to which I'd just received my acceptance letter the previous week), but we certainly hadn't been trying to have one right then. This was bound to be a false alarm, I told myself, as I took my little white stick into the bathroom and got busy.

While I stood there watching the chemicals do their work, I heard the phone ring.

"Hello?" said P's muffled voice in the living room, just as the plus sign on the test finished turning bright pink.

Holy crap! I thought.

"Okay, hang on," said P, now right outside the bathroom.

"It's [friend's name]," he called through the door.

"Tell her it's not a good time!" I said. "Then come in here!"

"Oh my God," said P, coming in with the phone still in his hand and looking at the stick. "We're going to have a baby."

And that is how I found out I was pregnant with G. It wasn't planned, and at the time I thought I wasn't ready, but it turned out better than I could have imagined. Not only did we get G, in all her gorgeous, clever, delightful quirkiness, but had we waited, we might not have had any children: when the time we'd intended to "start trying" finally rolled around, P's health had deteriorated to the point that we probably would not have tried at all. Things really do have a way of working out, eventually. And sometimes even sooner than that.

Food for thought

2010-05-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

G: You put a video of my band concert on Facebook?!
Me: I shot it from halfway up the bleachers. No one can possibly tell which kid is you.
G: ARGH! MOTHERRR!
Me: Look at it this way. I post your photos and videos and drawings because I'm a proud mom and I want everyone to know how beautiful and talented I think you are. Would you prefer it if I were ashamed of you and tried to pretend I didn't have a kid?
G: ... Oh.

Great moments in advertising

2010-05-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, this 15.8-oz. box does contain more cereal than a 14.5-oz. box. It also contains more wheat than corn cereal, more frosting than non-frosted cereal, fewer simians than a barrel full of monkeys ... I could go on stating the obvious all day, but I think you get the point.

Remembrance of summers past

2010-05-13T19:46:00.000-07:00

G: Today is May 13, right?
Me: Yes. Nearly the end of the school year. It's so close you can almost taste it. It tastes like chicken.
G (laughs): Ew. We don't eat chicken. (pondering) I don't know what the end of the school year would taste like.
Me: Actually, I think it would taste like popsicles and hose water.
G: HOSE water? Ugh! Why?
Me: Well, when I was your age, kids played outside all summer long. You'd get up in the morning, have your cereal, and then run outside barefoot and stay there until lunch. When you got thirsty, instead of going back inside to get a drink, you'd drink out of the hose, and the water always had a unique sort of taste.
G: Like what?
Me: Metal and dirt.
G: Gross.
Me: I'm sure there are places where kids still play outside in the summer, but this isn't one of them.
G: No, most kids go to day camp or on vacation.
Me: It's kind of sad.
G: I like it.

The circle of life

2010-05-10T22:53:00.000-07:00

I think a mouse has died in the wall of the staircase that leads up from our garage into the house. At first it smelled musty and moldy, like wet towels, and now it just smells, well, dead. Everything I've read online indicates that my options are a.) knock holes in the wall in an attempt to find and remove the unfortunate deceased, which may or may not be successful, or b.) wait it out until decomposition does its work and the smell goes away. Since I don't own this house and I have no idea how much it would cost to get a ripped-up wall repaired, I've been forced to go for option b, gross as it is.

The bulk of the smell is located near a large heating vent, so one of my friends has kindly volunteered to come over tomorrow, take the vent cover off and see if he can locate the offender that way. I know how to operate a screwdriver and could technically do that myself, but I'd really rather not (yuck), so just this once I'm going to take him up on the offer, and hope to God it works. The smell is minimal today because I've opened up windows and aired everything out, but when G and I got back from San Diego yesterday, it was a bit thick as we came in from the garage. (Not the sort of welcome-home you want to receive, let me tell you.) At least the top two floors, where we spend most of our time, are mostly stench-free; it's all concentrated in that stairwell, so we only have to smell it when we go in or out.

We had gone to San Diego because last month, as I was thinking about how depressing the last several Mother's Days had been, I decided that this year I was going to take preemptive action and plan something for myself. San Diego is only about a 90-minute drive from here, so I found a cute, reasonably priced hotel near the downtown Gaslamp District, and I made a reservation for Mother's Day weekend. Here are a few photos from the trip.

We stayed at The Bristol Hotel San Diego, and I couldn't believe how nice it was for the price I paid. It wasn't a bad location either, within walking distance of hundreds of shops and restaurants.

At the Ghirardelli Ice Cream and Chocolate Shop. G had the cone, I had the Rocky Road sundae. It was delicious, but I only managed to finish about a third of it. I'm not that much of a pig.

People playing giant chess at Horton Plaza. There were giant checkers too.

Outside the San Diego Museum of Art. Yes, it was yet another cloudy day for an outing.

Part of the sculpture garden and courtyard near the art museum. That's the bell tower and carillion on the left.

Museum of Man

Mayan stele inside the Museum of Man.

Hall of Modern Humans. Each of those circles had a human invention or milestone and the year it happened. My birth year was the computer microchip; G's was the euro.

All in all, it was a pleasant weekend and a huge improvement over the last few years. One of the nasty little surprises of widowhood is that while you can organize all the major holidays on your own, no one is going to pick up the slack on the days that are supposed to be about you. It's taken me a few years to get there, but I'm finally in a place where I can arrange my own special event and not feel bad about doing it myself. I'm already planning a similar approach for my fortieth birthday next year -- not sure where we're going yet, but I'm going to make it as good as I can. Surely I must deserve it by now.

The geometry of romance

2010-05-08T17:26:00.000-07:00

G explains to me, using aliases, who likes whom in her grade at school:

G: Okay, so Susie likes Tom, but Tom likes Susie's friend Mary. Mary likes Joe and Joe likes Trixie. Trixie likes Carl, and Carl likes some other girl whose name I can't remember.
Me: I'm confused.
G: It's not even a love triangle, it's like some strange polygon.
Me: *rofl*
G (with a disapproving head shake): Dating in the fifth grade. I don't know what they're thinking.

Some time later:

G: Everyone says I act like a grownup and not a kid.
Me: Why do they say that?
G: Because I like things they think are boring. I like classical music and I read a lot and I enjoy writing for the school newspaper.
Me: Those are perfectly good interests. Everyone is entitled to like what they like.
G: I know! Screw them!
Me: Um, that's not a polite thing to say. But it's true that it's none of their business.

Twihard

2010-05-04T21:03:00.000-07:00

G is a secret romantic. Or maybe not so secret.

I enjoy being a girl

2010-04-30T23:39:00.000-07:00

This evening, G showed me the pamphlet she got at the Growth and Development (a.k.a. "Fun With Puberty") presentation at school.

It said that while 80 percent of mothers think they've prepared their daughters for the emotional effects of having their period, only 10 percent of girls report knowing exactly what to expect.

So I said to G, "Okay, here's the truth. Having your period makes you grumpy."

And she looked me up and down and said dryly, "I know."

Erm. I guess I don't hide those crazy hormonal mood swings as well as I think I do.

Faire thee well

2010-04-24T22:02:00.000-07:00

Today we went to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. We've been several times before, but our last visit was at least five years ago, and I was ready for another trip. G was all over the idea when I proposed it last night, but when it was actually time to get ready and leave this morning, she said she had changed her mind and wanted to stay home and play video games all day. "Some people just want to be lazy," she opined, to which I said unfeelingly, "Yes, well, your desire to be lazy is interfering with my desire to have fun, so get dressed and let's go."

This is not us, but if we had gone in costume, I like to think we would have looked that good.

A troop of combatants marching away after a staged battle.

Horses! We both spent a long time patting them and scratching their necks. They seemed to enjoy it, or at least not to mind.

Let's all take a moment here to be grateful for our automatic washing machines.

I'm not sure what this pile of brush and sticks and random objects was supposed to be. Maybe they were planning to burn someone as a witch later on.

I wish I could tell you that G was completely into the Faire once we arrived, but of the three hours we spent there, at least two of them were set to a constant refrain of "It's so hot! My feet hurt! There's too much dust! It's so hot! I can't do this anymore!" However, she did enjoy some of it, especially the horses and the booth where she got to shoot bolts from a crossbow. As for me, I would have enjoyed myself more if there had been more enthusiasm and less complaining, but it was good to make the point that sometimes you have to suck it up and do what someone else wants to do, rather than what you want to do. Only children don't get much practice at that, since they never have to sit through their older sister's dance class or their little brother's Barney video, but it's a lesson everyone needs to learn before they're grown up.

The real highlight of the day came on our way home, when we stopped at a KFC to pee (both of us would rather have exploded than use the port-a-potties at the Faire) and get something to drink. As we pushed open the front door, we nearly collided with a guy dressed up like Colonel Sanders, white goatee, pale-pink suit, string tie and all. He was doing some sort of promotional appearance and there was a professional photographer who would take your photo with him, so of course I could not resist saying to G, "Now's your chance to get a picture with The Colonel!" The look of absolute horror on her face was a wonder to behold. I managed to play it off for about five seconds before I broke down, laughed, and told her I was only joking. It was a surreal moment, though. You don't expect to walk into KFC and see The Colonel any more than you expect to walk into McDonald's and see a man in a clown suit.

Where I've been

2010-04-24T17:45:00.000-07:00

visited 18 states (36%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

This is the best I can remember - I'd have to ask my dad if there are any I missed or added by mistake. Of those 18 states, I've lived in six: Florida, California (twice), Georgia, New Jersey, Louisiana and Texas. Also, while I've flown across the country and back a few times, I've traveled that entire route down the East Coast and across the South and Southwest by car, too, some of it more than once, and all of it before I was 10 years old.

Of the states I've missed, the two I'd really like to visit are Washington and Oregon. I'm more focused on finding a way to travel outside the U.S. right now, so we'll see if I get to them anytime soon. I do want to show G more of the country eventually, though - she's only been to California, Arizona, New Mexico and New York so far.

Putting her face on

2010-04-21T01:24:00.000-07:00

G had a field trip to see a concert at the local performing arts center today. Apparently she was excited about it, because she not only got up when the alarm went off and started getting dressed without being told, she also brushed her teeth and hair (!), and accessorized her outfit of cream sweater, black skirt and leggings with a bracelet and a sparkly headband.

It wasn't until we were in the car and nearly at school that I realized she also had accessorized her face with lip gloss (okay) and blue eyeshadow (forbidden at school). I said, "Are you wearing eyeshadow?" and she said "Yes," with such a guilty expression that you would have sworn she thought I was going to smite her on the spot. I was about to turn into the parking lot at that point, so I just told her to use her fingertip and blend it a little more - she'd applied it pretty subtly anyway, which is why I hadn't noticed until I saw her in full daylight - and not to be surprised if her teacher caught her and made her wash it off.

I suppose I ought to have scolded her about it, but in fact I found it kind of funny, because she had such a Busted! expression, and it's such typical behavior for her age. Most 11- and 12-year-old girls (me included) try to sneak off to school with makeup on at some point, or else hide it in their backpacks and put it on when they get there. I did remind her that she's not allowed to wear makeup to school until seventh grade, though, as she knows full well. Clear or sparkly lip gloss is fine, nail polish is fine, those strawberry- and bubblegum-scented teenybopper perfumes are fine, but not the heavy stuff.

Even when she does expand her cosmetic horizons, I'm sure I'll be checking every morning to make sure she hasn't caked it on - a bit hypocritical of me, given the amount of black eyeliner I wore in high school, but yesterday's moody Goth teen is today's fussy mother. Although come to think of it, I do still use a lot of black eyeliner. Hmm.

I can't believe it either

2010-04-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

While shopping at a craft store today, I saw a book called I Can't Believe I'm Knitting Socks. I giggled over it because it sounded so startled, as if the author had never knitted in her life, then looked down one night while watching television and discovered that she was holding a pair of needles with a half-finished sock dangling from them. I don't think sock-knitting usually takes people by surprise like that, but what do I know? I buy all our socks at Target.

G is at a campout with her Girl Scout troop this weekend, which is why I have time to roam around shops and muse about socks. She goes to this particular event every spring, and I've found it makes a great yardstick for how much she's matured that year: from first grade, when she attended as a day camper with me right beside her, to third grade, when she managed to sleep over one night before needing to come home, to fourth grade, when she thought she could only do one night, but ended up staying both nights and loving it. This year, fifth grade, I signed her in at the campsite, gave her a hug and said "Have fun," and she said "Bye Mom!" and was off like a shot.

I should probably be more sentimental about my baby not needing me, but if you knew G as a small child, and how clingy and terrified of everything she was, you know this level of confidence is practically worth throwing a party over. I may launch an independent adult yet!

This one's for all the widowed people

2010-04-12T00:49:00.001-07:00

Owl City - Vanilla Twilight

But I didn't mean to!

2010-04-04T21:15:00.000-07:00

Orchard Bank might want to rethink their marketing campaign. It's an invitation to apply for a preapproved credit card, but it reads like a Puritan minister thundering accusations from the pulpit. Oh, you can try to hide, but we all know where the blame lies. YOU made this happen! Do you feel guilty? YOU SHOULD.

Conversations with G, continued

2010-03-28T23:10:00.000-07:00

Lugging a huge box of just-purchased kitty litter to the car:

Me: Ooof, this thing is heavy.
G: How heavy is it?
Me: Twenty-five pounds. It's like carrying a toddler, except toddlers hold onto you.
G: They do?
Me: Yes. They put their little arms around your neck.
G (menacingly): And strangle you until you're dead.
Me: Good grief! What sort of demon baby are you expecting to have one day?

Browsing at Barnes & Noble:

Me: Hey, come over here and look at this.
G: What is it?
Me: It's an Edward umbrella.
G: Oh, now they've just gone too far.

At bedtime:

Me (cheerily): Okay, little princess, it's time for lights out.
G: I'm not little, and I'm NOT a princess. And I'm still reading my magazine.
Me: Jeez, I try to say loving things to you, and look what I get. All right, you're not a little princess anymore, but I need something to call you instead. How about if I call you my big ...
G: Penguin?
Me: Fine. From now on, I will refer to you as "big penguin."
G: *giggles*
Me: Time for lights out, big penguin.
G: *hysterical laughter*
Me (leaning over): Let me kiss you goodnight, big penguin!
G (between gasps): Stop! No more! You're going to make me pee.

Hectic

2010-03-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday started out with G and me frantically frosting bake-sale cupcakes at 7:50 a.m., went on to include a day at work and a detour to an Irish pub for a colleague's celebratory happy hour, and ended with the annual sock hop at G's school. By the time we finally got home and ate some real non-bake-sale food, it was after 8:30, and I was so tired that when G went to watch some Pink Panther cartoons on the TV in her bedroom, I crawled into her bed and went to sleep for two hours. It was a long day.

The sock hop was shaping up to be the painfully boring event it usually is (for me, not for G), when I spotted G's music teacher, Mrs. R, at the next table and decided to save myself by cornering her and talking to her about music and the band program for an hour. The poor woman was probably desperate to get away from me, but she was there by herself and no one came over to rescue her.

I told her that G started out the year thinking that playing an instrument was going to ruin her life and has since fallen in love with it, which is true - she plays her flute daily, without being prompted, and is always hunting for new sheet music to download off the web. Mrs. R laughed and said that she wasn't surprised, because every day she sees G either practicing her music or reading a book during the afterschool program, while everyone else is running around the playground and field. (G doesn't like to sweat or do anything strenuous. She's going to be one of those girls who always tries to avoid dressing out for high-school P.E. classes, and when she does show up in uniform, limply goes through the motions of running laps or playing softball while the teacher exhorts her to show some energy.) She also said that the school G is going to for seventh grade has a fantastic award-winning band, which G will be thrilled to hear.

On that topic, G is much more excited about junior high and high school than I remember being, but that's probably because by the time I was 12, I wanted to be grown up, immediately, without going through any of the steps in between. When other girls were fantasizing about the prom, I was thinking about the glamorous career I was going to have - I was leaning toward either Tony-winning playwright or international undercover agent - and how I was going to decorate my cool loft apartment*. I think G's got more of the right attitude by looking forward to her teenage years - you've got to get through those years one way or the other, so you might as well enjoy them for what they are, if you can.

*I never said my fantasies were realistic.

Gallimaufry

2010-03-22T22:19:00.002-07:00

How do cats always know where to find you? Both of mine were sleeping peacefully on the mezzanine just now, and didn't twitch a whisker as I got out of my chair. I went upstairs to my bedroom, and two minutes later, they both appeared, leapt onto the bed with me and are now sleeping again. I think they'd like it if I were in traction for a couple of months, just so they could stop following me around the house all day and night.

Ho hum. I've been starting and scrapping posts for two weeks because most of them are like this one - boring observations about pets, or shopping, or how I got the shower grout really clean with baking soda and a toothbrush. The ones that aren't mostly start out all right, but end up being too personal to put out there on teh intarwebz, which sadly is not my private confession box, no matter how much I'd like it to be.

Moving on, this evening G and I visited the local police station with her Girl Scout troop. Here are a few things that 9- to 11-year-old girls are interested in knowing during a police-station tour:

* Will we get to try handcuffs on? (No.)
* Will we see the jail part? (No.)
* Can we go inside a cell? (No.)
* Are they gonna taser someone? (No.)
* Have you got a shooting range here? (Yes.)
* Can we practice shooting? (NO.)
* Is this juvie? (No.)

What they did get to do was visit one of the police briefing rooms, where a nice young officer talked to them about drinking and driving, had them do some of the standard roadside tests, and showed them how the breathalyzer works. They also saw the watch commander's post and the juvenile holding cell (there was a teenage boy getting interrogated in there the first time we passed by - I'm sure he enjoyed being stared at by a gang of younger girls), viewed the records area, and got color-changing pencils with the [name of city] Police Department logo.

I found the tour quite interesting, but thought it must be incredibly depressing to work there. Everything was painted a sort of industrial paste color and lit with harsh fluorescent overhead lights, and the nameplates and paneling and other fitments had all clearly been there for as long as I've been alive. I can see why they don't bother making the holding cells nice for the perps, but I wouldn't mind a few of my tax dollars going to spruce things up for the officers and support staff. It's worse than the DMV.

Life goes on, brah

2010-03-07T11:13:00.000-08:00

I have had the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" stuck in my head for the last two days. It's not a bad song (unless you're John Lennon, who reportedly hated it) but forty-eight hours of "Happy ever after in the marketplace/Desmond lets the children lend a hand" is enough to drive anyone insane. Help!

In other news, we're going to see Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland this afternoon. I'm excited! Our tickets are for a show in a little more than two hours, which means I need to start preparing to leave right now. You have never seen anyone get ready for the day as slowly as we do. G is a great big lazypants and drags her feet about getting dressed, even to go and do something fun; but it's not all her fault, because I usually take way too long in the shower and get distracted by chores, etc., that could wait for later. It's a miracle we ever get out the door at all on weekday mornings.

And with that, I'm off. Review of the film later, maybe. If I feel like it.

Tea and sympathy

2010-03-06T17:33:00.000-08:00

This morning, while closing my bathroom door, I somehow managed to catch the big toe on my left foot in the gap between the door and the tile. It might have been slightly less excruciating if my toe had been chopped off with a hatchet, but I wouldn't bet on it.

I yelled and said AAARGH and FUCK and a lot of other less-than-ladylike things, and then I hobbled downstairs, still wincing and making pained hissing noises, because I wanted to tell someone about my agony and G was the only one to tell.

"I hurt my foot," I said as I limped into her bedroom.

She glanced up from her Wii game.

"What happened to it?"

"I shut the bathroom door on it. It really hurts a lot. I'm surprised it isn't bleeding."

"Your toenail polish is scraped," she observed, and then she said:

"Can you get me some cold pizza? I'm hungry."

Thanks a lot, kid. I'm bowled over by your concern!

And yet when she saw a kitten with an injured-looking paw on our patio a few months ago, she was in tears begging me to catch it and take it to the vet. Apparently you need four legs and a tail to get any sympathy around here.

Blue birthday

2010-02-27T21:46:00.000-08:00

If P were still alive, today would be his 40th birthday. Here are some photos in his honor.

This would have been sometime in mid-1994. That's his black Honda Accord coupe off to the left. He LOVED that car. Somewhere I have another photo of me sitting in it with the door open, taken because, as he said, he wanted a pic of his two most prized possessions together. (Yes, I know, but we're talking a 24-year-old guy here.)

October 1999, helping G figure out that standing thing.

County fair, summer 2002 or 2003. G doesn't look too sure about that corn cob, does she?

I think this is in the boardwalk area at California Adventure. It takes a real man to look cool while riding a seahorse on a carousel.

Batman was his all-time number-one hero.

I don't know where we were or what we were doing, but I love that look of cool skepticism.

I'm pretty sure this was at SeaWorld, waiting for the sky tower ride.

Disneyland, 2004ish.

I've never gone to the cemetery very often. Even at the beginning, I only went on holidays and when his parents asked me to, because I didn't feel he was there. His ashes are in their niche, but if his personality, his self has survived, it's someplace else. And thank goodness for that, because who wants to spend eternity hanging around even the nicest cemetery? Not me.

But I did visit today, while G was busy selling cookies with her Girl Scout troop. I played some of his favorite music in the car on the way there, and I brought flowers - not the blue hydrangeas I've brought in the past, because Gelson's was out of those, but yellow mums that looked bright and cheery on this grey, rainy day. I put them near his niche, and I wished him a happy birthday and told him I miss him. And God, how I do, even after four years. It's nothing to do with where I am in life - I'm fine, good even - I just miss him. I'm not sure if you ever can stop missing your best friend.

End of an era

2010-02-27T14:54:00.000-08:00

G is giving all her Barbies to the 6- and 8-year-old daughters of one of my friends. She could certainly use the extra space in her room, but it's still bittersweet to see her giving up something that used to mean so much to her without a backward glance. I did save two of them: her very first Barbie, which was always known as "Barbie Barbie" for some reason, and a Wonder Woman one that P bought for her. She may disdain them now, but in 20 years, she'll be glad she has them. Who knows? Maybe she'll even have daughters who will enjoy playing with a few of their mother's toys.

I'll tell you one thing, it took me forever to dress 30+ Barbies in matching clothes and straighten out all their hair. Not that they probably won't end up naked and tangled with their new owners (the tragic fate of all Barbies) but it seemed unsavory somehow to hand over a bag of nude dolls to a friend, especially a male friend. I'd have felt like a purveyor of Barbie p0rn.

Bottomless pit

2010-02-25T00:05:00.000-08:00

G and I are discussing what she's going to have for dinner before her Girl Scout meeting ...

Me: Look, I just want to find something that will fill up your little tummy.
G: It's not little.
Me: Oh?
G: It's a vast abyss.

I almost wrecked the car laughing at that one. No wonder she's always in the kitchen looking for a snack.

Fighting entropy

2010-02-21T19:12:00.000-08:00

Years ago, I had an awful epiphany: Nearly everything I thought of as an accomplishment, in the day-to-day sense, wasn't really an accomplishment at all. I could check things off my to-do list all day long, and at the end, instead of having created any sort of lasting change, all I would have done was reset the counters to zero.

The situation hasn't improved since then. If anything, it's gotten worse.

Here's an example. This was a productive weekend for me: I did laundry, I cleaned out and reorganized the pantry and fridge, I went grocery shopping and put everything away, and I washed the grotty interior of the microwave. I feel as if I've accomplished a lot, but have I really? Hell, no. By next Sunday, all the clean clothes will be dirty, the food will be eaten and the microwave will be crusty with spaghetti-sauce splatters. It might take a little longer for the pantry and fridge to get cluttered up with half-empty packages and old leftovers and spilled cereal, but it will happen. And it's not just household chores; probably 80 percent of what I do falls into this category. Fueling up the car, paying bills, filling out reports - all of it is an attempt to get through another day or week or month before I have to do it again.

Of course, this is mostly just the way life is. Except for a tiny fraction of the population, everyone has to do these essential-but-endlessly-repeating chores. (Even really rich people do at least some of them, or else you wouldn't see so many paparazzi photos of celebrities pumping gas and loading groceries into their cars at Whole Foods.) The actual tasks may vary depending on what part of the world you live in, but everyone's got them - I'm sure there's some poor woman in Africa right now who's preparing to make the daily five-mile trek to the nearest water spigot to fill up her bucket. I just wish there were a way for all of us to spend more time on the things that do make a lasting difference, and less on all the other stuff.

Depends on your definition of "almost"

2010-02-18T22:07:00.000-08:00

In the last few months, 11-year-old G has developed a heartfelt belief that she isn't a child anymore. Instead, she's "almost a teenager," and as such, she has a certain level of dignity to maintain. Every day, I learn about something new that used to be okay and is now mortifying, such as: using playground equipment, entering the children's section at the library, watching most cartoons, viewing baby photos of herself, talking about any incident in her life before the age of 9, and the list goes on and on. I just found out about the library today, when we went there and I automatically headed for the children's wing, only to have G go all rigid and horrified and ask, "Where are you going?"

"To the kids' section, where else?" I said.

"I don't want to go to the kids' section."

"Don't you want any books?"

"Not from there," she said, like the Queen of England being asked if she wouldn't like to pick out some new sweatpants at Wal-Mart. "I'm almost in junior high*. I have the highest reading level in my grade. I need adult nonfiction."

"Okay, if you like," I said, hoping my eyes weren't rolling too noticeably, and off we went to get her some adult books on pet care and musical theater.

Later on, I dragged her through the kids' books anyway, because I love them and I'm decades too old to care what anyone thinks about my reading habits, and it was hysterical watching her try to pretend that she wasn't interested in any of those books**. When we passed the new releases table, she said, "I'm going to look at these, just to look," put her hands behind her back, and leaned over to read the covers without actually touching the books themselves. Because, you know, someone who will be a teenager in a year and 11 months can't be seen looking at picture books in public.

The good news is that while she's started thinking of herself as a teenager-in-training, she's not interested in makeup or boys or any of the other teenage stuff yet. What she is interested in - writing stories, practicing her flute, drawing, watching musicals, playing Club Penguin and reading - is all about as harmless as it gets. Still, I can tell I'm going to say "You're not a teenager yet!" many, many times before she actually turns 13. Maybe I should get it tattooed across my forehead.

*She's halfway through fifth grade.
**For some reason, the kids' section at the bookstore is A-OK.

Convalescent

2010-02-17T22:03:00.000-08:00

I can't remember the last time it took me this long to recover completely from sickness. All the worst symptoms have been gone since Sunday, but I still get tired easily, and my whole body feels sore, like someone sneaked in and beat me up while I was sleeping. I've been at home for the last two days because G is on President's Week/Ski Week/Make Life Hard For Single Working Parents Week vacation, and it's taken me all of both days to clean the house, very slowly, with a lot of breaks. Maybe I had malaria or something and didn't know it.

And speaking of vacation ... argh. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy hanging out with G, who has finally outgrown the need to have me play Polly Pockets with her during every waking second, and is mostly content to be in the same room with me, doing her thing while I do mine. I would love to be able to spend the entire week relaxing at home with her and/or doing fun stuff. But I can't burn up all my vacation time now, because I just used a big chunk of it on Christmas break, and I still need to cover a week of spring break and two weeks at the end of summer, after day camp ends and before the new school year starts. This means a patched-together plan of one day with MIL (who also works full time), one day at FIL's office, three days at home, etc., etc. It's challenging. And stressful.

In the past I've tried having her stay at my mother's house for a few days (it's 75 miles away, so I can't drive back and forth every day to drop off and pick up), but while she loves Grammy, she hates being away from home for very long, and usually ends up crying and miserable, which is no good for either of us. I cannot tell you how much we're both looking forward to the day when she's old enough to just stay home, at least some of the time, when she hasn't got school. It's still a few years down the line, though. Where's Mary Poppins when I need her?