Sometimes you win

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!