Uphill Downhill

I can't keep up with this

2010-06-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

Here are some cute things Frankie's been saying lately because I can't actually have time to write anything real:

1. "Sid's [the Science Kid's] grandma is a grownup. My grandma is a grownup, too. A little grownup. A teeny tiny baby sister grownup." [Anyone who's seen my stepmother can confirm this.]

2. "When we get a baby I'm going to give her her bottle and leave my room to tell her good night when you're not in her room and I'm going to make her comfortable and then go back in my room. Tell daddy not to watch." [Awwwwwwwwww.]

3. "Mommy, sometimes you use a crazy voice to talk to me." [Guilty as charged.]

4. "Can I wag my flag now mommy?"; "Gran scored!" [While watching the USA-England game]

Tomorrow I fly to Salt Lake City for work. Maybe in another few months I'll post again. . .

Clarification

2010-05-18T05:32:00.000-07:00

Frankie: I don't think I like boy teachers.
Me: You know what's funny? Your daddy's a boy teacher.
[Pause]
Frankie: But he's my daddy, right?

Heh, heh. In other school-related news, Frankie's insisted lately that she's not allowed to wear dresses:

Frankie: My teachers say I'm not allowed to wear dresses to school.
Spence: Oh yeah, what do you say when they tell you that? [You see, we don't believe her.]
Frankie: I say "I don't care. Don't worry about it. Talk to my mommy."

Shame and Strength

2010-05-13T05:39:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in over two months, during which time we decided definitively to have another kid (we think), and I tapered off of my medication to see if maybe I could handle normal life again enough to get pregnant. The actual tapering off was a little rocky. I fought hard to stay calm and cheerful, but, well, what can I say. . . . I have a few shameful incidents to report.

Last Saturday morning I went outside to hang laundry on the clothesline. It was 10 a.m., and, even though we live in a swamp, I thought I might be safe from the mosquitoes for ten minutes. Of course I wasn't. Within seconds I could see clouds of them around my ankles, and between trying to hang clothes while staring into the sun, swatting mosquitoes with my feet, and avoiding imaginary snakes (I HATE snakes), I was a teensy bit frantic. Frankie came out onto the deck then to tell me that it was time to leave for a birthday party that wasn't going to start for another hour and a half. No, it wasn't time to leave yet, I told her. She insisted, she whined, she cried. I hung up clothes as fast as I could and told her she was annoying me (not a good strategy for mollifying a preschooler), while scraping my shoes up and down my shins. It was a completely ridiculous situation. So I gave up and went inside to explain to Frankie why I was upset and that she was bothering me. Now I'm embarassed to tell you that I brought this incident up several times throughout the day. I told Spence when he got home: "Frankie was bothering me when I was trying to hang up clothes." I told Frankie for no good reason: "Remember when you were bvothering me. That really bothered me." I was pouting at a three-year-old. So yesterday, Wednesday afternoon, I finally got it together to take the clothes down from the clothesline. Frankie was busy coloring. The mosquitoes weren't bad this time, I decided to ignore the possibility of snakes (I'm so valiant), and was only a little bit sad to see tons of spiderwebs in my clothes (I'd left them up for five days, after all), when I heard Frankie shouting to me from the kitchen. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but it was obviously a shout, not a cry, so I stayed outside to finish. When I went inside I asked her what she'd been yelling to me. "I was saying that I wouldn't bother you, Mommy." Here's the dagger in my heart.

The other thing I want to tell you about happened a week into the process. This is much, much worse. I took Frankie to Target after school to buy a birthday present (for the party mentioned above) and a Dora DVD for her. (Yes, it happened. She's come down with Dora fever.) Frankie was super, super good while we were shopping, especially considering the fact that we were buying a toy for another kid. But she fell apart in the checkout line for a reason I can't remember. I could feel my anxious crazies coming up, so I said to her, "No, don't do this. You can't do this now." (Everyone but me, apparently, knows that this is not an effective behavior modification strategy for a preschooler. I'm on a roll lately.) I paid and pushed the cart out to the photo area to have a talk with her, and suddenly there was a bottleneck of carts all trying to get past us. I got more anxious. She stood up in the cart. I told her to sit down, that it wasn't safe. She stood up again. I actually contemplated nudging the cart just a little bit so she'd fall over just a little and get a tiny bit scared. (Wow.) She threw our bag of stuff out of the cart and onto the ground. I threatened her with the removal of a Dora-related privilege, and she finally sat down. She slapped my arms on the way to the car, refused to let me get her out of the cart, became even more enraged when I succeeded in getting her in the car, refused to get in her carseat, climbed up to the front where I had just turned the car on for the air-conditioning, and TURNED THE CAR OFF. I turned the key again to start the car, she turned it off again. I was apoplectic. I threw her (well, not really) in the backseat and let out such a torrent of screaming that I didn't even recognize myself. She cowered in the corner until I was done, and now I'm crying as I write this. I went to sit in the front seat to cool off, and almost instantly I noticed her getting in her carseat. I got out to help her do the straps, and she said "I'm sorry, Mommy." Good God.

But it doesn't end there. As we were driving out of Butler Plaza, someone cut me off in a ridiculously dangerous way. I never, ever honk my horn, but I did then. I laid on the horn while Frankie screamed "No, Mommy!" The person zoomed ahead, but I caught up with them as they were waiting to turn left, and I honked and honked and honked. When they turned into a shopping center, I thought about following them. I remember thinking "I wish you would say something. I wish you would slam your door and come at me. Because I am ready to whip your ass."

Um, I want to promise that this is not typical of me. The rest of that day I cried and swung wildly between wanting to finish getting the stuff out of my system and wanting to take as many pills as possible right that moment. I've never, ever, ever had such a rageful fighting urge as I had that day. Maybe "rocky" is underselling it.

But I stuck with it. One night a few days later I popped awake and thought, "So you're crazy. What the hell?" (I want to emphasize that I am not crazy, despite that last anecdote. I have a "tendency toward a mood disorder," which means I have overly strong moods that sometimes get in my way. I in no way suffer the way someone suffering from a mental illness suffers. Three "suffers" in one sentence is the right way to write it.) And now I'm fully off my medication. I haven't had any problems like that again, but who knows? Maybe Frankie's just been on her best behavior.

I do notice some big differences. I never didn't feel like myself when I was on it, which was a relief. But now I feel like myself full of poison. I don't mean to overdramatize. This is the most succinct way I can find to describe it. I feel like myself, but full of the poison of blame and anxiety and anger. I realize now that this has always been normal for me--being on medication made it obvious. And maybe it's better not to mask that poison with a chemical. Maybe I should work on being a better person. I feel very strong in this decision. (Again, I don't in any way mean to imply that people with actual, real, life-altering mental illnesses should just go off their medication and deal with it. That's a completely different story.)

But I've decided that the chemical/hormonal whirlwind that is pregnancy is probably not a great idea for me. So it's on with the adoption! Wish me luck?

Belinda

2010-03-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

I know I've written before about Frankie's obsession with truth and accuracy, but maybe I didn't mention that it extends to fiction as well. Remember her reworking of "O, Susanna?" Well, in case you don't, she thinks the narrator has a baby (not a banjo) on his knee, and since, in the dream sequence, he sees Susanna coming down a hill, Frankie insisted that the baby be called Belinda. Why would a grown man be singing, she further wonders, unless it's to a baby, so the song became "O, Belinda" in our house. (Everything falls apart if he has a banjo. I'm waiting for the day she realizes this, but, really, now that I think of it, the song doesn't make sense unless there are two characters. . .)

So anyway, we hadn't heard it for a long time, and I'd forgotten and--fool that I am--assumed Frankie had forgotten about her cute little decree when we heard the song the other night. Spence tried to sing along, and this happened:

S: "O, Susanna . . ."
F: "Uh, it's Belinda."
S: ". . . don't you cry for me . . ."
[etc]
S: "O, Susanna . . ."
F: "Do it right, Daddy. It's Belinda."

Her delivery was ice cold, too.

Haircut and Mess

2010-03-02T06:12:00.000-08:00

Force, Vacation

2010-02-05T17:43:00.001-08:00

Not for any good reason were Spence and I able to spend the day together yesterday. We went to the Jones for breakfast, napped for the rest of the morning and on into the afternoon, went to Las Margaritas for lunch, and read on the couch until it was time to pick up Frankie from school. As maybe you've guessed, we were incapacitated in each our separate ways, and I’m writing about this because it wasn’t just illness that kept us home.

I was home from a little bullshit cold, but Spence was home because—da, da—Frankie slammed his head in the front door the night before. He was on the front stoop changing our outdoor cat’s water and leaned in the door way to grab the food that we keep just inside the door because of raccoons. He didn’t know that Frankie was behind the door, but, even if he had, it wouldn’t normally have mattered. Except this time, after she pried her shoes off, Frankie reared up and put all her strength into slamming our huge, oaken door. I mean, she closed the hell out of that door. The doorknob hit Spence right on the temple (or so I thought) and completely floored him. I don’t accurately remember his reaction because I was using all my concentration to think how to convince her in a few years that she didn’t kill her father and to stifle my suddenly irrepressible instinct to laugh. (Alarming, that.) He was on the ground or a while and then moved to the couch. He was nauseated and groany but otherwise okay seeming. The problem with things like this is that I’m not a doctor and am probably as far from being sensible about the human body as anyone you’ll ever meet. I have no idea what normal symptoms are for knocks on the head, so I wouldn’t have been surpised by anything: vomiting, utter collapse, an urge to pirhouette, instant death. I was certain we should go to the hospital, but Spence didn’t think it was necessary. This put me in an awkward position. Certainly I have nowhere near the experience with these things that Spence has, but, then, I wasn’t just knocked on the head. When he called his parents and they suggested he do a little research on WebMD, I thought, “Great, so we’ll trust the man who might have braindamage to make the decision.” But the Spences are very good at this, and I trust their opinion. So we didn’t go, but I forced Spence to take the next day off work.

We were quite a pair around town. And this brings me to my next point: how on earth do people ever have more than one kid? We’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and I keep coming back to what’ll happen if we’re both sick. I mean, really, what do you do?

Just real quick

2010-02-05T06:31:00.001-08:00

I thought that after my antidepressants kicked in I would stop looking so tragic in pictures. (See profile picture at right.) But yesterday I didn't have much to do--more on that later--so I spent a little time in front of the camera hoping to reveal something cheerful. Turns out I'd still make a convincing extra in a movie about the Bosnian war.

It's already a new year

2010-02-02T05:21:00.001-08:00

I'm back to writing, here's hoping more often than once a month. I haven't been able to after work because I'm either at the gym or trying to cultivate cleaning as a leisure activity. And no writing during the day because work has been busy, busy, busy. So, what's the news? I might be getting a promotion this summer. We had our first non-family houseguests for a weekend. And Paxton.

The superstar in our home is a twelve-year-old boy who lives across the street. His name is Paxton. Frankie idolizes him all out of proportion even though by any measure he's a pretty great kid. He achieved celebrity by being outside a lot, playing catch with Frankie, letting her use his hockey stick, and running with her--apparently willingly--up and down the street like a fool. Eventually she was talking about him constantly, making decisions based on his tastes, and, weirdest of all, insisting that she WAS Paxton. She uses his name as a title, like "Barbie": "I'm Baby Paxton/Kid Paxton/Duckling Paxton/Paxton Gondolier." She also insists she's a boy. And because she's Paxton, I'm Paxton's mom, Tracy, and Spence is Paxton's dad, Spence. A lucky piece of luck them having the same name you might think, but Frankie manages to complicate things. She calls her father Neighbor Spence. (I mean his father. Paxton's a boy.) This madness has gotten so mad she even tells her teachers that my name is Tracy. But that's not my name, that's not my name. . .

His elevation took place in the fall when everybody was outside all the time, but then when it got cold, something curious happened. We didn't see him for a few weeks, and now that we do, Frankie's speechless around him. She used to play and talk with him, but now he's an unapproachable icon. She sits on the stoop and watches.

I'll forget if I don't write it now

2009-12-13T16:17:00.001-08:00

"This is a good stick for a long walk. It's a long, wet stick for a long, wet day."

"It looks like, a little bit, to me, morning."

I'll write again someday.

Why is there no beer in this house?

2009-11-16T18:17:00.000-08:00

That's all. I'm just curious. Shit shit shit shit shit. I have a cranky kid who's supposed to be asleep, a broken noise machine in the kid's room, a husband with one broken eye, a broken coffee pot, lots and lots of dirty dishes, NO BEER, and nothing to do except that which I can do silently and alone. Don't even mention reading. I do that shit all day.

(I didn't feel like posting this on Facebook, believe it or not.)

Inability to Sleep in Children: A Longitudinal Study

2009-10-14T06:30:00.000-07:00

Genesis of the Study
This study began its exploratory phase at the Flumflum sleep lab two and a half years ago with an estimated duration of six months. It was reshaped and extended when a review of the literature on inability to sleep in children (ISC) showed an overrepresentation of manuals describing how children in general sleep and an underrepresentation of information explaining why the hell the Flumflum child wouldn’t sleep.

Groundwork
The researchers began by examining their own ideas and prejudices about sleep and attempting to back them up with fact. Many common myths were thereby exploded.

Myth 1: A child needs to be in bed to sleep
This is false. The researchers had been under the impression that the closer one gets to a bed, the more likely it is that sleep will occur. Suprisingly, participants often super duper promised that they would sleep if they were a) on the floor; b) on the crib mattress next to their bed; c) on the bed with their head on the floor.

Myth 2: A tired child will sleep even if slightly uncomfortable
Ha.

Myth 3: Children require sleep
This is an area in need of further study. Participants (who are now between the ages of two and a half) reported “friends” who “jump up and down” instead of sleep, though they were unable to provide information related to the morning crankiness of either the friend or the friend’s parents. Researchers interested in “native” or “folk” science would do well to follow this emerging strand in the field of child sleep.

Methods
Participants were put through a predictable “bedtime” routine, at the end of which they were expected to sleep. The researchers then interviewed sleep-refusing participants using a protocol of increasingly intense questions. The goal: what the participants thought they were up to not being asleep yet. Jeez. A variety of responses were collected and analyzed with an eye toward preventing non-sleep in the first place.

Results
The most common reasons given for not being asleep:
1. “My eye hurts.”
2. “My diaper hurts.”
3. “I have water in my nose.”
4. “I want to climb up the wall.”
5. “My [pop-up] book won’t close.”
6. “I want to hear [Laurie Berkner’s] Valley [of Vegetables] song only.”
7. “My book fell down.”
8. “I want/don’t want my pillow.”

Discussion
Statistical analysis shows that non-sleep in participants was caused overwhelmingly by parental intransigence. In most cases, a simple remedy was suggested by the participant’s response. For example, the parents of the participant whose book had fallen down could have simply replaced the book on the shelf and the participant would have fallen asleep. We mean, that’s obvious. Similarly, the parents of the participant who wanted to hear “the valley song only” could have used the repeat function on the participant’s CD player to solve the problem. Finally, the parents of the participant who had water in his/her nose could have . . . Well, we don’t know what they could have done, but surely doing something is better than doing nothing. Maybe you’ll say that solving one problem will only lead to another? That the child is trying not to fall asleep? See what we mean? You’re intransigent. Maybe you don’t even love your children.

Conclusion
Due to the nature of the results, the researchers can only conclude that the participating parents’ rubric of priority (RoP) is skewed heavily in favor of sitting in the living room, drinking wine and gritting teeth, while the child yells and yells a series of very simple—and unanswered—requests.

Recommendations
Relieving the discomfort of the non-sleeping child, while it didn’t tend to encourage sleep, at least shut the child up for a minute. Parents should look to their child to solve this problem, if it even is one. If closing the pop-up book and drugging the child doesn’t get them to sleep, they obviously don’t need to. Only you can help yourselves, people.

I guess this is what life's gonna be like from now on

2009-10-07T05:14:00.000-07:00

Frankie's nuts, y'all. She's two and a half now, which means she's either behind and just now starting the terrible twos, or she's ahead, diving right in to the horrible threes. (Therrible threes?) Two weeks ago I could have counted on one hand the total number of tantrums she'd ever had. Now she'll argue (that's a stretch--scream and deny, really) about anything. This morning as she was down on the floor screaming for me, I came in the room and sat down. Spence said, "Look, Mommy's here." She screamed "No, no she's not here!!!" Then she looked me in the eye and screamed "No, she's not sitting right there! No!!!!" Mostly this is pretty easy to ignore, and it's kind of fun to try to follow her logic and see how far she'll go in denying the obvious truth.

What really gets me, though, is when she throws a tantrum for something that Spence or I are about to do but don't actually. For example, Spence had no way of knowing that Frankie was willing to let him get her breakfast bowl out of the cabinet but not her spoon, hell no. Spence has the spoon in his hand, she starts to yelling, and he says, "okay, sweetie, you can get your spoon, see I've put it back" (plus lots of good-parent things like "you don't need to yell"). What he further doesn't know (stupid Daddy) is that the real offense is just thinking that he should have gotten the spoon in the first place. Daddy has sinned in his heart (if not by his hand), so now it's time to go thrashing on the floor. This is sometimes funny, sometimes the worst.

More later, I'm at work.

I Share this Opinion of the Outdoors

2009-09-25T08:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUS6nKpddec

Sorry for the link. I couldn't get the video to upload. Let's get the f*** out of this m****f**ing internet.

A Whole Bunch of Stuff, Mainly about Girliness

2009-09-16T06:14:00.001-07:00

When I found we were having a girl, I kind of freaked out a little. I've always felt that my girly education was lacking, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to teach my future daughter the mysteries of makeup and braiding and matching socks and stuff. I overcompensated when she was around 18 months old, trying to brush her hair regularly and give her pigtails, sure that if I didn't do it every day RIGHT NOW, she would forever refuse. But now that she's two and a half (tomorrow! which means I'm twenty-nine and a half! tomorrow! yikes!) she's become girlier than I imagined she ever would be. On one hand, I'm relieved: my delayed beauty sense isn't holding her back. On the other hand, I'm nervous: it's holding me back, and I think she's going to lap me soon.

To show you what I mean, let's take toenail polish. It isn't enough that she asks me to touch up her blood-red toenail polish three to four times a day, she also lets me know when I need a touchup. And she won't be fobbed off with a little cursory swipe of polish. I tried this the other day on my big toe, and she said "That's not enough, Mommy." As if to say, "Please have some self-respect for once."

Or let's take clothes. Everything she wears must match. (Lucky for me, though, she still has a truly wacky, toddler sense of why clothes match that makes for some hilarious outfits. I can still beat her at some things.) And she discovered belt loops the other day, decided she wanted a belt, and, now that she has one, has not taken it off, not for anything. (Yesterday she took the pants-and-belt off to go to the potty. When she was done she put her belt back on, but nothing else. Nothing.) Oh, and one morning when we were getting ready I told her I was going to wear a dress to work. Her reply--"Wow, Mom . . ."--contained more sarcasm and pity and, I'll admit it, contempt than I thought a two-year-old could understand. Ouch.

Or makeup. The girl won't leave the house until she's put on "wipstick." I had a pale pink lipstick that she tried on one day for laughs, and it is now very much her pink lipstick. She wears it to school, to the farmer's market, you know, out and about, but she doesn't let me off the hook, either. Usually as we're headed out the door, she'll say "Oh! I forgot my wipstick!", put it on, then say "Here, Mommy, I'll put it in your purse so you can put wipstick on at work." This sense of subtlety has been inherited from my mother-in-law, I swear.

Finally, my triumph and my glory: hair. Every morning she asks me to, yes, brush her hair and put it up somehow. Usually she request "pinktails," but sometimes a ponytail, and last night she tried bobby pins, so that'll open some doors. I'm so, so happy.

I'm also a little nervous. I can keep up with her now, but for how long? I've jumpstarted my long-dormant interest in this sort of thing by going to the gym, where I watch Bravo and am forced to blow dry my hair in front of other women. Maybe I should take out some sort of magazine subscription, too. I don't know.

But you'll be glad to know she can still be old-fashioned disgusting and coarse, too. Anyway, I'm glad to know this. Last night Spence fed her a full cup of broccoli and at least a half cup of sauerkraut (!) for dinner. It was hard, but I kept my mouth shut. I knew this was Spence's own personal triumph, pickled cabbage being his very favorite food. I guess part of being a kid is doing different things with different parents according to their personalities. She spent all afternoon clothes shopping and doing nails with me, just like I like, and she spent the evening huddled over a table with her dad eating like an elderly Eastern European, just like he likes. Everyone enjoys time with their kid in their own way. Let's just say there was a certain, un-girly movement overnight. . . .

A Communication

2009-09-02T04:47:00.000-07:00

Since my counselor told me about my "tendency to have a genetic mood disorder," I decided to tell the people I was, you know, genetically related to. I started with my dad. He was in California when I talked to him, traveling in the band of a man who was married to Cher twice, or only once, or in any case, had at some point, or points, been married to Cher. They were driving on 680 around Oakland to get to Monterey (sigh), and the signal was bad. Here's how the conversation went:

ME: I want to tell you because we're related, I probably have a genetic mood disorder.
DAD: WHAT? I can't really hear you. [Lots of gurgling and shouting in the back ground throughout. I won't note it hereafter.]
M: A mood disorder. A genetic mood disorder. I probably have one.
D: Yeah, I probably have a little bit of that, too. How did they find out, a blood test or something?
M: Ummmmm, no, I just have been seeing my counselor for two years and she mentioned it yesterday.
D: WHAT?
M: Uh, well, I'm excited because . . .
D: WHAT? I can't really hear you.
M: I said I'm excited because it means I can probably take antidepressants. Ha ha.
D: WHAT?
M: Antidepressants. I'm excited.
D: Oh, antidepressants. Really? [Surprised. Disapproving?]
M: Um, yes. I'm excited. [Getting shaky]

[MORE CONVERSATION ABOUT OTHER TOPICS BUT WITH ABOUT THE SAME SUCCESS]

D: I'm gonna let you go cause I can't really hear you. Let me know how the food allergy thing works out.
M: Oh. No, it's a MOOD disorder. MOOOOOD disorder.
D: WHAT?
M: A MOOD disorder. With an M.
D: WHAT?
M: MOOOOOOOOD.
D: Oh, mood! So where does the allergy come in?
M: There is no allergy. . .

Is it me, or is there something about repeating the same word or phrase to someone who can't hear that makes one start to doubt the phrase's truth or necessity or whatever? The first time I said it, I was firm in my belief--yes, assuredly I have a mood disorder. But then each time I repeated it, I felt a little less sure, a little more silly, until by the end of the conversation I was ready to admit I was making the whole thing up. Maybe it's the loud, slow exaggeration of something that should've been over with in less than a second, and when you know you're the only one who can hear it? Or maybe it's just that mood is a silly word to begin with? Screaming moooooood over and over? Forget it, I'm fine.

Change?

2009-09-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

Spence and I have been married almost five and a half years, and I'm just now thinking about changing my last name. (I didn't when we were married because, I don't know, I felt too young to make a decision like that. But not too young to get married, apparently!) I've learned since then that I have a problem, or aversion, or allergy, or whatever, to change. Unless you consider drinking and crying an appropriate coping mechanism, I don't handle change well. My mom's father-in-law has a saying that I now realize has been my credo my entire life: when in doubt, do nowt (it rhymes in England). This is my response to every major decision. If I'm not sure, I don't do anything unless I absolutely have to.

So, back then I had doubts, but I've had some time to mull it over, and . . . I still have doubts. Here are the pros (as far as I can tell): it'll be sweet to have the same last name as my kid and, you know, my husband; I won't have to explain to official people all the time that I actually am married; it'll be easier to renew my carpool decal at work; I can't think of any other reasons. And here are the cons: it feels weird to change the name I was born with; partriarchy and all that; I won't be able to think to myself "At least I don't have the same name as you!" when Spence and I are arguing; Spence's last name is kind of shitty.

Spence himself is on the fence, but I think he's leaning toward the "do nothing" side. (He's like me you see, maybe even more so.) He says that he likes my name and that his name sounds like "Flumflum." (He's right. But it also sounds, perhaps more accurately, like "Lunchroom.") He wonders if we really need another person saddled with that.

I don't know, Mrs. Flumflum? I'm not sure if I have it in me. Any suggestions?

She's Bossy

2009-08-27T05:25:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading a book by Sergei Dovlatov that calls itself a "family album" because it is made up of short stories about each of his family members. One grandfather survives an earthquake in Georgia while yelling "I shit on you" to anyone within earshot. The other grandfather ruins the reputation of an American camp bed manufacturer before he is imprisoned for no reason and shot. His little daughter is growing up so that he can now see her even when she's standing behind an armchair. (That part struck me so hard, I don't know why.) His mother, though, is the person I want to talk about because she's a dead ringer for Frankie. They don't have a ton in common--Dovlatov's mother was a newspaper copy editor in the USSR during Stalin's time--but she has a "moral purity," as Dovlatov calls it, that is pure Frankie. An internal standard that allows no compromise. An intolerance for mistake. A tendency to general statements about the qualities of groups of people. A scathing honesty. In other words, she's bossy.

Really, of course, I'm here to talk about Frankie; I was just so surprised to find her in a short story written who knows when about an older Russian woman. Maybe these qualitites are more universal than I thought? Maybe many children have them? And many Russian grown-ups? And me, maybe? (I think Spence would say yes.) I'm going to give you some Frankie examples, and we'll see how everything shakes out.

First, she'll let you know if she wants you in the room or not. Yesterday when Spence came home from school he walked in the front door, and Frankie said "No! No, Daddy! DON'T come in here! Please go! Go! Please go!" You have to imagine this said in a very clipped, staccato, authoritative fashion by a young girl pumping her pointed finger in the air to punctuate every hard, hard syllable.

Second, in Frankie's world songs are open for debate. If the narrative doesn't make sense to her, she'll change it. Let's take "Oh, Susanna." Sometime a way's back, Frankie decided that the "banjo" (you know, on the guy's knee) was a "baby." I think she accepted that the baby was Susanna until she realized that that didn't square with the dream sequence. As maybe you know or maybe you don't, in one of the verses our narrator has a dream the other night when everything was still. He thinks he sees Susanna, coming down the hill. Well, if that's the case (so the thinking goes), who the hell's the baby? After much prodding from Frankie one night, I stopped singing long enough to say the first name that came to mind--Belinda. So now the song makes sense, but only if you don't sing "Oh, Susanna" in the chorus. You have to sing "Oh, Belinda." Frankie ripped apart the story, renamed it, and reassigned the main character to a dream.

Third, this morning she threw an empty cup at me. When I said "No, thank you, Frankie. We do NOT throw cups," she said, "I tossed it, Mommy. Toss. Toss. I didn't throw." Fourth, she does not consider men to be people. Well, maybe they're people, but they do not have personhood. If you ask her if Uncle So-and-so is a person, the answer is no. Daddy? No. Grandpa? No. Pops? No. Mommy? Yes.

(Hmm, forced evacuations, a scary oratorical style, rewriting folklore, rebranding violence as "gentle," condemnation of whole classes of people. I think we're in for a world of trouble. If she sets a bank on fire, I quit.)

I know I was like this when I was a kid. I remember annoying the mess out of my step-mother every time I wouldn't accept her answer of "a quarter past" when I asked the time. I would go check the clock myself, discover it was only thirteen minutes past, and then inform her of her mistake. She would get annoyed, but I clearly remember wondering "why wouldn't you want to know exactly what time it is?" Why wouldn't you want to fix a story in which two characters have the same name? One of the characters is your own invention, but still. Why wouldn't you want your dad to leave the room?

I'm starting to agree with Frankie. Either I have Stockholm syndrome, or I'm a despot, too.

Blah

2009-08-20T08:01:00.001-07:00

I'm bored, I'm hungry, I want to write a lot but I'm at work. On a positive note I found out that I "tend toward having a mood disorder" (my counselor's words), which means I'm in line for drugs. (Sorry to be personal, I'm just excited.) Apparently there's one that combines mood enhancement with added energy--who wouldn't want that?

So, someday I will write again. Someday. . .

That Her Face

2009-07-28T10:41:00.000-07:00

Frankie's impression of my grandmother. I promise I'll post again someday.

Some Things She Also Said Yesterday

2009-07-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

"Tie my hat."

"This dress has a diaper."

Both were spoken as she draped a dish towel around her naked self to make a dress.

This Time I Cannot Be Careful

2009-07-03T07:46:00.000-07:00

This was said by Frankie last night as she got set to jump on me in bed.

It's a holiday, so I'm the only one at work. Boring. But I've learned that when the air conditioner in my building shuts off it sounds like someone is running toward me. Creepy and boring.

Someone email me so I can be entertained.

Perfumania

2009-06-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

Next week is Frankie’s last week at the preschool she’s attended since she was 6 months old. (Funny to call it preschool, but they do.) She’s had the same amazing, wonderful, helpful, perfect teacher the whole time, so, naturally, we’ve been trying for the last few weeks to think of a perfect gift. Luckily, one of Spence’s students goes to church with her. They’re only casual acquaintances, but the student suggested she likes “fragrances.” Being a liker of fragrances myself, I was happy to hear this advice but also slightly terrified: you just cannot pick a perfume for someone else. (Except my mom can; every time she’s given me perfume, it’s been perfect.) So I asked a fellow teacher at the preschool if she knew what kind of perfume Wonder Teacher might like. Naturally, Wonder Teacher never wears perfume to work, so she didn’t know, but she suggested getting the perfume made by one of the brands Wonder Teacher often wears. Perfect, I thought, problem solved. But then, horror of horrors, Spence found out quite accidentally from his students/fashion experts that the brand Wonder Teacher wears is kind of last year. (At the beginning of a unit on Marketing, he had his kids fill out a “What’s Hot, What’s Not” chart. Wonder Teacher’s clothes ranked a sad “What’s Not.”) This led me to two conclusions: that she’s behind the times or, more sinister for my purposes, that she only wears her old, unfashionable clothes to work. It is a preschool, after all. I was suddenly at sea; teenagers don’t know everything, of course, but they know a heck of a lot more than I ever will about whether a trendy, youth-oriented brand is cool . So what was I to do? Commit a major, “uncool old person” faux pas by giving her a perfume to match what she considers her out-of-date, tacky clothes? Disregard the advice of native informants and hope she still thinks this brand is cool? Or ditch the idea and start from scratch? I worried over this for a few weeks, and then got up the courage to ask someone at work who might know. (This was tricky. The brand in question is associated with a certain group, and the person I asked is one of only two people at my office belonging to this group. It was just a friendly question about perfume, but I didn’t want to seem, you know, questionable. Especially since my office mate--no joke--CANNOT TELL THESE TWO INDIVIDUALS APART.) She told me that she owns one of the perfumes the brand in question makes and likes it. Phew. (I couldn’t screw up enough courage to ask if the brand was passé; that seemed like pushing it.) So Spence and I decided to go to the mall, buy her the perfume, and include the receipt in case she didn’t like it.

This should be the end of the story, but it’s not, quite. Last night Spence and I were at CVS. I happened to look at the perfume case just because, and what should I discover but that one of the two perfumes in question was 50% off! Major discussion ensued: should we get her the discount one and not include the receipt?; or should we go to the mall and pay full price for something that we know we can get cheaper, just so we don’t seem like cheapskates? We decided on the latter course. Well, Spence did, and I begrudgingly agreed, but I’ve come to see his point. I mean, how does this sound to you—“You’ve been our daughter’s third parent for almost two years now, so we’d like to honor you with this discount perfume we got at CVS”?!

Still, it rankles. Look for us at the mall soon, paying through the nose.

Update on Car Color

2009-06-23T07:22:00.001-07:00

It's been described to me as "root beer foam," so I think we'll go with that over "brown."

You Never Thought It'd Happen

2009-06-21T17:26:00.001-07:00

Our broke asses bought a car! It's a 2006! And a CRV, which is exactly what we wanted! Grandma Spence (aka "the snake") came with us and bossed salesmen at three different dealerships until two of them were near tears. So I think we got a good deal, but we'll see, I guess.

It's brown, but, as you probably know, that's Spence's favorite color, so it's all okay.

Yay! (Thanks Mom and Grandma Spence! And Grampa Spence for babysitting Frankie while we shopped! And thanks Frankie for forgiving us that it's not pink!)

I Think I'm Going To Cut My Hair Off Again

2009-06-11T12:32:00.001-07:00

If I'm going to look like a sunstroked toddler within ten minutes of going outside every day (and I do, people, I do), it's not worth the fuss.

Also, guess whose morning included bubble liquid spilling on new shoes, plagues of fleas, five screwdrivers, and being bodyslammed by an obese three-year-old? Mine! I'll tell you the story sometime.

Part 2

2009-06-04T10:37:00.000-07:00

Escape from pigtails.

She insists on listening to this record of "circus music" EVERY MORNING. Spence owned this record long before we had her. This is one of my daily trials.

Embrace the cage. Here she is using Spence's ironing board that he set up for her this morning. I don't know where I stand yet on this issue. Her interest in the ironing board may be a positive development in my far-sighted scheme to never iron ever again. On the other hand, if she turns into one of those kids who requires all her clothes to be ironed, I'm sunk.

Happy birthday watermelon.

With the new birdhouse Grampa Spence made for her, wearing Spence's old Superman shirt from his toddler days.

Queen of Straps.

This possum was in our garage. We now have a family of three armadillos living under our deck. They are ALWAYS in our backyard, snuffling up some small pox or whatever. I kind of don't really like animals.

Lazy Person's Post

2009-06-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

That's right, it's another Update in Pictures! (This is only part 1. I have to figure out how to rotate a bunch of pictures, then look out. . .)

A self-portrait from this morning.

Sweaty picnic girl.

Frankie and Mister O running around the tennis courts at Cofrin.

At Spence's birthday picnic. I don't know why I'm making that face. Frankie and that blue pop Meaghan gave her are in another world.

This was just on my camera. I don't know what's going on.

Hooray for Cribs!

2009-06-03T10:26:00.000-07:00

I'm so tired of lugging my kid's heavy behind all over the world: in and out of cribs, in and out of shopping carts, in and out of carseats. In an effort to solve one of these problems, we started talking a few weeks ago about switching Frankie to a bed, but she categorically (and loudly) refused to give up her crib. I was disappointed for a little while, until she turned a wonderful, "I-want-to-be-in-my-crib-alone-get-out-of-my-room" corner. My new attitude is hooray for cribs.

The corner first appeared on the horizon when our pediatrician started giving me a bunch of mess because Frankie still has a pacifier in the car and in her crib. There was, believe it or not, a lot of wiggle room around those rules: "she's getting it in the car anyway, why not let her have it while she's putting on her shoes so she'll stop crying?" Et cetera. The pediatrician told me we have to switch to pacifiers only in the crib to close loopholes like that, and then, in a few months, no pacifiers at all. So anyway, Frankie freaked and started asking for longer and longer, more and more frequent "momo breaks" in her crib.

I was not prepared for how this would change my life, as usual. Last Thursday she spent a solid hour in her crib, playing with her dollhouse and sucking away furiously. Monday was another hour. Then Tuesday she spent TWO ENTIRE HOURS alone in her crib. As you probably have guessed, I had sussed out a pattern by then and was ready for my alone/cleaning time. (The first two days I sat on the couch and looked out the window--my very favorite thing to do in the whole world anyway--thinking she was going to get fed up any minute so it wasn't worth starting to clean.) I did an entire kitchen full of dishes. I did an entire kitchen full of dishes.

I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me before this week: a crib is a cage. Hooray for cribs!

Weird Day

2009-06-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

Today, Spence's birthday, has been weird. For starters, when Frankie woke up this morning she alerted Spence that elephants had taken her pacifier during the night. Usually she tells us that an owl took her bunnies and then returned them, so it makes a change. (Every night before I put her to bed she says "Owls not come in my bed tonight, Mommy? Just zoo animals." She's so weird.) Then Frankie and I tried to make pineapple cupcakes for Spence's birthday. Frankie had a screaming, crying spazz fest because the cupcakes weren't in the paper liner bag, and I discovered that my baking powder is expired when I opened the oven door to find twelve flat, pineapple-scented little turds looking up out of the pan at me. Then for a couple of reasons my house keys were in two different places that weren't on my person. No big deal, it just feels kind of weird to lock up and leave for the day without your keys. Not bad, just weird. Then Spence realized he was too sick to teach after all and came home. Of course we had to cancel our babysitter and Mildred's plan for tonight, and the schmancy champagne I bought will just have to wait. (I want to drink it now, you see.) Then work. Well, it wasn't too bad. Let me just tell you that there are days when Microsoft Word is the last thing I want my job to include. Sometimes I'd rather work in a prison. Then when I was driving home a little light involving my transmission came on, alerting me not to accelerate quickly. Brrrrr. The last time this light came on I had to replace the transmission, and I'm not doing that again--my car is seventeen years old, people. Maybe I'll be getting that new, tall car of my dreams, after all. . . .

But now Spence is out getting Gyro Plus and some beer (for me) for our birthday dinner, and I get to give him his present! Yay!

So that's my day. Not terrible. Just weird. Oh, and just now in the bath, Frankie sang happy birthday "to drink." Word.

It is now

2009-05-22T13:40:00.001-07:00

4:40 pm, and my office mate has been eating lunch for the past two and a half hours. Noisily. Anybody who knows me knows how much I want to vomit/destroy right now.

Thunderstorms, Wind

2009-05-20T18:11:00.000-07:00

If you've talked to me lately you know that all this rain has put me in a foul mood. In fact, it's inspired me with a certain phrase that seems to apply to every situation. I've almost said it to coworkers, members of my own family, everyone shopping in Sephora tonight, etc. So I'm going to post something I wrote last weekend before I forget I'm a lady and insult you all. (Speaking of which, I met a new friend who used a really, really great phrase that I'm going to try to steal from her. She was talking about a scary playground, and she said "that place scares the mess out of me." I love it! It's actually more literally disgusting than what I would've said, and it's not offensive.)

Oh yeah, that Sephora reference? I was at the mall tonight trying on bathing suits. I eventually spent a lot of money on one that makes me look like a slightly out-of-shape Harry Houdini. (Spence says the effect is better when I take off my brown socks, so that's some comfort.)

Here's the old stuff:

Spence is away in Promland tonight, and I just put Frankie to bed, so now it's time for blogging and a good old-fashioned "Mrs. Sad" dinner of spinach leaves and beer. (My neighbor just opened his door and a bird flew out of his house. Birds!) I thought of telling you a bit about Frankie's preschool, a bit about my sexy eye, and maybe a little something about being out of touch with the rest of the world. And you wonder how I'm able to keep my readership so low.

Frankie's now in the two-year-old class at preschool. The switch from the infant class happened because she ratted herself out in front of a DCF inspector (I told you about that already, right?) and caused lots and lots of tears. But now that she's there, her schedule is such that I am able to work a full day in the office while still spending the same amount of time with her in the morning. I tried like the dickens for a year and a half to make working at home work for me, but I realize now that I'm just not cut out for it. Now 90% of my stress has disappeared, my counselor has complimented me on my all-around sanity (well, she didn't say that exactly), and a coworker pointed out that I no longer threaten to quit every day. The preschool wasn't my first choice, and I'm still not completely convinced about keeping Frankie there, but right now having a sane mom is probably more important than baking bread once a week (like she'd get to do in the other school). Right? Anyway, what I wanted to tell you was about one of Frankie's teachers. She's kind of frenetic and very, very loud. She's also a nonnative speaker of English. Basically, she's not for everyone, but I'm sort of excited for Frankie to see that people can be lots of different ways. Plus she provides way more comedy than your ordinary preschool teacher. For example, I learned from the lesson plan that they read a book called Peel-a-Boo Penguins this week. And last week when I had to pick Frankie up early for a doctor appointment, I discovered something really, truly singular. We needed to leave right after Frankie's nap, so I got to her class a little before I thought she'd wake up. I went and sat next to her while Ms. X tidied up the room. The lights were out, there was soft music playing, and eight or so two-year-olds were sound asleep. I thought I'd just sit around until Frankie woke up, but at the stroke of 2:30, Ms. X turned on the lights, blasted some circus music on the CD player, and walked around the room yelling "Wake Up! Wake Up! Ha Ha Ha!! Wake Up, Jachary! Ha Ha Ha! Wake up! Kaylee! Wake Up! Where your shoes?! Ha Ha Ha! Wake up! Ha Ha Ha!" until all the children did indeed wake up. That's weird, right? Now every day at 2:30 when I'm at work I feel a little stab of terror and pity for the poor souls who are being woken up in such a way. (I know if Ms. X tried to get me out of bed in the morning like that I'd probably punch her in the face. That sounds hostile, I know, but the truth's the truth.) On the other hand, she has a master's degree in child something or other and she gave me a chocolate bar for Mother's Day. I love her.

So, on to sexiness. Spence and I were out the other night, and he was telling me about a coworker of his who operates on the "come hither" principle in her daily life. Aside from noting the fact that this seems pretty unwise when you work in a high school, I was intrigued. I never thought about acting a certain way, sexy or otherwise, around the fellas. (Even though it sounds like it, I'm not being superior; that just never occurred to me. Obviously I haven't been hit on very much.) This woman's method is the thing called bedroom eyes, so when we got home, I spent some time in front of the mirror and discovered that I do indeed have one eye that can be cast in a sexy fashion. The other one is just weird. I don't know what I'm going to do with this knowledge, but I have it. I'm also Facebook friends with a girl I sort of knew a few years ago who seems to have some contest going among her, um, intimate friends, the winner to be the person who can call her "sexiest woman in the world" or some such thing the most often. [No f-ing mess, "Let's Get It On" just came on the stereo. To which I say, EAT MESS!] That just seems lame to me. I don't have anything more eloquent to say--it's just lame.

I must stop now. In the contest between spinach and beer, I suppose you know who's won. I guess my out-of-touchness will have to be saved for another post.

Another Lament

2009-05-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

I want to be married to the person I love, not just in some sort of business/zookeeping partnership.

AAAAAARRRGGGGHHH!!!!

What Do I Do?!?!

2009-05-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

My boss (not just my supervisor, or even her supervisor--the big boss) just added me as a friend on Facebook. Do I accept? I mean, I have to, right? And just never, ever use Facebook during office hours again?

Lament

2009-05-15T11:16:00.001-07:00

Bye bye, Spence. Have fun in Promland. See you Sunday. . .

Eurovision

2009-05-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

Probably everybody already knows what fun can be had. If not, please go here. If nothing else, please, please watch the Czech Republic's entry.

This is My Life

2009-05-12T12:51:00.000-07:00

So I’m pretty sure our mailman thinks I’m a loony bird--for a million reasons really, but namely for the state of our mailbox. You see, a tiny wren has insisted on trying to build a nest in the sucker and persists in stuffing it full of straw and other trash. Even after a single, high-class effort on my part to clear it out, he or she keeps coming back. I had hoped that the touch of woman’s hand would’ve spoiled the place forever, but no. (Possibly I should make another effort.) And because of all the sticks, straw, mattress stuffing, horse hair, and man hair in my mailbox, I don’t take the mail itself out as frequently as I would like. So the mailbox stays open and the wren pumps more shit into it. And then this morning, when doing my makeup on the back deck was the only way my makeup was going to get done, I remembered that I put my hand mirror in the mailbox a few weeks ago. I wish I remembered why.

Anyway, this is what my mailman thinks about me every day, and it's all leading up to what happened this morning. It looked like it was going to rain, so I decided to run outside and put Frankie’s stroller in the garage. I was still in my pyjamas--modest, sure, but not anything you want to be seen outside in for longer than it takes to put away a stroller. Rain seemed imminent, so I flung open the front door and ran almost directly into the mailman who was just walking up the steps. I wanted to say something about my stroller mission or something conspiratorial about that wren, but what I said was “I’ll take that!” Then I grabbed the mail and ran back inside like a complete psychopath. Every day that man must wonder.

Oh, last night Frankie's pyjamas said "My Best Buddy" on them. I asked her if she was my best buddy and she said "I a friend and a daughter." So I guess the answer's no.

Pictures from the Weekend

2009-05-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

Here is Frankie on her pony ride. When we got home she sat on our cat Pily's back--which I cannot believe was tolerated--and said "I ride Pily's pony." Ahem.

One of the seven or so carousel rides. The zebra was a fave, also the cougar. Frankie's been making cougar jokes a lot lately.

We discovered what style of glasses Spence should never, ever buy. He said it looks like he's hiding out in Argentina.

Frankie at the beach. She chooses all her own clothes, you know.

Comedy Purposes

2009-05-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

Before we went to Ft. Myers for Valentine's Day, I absolutely HAD to clean out my car. I saved everything that wasn't trash in two cloth Publix bags to catalog and list with the idea that the things I had allowed to collect in my car would be funny to other people. The joke's on me, though, because these two bags have been shuffled around my house ever since, with no real effort made to find out what's inside them.

Just in case it might still be funny, though, I'll list the things that I was pretty sure would crack you up: parking ticket, my winter coat, my grandmother's scissors, two hot mitts, my coworker's purple umbrella, Frankie's hand-knitted Peter Rabbit sweater. . . . That was back in February; it goes without saying that the heap of trash rapidly bloomed to greater than its original size. I tried once again a few weeks ago to clean it finally and fully, but Erica and Audrey came over and I only finished the passenger foot area. But, now, I am pleased and proud to announce that I have achieved a stuff-free car as of May 4th. (The floor is still covered with cheerios, goldfish, leaves, and pine cones, however, because, though we have a shop-vac, we do not have an extension cord! Why?!)

In other news, we went to Clearwater Beach over the weekend for a wedding. We were going to bring Frankie to the shindig cause one of her best pals from Ft. Myers was the flower girl, but Grampa and Grandma Spence offered to drive up, just for the day, to babysit her in the hotel room. Even though we had to be back by 9 p.m., it was still WONDERFUL to have five or so hours to ourselves and alcohol. Thanks, Spences.

Everything about the weekend went more smoothly than I'd expected. The hotel was on a channel between Tampa Bay and the Gulf and had a little strip of private beach that was the perfect size for Frankie to run around and not be intimidated. There was, of course, a pool that she loved. And the wedding was really fun! I hadn't been to one in a pretty long time (come on, friends, get married!) and I'd forgotten how sweet it all is. Plus the buffet. Then Sunday we took Frankie to the Lowry Park Zoo, which was TOTALLY WORTH IT. It was big enough to be fun but not overwhelmingly big. And even though most of the rides were too old for Frankie, there was still a lot for her to do. She rode a pony, brushed a goat, had an (untaken) opportunity to pet a llama, fed a giraffe, watched an elephant "go poopy and peepee at the SAME TIME," saw tigers, rode the carousel seven times, and got really scared in the kids'-water-play-area. I don't really know what kinds of thing older kids like, but I totally recommend it for the two- to four-year-old set.

But the trip to the zoo reminded me (as if I needed reminding) of how truly giant is the fog of unpreparedness in which I live my life. When we were getting out of the car, my thought process went something like this: "I don't want to bring a lot of stuff in with me, so I'll leave my purse in the car. I'll only bring essential items in the smallest, most inconvenient receptacle and allow Frankie to bring whatever she wants with her." I walked into the park with two bottles of sunscreen, wipes, and a couple of diapers crammed into the zippered tote bag that came with Frankie's suitcase. Frankie entered with a frame purse, a bunny, and two pairs of sunglasses. Among the few things I decided we didn't need to bring were a stroller and a bathing suit and swim diaper (even though I knew the zoo has a few watery play areas). I'm not including a change of clothes in that list, because a change of clothes didn't even cross my mind. Long story short, Frankie peed out her diaper and skirt in an elephant transport cage and spent the rest of the day bottomless; the bunny, sunglasses, and frame purse were abandoned to our care; I had nowhere but my pockets to put all the tokens they make you buy; and we had to carry her everywhere. Nobody got a sunburn, though.

More Advice

2009-05-05T14:46:00.000-07:00

When Spence was talking about getting a dog the other day, Frankie interrupted him with "We get a lawnmower for ourselves."

The kid's got priorities.

Hairdo Schmairdo

2009-05-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

I've been working on getting Frankie to let me put her hair up, so we've been combing our hair each to day to make it look "neat" and I occasionally model by putting my (quite short) hair up in some fashion. So the other day I put pigtails in my hair, and Frankie said "Mommy, you look like a girl." This was trumped the following day when I finished combing my hair and asked her, "Does my hair look neat?" Frankie's reply? "Not yet." Ouch.

Here's a picture of the pigtails she left in for ten minutes.

And here's a picture of what she requires us do to keep her hair from getting wet in the bath.

But she won't tolerate pigtails. Such a pickle.

Oh, and please ignore the grout. It's going to be redone soon.

Some Stuff Lately

2009-04-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

We’ve been up to a lot lately that I haven’t yet had the time to write about, because, as you maybe know or maybe don’t, we’re the last non-disadvantaged people left in our town without internet access at home. (Sometimes when I get to work in the morning I look at the Facebook and just marvel at all the leisure that’s gone on after business hours.) So here are a few items, thematically arranged.

I’ve been trying to do a bit of gardening. That means I bought some lantana because the man at Home Depot thought it might be able to survive the very specific, stringent dangers of the bed under our front window. As I told him, it gets full sun in the morning, but almost none after noon, and is directly under a corner of our roof-with-no-gutters and gets absolutely swamped with standing water at the lightest drizzle. What I didn’t tell him, though, is that I’m a plant assassin. I know some people claim to have “black thumbs” or whatever, but I think I’m deadlier than most in that I don’t even need to establish a typical “gardener-garden” relationship before the slaying. No potting, transplanting, or anything else for me. Simply through visualization and wishing a plant well I can achieve a kill overnight. This talent even came up in my Beginning French oral exam a few years ago. You’re familiar with these: you talk and answer questions for fifteen minutes about, for example, the typical weather of your native city and the leisure activities you aime bien very much, like summer sports and the cinema. After I talked for a while, my professor asked me if I liked to garden, and I replied, “I love very much the flowers but I do not garden because they die always.” (I’m not writing this in French mainly because I don’t think I can, but also because I’m currently reading a book—in English, of course—the author of which assumes that I can read French and uses it, not just as a garnish, but in phrases that carry meaning important to the flow of the story. I don’t know what the hell he thinks he’s doing. I would never do that to you, even if I could.) I’ll keep you posted about the lantana. So far they look okay, though it hasn’t rained yet and I’m pretty certain my cats are pooping in them.

In other (possibly deadly) failures, our fridge broke right about the time we decided to keep Frankie in her current, academically oriented preschool next year instead of switching her to a crunchy Waldorf school. As our fridge was breathing its last, I read a book about very organized parents using Montessori techniques in the home because I figured we were going to have to do a lot of independence-fostering ourselves. (Please let me reiterate that these parents, if even real at all, were almost tragically organized.) What I learned was that it’s a real morale booster in the early days of making a transition to a Montessori home to take everything out of your fridge and leave it on the counter for thirty-six hours. The grown-ups can spend that time playing a delirious game of “This Might Kill Us Now, This Might Kill Us Later” while the child soaks up the importance of a beautiful and orderly environment.

We got a new fridge two days ago. It’s so beautiful I don’t want to use it. I put back all of the condiments that seemed to be able to survive their sabbatical, but I’m conflicted about the soy sauce. The label says “Refrigerate for Quality.” Anybody have any ideas about whether I should throw it out or not? Obviously I’m a fan of quality, but I wouldn’t call myself a fanatic.

Dialogue

2009-04-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

Here are a few things Frankie's come out with lately.

F: Mommy, I have a question for you.
Me (laughing): Okay, sweetie, what is it?
F: Mac and cheese.

(I'm enjoying the leftovers of that question right now.)

F (to me): Daddy's sister?
Me: Yes, sweetie, Daddy's sister is Aunt Chelsey.
F: Aunt Chelsey not go to Daddy's office.
Me: No, she lives far away.
F: I not live far away. I live close.

F (on the way to school this morning): Mommy an eagle?
Me (charmed, thinking she's referring to my nobility and my fine bone structure): Mommy's an eagle? Well. . .
F: NOOO!!!!! [laughter]

More later.

Hmmm. . .

2009-04-21T13:06:00.001-07:00

Who knew there'd be so much poetry in a book about the history of the English postal service?

Planet Earth

2009-04-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

We've been watching a lot of Planet Earth lately, on loan from my dad. Here are a couple of things Spence said last night during the Great Plains one. I'm paraphrasing:

That Arctic Fox is so Benatar. She looks like the lady in a nail salon graphic.
The Tibetan fox looks more like Richard Gere than a regular fox. He is a Buddhist, so . . .

Spence was annoyed at me for writing these down, but my feeling is you've got to expect these things if you're going to be so charming.

I forgot to say that Frankie also wanted to bring water in a baggie to her friend's house.

Baggies

2009-04-21T08:40:00.000-07:00

Whoever taught my kid about baggies yesterday can just go to hell. At first I thought it was cute: when she found out we were going to a friend's house, she said "I bring my waffle and banana," ran to the kitchen, and came back pushing her waffle and banana into a quart-size baggie. Wow, I thought, she's figured out how to store her food. But then it was all "Mommy close the baggie," "Mommy open the baggie," "Mommy close the baggie," "Mommy get banana out of the baggie" (after she'd squished it up). THEN she went around the house to see what else she wanted to bring. "I bring these," she said and handed me three grown-up books. "Mommy get baggie?" I thought I could fob her off with a gallon-size, you know, one the books would actually fit in, but she wouldn't have that. It was three proper books in a sandwich baggie or nothing. Which meant it was nothing. Or rather, it was screaming and crying.

Advice

2009-04-20T14:38:00.000-07:00

You shouldn't overeat at a work function when your pants are held together with a binder clip.

Names

2009-04-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

I'm really into them. I carried name books around when I was a little kid, and, you know, read them for fun. Weird.

Anyway, Frankie has FINALLY started naming her dolls. (I've been waiting since she was born.) You already know about Dippa and Julia. Please let me introduce Flowers (also sometimes known as "Daddy") and Tikim (rhymes with "sic 'em," also sometimes known as "Gloria"), Flowers's little sister.

I thought I could find a picture of Flowers online, but I guess you'll just have to look in this month's Parents magazine article about the importance of dolls. First a name, and now, fame. I'm so proud.

Gross, Nasty, Sick

2009-04-09T17:44:00.000-07:00

I'm sick again, missing work, ruining Spence's spring break. He's had NO time to himself at all, and I was going to take Frankie here and there so he could go canoeing in the awesome bitching new canoe I just bought him for last year's birthday present. But no. I'm home on all kinds of nonsense, including a nebulizer (sp?) that Frankie calls "Mommy's machine."

But this is more proof that Spence is my very favorite friend, husband, etc. He's been playing with Frankie non-stop all week, cleaned the F out of the kitchen today (no mean feat, it usually requires hours of solitude and a lot of alcohol), and is right now out getting me a new book to read, two Sicilian movies to watch, and a (Ah!) diet coke.

You want to hear something gross? When my doctor was just starting her exam, she said, "You have a sinus infection. I can smell it." EEEEWWWWW!!!!!!!!

Spring Break

2009-04-07T07:25:00.001-07:00

Spence is home with Frankie all this week. When I got home from work yesterday, they were making sheets and blankets for her new dollhouse. So sweet! (She's the named the two ladies who share the house "Dippa" and "Julia.")

Once Again

2009-04-03T13:49:00.000-07:00

Once again my dad spent the night, stayed up way past any of us, drank some beers, and cleaned MY ENTIRE KITCHEN. You probably already know I don't have a dishwasher. I was also sick most of this past week, so nobody had paid any attention to cleanliness or order in the kitchen before he arrived and it was getting dire.

My dad was in town for a hair appointment. I have the best dad. THANK YOU!!!!

Not Every Kid is Into Walking Sticks

2009-04-03T12:35:00.000-07:00

I'm here to complain. (I think I was maybe born under a whiny star. Or maybe I just have a bad attitude. Or maybe I drink too much. Or maybe. . .) You might remember that I have a problem with English packaging. Now I realize I may have a problem with PACKAGING IN GENERAL. My feeling is that goods aimed at children should be packaged in such a way that they can be opened in the middle of a tantrum and a high wind, and without bloodshed or the use of tools. Why wouldn't they be?

Can I tell you why I bring this up? Last week a slightly sick but mostly just grumpy Frankie wanted to paint on her new Ikea easel that Meaghan (thank you!) brought up from Orlando. I told her I would need to put the paper, which was still in its packaging, on the easel. Was this okay, or would chalk be better? (The easel has a chalkboard side.) No, this was okay. I removed the wooden dowel in the bottom of the easel that the roll of paper slips onto, and everything was instantly not okay. Because this dowel, as should have been obvious to me, was Frankie's cane. Yes, her cane. Her cane. I tried to get her to choose between paint or cane, and for a moment (just a moment), paint won out, so I took away the cane, took the plastic wrapper off the paper, put the paper on the dowel, and slid it into place. Then I hunched up under the easel and found that the paper was secured in the middle with a very thin sticker. I couldn't get a purchase on it or really even see it, and it goes without saying that Frankie was working herself up into a mucous froth by this point, screaming "MY CANE! MY CANE!" I thought several times about getting up out of that easel and getting a pair of scissors or a key or something, but for some reason that seemed like it would take an impossibly long time. So I wasted some time looking around the floor in front of me and considering whether a piece of ribbon, a brown washcloth, or a bit of wrapping paper could be of any use. I ended up grabbing both loose corners of the paper and pulling them out and toward each other until the roll unwound enough that the sticker ripped; you know, like with toilet paper. This ended up being a terrifying amount of paper, essentially ripped in half length-wise, that I then had to ease through the top of the easel and the little slit at the bottom. Goodness, what was the point? Because once it was ready, we made only a few marks with crayon before a very snotty and exhausted Frankie was back on the floor screaming.

I think Ikea could have done a better job. Why put a shitty sticker on something that was already packaged and that can only be accessed, once it's in place, from underneath a piece of furniture? And, I mean, come on, that's her cane.

I also cut my hand opening one of her birthday presents.

The Kees

2009-03-28T19:12:00.001-07:00

We met the Kees at the playground this morning and had a lot of fun. Frankie spent most of the time getting naked under a water faucet, slinging mud, and pretending to be Ceci's baby snake. (Ceci was the mama snake.) I didn't get a picture, unfortunately.

But this is how she looked a few weeks ago after we got home from meeting the Kees at the playground. Thanks guys. It's always a blast.

I Am Not the Recession

2009-03-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

Please read an email I just got from Spence but keep in mind the title of this post.

Dear Recession,
Please soon turn into a global economic situation in which drawing big brown alphabets and vultures-from-life and caricatures of Victor Hugo can feed starving kids and send refugees back to their home from before.

He's smart. That's why you should read his blog.

Nothing Much

2009-03-25T11:18:00.001-07:00

Sometimes it takes me as long to get Frankie in her carseat after a trip to the grocery store as it takes some people to park, buy six blocks of cream cheese, get back in their car, and drive away. I learned that this morning.

Also,

I used mine to take birthday pictures. I'll post some soon.

On Second Thought

2009-03-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

I'm a production editor at a book publishing company; I want to tell you one of the best parts of my job. I receive "final drafts" of manuscripts that are then sent to freelance copy editors. When they have been edited, the authors get a chance to review the copy editors' work and make any additional changes. Oftentimes an author sees fit at this point to revise their Acknowledgments page, and this is where the fun begins. A nosy person like myself can't help but wonder what "Uncle Gus" did recently to be erased from the page. What change of heart caused someone previously promised "my lifelong friendship" to be the recipient of "my thanks"? It's especially interesting when someone is struck from a list. When Jackie L. Jones is deleted from "At the Blahblah Archive, James M. Smith, Jackie L. Jones, and Sarah White were extraordinarily helpful," I wonder if Ms. Jones ended up charging those overdue fees all three had promised to overlook. In the month or two (or three or four) between the authors' submission and their review of the copyedited manuscript a lot can happen, I guess.

Maybe this doesn't seem that funny, but when you've got the real thing in your hand and you can see the little stray slivers of colored pencil shed when an author so vigorously (furiously?) corrects the list of people who make their life and work possible, man, that's comedy.

Another List

2009-03-18T09:08:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the things Frankie yelled yesterday to welcome in her third year.

Help, couch! I'm tall!
MY GOODNESS!!! MY GOODNESS!!! MY GOODNESS!!! (running through Sweet Dreams on a sugar high)
OH GOSH! OH GOSH! OH GOSH! (ditto)
I be basking in the sun.

Happy birthday, crazy girl.

It's Our Birthday!

2009-03-17T11:31:00.000-07:00

It started out shit, but now it's lovely. I'm happy to think about Frankie sharing cupcakes with her friends at school.

Yep, we have the same birthday. And it's a drinking holiday. Look out in 2028--we're coming to YOUR town.

Saving is Only Part of the Pleasure

2009-03-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

Aly's post the other day put me in mind of a few encounters I've had at the grocery store recently. While her Publix showcases advanced style, I go to a frat version where everyone is drastically presentable. One thing about me, I've never quite made the connection that wanting to look nice in case you should run into anyone means you should look nice almost all the time, because when you leave the house you run the risk of seeing other people, darn it. I mean, I know this, I just don't really know it. So anyway, Frankie and I were carting it down an aisle, her with some kind of food all over her face and me in some ill-fitting green clothes. A fashionable young man came walking toward us and glanced at Frankie. Frankie yelled "Daddy!" while staring directly into his eyes, making herself impossible to ignore. I blushed hot red blood. The young man looked at me and said--sparklingly, presentably--"Have we met?" I blubbered some unwitty response and have never felt more like a hedge-dweller.

The other encounter has to do with multi-tasking. Last Thursday I put Frankie down for her nap and started to work. She slept for an extra long time, during which I was obsessively clock-watching and shutting down and restarting my computer as I thought I heard her but did not. When she finally woke up with a fever it occurred to me that I was just then missing a meeting at work, so I left a message with my boss trying to make it sound like I had actually not forgotten about it. Frankie and I went to the pediatrician, received a diagnosis of tonsillitis, and headed off to Aly's Publix for Frankie's doctor-visit-sprinkles-cookie. I don't know about your kid, but Frankie is WAY into walking by herself at the store now, and, as we're usually there before 9 a.m., I almost always let her. Unmedicated and in pain as she was, I let her walk this time even though it was the post-middle school pickup rush. When we got to the freezer aisle and I set myself the task of finding a vegan burrito to stock up on, I got a call from my office about the meeting I'd missed. Even in the best of times I'm not terribly clever about finding things in the grocery store--trying to do so while corraling a wandering two-year-old and conducting an intelligent, impressive conversation about work was impossible. Frankie almost made it to produce, and I kept more than one person from getting their freezer goods in a timely manner, bumped into someone's cart, and had to admit to my colleague that I was having a hard time concentrating because I was busy shopping. F***!!!

This brings me to my larger point. Why are so many people such bitches in the grocery store? I mean 1) why put the vegan burrito a freezer door down from the non-vegan ones of the same brand; 2) why try to squeeze your cart between three families who don't see you just because you might be able to if no one moves or breathes; 3) why insist on picking up your freezer stuff RIGHT NOW; 4) why look a person carrying a basket and a crying two-year-old in the eye while you hurry to get in line in front of them; 5) why make this same person wait to leave while you stroll into the store. I thought people didn't like to see tantrums, but this trip proved me wrong.

As you can see, I was in a hot hot rage by the time we got to my car, but something so silly and absurd happened then that I had to laugh. I set the bags of groceries on top of my trunk to unlock the door. (Perhaps I should have put them in the trunk, but I was holding Frankie and her two bunnies as well as the groceries and my head was full of steam.) Then I put Frankie in the backseat and crouched in after her to get her in the carseat. She had lots of ideas about where she should sit, which of the three hats she found in the backseat to put on her head, where the hell her sticker had gotten to, whether or not to take off her shoes and socks or just her shoes, etc. As I was struggling with her to get her in the seat, I saw out of the corner of my eye that one of the bags of groceries--the one with the giant bottle of apple juice--was rolling off my trunk. There was a car parked next to us with an elderly lady in the passenger seat who I had made eye contact with as we first got to the car and who, I could tell, was watching me put Frankie in the car, and for some reason, I looked at her. For help maybe, I don't know. Anyway, the moment I looked at her, the moment my apple juice threatened to carry a bag of groceries to the ground, she looked away. Huh, I thought, abandoned by the aged. Damn.

Will Somebody Please

2009-03-11T13:21:00.001-07:00

wash my dishes and tweeze my eyebrows? (I'm not being euphemistic.)

Please, somebody. It's almost my birthday.

Update in Pictures

2009-03-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

I realize that I haven't written much about Frankie lately, so here's a bit about life with her.

She has been naked more often than not. Today she only had clothes on during her nap. Here you see her eating lunch--that she's wearing socks and shoes is a surprise to me.

On the counter eating a most popular breakfast these days--dry oatmeal. She either wants this or "hot oatmeal, lots of hot water."

"I cook naked." I told you, she's ALWAYS naked.

This was taken a few weeks ago when Owen invited us over to play in his giant garden-in-progress dirt pile. This was the first time I ever heard Frankie say "I happy." Thank you, Meaghan.

This is Frankie using Owen's dumptruck against him. She's happy.

Painting because I couldn't think of anything else to do, and, really, I couldn't be bothered to prevent disaster.

Because it's important to have literacy around the home.

More art disaster.

Aww.

I don't know whose name this is, I was just impressed with the artistry. . .

The Smartest Person I've Ever Met

2009-03-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Is writing.

Direct Quote

2009-03-10T10:44:00.001-07:00

"Mommy no have saltines at mommy's crackers office."

This is important to point out because "daddy [does] have saltines at daddy's office." So you can see who wins the "best office" battle. Spence even has a purple desk chair. Because he's a high school teacher and he wants to appear to be a heterosexual.

Old Maid

2009-03-09T12:30:00.000-07:00

The summer Frankie was three months old we housesat a lovely place on Little Lake Santa Fe. It had a dock and boat, a huge gorgeous porch that faced the sunset over the lake, a guest house (so our family could visit us), lots of roses and wasps, a great big kitchen, and beautiful walks in the surrounding countryside. I say all this so you can get an idea of the types of things we missed out on because we had a three-month-old. (Spence probably enjoyed them as much as he could. He was home all summer with her because I'd gone back to work.)

The point here is that we needed something to do after Frankie was swaddled and in her co-sleeper, and that thing, out in the country, tended to be the playing of Old Maid. I don't generally like games. In fact, I have a violent history of hating them that you should ask me about some time. But exhausted parents have to find distraction where they can.

And even creativity. Our respective deadened genius and our despair at playing that damn game again led us to create our own cast of characters for the deck. Here, for you, is the newly rediscovered list of folks we dreamed up when we at our most desperate. May the absurdity herein remind me that I should under no circumstances have another child.

Male characters:
Sir Fulke Heynonny (Elizabethan fop)
Capt. Anthony (fireman)
Commissioner
Skeleton Key (hobo)
Spotsman (prep school)
Steve Stroke (coxswain)
Mr. Coalstripe (train engineer)
Cervantes (cartographer)
Baby Dwa-Dwa
Upsa Daisy (a snake)
Somerset Prunewell (gardener)
Heinz Danube (composer)

Female characters
Doll Quickneedle (Elizabethan tarty-toes)
Chug Queen
Annie Redwood
Jane Addams
Blousey LeBon
Frieda (short-order waitress; her portrait features eggs)
Little Slicker (Shirley Temple type)
Cranky Tess
Big Deal (a teddy bear)
Hurdy Gerty
Polly Parlour
Hortense Dribble (basketball champ; bloomers)
Swamp Molly

Note: Baby Dwa-Dwa is a piece of Spencer family lore. Apparently someone once met a four-year-old named Joshua who so called himself.

Spa Day

2009-03-06T10:10:00.001-08:00

Yesterday after I got home from work, Frankie instructed me to lay on the floor with my legs propped up on the coffee table while she sprayed my feet with a vinegar-and-water solution which was then wiped off with a diaper. I wish I had a picture.

Dispatch from Crazytown

2009-02-25T10:33:00.000-08:00

Since all I've done lately is post lists, here's a little something in narrative form. A friend was in Target the other day behind this John Goodman-type man wearing a tool belt. She took a picture of his only purchase.

Are you sure you want to do this?

2009-02-24T14:06:00.000-08:00

This is my list of tips for flying with a toddler. I don't pretend to have a lot of experience, mine being limited to one trip from Orlando to London--7.5 hours going, 8.5 coming back--with a 21-month-old girl, so I'm going to divide the list into things we did and things we wish we'd did. I mean done.

Things we did:

If your kid has never flown, TAKE THEM TO THE AIRPORT BEFORE YOUR TRIP. I can't underestimate how much this helped. I took Frankie to the dinky Gainesville airport a few days before we left and explained to her the general check-in/security scene. The security people even let her walk through the metal detector and gave her a sticker. When we got to the much-larger Orlando airport, Frankie wasn't nervous at all, probably because, back in Gainesville, I had prepared her with my typical lucidity: "Try to picture this with, like, way more people, sweetie." (This tip is greatly aided by the one following.)
Explain every step of the process a lot. Include the crappy parts. I don't know how many times I retold the "story of the airport," but I know I started getting made fun of by adults. "First we're going to wait in line, then we're going to give our suitcases to the person who''ll put them on the plane, then we're going to wait in line again," etc.
Get bulkhead seats. I never knew why this was important for families. It's because kids can get out of their seats and stand and not be in anybody's way. An advantage.
Travel with an adult who, instead of helping in any way, occasionally looks up from his/her sudoku long enough to give you a pitying smile. This is optional but will provide a good target for any frustrated anger you may have built up.
Be lucky. I don't know how else to put this. Make sure your kid is in a great mood, charmed by moving sidewalks, distracted easily, excited and not scared, eating well, and not sick.
Time your arrival at the airport just right. Another tricky one that depends entirely on the airport, and on you. We were WAY early to the Orlando airport because I hadn't traveled overseas in four years and had lost the habit, and because I'm phobic about being late generally. But we were much later arriving at Gatwick than I would ordinarily be comfortable with. The timing was perfect in both cases: even though we ended up having to wait in Orlando for six hours, that airport is pretty kid friendly (moving sidewalks, Disney statues, pleasant decor); I was stressed out getting to Gatwick so late, but really I wouldn't have wanted to be there a second longer.
Bring interesting toys. Well, obviously. But don't wrap them (security will unwrap them, especially in England, grr), make sure they don't have loads of parts (even crayons fit this category, I should think), and, if at all possible, get something really great that doesn't make any noise. The hit of our plane trip was a small globe full of little lights that whirled around in an interesting pattern. When Frankie was shattered with fatigue and boredom she could still manage to push the button and have a wild time of it without bothering anyone else.
Travel on a day when nobody belonging to a major world culture and in their right mind would want to travel. I'm talking about Christmas Day, Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve, for example. We came back to Orlando on New Year's Eve and there were around thirty people on the plane, making it much easier for Frankie to achieve her goal of looking out of each and every window. She didn't have to climb over so many people.

Things we wish we'd done:

Bring something you like to eat (particularly if you have a special diet and even if you've notified the airline in advance), and designate your own water bottle and NEVER let your kid touch it. On the way to England, Virgin gave us vegan dinners but not snacks or breakfast. A handful of goldfish for breakfast after three hours of sleep and no food since I could remember only served to make me mad. I became unhinged when I discovered four more goldfish floating in my water bottle. This could have been prevented easily.
Bring your own carseat? I'm undecided about the carseat problem, mainly because it's manifold. We left ours at home, brought an umbrella stroller for use in the airport and then gatechecked it, used a Virgin-provided carseat on the plane, and borrowed one from my mom's friend for use in England, but I'm not convinced that that was the best method. The Virgin seat was very uncomfortable and nearly impossible to sleep in, and pickup for gatechecked luggage was so far from the airplane that we ended up carrying Frankie most of the time on arrival, anyway. But I'm pretty sure our carseat, however FAA-approved, would not have fit in a coach-class seat, and we didn't feel like shelling out for a carseat carrier that would've made it possible to lug the thing around the airport. A friend of mine is going to use one of those CARES-type harnesses next month, so I'll let you know how that goes. (Ugh. I think the solution is not to travel for several years.)
Don't count on England. It's a great country and all, but don't count on it to provide a well-organized airport experience. Don't think that just because you've declared your little baggy of liquids to one set of security people, a subsequent set of security people won't tell you that if you'd only declared your little baggy of liquids they wouldn't have had to unpack (and repack, messily) every bag belonging to every member of your party one at a time. This may sound unduly general, but I'm not sure I entirely trust the way English people think, either. For example, no restaurant in America has ever offered me a paper bag for my leftover pizza, the American line of carryout containers usually running to materials that will survive the journey home. Our carryout containers have a pretty good record, I'm guessing, of not being destroyed by the very food they're meant to carry. This may be just the one restaurant, but I don't think so. I have also been given, in a different part of yon English countryside, a paper straw with which to drink a liquid. Again, it's a question of survival.

Good luck.

A Winkler Valentine

2009-02-18T15:31:00.000-08:00

Spence had a four-day weekend, and I honestly thought I had a three-day one (you know, President's Day), so we decided to cancel our Valentine's dinner reservation at Emiliano's and head to the Spencer manse in Ft. Myers. Since we went to England for Christmas, Frankie hadn't been there (and Grampa Spence hadn't seen her) since Thanksgiving. This meant that instead of hiring the best babysitter in the world so we could go out for dinner Saturday, we'd get as much of the entire weekend to ourselves as we wanted. Here are some things we did on our day-long lover's holiday:

Went shopping at the mall. We both HATE to shop, but we were also each of us down to one or two pairs of work pants, so we decided it was time. I bought two shirts for $4.95 each and two of the same pair of jeans for work. Which is a good thing because as I took off my current work jeans in the dressing room, I noticed they have salsa on the butt. How long has it been there? Who knows. One of the problems with looking generally disheveled most of the time is that people don't tell you when you have salsa on your butt--they assume you know and don't care. I probably wouldn't have cared, I'm just saying. Another problem with my method is that it doesn't prepare me for when my socks, or anything else for that matter, are accidentally on view. Last week at Musikgarten, for example, during one of the "bounce your toddler on your thighs while in an anti-human position" songs, I was REALLY glad I'd made the extra effort that morning to find two socks with the same stripe. (They matched each other but unfortunately not my polka-dot shoes. Who even has polka-dot shoes, you ask? Who wears polka-dot shoes and stripey socks? Who almost walked out the door wearing polka-dot shoes and two different stripey socks? Why, it's me!) Spence, who only has to stand in front of a hundred teenagers every day, bought four pairs of pants for $4 each. Success!
Went to One for the Books, a quite good new/used bookstore. We bought loads, and Spence got into a conversation with the owner about an old cemetery downtown, so
After a long lunch at Iguana Mia,
Went to an old cemetery downtown. This was interesting and fun in a sort of academic way until we started finding these really small tombstones and
Cried. But even then shit would've been fine except
After going home to hang out with Frankie and decide which Thai restaurant to have dinner at,
Watched Frankie swallow two magnets and
Went to the Emergency Room

LAME!

This is how it happened. Frankie, Gramma Spence, and I were playing with these little magnetic marbles while Spence got Frankie's dinner ready. Frankie put two of them in her mouth, and Gramma Spence and I had two private, quiet heart attacks while we tried to ask her calmly to spit them out. I think we scared her. She whipped around quickly and cried out, then kept crying. When she turned back around they weren't in her mouth, but since we didn't see them fall on the ground we had to consider that she might have swallowed them. My mother-in-law and I looked at each other. I can't describe her face, and I don't know what she was thinking, but I was wondering if we could pretend it hadn't happened. Anyway, I came to my senses, called the after-hours pediatric clinic in Gainesville, and they told me to go to the Emergency Room.

Okay, now. I hate Ft. Myers. And I've heard it on good authority that people in Ft. Myers are crazy, but I'm here to tell you that the Emergency Room at the Children's Hospital is real. We waited for one hour in a genuinely fun waiting room and were then seen by super sweet people, from the P.A. to the guy who walked us to the X-Ray room. Frankie was a star--as I knew she would be from her amazing behavior waiting for six hours in the Orlando airport--even though we got to the hospital after her bedtime and she had to go in a scary (to me, anyway) darkened room and get X-Rays. (As we left she even said "Go doctor's office again now, Mommy!")

It turned out she hadn't swallowed the magnets at all. She'd managed to spit them out somehow without us noticing.

So my question is this. Why does Ft. Myers have so many different streets called Winkler?

When Did My Life Get So Crazy?

2009-02-11T11:32:00.000-08:00

I don’t mean busy or stressful or anything else. I mean actually crazy. Sometime in the past few weeks I turned a corner somewhere into full-on Crazytown, where every small detail is ridiculous. Pre-Crazytown (or C.T. from now on) someone would tell me about a friend of a friend of a friend’s new boyfriend, and his name would make sense. It would be Matt or something. But now this person is named Turkey. I’m serious. Or, before I moved to C.T., I would pick kumquats with my kid. Nowadays, we get to the top of the ladder and a rat jumps out of the tree. Not just any ordinary citrus-loving vermin, no—A RAT. Or, pre-C.T., I would do laundry and have nothing interesting to say about it. Now, however, I open the washing machine to see that I’ve washed my clothes with two or three handfuls of fresh mint leaves. Why? How? (Well, I know how. When I was putting my clothes in the washer I also put in two or three handfuls of fresh mint leaves.)

You can’t tell to look at me that my life has broken down in the old C.T., but maybe this isn’t something that shows on the outside. It’s just the tiniest things that have changed. Turkeys, rats, mint where you weren’t expecting anything. I mean, I’ve never seen a lady at the playground or the grocery store and thought, “That gal probably put produce in her washing machine this morning.” And I can’t be the only one.

Looking back over my shoulder I can sometimes see normal life. It looks hazy and delicate and full of pleasant routine and weekends at the beach. I’m going to the beach this weekend. At least I’ll smell minty.

Yeah, our Christmas tree is still up

2009-02-05T14:11:00.000-08:00

You wanna say something?

Submitted to You

2009-02-05T13:56:00.000-08:00

My application for mom of the year.

Last night, about an hour before Frankie's bedtime, she fell while walking on some shaky bricks in our backyard and skinned her shin. She was wearing an outfit from her daycare's lost-and-found box (I had forgotten to bring an extra set of clothes) consisting of a pair of mid-calf knit pants and a short-sleeved onesie.

It was very cold, and I, having the power (some might also say the responsibility) to solve and/or prevent many of her problems, was with her the whole time. Read that over again if you aren't already convinced that I'm deserving. But there's more.

I carried her inside--Spence offered, but she said, "No, Daddy, I'm crying!!!!"--and we cleaned up the cut, which wasn't terrible. It was, however, a weird shape and larger than any bandage we have. So we just put antibiotic ointment on it and figured she was going to bed soon anyway; what could happen?

Nothing did overnight, but as I changed her way-overdue diaper at 10 a.m. this morning (hey, I was on the phone), I decided I should probably do something to cover up the wound since she would be at daycare later. I can't really take credit for this brainwave, though. We had just been reading a Babar story in which Pom or somebody gets a cut ice skating. This, the "boo boo page," is Frankie's very favorite. So as we read about Pom getting medicine and a bandage for the, I don't know, twelfth time, I had my "mom-of-the-year" idea--I could put medicine and a bandage on my child!

But, as you'll remember, we didn't have a bandage big enough for this particular cut last night, and you'd better believe I wouldn't leave the house before ten just for that. This is the moment in life that separates the "moms" from the "ordinary women." This is the moment when one must use the ingenuity and all-out craziness that can only be gained from being, let's face it, sort of a slave to a lovely, irrational, monkey-type person (or persons) for a couple of years. I have no idea what an ordinary woman would have done in this situation because I am not one. I am a mom. And this mom taped a pantyliner to her child's leg.

I also let her put on make-up.

Send my child home in lost-and-found clothes and I'm sending her back with a hobo beard and a pantyliner. Your move, daycare.

An Update

2008-12-27T12:18:00.000-08:00

We made it to England. Halfway through the flight I decided that we would never fly again, that we would call our landlady upon arrival and tell her to sell everything in the house. That we would start a new life in London with the clothes in our suitcases, three sippy cups, and a small bag of goldfish, But, really, it wasn't that bad. Frankie was an absolute star through four hours of waiting at the aiport, through taking off her shoes and walking through the metal detector at security, through the hour delay once we were on the plane, and through the two and some hours it took her to fall asleep once the plane took off. In my pre-flight panicked reading of flying-with-toddler tips online, I learned that you can't bank on your kid falling asleep at a normal time because they're usually too excited. Not Frankie, I thought. We were due to take off at 7:40pm (which is already past her bedtime), and I guessed that she would probably fall asleep within an hour of takeoff. As it turned out, we didn't take off until after 10pm, and it was at least midnight before she fell asleep. MIDNIGHT! Then she couldn't sleep in the airline-provided carseat, and I had to hold her as prone as I could while keeping her head out of the aisle. And while trying to sleep myself. Around 3am I decided that I was done with air travel.

But, alas, we all got through it. And the ensuing jet lag. (No fun with a toddler, by the way.)

Stay tuned for my list of flying-with-toddler tips. Due out any time.

Signing Off

2008-12-18T13:39:00.000-08:00

I don't have a lot of time to post today as we're gearing up for a big plane trip (argh!) to London on Saturday. So here's a festive list to say goodbye and happy holidays.

I was working on a chapter today called "Iguanas and their Relatives." I found that iguanas have a LOT of relatives.

Does anybody else know someone who asks you a week before a big trip if you're "all packed?" A week before.

Frankie now yells "Naked!" every time she sees someone jogging. I don't know why. Joggers always wear clothes, even if just a few.

"Audubon was no slouch."--my grandmother

This is the first Christmas since I've started going to church, and I'm going to miss going to my church for the last sunday of Advent and Christmas Eve. I'm thinking of going to Christmas Eve services in London, but it'll be all Church-of-Englandy and I won't know what to wear.

After I finished complaining about my upcoming trip--"tonight after work I have to do laundry, do the dishes, go Christmas shopping, find a gift for Frankie's teachers, pack Frankie's bag while she tries on everything I put in the suitcase, etc."--someone actually said, "That sounds so exciting!" Does it?

We're out, folks. Have a great holiday!!!!!!

Weeva and Opiemeal

2008-12-10T05:36:00.000-08:00

I have one problem with the book Olivia (or Weeva as Frankie calls it)--why does it make fun of Jackson Pollock? Doesn't it have enough subtle snarkiness for parents to enjoy? Doesn't it do enough to nauseate people who use the phrase East Coast Liberals? And why such a departure in tone? If you ask me, a small pig who likes to make sand skyscrapers, imagine herself in a Degas painting, and dream about being Maria Callas (not to mention all that moving the cat business) probably would really like Jackson Pollock. The anti-Pollockness isn't structurally necessary either, as one might argue, to cause her time out. Olivia could just as well appreciate the painting in the museum, try to mimic it when she gets home, and then get the time out. This is how I read the book to Frankie ever since she yelled "Mess!" one time when we got to the Pollock page.

Which brings me to a question. Do you all think it's okay to censor books while you're reading them to your little ones? Weeva is a pretty mild example of when I do this, but there is a very slightly more serious one. Frankie has this book called The Tiger Who Came to Tea that was written in the '60s and is about a stay-at-home mom having dinner with her daughter and a tiger. The questionable business is when the tiger drinks all "daddy's beer" and eats all of "daddy's supper." So I change the words on these pages. Is that okay? Obviously later when Frankie can read I'll probably just explain the context of whatever story we're reading, but now I'm stuck with plain old lying. What do you do?

Opiemeal (oatmeal) is what Frankie and I had for breakfast this morning. "Together!" as she likes to say.

Text to Text Connection

2008-12-09T05:04:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago Spence took a short video of Frankie digging and dumping dirt out of a bucket. In this video you can hear Spence say, "You dumped your dirt." Since then, Frankie has requested this video several times a day with the words, "Dump my dirt!" (Although it's more of a desperately emphatic question--"DUMP MY DIRT?!?!?!?!?!?") So. We're driving back from Ft. Myers after Thanksgiving, we've been in the car about three hours, and I decide to make little films of Frankie to show back to her. I say, "Frankie, is there anything you want to say to the camera?" and she, of course, starts singing the ABCs. It's going along as well as a 20-month-old can manage (you know, "H-I-J-K-M-M-M-O-P"), until she comes to T-U-V. She starts saying W, but then thinks for a second and screams "DUMP MY DIRT!" Double you to dump my dirt. My grandmother says that this makes her brilliant, but I don't know because now she can't finish the ABCs without inserting her little joke somewhere. Now it usually comes after J.

And the duck turned out to be in the potty. Read the previous post if you need to.

Help!

2008-12-05T07:19:00.000-08:00

Anyone have any great ideas for keeping a kid busy on a long plane ride? Like 9 hours long? Aly, any tips from your many trips way the heck up north?

Also, this morning Frankie woke up ten minutes before the alarm screaming "My Duck!" in a very mad way. Spence wasn't quite together yet, so he tried to reason with her. "What duck, honey? Where is your duck?" Heh, heh, heh.

More later.

NO ON 2!

2008-11-04T06:50:00.000-08:00

It's not fair to anyone.

And please vote.

Simon

2008-10-22T15:31:00.001-07:00

We missed our once-in-a-lifetime (as they say) opportunity to see a truly impressive future first lady speak in our town yesterday because Frankie had to go to the doctor for a rash down there. (I'm not trying to be crass, this is just something you have to deal with when you have a kid in diapers.) It was a tough choice: take Frankie to an historic event celebrating a serious, accomplished woman who's helping to change the world, or remedy the probably serious discomfort of Frankie's girly parts. What's a woman to do? I followed the maxim that you have to be well-fed (in this case, not burning and itchy) before you can listen to anybody's sermon on how to behave. I think Billie Holliday said that, and, though it doesn't quite fit the situation, it almost does. And I take a lot of comfort in Frankie's pediatrician: she's a serious, accomplished woman who's helping to change the world, one sick (or itchy) kid at a time. So I don't think Frankie missed out too much.

I certainly haven't been missing out on anything. My new schedule, though moderately horrible, means that I can spend a lot of uninterrupted time with Frankie without worrying about getting her somewhere on time. So we've been having a lot of fun. She mostly likes to play with "Bronnyn," "Intie," and Audrey (she says this perfectly, somehow), go to the playground, play in my car, read books, and run up and down our street. This leaves very little time for playing with toys that aren't her Spiderman ride-on toy. Which brings me to her Spiderman ride-on toy. She now calls it "Simon."

Descriptive Title Defied

2008-10-20T06:57:00.000-07:00

A wild thing happened this weekend. (Plus lots of normal, fun things.) It was on Friday afternoon when Frankie was having her daily "nakeed time." This strong tradition started a few weeks back when she had a pretty nasty diaper rash and we let her run free for a while every day. So, it was nakeed time, I was sitting on the floor, and she walked up to me to rub my hair--she's really into touching people's hair--and be affectionate generally. Then she peed on me with no warning. The wildness occurred when all her pee collected on my lower back and ran down my crack. BLAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!! How did she manage this?!

Breakfast Time

2008-10-20T06:34:00.000-07:00

Omnibus

2008-10-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

I didn't accost the director of Frankie's preschool this morning because Frankie cried A LOT when I dropped her off, and there's nothing that makes me feel more like a spineless jerk. So I don't know what happened with her teacher, but I'll keep you posted.

. . .

Now that Frankie's going to school in the morning, I get to listen to Diane Rehm. Which is wonderful. (On her Web site there's a picture that makes her look like a sexy falcon.) My job is kind of unusual in that the actual work I do doesn't distract me from listening to news and long, extended podcasts all morning. One thing I've just discovered is the New Yorker fiction podcast. Oh my, if you have a spare hour you should listen. A writer who has a story in the current issue reads and discusses with the fiction editor a story of their own choosing from the magazine's archives. It's SO GOOD. There is a Nabokov story that I'd never heard of and is now one of my favorite stories ever; Aleksandar Hemon reads a Bernard Malamud story and says interesting things about it; and I discovered that I love Lorrie Moore. Louise Erdrich reads her story, "Dance in America," in a way that's almost better than reading the story for yourself. I highly, highly recommend it. And the story Richard Ford reads! Oh man, just listen.

. . .

Now, I'm not usually ever in danger of being called organized, but I wanted to share an idea I read about a few years ago that's worked well for me. So well, in fact, that yesterday as I was putting away laundry I sighed happily to myself and thought, "what a great closet I have." Those of you who've been to my house can stop your laughing and just trust me on this. My closet is awesome. This is how I do it: 1. I don't have that many clothes (this is probably the most important factor); 2) I hang up everything that I can (everything except underwear, socks, and plain t-shirts); 3) I hang clothes by type (duh). Now, the best part. At the beginning of a season, I turn all the hangers the wrong way, then when I wear something and hang it up again I turn it the right way. At the end of the season, I donate everything that's facing the wrong way, no questions asked. Obviously this won't work all the time, like during a pregnancy or whatever. This works because it keeps me from having too many clothes that I don't wear, and it shows patterns. Like, for example, I noticed the other day that all my long-sleeved t-shirts are either black or salmon, and I've never worn the salmon ones. This may be something that is well known or stupid or unnecessary for most people, but I'm proud of my little organized haven in the middle of . . . well, you've seen my house.

Halloween Party

2008-10-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

If you can read this, you're invited to my and my sis's toddler Halloween party. You'll also be getting an email. I just want to show off the invitation Spence made.

Layoff

2008-10-10T05:21:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure one of Frankie's preschool teachers got laid (it's not layed, is it?) off. My evidence is that she wasn't there this morning, there was a new schedule posted that did not include her name, and I saw her crying yesterday. So I think I'm right. But I don't know the circumstances: maybe she was fired, or maybe she quit. In any case, I'm pretty upset about it. I have no idea if it was a budget issue, or if she was being punished, or what, but she's a single mom with a three-year-old and a seven-month-old who happens to be really sweet and spends a lot of time with Frankie. I really do believe that teaching is the most important job in the world. (I mean, unlike the politicians who usually say that.) And I want to do something for her, especially if she got laid off. Any ideas? I'm thinking of sending her money. That might be tacky, but I know it would be welcome.

My job doesn't matter at all. I get paid way more than the people who take care of Frankie for me for five hours a day. And they're wonderful people. I'm going to abandon anonymity and say that the teachers in the Little Quackers's room at First Presbyterian Preschool are wonderful, wonderful people. Everything I didn't learn from my sister, I learned from them.

Sorry this is so poorly written. I'm really upset.

New Low?

2008-10-09T05:26:00.001-07:00

For breakfast, Frankie ate Earth's Best cheese crackers. Out of the box. In her carseat on the way to preschool. Is this wrong? This happened because she slept late, and my thinking is that more sleep is better for her than a normal breakfast. Plus she doesn't usually eat that much in the morning anyway. Plus she has a snack at 9.

Am I a monster?

Frantic Frazzle

2008-10-07T05:33:00.000-07:00

Frankie's daycare schedule changed, so now I have fewer than five hours a day at the office. And, since I don't have internet access at home, I think these blog posts are going to get few and far between. I mean, I am at work after all. So sorry. I really like writing, and I love reading all my friends posts. Oh well.

But quickly, a note. Frankie's slowly starting the two-word sentence thing. (Very slowly.) The most common formation is "So-and-so home." As in, "Mimi home." (She calls my mother-in-law Mimi.) Last night, though she hit me with a good one. She was looking at a picture of an eagle (talk to Spence about why there are pictures of eagles around our house), and saying "beak." (We've been talking lately about which animals have beaks and which don't.) I said "Yes, eagles have beaks." You know, like a mom. And then she said, "me mouth." Well, really it sounded like "me mowsh," but I got the picture. So there it is, everyone. Frankie does not have a beak, she has a mouth. Don't go around telling people otherwise.

Bye bye.

a bit of a rant

2008-09-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

Please skip if you aren't interested in reading my complaints about how little money Spence makes. But if any of you are teachers or would-be teachers, this might be a little interesting.

So Spence works at a school that's not part of the county system. (I won't name it; if you're interested email me.) When he was hired he was told that this school pays the same as the surrounding county and even that the administration "tries to pay a little more" than the county. (By "try" they actually meant "avoid," but we'll get there.) So Spence is excited about working there. It has a great reputation, it's small, he gets to teach the whole 11th grade, he loves his fellow teachers, and it's a K-12 school so Frankie'll be able to go with him when she's ready. But the administration downright lied about the pay. He started at a salary under the surrounding county and hasn't had a raise, so now he (having 5 years experience and a master's degree) makes the same amount as someone with 2 years experience and a bachelor's would in the county. Add to this the fact that his school has no published salary schedule, which is illegal, so no one knows what anyone else makes or why they make it. Add to this the fact that the school has some super expensive facilities run by some extremely well-paid people. Add to this the fact that Spence doesn't have heat in his classroom, despite having complained about it for over two years. Add to this the fact that the head of the school, because it's K-12, makes the same amount as a county superintendent. And, finally, add to all this the fact that Spence would get fired if he tried in any real way to fix any of this because hiring and firing is totally controlled by the school head and is not transparent.

Now I want you to know that I'm not idealistic. I know teachers are never going to paid what they're worth. I don't expect Spence to get a $20,000 raise. All we want is for him to get paid as much as he would in the county. I mean, all he wants is to be among the second-worst paid teachers in the state.

It makes me f*ing furious.

But the union is working on it, so we're hanging in there. Watch this space for fabulous money-saving ideas. (That's a joke. A cruel, bloodless joke.)

Eat at Home

2008-09-19T08:36:00.001-07:00

Frankie's been testing out the word home lately. After preschool she runs through the list of her friends, telling us they're now at home. (A few of her lucky friends get to be night-night, too.) She's also sprung the word at me a few times when she wants to be at home. You know, like as we pull into a parking spot at Target or when we're halfway through a long walk full of hills. And the other day when Spence was getting dressed for work she was pointing at his belly button and his nipples. When he asked her where her belly button was, she pointed to it. When he asked where her nipples were, she said "home."

Another big word now is eat. The other day at preschool some of her friends were getting up early from the lunch table, claiming they were "all done." This was not to be tolerated, apparently, as Frankie looked around at everyone and yelled "eat!" And after a visit from my dad on Sunday, Spence asked her "what Grandpa does." (I'm not sure what he was expecting her to say. He's a musician, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't know that yet.) Anyway, I suppose you can guess the answer. Eat.

Lesson learned, I hope

2008-09-16T08:46:00.001-07:00

This morning I tried two activities from some toddler-themed books I got recently. Neither were successful as written, but one turned out all right with some modification from Frankie. I stupidly resisted her changes to the other and provoked a tantrum. Read on.

First, I tried to make a swing for Frankie's favorite pal, Bun-Bun. What a charming idea, I thought. Frankie'll love pushing Bun-Bun and singing "Motorboat" like we do at the playground. It started well. I tied a bright pink ribbon to a low branch. Frankie looked intrigued. I picked up Bun-Bun. No response. I started to tie the other end of the ribbon under Bun-Bun's arms. Total screaming freak out. Maybe it's Bun-Bun, I thought. Maybe if we use a less sacred animal. I picked up her camel, Biz-Biz, and started to string him up. Again, a freak out. At this point I realized how grotesque a stuffed animal hanging from a tree by a ribbon actually looks, but I soldiered on. Since it was the whole concept--not just the animal--she didn't like, I tried it again with Bun-Bun thinking that Frankie would warm up once she saw how fun it was to push her. And sing "Motorboat!" Like on the playground! She didn't find it fun. I finally took Bun-Bun down after much insistence, and Frankie joyfully pulled her by the ribbon up and down the street for a long, long time. I had a blast, too. See, mom? It's simple.

The second activity didn't end as well. From a super-cool book called First Art, I got the idea to make self-hardening playclay, form it into balls, poke holes through the balls to make beads, let them harden, paint them in a few days, and practice putting them on a shoelace the day or so after that. I measured the flour, salt, and cornstarch into a big measuring cup, and Frankie played quietly in the kitchen, pushing a spoon around in the cup while I got a big tablecloth, warm water, and everything else set up in the living room. That should have been a clue, but it wasn't. Instead of letting her play until she was finished, I hustled her into the living room and asked her to dump the measuring cup into the mixing bowl. This went fine because she liked playing with the flour mixture in the bigger bowl, using her spoon and the chopsticks I'd brought to poke holes in the beads we were sure to make soon. Again, I should have waited here until she was done. But no, I poured in water to make the dough, and instantly Frankie lost the plot. What she liked was playing with the dry flour stuff, she did not like playing with the dough. No matter how much I tried to invite her to play with it--and believe me, I made it sound pretty good--she wouldn't. While I was forming balls and poking holes in them with the chopstick, she was trying to scrape off the dry flour residue from the bowl. Then she noticed that I wasn't really paying attention to her, just narrating my now absurd foray into bead-making, and decided to get my attention. That's right, she started eating clay. I thought she'd stop once she tasted it, but boundaries must be broken. She pressed on until I took the bowl and everything having to do with the whole project away. So she had a tantrum. And rightfully, I think.

So that's my lesson for the day. Frankie, like all kids, is unpredictable, and I can't expect her to respond in a predetermined way to anything. I need to remember to follow what she's interested in and can handle, even if it's not in the book. Of course this is obvious. Of course I know this, generally. But it's a completely different thing when you get down to the very, very specific task of keeping a toddler busy for hours on end. I think I was just too tempted to rely on a manual.

Thanks for listening, everybody. This is really helping.

Oh, Right

2008-09-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

I called the last post Ice because I meant to write about Frankie's teething-related ice obsession this weekend. Yesterday Spence gave her an ice cube while they were reading a book or something and she dropped it under the couch. She crawled around for a while whimpering "ice? ice?" looking for all the world like a junkie until Spence stopped laughing and found it for her. Then she refused a bath unless we promised to make it an "ice party." She ended up with eight ice cubes floating around in her bath water. Weird.

The other thing I meant to write. My dad spent the night Friday. After a pretty late evening (for us, not for him), Spence and I staggered to bed while my dad stayed in the kitchen clearing up. I told him not to worry about the dishes, because he was a guest, after all, and he said, "I'm just going to move some stuff around to make myself sleepy."

Ice

2008-09-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

A crazy weekend. Trips to the airport, museums, ice cream shop, city pool, bookstore, duck pond behind our house, and grocery grocery grocery. We spent all last summer housesitting out in the country thirty minutes from the nearest grocery, and I'm not sure how we didn't starve to death and run out of diapers. I go to the grocery fifty million times in a given 72-hour period. (And do fifty million dishes, now that we don't have a dishwasher.)

This is one of the things I'd change about motherhood. Also having to carry at least one other bag beside my purse. Also not being able to drink at lunch. (Well, I guess I could drink at lunch now. . .) Heck, let's make a bulleted list of things I'd like to change. About motherhood or kids or being a householder or whatever. Feel free to write in with suggestions.

the things mentioned above
having to bend over backward (really, not figuratively) with three bags over one's shoulder and while holding a toddler to pick up a stuffed animal that this toddler has dropped and needs desperately
the fact that toddlers need things desperately
the fact that I couldn't remember how to spell "desperately" without picturing the title to the song "Desperado"
the fact that I'm still not sure I spelled it correctly; and the fact that I'm not going to look it up right now (hell, no) even though I'm better placed at the moment to find out anything you'd need to know about that word than most people
being sweaty
being sticky

I can't think of any others right now, but do not doubt that this list will be continued.

One thing that was wonderful about this weekend was the break I took Saturday morning. Spence has been insisting I take a break every weekend but I don't usually. We either have company, or Spence has to work, or something has to be cleaned. Anyway, I've decided to schedule break time, so starting next Saturday I'm going to be volunteering at the St. Francis House for a little while. (I wasn't able to get to an orientation in time for this weekend, so I just had to go shopping.) The point is that two hours, or even one, away from Frankie makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE. I wasn't stressed out or gloomy at all for the rest of the day, and that's something coming from me. (Sunday afternoon my break came in the form of, that's right, a trip to the grocery. But it helped nonetheless.) So Spence was right. I used to feel guilty that I would even need a break from Frankie, but now I realize how important it is. And I'm excited about volunteering. I'll let you know how it goes.

Spiderman update: I don't think I mentioned in the last post that I/we usually sing the Spiderman song when Frankie's riding downhill. (I only know the words because of the CD Spence made a million years ago of the theme song to every '80s show you can think of.) So Spence was singing it this weekend, he accidentally used a Southern accent on one line, and minutes later had re-written the lyrics as "Southern-Fried Spiderman." I don't remember most of them, but here are a few lines:

Wherever there's a delta, come on and feel the swelta/He's Southern Fried Spiderman
He's just one in a million, at every girl's cotillion/You'll find the Spiderman

"Can she swing from a thread?"

2008-09-09T10:47:00.001-07:00

Why did I call my blog "Uphill Downhill"? Because of Spiderman. Frankie has a Spiderman push toy that she has discovered how to ride down the grade of our street. (We live at the end of a dead end street, and we let Frankie play in it. I know one day I'll regret this. I know this because the parents of every kid who comes over to play tells their kid it's okay "only at Frankie's house--NOT at our house.") So she puts it in the middle of the street, gets on, and props her feet on either side of the steering wheel. It rumbles downhill slowly until the final driveway when the road drops off quickly and I have to grab her before she rockets down into a sinkhole. There are also two huge, gaping storm drains on either side of this driveway. I think the whole experience will teach her to ignore wealth and fame. Action, after all, shall be her reward.

That's the downhill part. Uphill is annoying. I have to carry her, Spiderman, and whatever else she has with her up to the starting place. (Today she was toting her giant stuffed dog, Moses. Actual name.) This is really only annoying because of how often she insists on being carried. Up and down the street (when she really could be walking or running), around the house (ditto), all over the playground (ditto!). Does anyone else's 18-month-old do this? What is going on? My kid is hugely heavy, and she now swats away the hand of the arm not holding her. My support hand. Any advice?

Uphill Downhill

2008-09-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

I'm starting up a blog again. A new one this time, because the last one devolved into a lists of complaints about my job. And I have so much more to complain about!

I'm going to try to figure out how to set this to private to spare you all a bunch of mess. I've been depressed for a while but for some reason have a block about going back to see my counselor. Maybe writing will help? This occurred to me the other day when I realized that I can't remember the last time I wrote anything. Writing used to be a part of my job, my life. And, as a good friend says, it's a perishable skill. While there's some pretty solid evidence that my skill has perished already, I'm going to kick it around a bit to see if it might wake up.

On second thought, I don't think I will set it to private. If I know that a few friends are reading, I'll try to be more discreet and less maudlin. First task: fake names. Even though someone would only read this because they know me. So if you suspect you might appear and you have a preference, send me a name you'd like me to use. It'll be fun. I'll be calling my daughter "Frankie" because that's a good name for her. A special prize goes to the person who comes up with the best name for my husband. A special, special prize. Like alcohol.

Uphill Downhill

I can't keep up with this

Clarification

Shame and Strength

Belinda

Haircut and Mess

Force, Vacation

Just real quick

It's already a new year

I'll forget if I don't write it now

Why is there no beer in this house?

Inability to Sleep in Children: A Longitudinal Study

I guess this is what life's gonna be like from now on

I Share this Opinion of the Outdoors

A Whole Bunch of Stuff, Mainly about Girliness

A Communication

Change?

She's Bossy

Blah

That Her Face

Some Things She Also Said Yesterday

This Time I Cannot Be Careful

Perfumania

Update on Car Color

You Never Thought It'd Happen

I Think I'm Going To Cut My Hair Off Again

Part 2

Lazy Person's Post

Hooray for Cribs!

Weird Day

It is now

Thunderstorms, Wind

Another Lament

What Do I Do?!?!

Lament

Eurovision

This is My Life

Pictures from the Weekend

﻿Comedy Purposes

More Advice

Hairdo Schmairdo

Some Stuff Lately

Dialogue

Hmmm. . .

Planet Earth

Baggies

Advice

Names

Gross, Nasty, Sick

Spring Break

Once Again

Not Every Kid is Into Walking Sticks

The Kees

I Am Not the Recession

Nothing Much

On Second Thought

Another List

It's Our Birthday!

Saving is Only Part of the Pleasure

Will Somebody Please

Update in Pictures

The Smartest Person I've Ever Met

Direct Quote

Old Maid

Spa Day

Dispatch from Crazytown

Are you sure you want to do this?

A Winkler Valentine

When Did My Life Get So Crazy?

Yeah, our Christmas tree is still up

Submitted to You

An Update

Signing Off

Weeva and Opiemeal

Text to Text Connection

Help!

NO ON 2!

Simon

Descriptive Title Defied

Breakfast Time

Comedy Purposes