Stay-cation: Day One

My friend Lisa has recently been going through what I feel like I go through at least monthly -- that sense of, Good God, get these kids away from me and give me some peace.  And she made a point today that I make all the time, and that few people seem to get -- I don't want to go away anywhere and have time away from my family.  What I really crave is for everyone to get the fuck out of my house and leave me alone (I love her idea of a kiddie hotel).  To read, to do laundry, to watch my DVR'd shows, to just have some time with no whining and no crying and no noisy toys.

Which I am finally getting for the next two weeks until I start the new job. 

And holy shit, it's so nice.  I got the kids up and out the door by 8:15.  Zeke started his new preschool and did so well.  I've been preparing him for this day for a long time, and at first he was nervous and saying that he wanted to go to the old school.  But I talked him off the ledge, and after we dropped Josie off at her daycare, he said, "where are we going, Mama?"  And I said, "we're going to your new school sweetie.  You're going to make new friends and learn all kinds of cool stuff and it'll be great."  He said, "I'm going to be just fine."*

I've been telling him that all along.  And I guess he gets it.  So we went in and met the teachers and he said hi to his friend Connor and sat down to have breakfast with everyone and said, "bye, Mama!" without a look back.  Which is exactly what I wanted.

And then I came home, got back into bed and finished my book.  Which was seriously phenomenal -- one of the best books I've read in awhile, and one of the few experiences of reading a book in which I truly had no idea what was going to happen. 

Then I took a nap.

Then I had something to eat.

Then I watched Saturday night's recording of SNL -- love me some Jon Hamm. 

Then I did the dishes.

Then I had a massage.

I couldn't do this forever.  I'm too restless.  But I'll take it for the next two weeks.

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*Then we had a hilarious conversation about what we should feed the lion that lives in his closet.  He opted for crumbs, but I said that lions might need more food than that and suggested hamburgers.

The hard truth we all learn

This morning Josie woke up at 5 in the morning, screaming her face off.

She's teething again.  Finally, because I was getting a little worried that those four teeth she has were going to be it for her.

But it hurts.  A lot.  Much more than her other teeth did, at least so far as can be determined by her reaction to it.

So I got up and went and got her and tried to comfort her by sitting with her in the rocking chair, but she was having none of it.  Just cried and cried and cried.

So I put her in Zeke's bed and lay down next to her, trying to snuggle her into calmness (Zeke had made his way to our bed at this point, so his bed was empty).

Nothing doing.

So I took her downstairs and gave her a bunch of ibuprofen, and then got back into bed with her, waiting for it to work.

It took about 30 minutes.  And she was furious the entire time.  I would try to cuddle her, and she would beat at me with her fists.  I would try to hold her upright, and she would scream and shake her head back and forth.  I would try to give her a frozen pancake to chew on, or a teething ring, and she would push it away and wail.

She was in so much pain, and so pissed off at me for not being able to make the pain go away instantaneously.

At one point, while crying inconsolably, she kept holding up her hands and making the "finished" sign, as if to say, "OK, Mama, I'm done with this shit.  Please help me.  Please make me feel better."

But all we could do was wait it out.  I had given her medicine, I had tried topical remedies, and now all I could do was comfort her and try to sympathize.

I'm not all-powerful.  But she doesn't know that yet.

Well, now she does.

Damn the Man

This is the saga of J's worker's comp claim.  Or, non-claim, as it turns out.

Some time in mid-August or early September, J came home from work and said, "I think I got a hernia at work today?"

Being the calm, rational one, I shrieked, "WHAT??"

"Yeah.  I was lifting a big spool of cable and I felt something pop."

"So what did you do?  Did you report it to your foreman?"

"Yeah."

"Well??? What did he say???"

"He said, 'not on my fucking job, you didn't get hurt!'"

"What??  He can't do that.  That's illegal.  This is a worker's comp claim, you need to report it."

"I tried, but he refused to accept it."

"Well, he can't do that.  You need to talk to his supervisor, or call the main office, or something like that.  You can't just let it go."

"If I do that I'll get fired."

My head was about to explode right off my body at this point.  "They can't fire you for submitting a workers comp claim.  There are laws against it!"

"Baby, they do it all the time."

I fumed.  "You cannot let them get away with it.  You have to report this."

Long story short, he was intimidated by his foreman's attitude, didn't report it (thought there were witnesses to both the injury and his efforts to tell the foreman), it got worse, and a month later, it hurt so much that he couldn't lift his tool pouch without excruciating pain.  So they sent him home and told him to go to the doctor, get it fixed and go on short term disability.

So he went to the doctor.  Who confirmed that he had a double hernia and sent him to a surgeon.  Who also confirmed that he had a double hernia and scheduled him for surgery.

But all along, I was confused.  It was a workplace injury.  Why wasn't it being covered by workers comp?  What the fuck was going on??

I wasn't the only one.  The administrator at the surgeon's office was confused as well, because workers comp is billed differently from other kinds of claims.  And if it was a workplace injury, it needed to go through workers comp.

So she called the HR people at J's company, who proceeded to yell at her.  Then they ran around trying to cover their tracks by intimidating the guys on the job -- the witnesses -- into giving statements casting doubt on J's version of things.

J, being totally non-confrontational and intimidated, didn't want to make waves.  He was perfectly happy to pursue the personal-insurance-and-short-term-disability route.  But the safety manager at his company, who was walking around talking about how he was going to "bury J in court," insisted on submitting the claim through workers comp.

Which denied the claim today.  Because it was a "your word vs. theirs" thing, according to the claims rep.

So we'll submit it through our own insurance and seek short term disability for the time he needs to take off of work to recover.  Which we were willing to do all along.  We can't afford to fight it, so whatever.

This is why my great-grandfather, the proud socialist, believed in labor unions and working for the rights of the working man.  Because he knew that without them, the working man has no power.  The Big Man will always find a way to bring the little man down.  I never really thought about it before I was married to a tradesman, but now I know.  In Hawaii, a very pro-union state, J would have been protected.  In Colorado, where the union has a very weak presence and there are no union jobs to be had, he's fucked.

It makes me so mad, I don't even know what to do but sit and stew.

You can't go home again*

For Zeke, one of the consequences of turning three is that, in addition to being a big boy who almost always remembers to use the potty, who will be starting preschool with his buddy Connor next week, who is learning how to read and put puzzles together, is that he has to sleep in his own bed.  All night.

I'm sure some of you may be wondering if you accidentally stumbled on an old blog post from last year (or even the year before), because we've been fighting this fight for a long time.  Or, more accurately, not fighting it.  The kid has been playing us like a Stradivarius.  What with J being out of town, and not wanting to wake up Josie by putting him to bed later than her (they share a room now), and just generally being a big ol' softie about it, he's been spending a lot of time in our bed.  A lot lot.

So I decided that his birthday would be the arbitrary Maginot line that would mark the start of him Being A Big Boy And Sleeping In His Own Bed.  It was the perfect day for it, because he didn't nap, and in addition to his party, which involved non-stop running around and excitement, he went swimming at my parents' hotel in the morning and then immediately after the party, went to the park to play some more with his friend Lucy.  So by 7:30 or so, he was a complete zombie.

I put him in his PJs and put him in his bed and sang the sleep song and he eventually went to sleep.  But not before, as we were turning towards his room rather than mine, he said, "but I want to sleep with you, Mama."

"No, honey, you're a big boy now.  You need to sleep in your own bed."

"But I don't want to."

"Well, remember, we talked about it, and now that you're three, you need to sleep in your bed."

"No!  I don't want to!  I want to be two!  I want to be two!"

Sorry, kid.  That ship has sailed.

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*Hat tip to my brother Sam, who came up with this line (by way of Thomas Wolfe, obvs).

Three is a magic number

Zeke is turning three on Sunday.

I could do another Animoto video, as I've done in the past on the kids' birthdays, but I feel like it doesn't tell enough of a story anymore, where Zeke is concerned.  The pictures are cute, and he's turning into a gorgeous kid (if I do say so myself), but the pictures aren't enough.

They don't convey what it was like for me to be driving him to school this morning and have him sit in the back seat and look at his animal book and say, "C-O-W....that spells 'cow', Mama!"

Yes it does, son.  And also, holy shit.

Newborn Zeke in his first bit of prison gear.

The pictures can't really give you a sense of what it's like to see this ... this boy -- I mean, he's certainly not a baby and not even a toddler anymore, he's seriously a kid -- and remember what it was like the first night of his life when he woke me up crying and for a second I was confused and thought someone had let a cat into my hospital room.  All of a sudden having this tiny little person in my life was so weird.  But now he is a person, an interesting, smart person, and we have hilarious conversations about elephant poop and which park has the best slides and the relative merits of mac & cheese vs. ham sandwiches and why it's fun to play with toy trucks.  It blows my mind.

There's nothing baby-ish in this guy anymore.

The pictures don't tell you how my heart feels like it's swelling up and about to pop out of my body when I walk by him when he's sitting on the couch looking at a book or watching a DVD and he calls me over to take my face in his hands, plant a big smooch on me, and say, "I love you, Mama."

The pictures can't express how I simultaneously die from the cuteness and also laugh my ass off when I drop Zeke off at school in the morning and he and his friend Elliott run up to each other, call each other's names, and give each other a big bear hug.

From looking at a picture, you can't hear the joy we both get from playing the silly "I'm going to change you..." game that we play all the time.  "Mama, I'm going to change you into a hot dog."  "Oh, yeah?  Well I'm going to change you into a piece of macaroni!"  "I'm going to change you into a traffic light!"  "I'm going to change you into a shoelace!"  There is no rhyme or reason to this game.  It's just funny and it makes us laugh.

You can see a lot from the pictures.  His twinkly eyes, his big smile, his sweetness toward his sister, his joy at being alive.  But you can't tell that if you take the joy from the pictures and multiply it by about a million, you might come close to the joy he brings me every day.  Maybe.

So, happy third birthday, Zekey-beans.  You're my best, sweetest, lovie-est boy, and I'm over the moon about you.

And I'm going to change you into a tree.

Conversationus Interruptus

One of the unfortunate side effects of having two small children is that any telephone conversation with me is bound to be either confusing, incredibly annoying or both (unless the children aren't at home, in which case I hope you will consider the conversation pleasant, unless you're with customer service for Verizon, in which case, piss off).

Few things drive me nuttier than talking on the phone with someone who is very obviously doing something else at the same time, like, say, opening his mail.  I'll say something, and the other person will start a sentence but then will go silent in the middle of a thought, and then finally mutter, "but I paid this already."  And I'm all, "Hel-looooo!  I'm still here!  Pay attention to me!"

Yes, I'm talking to you, Dad.

But now I'm doing it too.  Not opening my mail, which I almost never do anyway, which is why my water will be shut off, causing me to have to pee outside in the middle of the night, and I'll think that someone is playing a prank on me until I realize that I just forgot to pay the bill because I never opened it.

No, my offense is trying to have an intelligent conversation while also supervising my children.  So my poor brother will call me to chat, and then be forced to suffer through sentences like this:

"I also loved that scene at the end between Betty and Don, and really thought the whole episode was don't throw food at your sister."

Or:  "I can understand why you'd want to just settle the case and get -- I smell poop.  Who has poop?"

Or:  "We're really excited about get your finger out of your butt!"

My brother has the decency to not hang up on me or even scold me, though I totally deserve it.  But it's hard.  You get so used to trying to do 47 things at once, it bleeds over into your conversations and obliterates every rule of politeness that you've forever held dear.

So to anyone that is subjected to this in the future, please bear with me.  I know it's a problem, and I'll try to be better.  Things should normalize in, oh, 17 years or so.

Monday miscellany

• You people are a bunch of serious task-masters.  By an almost 3-1 margin (and that's not counting the votes cast to let me know that I'm a big ol' dork), you said that I should pull up my big-girl panties and just suck it up and read the Chernow book already.  Lucky for me, this isn't a democracy, so I may or may not heed your advice.  I'm still deciding.  At the very least, so that I don't become completely boring, I am forcing myself to alternate every non-fiction choice with a fiction choice.  So right now I'm reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and loving it so far.  
• Josie is starting to communicate.  I've been a little bit worried about the fact that she is at least 4 months behind where Zeke was at her age, developmentally speaking, because when Zeke was 13 months old, he was saying words and walking and had at least 8 teeth.  Josie says "dada" or "da-di" and occasionally says "mama," is at least a month away from walking, and has had 4 lonely little teeth that don't appear to be getting any company any time soon.  But suddenly she's taking more steps and chattering up a storm, saying "bye-bye" and using sign language for things like "eat" and "more" and "all done."  And as a close family friend said to my mom upon learning of my concerns, comparisons are odious.  So I'm not worried.  She's perfectly healthy and normal.

"Look, Ma, I'm standing!"

• We're slowly but surely getting the house in order.  It was even presentable enough to have friends over for dinner Saturday night!  And my parents will be in town this weekend and have agreed to take the kids for a solid stretch on Saturday so that  and I can finish the drywall in the front hallway and dining room.  When it's all done, it going to be beautiful.
• My friend Elizabeth is having a baby today.  Send her positive vibes for a smooth delivery and speedy recovery and a healthy, happy baby girl.  

Climbing the literary Everest, and a "test your level of geekiness" poll

So I finally, finally, finally finished the Alexander Hamilton bio.  At 4 in the morning last night when I couldn't sleep and I had already watched my recording of The Good Wife.  I've been reading it since the beginning of August, but have only had snippets of time here and there, with the occasional plane ride that gave me a bigger chunk of uninterrupted reading opportunity.

And the book is huge.  But I didn't realize how huge, because I've been reading it on my Kindle, and the Kindle pages don't match up to actual pages, plus you can adjust the font and print size to your liking.  So all I knew was that a) it was amazingly written and researched; b) Hamilton was an extraordinary guy, and probably the most essential of the Founding Fathers, in terms of his ability to take the concepts underlying the Constitution and turn them into an actual working government; and c) it was taking me forever to plow through it.

Then when I went to DC for the Israel reunion, my parents had an actual physical copy of the book, and I was stunned.  It wasn't just 700+ pages, but 700+ big pages with teeny teeny tiny print.

Jesus, I thought.  No fucking wonder.

But I kept plugging, and finally finished it.

And somewhere along the way, came up with my latest uber-geek plan to read the history of the United States in order, by president.  I'm good with Adams and Jefferson (and a few others), but I've never read a biography of George Washington, so I was talking to my mom about looking for a good one.

Wouldn't you know, Ron Chernow just came out with an opus about George Washington.  And it's 900 fucking pages long.

"For God's sake!"  I said.  "I'm sure it's great.  He's an incredible writer.  But there has to be a worthy Washington biography in the 300 or 400 page range."

"But if you're going to be reading anyway, what difference does it make if it's a 900 page book or some other book?  My feeling is, I'm going to be reading something regardless, so I'd rather be reading something good, no matter how long it is."

"Hmm."

"I mean, do you read for quality or quantity?  Would you rather read more books, or read better books?"

"Can't I do both?"  I wondered.  "I'd rather read really good books that don't take me a million years each, because then I can read more of them."

She laughed.  But it got me thinking.  Why was I so hung up on the length of the book, when I enjoyed it and was going to be reading something anyway?

What say all of you?

Sleepless

I've been doing a lot of blogging in the middle of the night lately.

It beats lying in bed and tossing and turning and thinking about the various things on my to-do list that are crowding my brain.

But the middle of the night is also a great time to get caught up on my shows.  My DVR does its thing, and then I watch my episodes of House or Mad Men or The Daily Show at 3 in the morning, when no one is clamoring for my attention and Zeke isn't asking to watch Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa for the 80 millionth time in a row.

But I can't focus tonight.  My chest feels tight and full of anxiety.

Could be the fact that I'm changing jobs soon.  Going to try my hand at being a special ed. specialist again, instead of a general education generalist, which, as it turned out, I am ill-suited for.

Or it could be that J and I can never seem to get caught up around the house.  I feel like I spend every spare moment unpacking a box or trying to figure out where something is going to go.

If I'm not actually doing renovations.  Like sheetrocking.  Here's a piece of my handiwork:

I still need to tape and mud, but the cuts are clean and that sucker isn't going anywhere.

And here's another.  And see that thermostat?  I wired and mounted that bad boy.

The duk-duk dancer is watching over my work.

It's been nice having J home again.  Did I mention he's home again?  Except that the reason he's home is that he has a double hernia and can't work and needs to have surgery.  So he's around, but I'm still doing plenty of the heavy lifting, literally.

Lately when I talk to my friends and family on the phone, they keep asking me if I'm OK.  And they don't sound like they believe me when I tell them I am.

I'm OK.  I'm taking my meds.  I'm stressed out, but I'm OK.

I guess.  I don't know.

Blue Rules

One of the coolest things about my school in Israel was the Hockey Marathon.  Every year, I think in February, the entire high school would divide up into red and blue teams.  In the weeks leading up to the Marathon, the captains of teams would determine the hierarchy of players and divide into squads from A to E (or so) and practice.  The school was decked out in huge posters that covered every bit of available space, and the gym was transformed into a red and blue battlefield.

Then came the big event -- starting on a Friday afternoon, we would play floor hockey for 38 hours straight, finishing up on a Sunday morning.  First the A boys would play for an hour, then the A girls, then the B boys, and so on.  Most people played on two squads and thus were scheduled to play every 6 or 7 hours.  So we would camp out in sleeping bags and try to get some shut-eye between heats, or hang out in the gym cheering on our team, with the music blaring and all of our friends there and the whole school watching. 

I've never been involved in another tradition quite like it.  It was awesome and crazy fun and overwhelming and exhausting.  We'd all be fried and hoarse from cheering for days afterwards, but would immediately start looking forward to the next one.

And the allegiance to color was pretty much a permanent deal -- once you were blue, you were always going to be blue, barring some extraordinary set of circumstances.

When I showed up this past Saturday for the Alumni Hockey Marathon, I wasn't even sure I would play.  I had my kids with me and I was tired and I haven't played hockey in 26 years.  But I wore a blue shirt without even thinking about it.  Honestly, I just grabbed it out of my bag, and only when I got there and decided to sub in on a heat did I realize I was wearing blue, and of course would only play for blue.  Playing for red was unthinkable.

I only played for about 10 minutes, and was totally on the verge of barfing up a lung afterwards, but it was worth it.

And Blue won, of course.

The reunion was as most reunions are.*  A whirlwind of old memories brought to the surface and old friendships rekindled and the fascinating experience of finding out, 26 years later, how your recollections of teenage awkwardness matched up with what other people remember about you.  Seeing old boyfriends and thinking, "really? him??  Huh."  Martinis.  Getting into intense conversations with people you haven't talked to in decades, and have them tell you seriously deep dark secrets.  Dancing until 3 in the morning.  Laughter.

Lots and lots of laughter.
____________________________
* Of course my nervousness and apprehension were totally unfounded.

Many thanks to Candice and Sharon for the pictures.  

Another day, another reunion

Growing up all over and moving every few years meant that I went to lots of schools.  Lots and lots of schools.  Eight before I went to college, to be precise.  And this appears to be the year of the international school all-class reunion.  July was for the India school, from which I graduated from high school.  This weekend is for the Israel school, which I attended from 6th through 9th grades.

As you all know, the India reunion was phenomenal.  Most likely because my experience in India was phenomenal -- a magical confluence of being in the right school in the right country at the right age with the right friends.

Israel was different.  I love the country, and I received a terrific education at the school and made good friends, but I don't feel the same nostalgia and longing for my time in Israel that I do for the India experience.  Maybe because I was at such a difficult age -- going through puberty with all of the horror that entails, including trying to figure out how to deal socially with my newly developed body and trying to feel comfortable in my own skin and not succeeding very often.  Being 12 and 13 years old and navigating the new world of leers and stares from older boys and men, and not knowing how to deal with it.  Being a freshman in a high school that was really small, so older kids and younger kids tended to hang out together more than they otherwise might have.  And feeling the pressure to grow up a little too fast as a result.

So I'm a little warier going into this one.  Probably for no reason -- I mean, for God's sake, it's been 26 years -- but I can't help it.

Still, I had some wonderful close friends with whom I have reconnected over the past few years via Facebook, and based upon the list of attendees, I will be seeing most of them.  Seriously, the turnout looks to be amazing.  It's going to be great fun.

But I'm nervous.

Lesson learned

Shopping is one of the rare times I have to myself, like, ever.  So while I actually don't like shopping all that much, my trips to the grocery store or to Target are sources of great peace for me.

I was at Target tonight shopping for stuff for the house -- utility shelves for the laundry room, an in-sink drain rack, contact paper for the drawers, a shower curtain, that sort of thing.  And all was going well, except for a pervasive feeling that people were staring at me. 

I checked my teeth.  I checked my fly.  I smoothed my hair. 

Nothing seemed out of place.

But the feeling persisted.  Occasionally I would look up and notice someone start to approach me like they wanted to say something, but then would stop themselves, as if they were unsure.

I was in the lampshade aisle, comparing the square medium-sized shade with the larger round shade, when I heard someone say, "excuse me!  Ma'am?  Ma'am!"

I looked up and saw a woman approaching.  "Yes?" I said.

"I'm trying to find a swiffer, you know, one of those sweeper things?  Do you know where I might find one?"

"Uhhh...." I responded, with what had to be an extremely confused look on my face.

Then she stopped short and put her hand to her mouth.  "Oh, my goodness, I'm so sorry!"

She obviously thought I worked there, and had just realized her mistake.

"Oh, it's OK," I assured her.  "I think the brooms are over in the next aisle.  I would look there."

She thanked me and scurried off, apologizing and obviously embarrassed.

 Then it hit me, and I started to laugh.

Moral of the story:  don't wear a red t-shirt and khaki-colored pants to Target.  Unless you really want to mess with peoples' heads.

Chaos. But in a good way.

It's such a cliche, but Jesus Christ, moving sucks.  As many times as I've done it, it never gets any easier.  At least with this one, it's a local move, so I can be slightly less organized and still get it done.  But then I'm disorganized.

And for reasons that I don't understand, we decided to throw a little barbecue for Josie's birthday the night before the movers were coming.  So instead of spending valuable time getting ready, we were trashing the house with balloons and cupcake pans and dirty mixing bowls streaked with batter.  

But it was good to hang out with friends.  And Josie had fun doing the requisite destroying-baked-goods ritual of the first birthday.

Prey

Predator

To the victor go the spoils

 The move itself went fine.  The movers were great and worked quickly and efficiently.  But now we're in that stage of moving when we're technically in the house, but it's like living in a war zone.  There's debris everywhere.  I have no idea where anything is.  I'm all disoriented and keep walking into the wrong room.  Every time I take a step I trip over something.

But still, I love the house.  We're so happy.  I can mince down the block to grab a dozen eggs at the local grocer, or across the street for coffee, or two doors down for nails at the hardware store.  It's such a great neighborhood.  And the house, for all of the work it needs, feels like home.

How sweet it is

It's very hard for me to believe that it's been a year since she was born.  The year feels like it has flown by.  It's been tough, with J working out of town most of the time, and me trying to get the hang of a new job while being a part-time single parent. I spend my weeks bearing down, grinding it out, trying to get through.

But Josie has been the easy part.  I am not exaggerating when I say that she is the easiest, mellowest, sweetest little monkey I've ever encountered.  Just a lump of sugar -- affectionate, funny, good tempered, beautiful.  She is a joy, and I feel blessed beyond measure to have her in my life.


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

My brain is pulled in too many different directions right now.

Moving day is Monday.  We're incredibly excited, but also getting stomachaches thinking about all the work that there is to be done, both in preparation for the move itself, and generally on the house.  We've knocked out the walls at the top and bottom of the stairs and are putting in new flooring.  We're putting in a closet under the stairs and reframing under the stairs to vault the hallway to match the line of the staircase.

The front entrance hall

That carpet and wallpaper are a crime against humanity.  Or at least against good taste.  And what the hell were we supposed to do with that space between the staircase and the wall?  Use it as a dedicated time out spot for Zeke and Josie??  Also, you can't see it in these pictures, but there was a wall and door at the top of the stairs that created the entrance to the upstairs apartment.

That brass fireplace hardware is heinous.  The fireplace doesn't work anyway, and there are so many restrictions against burning wood in Denver that it's not worth getting a mason out to rebrick it or whatever.  So we're going to eventually put in a gas fireplace that's black or grey metal.

Here's the progress so far:

That used to be a wall and a door.  It was visually and physically jarring to suddenly confront a wall at the top of the stairs, plus it completely chopped up the space.

That back ledge under the stairs will be taken out so that the entire hall into the back room vaults along the same diagonal as the front.

I will never understand why people put carpeting over beautiful wood floors.  But the wood is so old and trashed now -- all buckled and bowed and bent -- that we have to cover it up with new flooring anyway. That should be done today or tomorrow.

There are boxes to pack before the movers come, cleaning to do, a bed frame to order (J and Zeke trashed ours jumping up and down on it).

And yesterday I enrolled Zeke in preschool.

And tomorrow is Josie's first birthday.

And I've got a week left of Insanity, and then I go to another high school reunion (for my school in Israel).  I timed that one well, eh?

Everything's changing.  But I guess life is like a shark -- if you're not moving forward or changing, you're not really living, are you?

Looking for love in all the right places

I spent a lovely weekend reconnecting with old friends and meeting a new one.

Well, "meeting" in the sense that we had never actually met in person, because the truth is, we both felt like we already knew each other.  Back when I was a baby blogger and learning my way around the blogging community, I started reading Lisa's blog, PoliTits (at that time, she blogged under the moniker "DCup") which was linked on Lemon Gloria, my high school friend's blog.  I thought the name "PoliTits" was hilarious, and soon discovered that in addition to being of my political ilk (read:  a big ol' bleeding heart like me), DCup/Lisa was funny and warm and smart and a terrific writer.  And it wasn't just a political blog -- she wrote with heart and humor and raw honesty about her family.  I was a new mom at the time and whenever I experienced a crisis of confidence about my mothering skills, I appreciated her wry wisdom and advice, and her reasonable approach to dealing with children (she's a proponent of Benign Neglect, a refreshing antidote to the type of helicopter parenting that seems to be the prevailing approach among my peers).

So I mustered up the courage to leave her some comments on her blog, and she was always gracious in responding, and soon she started leaving me comments, and then we would email about various things from time to time, and then we were Facebook buddies, and before I knew it, I had a true friend, albeit one I had never actually laid eyes on.

She lives just outside of Atlanta, so when Kathleen and I planned our trip to Atlanta, I got in touch with Lisa to see about meeting for coffee.  We settled on a Starbucks halfway between us.  As I pulled into the parking lot Saturday morning, I noticed a woman walking up the sidewalk and recognized her immediately and she recognized me immediately and we waved and it was like meeting up with an old friend that I just hadn't seen in a long time, rather than one I had never met.

"Cheeeeeeese!"

There was none of that initial awkwardness that might come from a Match.com first date.  We sat down and immediately started talking about her kids and my kids and writing and marriage and politics, and we knew each others' back stories (mostly).  And she's as cool as I thought she would be.  Easy to talk to, generous of spirit, intelligent.  It was similar to the experience I had meeting Anne last year -- just hanging out and catching up with an old friend.  There was no bullshit about it.

This crazy blogging community is a funny thing.  I get the sense that for many people, the ease of interacting online fosters a certain wariness about face-to-face interaction.  You can be anyone you want to be if you're limiting your contact with people to that which is made through the ether, when you are simply sitting in front of your computer, in the comfort and safety of your own home or office.

And so can everyone else.  Meaning that cyber-friendships can be, and often are, between people who have utterly misrepresented themselves, whether in their physical appearance or their life circumstances or whatever.

But nonetheless, my blogging friendships are very real and very important to me, and at least in my experience, the people I have befriended are exceedingly honest about who and what they are.  And I care about them.  When I see a Facebook status update by Moosie or Suz -- neither of whom I have ever met -- I am as interested as I am in those posted by my IRL friends.

Plus, as Lisa noted on her blog yesterday, life is to be lived.  Take chances.  Reach out and connect with people, regardless of the medium.  It's worth it.

Time lost, time gained

The alarm goes off at 5:30, just as I've set it to.  I've actually been up for a half hour already, half dozing and half admiring Zeke's sleeping face.  J was out of town last night, so I let him cuddle up with me. 

Kathleen and I are going to Atlanta today to visit some of our old crew.  Our flight leaves at 10-something, so I've timed it so that I can get up, do an Insanity DVD, clean up the house a bit and get organized, and then get the kids up and off to school before I pick up Kathleen and head to the airport. 

I don't feel like I'll have time to exercise at any other point in the day, so I really, really want to get this workout in.  I'm 7 weeks into the 9 week program and I'm losing weight and inches and it's going great.  I know one day won't kill my progress, but I don't want to lose momentum.

I make the coffee, prepare my water bottle for the workout, put on my clothes and my heart rate monitor, and start the disc.  The workout is super-intense, but only 40 minutes or so, so I feel like I've timed it perfectly.  I start the jog, then the jumping jacks, then the high knees.  I check the heart rate monitor, and my rate is creeping up nicely.  I start to feel awake.

Exactly 3 minutes in, I hear Josie screaming her face off.  It's a solid 1 1/2 to 2 hours before she normally wakes up.

Fuck.

Maybe she's hungry.  I stop the disc, find a clean bottle and fill it with milk and head down to her room. 

"Hey, sweetie," I whisper.  She calms down and holds her arms up to me.

"Are you hungry?  Do you need a bottle?"

She makes a kind of "mmmmh" noise in assent, rubbing her eyes and still whimpering.  I sit down in the rocking chair and she settles in to my arms and drinks the bottle. 

Rock, rock, rock.  10 minutes go by.  She's very relaxed and happy now.

When the bottle is empty, she sits up and looks at me.  "Ba ba dee."

"Really?" 

I know she's not ready to get up yet.  She sticks her middle and ring fingers into her mouth, leans forward, and curls up on me with her head resting on my shoulder.  I support her butt with one forearm and wrap the other arm around her, rubbing her back and whispering in her ear. 

As her breathing slows and becomes more regular, I just hold her.  From time to time, I pull her a little bit tighter to me as the surges of "oh my God I love this child so much" wash over me.

I wanted so much to get some exercise in, but I don't feel the slightest bit of annoyance or frustration with her.  Just contentment as I sit and rock and hold her and she falls back to sleep.

I've lost my window of time.

Maybe I can get a quick workout in before dinner tonight.  Or I can just do two of them tomorrow.

It doesn't matter.

The cuteness is an evolutionary tool to keep them alive.

Yesterday I was talking to my brother Sam.  Just a general catch up type of call, hey how's it going, what's going on with you, I talked to Mom, she's on her way to from Bishkek to Delhi, we had dinner with the cousins, they said they saw you in New York last week, blah blah.  And of course, the talk turns to the kids.

The kids are doing many amusing things these days, so I always have a funny story or two to tell.  The one currently in rotation involves Zeke's irritation with J and me over our insistence that, from time to time, we get to watch what we want on the TV that we bought and paid for.  Last week, after Zeke had had his chance to watch at least one or two episodes of Diego and an episode of Elmo, we put on a football game.

"Mama, I want to watch Dora."

"No, honey, you already got to watch your shows.  Now Daddy and I are going to watch footy."*

"No, Mama, no!  I want to watch my show."

"You already watched your show.  Now it's our turn."

"No, Mama.  Don't say 'no' to me."

He continues in this vein.  J and I ignore him and watch the game.

He's quiet for a little while and plays with his trucks.  Then, in the kind of voice I usually reserve for the car, when I'm berating asshole drivers from the comfort and security of my own bucket seat, he says, "It's TIIIIME to SHAAAARE!  You need to SHAAAAARE with me!!!!"

J and I both have to bite our lips to keep from laughing.  We explain that we shared earlier, when he got to watch his shows, and now it's our turn.

He glowers, and periodically repeats his complaint in a classic Jewish-mother-nagging tone.  "You're not SHAARING!  Time to SHAAAARE the TV!"

We resist the urge to say, "everything about our entire fucking lives involves sharing with you, you little shit."

Sam and I laughed about this as I was recounting it, and he mentioned a Louis C.K. bit that he does about his four-year-old daughter; how he loves her like crazy, but she's an asshole.  Later he sent me a link.

It's a little jarring to hear someone talk about his or her kids this way, but when you think of it in terms of how you would react if an adult engaged in the kind of behaviors we tolerate in young children, it hits home.  They would be totally ostracized, if not homeless.  In any event, it's pretty damned funny.

(WARNING:  This clip is NSFW.  There is much gratuitous use of the word "fuck."  Even I, an unabashed fan of the word, was a bit taken aback.  Truth be told, I've never been a huge Louis C.K. fan because I find him unnecessarily vulgar and harsh.  But still, I defy you not to laugh, particularly if you have kids.)




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*Yes, I have co-opted J's Aussie-ism for "football."

Another in a long string of (unsuccessful) attempts to raise the discourse 'round these parts

J was in Vail last night, so I had the kids.  We went to the park after school and Josie crawled around and ate wood chips while I pushed Zeke on the swings.  She crawled around and ate grass while he sprinted across the playground pulling the wagon behind him.  Then it was time to go home.

Zeke managed not to bump into the curb too many times, thereby increasing the comfort level of the ride

At home I fed them dinner (corn dogs!  Mom of the Year Award is a lock!) and we watched some Backyardigans and then I decided that we had watched enough TV.  I took Josie into the play room and we played with some musical toys and I started reading to her.  Not being able to resist being in on the action, Zeke ran in to join us.

Of course, he was naked.  Because he's always naked.  He's going through that naked phase that all kids go through, and when he's in the house, I'll give at least 1 to 5 odds that he's not wearing any clothes.  He walks in the house and immediately strips down.

I'm kind of jealous, actually.  It seems comfortable.  And it's helped immeasurably with the potty training, because he will use the potty every time when he's naked, but the minute there is some piece of something covering his nether regions, be it a diaper or big boy pants, he's much more likely to completely zone out and wet himself (or worse).  He's making progress going to the bathroom when he's wearing clothes, but I don't mind the nakedness if it means I don't have to clean shit out of a pair of underwear.

So we're sitting in the playroom, and I'm mentally patting myself on the back for getting my children away from the idiot box and engaging them in reading and educational play.  Josie is enjoying Tickle the Pig as Zeke squats down and listens and occasionally points something out to her.  He's a really sweet big brother.  "Look, Josie, there's a caterpillar!  See?  See?"

I praise him for being such a good boy.  "Zekey, you're being so nice to Josie.  You're a really good big brother.  I appreciate it."

He looks at me and gives me a big smile.  I'm feeling the love.

"I put my thumb in my butt, Mama!"

*sigh*

A lesson for all of you out there who think that you'll never use what you learn in math class

We're getting really excited about the new house.  Friday night we started knocking down two walls to open some of the space up.  The previous owner had closed off the top of the stairs and a hallway under the stairs to create discrete upstairs and downstairs apartments, and it made the space all chopped up and awkward, so priority number one was to take the walls down before the new hardwood floors get put down next week.  J showed me how to use the sawzall and loaned me his work gloves and put me to work.  I pulled off door framing with the hammer and cut out squares of sheet rock and generally had a ball.  We did bits and pieces throughout the weekend, and finished up tonight.

With just two seemingly small-ish, insignificant walls gone, the space just flows so much better.  When the floors are installed, it's going to look beautiful. 

There's still much work to be done, though.  Both bathrooms are atrocious, and while functional, need to be redone.  And there are a couple of other walls that we want to either bring down or cut into, but they are load-bearing walls so we need to figure out exactly how it can be done without jeopardizing the structural integrity of the house.  While I am certainly handy with power tools and a paintbrush, that's as far as it goes.


This is where J impresses the shit out of me.  Because not only does he know how to do all of this stuff, he knows how to figure out how to do it.  If that makes any sense.

The narrative of our marriage, at least as far as he tells it, is that I'm this crazy-smart person full of book learning who is all brainy for a living, and he's the big lunk who is on the tools because his brain isn't worth a damn.  I reject this because it's simply not true.  He may not have the formal education I have, and my abstract reasoning skills may be better, but he is very intelligent and has an amazing ability to figure out complex problems of engineering that leave me baffled.* 

And let's face it, I had every opportunity.  I came from a loving, supportive home in which education was valued, my abilities were praised, and it was always assumed I would go on to college and some post-graduate degree.  J went from one abusive home to another, was discouraged from pursuing a career as a vet by people who told him he was too stupid, and finally escaped to go out on his own when he was 16 or so.  He had the discipline and resourcefulness to finish school and put himself through trade school so that he would always have a solid skill that would allow him to support himself.

As my dad always says, in our family of Deep Thinkers, J's the only one that actually knows how to do anything useful.

We were sitting tonight watching football and folding laundry after the kids were asleep, talking about the house.  He had been over there earlier in the evening to do some laundry (our washing machine in the rental house is on the fritz) and we were marveling at how great it's going to look with the space opened up.

"And baby, I was doing some calculations, and we can really do something with that wall between the dining room and the back hallway.  We could put a pillar here or cut it out like you were saying you wanted to....."

As he's talking he's gesturing with his hands and I am trying to follow but I can't visualize what he's describing.

".....and so if you put a stud there to support the floor joists and wah wah wah wah waaaaaah...."

I'm like Charlie Brown listening to the teacher.

"I don't understand,"  I say.  "How do you know it's possible to do what you're describing?  How do you know the upstairs structure can handle it?" 

"I told you, I did calculations." 

"I know, but how did you know how to do them?"

"Well, I had a calculator."  He huffs at me like I'm daft.  "I'll have to take you over there and show you."

"Dude.  I'm not talking about doing the actual math.  I know how to do math, too.  I finished two years of calculus before I was out of high school, ferchrissakes.  But which calculation?  How do you know what formula to use?  The Pythagorean theorem?  The quadratic equation?"

I give him my stern, confused look, and he looks back at me, and we both crack up.

"Should I be using SOHCAHTOA?" I demand.  We're wheezing now, tears squeaking out of our eyes because we're laughing so hard.

Finally he sighs and hangs his head as he shakes it.  Kind of a "don't worry your pretty little head" gesture.

Which is fine.  Everyone likes to feel smart and competent, and he's entitled to it in this situation.
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*Not that I couldn't figure it out given the time and a decent math textbook, but it's just not what I do on a regular basis.