elise abrams miller

I've moved...

2011-09-09T22:17:00.003-04:00

...to a new URL in cyberspace. A few days back, every time I clicked onto this blog I got a malware virus warning. It scared me. Then it inspired me. I've owned the rights to my name-as-domain for years. It's older than Hamish. So I finally bit the bullet and paid up to actually use it. My new address is elisemiller.com.

It's been a great six years here at blogspot. Please come on over to my new digs. I'd love to see you!

Peace out y'all,

Random smatterings, Insomniac haze

2011-09-03T05:24:00.014-04:00

Bryan and I got busy. Busy in the kitchen. Oh yeah. We lacto-fermented more than we did last summer—zucchini, cucumbers, salsa, gingered beets and carrots with cardamom—used more veg from our garden than last summer, since Bryan grew more, since he got serious (I look forward to participating in the planting more next year), and now we are enjoying the sometimes fizzy fruits of our labor. I've been downing salsa like nobody's business—on eggs, on taco night, and drinking the brine for a digestive boost. I'd like to thank salsa for my poops. Sniff.

I have insomnia. I think it's from the steroids I'm on for the fluid the ENT detected behind my right eardrum, Lord knows how long that's been there.

I went to the ENT because I have this weird ear thing where my ear pops open and I can hear myself talking inside my head. I can hear my breathing, my heartbeat, my footfalls. According to the world wide web it's called Patulous Eustachian Tube, and it's rare and it's barely fixable. Hooray! It doesn't hurt but it's annoying as hell and makes me want to lie down, because when I do it stops. Or when I bend over. It doesn't happen all the time but when it does, oy. Unfortunately losing weight and exercising are prone to worsening symptoms but hell no, I won't sit around and gain weight. Anyway, PET is one of the few things Primal can't fix. In fact, since losing weight and exercising more (and by exercising more I mean walking barefoot around my neighborhood until I grow the balls and the funds to try this), it's been worse. What a buzz-kill. Actually, wait. Scratch the exercising more thing. I am not even exercising more. I am exercising less. But I am moving around more and I am sitting less.

I've had PET for over a decade. It obviously took me a while to get it looked at.

The fluid may or may not have anything to do with the PET. The PET happens because my eustachian tube doesn't stay closed the way it should. The fluid has me slightly deafer in my right ear.

The kicker is that the steroids make the PET worse and may have no effect on the fluid. God I love Western medicine!

I already tapered off the Prednisone thank God but I'm still on the spray. And I'm thinking about kicking it to the curb tomorrow. I can't stand this shit.

This is what I learned: I hate steroids. They make me mean and unsympathetic. Or maybe it's the kids. Or maybe it's my diet. I'm looking into this since reading this Primal blogger's account of her vulcan-like apathy. Could sweets really make you sweeter? Maybe. Still, I'll choose apathy over anxiety any day of the week. The steroids, though. They give me a headache and interrupt my sleep. I love sleep.

I've wanted to blog for a while but haven't had the chance. This seems like the perfect time, five AM. Is insomniac blogging the same as drunk blogging?

Summer is done. My tan is fading. But I look forward to dropping my kids off at school. Oh I do. This week has been rough, ladies. Men. Puppies...

Okay these pics are Stella-heavy but these are my flagged shots so here we go. Above, a rare shot of Stells with her hair neatly kept. Below, looking scarily grown up.

Below, twirling. It reminds me of the cure's The Head on The Door album cover. But it's just a five year-old girl showing off the twirl power of a new, already beloved dress.

Sweet dreams, y'all. And happy last summer weekend.

Growing up

2011-08-25T17:47:00.019-04:00

I've heard throughout my forty-two years on this planet that it's not a good idea to give too much thought to critics and naysayers, flamers and assholes.

And yet. Isn't that exactly what we do sometimes? Cling to that one little negative thing someone said, turn it over and over in our minds until it morphs into something completely different—bigger, more offensive, infuriating even. You shake your fists and foam at the mouth—Ooh why I oughta!

I used to do that. Before I went Primal. (Yes, two months into my experiment and I'm still reaping rewards. Pooping regularly, thank you, wee! Getting nuttier over it too, but that's a post for a different day. It involves bare feet. And chairlessness. I guess you could say it's the rabbit hole that keeps on giving. Bryan's still waiting for me to implode before he takes any of this seriously. He's given me till December, the six-month mark. Um, that's my disclaimer. He's an uber-rational guy, see.)

Okay. Back to the assholes. I received a nasty comment on my previous post. I hadn't gotten any negative comments in the six years since I started this blog—well there was that one a few months back when some anonymous poster told me to get a job. I cursed at the screen, deleted their comment, took their advice and wrote a novel.

Silver linings everywhere, right?

So this recent anonymous poster wrote, "You are a really crazy woman. Don't know you but maybe there was a point to that experience especially draining that animal looks like great fun for your kids."

Since I am filled with EPA and B vitamins, I didn't get too bent out of shape about it. I feel sane to the point of rejoicing each night as I lay myself to sleep, which makes plenty of other people seem WACKO, even though I'm the one thanking my clasped hands in the dark. I simply replied, "anonymous—grow some balls and reveal your identity. It's the least you can do, coming to my blog to bash me, you ignorant tool."

It felt so good!

But then I thought some more about it. I didn't receive too many comments on my last post and I wondered if maybe those photos of my daughter watching a deer getting skinned grossed people out. Maybe they were offended and thought I was crazy too, but since we're friends they didn't want to ruffle my meat-eating feathers.

Maybe Anonymous has a point, albeit a cowardly, disrespectfully presented point, with little care given to punctuation...

So what is the story with my five year-old daughter and the deer carcass anyway?

The story is simple: she wanted to watch. Bryan and I asked her repeatedly if she was sure she wanted to watch and she said yes every time, blowing not only our minds but the minds of the farmers too. She remained rooted to the ground and stared as the deer was skinned and sliced, beheaded and butchered. At one point, illustrated above, she stomped over to me and said, "It's sad but I can't stop watching." You know, car crash style. I offered to take her away. She said no. The next day when we dined on backstrap she politely declined as she had planned to do. She did eat the venison burger however.

And seven year-old Hamish? He opted out of the viewing but relished the steak. He wants no part of death, sensitive soul that he is, aside from consuming its spoils. We respect his wishes.

I have no problem with my daughter witnessing the butchering of an animal that is to be consumed if that is her wish. I am in good company, too. Anyone read The Dirty Life? Kristin and Mark Kimball are modern agricultural heroes and it makes me proud to have a tiny something in common with them. How do people think meat makes its way to their plates anyway? It's not elfin magic. Death is a part of life and in my omnivorous view, it's childish to pretend it's not. Better yet, demystify death and familiarize kids with the reality of it early on. (Now if only I could use this truth-logic to tackle Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy...) Anyway, a whole lot of animals die to grow vegetarian delights like lettuce and soy, corn and wheat. Entire ecosystems are wiped out to plant and sustain monocrops. I used to have a huge problem with the eating of animals which is why I was a vegetarian for a dozen years. I could have been that anonymous a-hole back when my main source for nutritional information came from John Robbins.

Growing up beats pretending you can outwit death at the table. But the news is good. It's called mutual indebtedness, and it's one of the reasons I am so thankful every night. For my food, my health, and for you, Kind Reader.

Thanks for tuning in,

wwoofing it

2011-08-19T23:47:00.002-04:00

Call it overkill. 51 photos. I could split them into multiple posts. Edit them down to a paltry sum. Add a ton of text. Instead I'll serve them raw and unadulterated like the goat milk we helped to procure during the few days we stayed on a farm that was kind enough to share itself with us.

happy ending

2011-08-06T22:09:00.015-04:00

While Bryan and the kids are camping I am supposed to be revising. Instead I am playing hooky. I napped for three thousand hours today. Two thousand yesterday. I will be up forever this evening surfing Netflix Instantplay. But it is so worth it. Naps are my new favorite pastime, especially when my insides are on strike.

Last night, filled with collards, freedom (and other, ahem, things) I drove to Whole Foods and confessed in hushed tones to the silver-haired vitamin guy, the one with the buzz-cut and the architectural glasses, that I am constipated.

Dear Reader, it's come to that. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I told Dr. Whole Foods that a friend recommended liquid magnesium but we both decided it was too expensive at $24.99, too much of a gamble, even though my friend has much expertise. The box, for some reason, looked menacing. I couldn't do it.

Dr. Whole Foods mildly criticized the bacon in my basket so I knew he wasn't down with traditional foods or saturated fat. He asked me what kind of cooking oil I use and I tried to look proud and self-assured when I mentioned pastured lard. I wanted to explain the benefits of grainlessness and animal fat but I get mealy mouthed when trying to convince the unconvinceable, especially when they're in a position of relative authority and I poop once every five days. Something is obviously wrong. I was not in a position to be touting my ways.

In the end, his eyebrows escaped the edges of his slick specs in uncharacteristic excitement. He told me to eat not one but two apples, that the pectin would help me, and ooh, ooh, he'd just read this study, it would help me avoid coronary heart disease too. And also, I should use flaxseed oil. I bought a bottle of that for $6.99, a stultified sheep in the Whole Foods headlights.

Back at home, I ate a spoonful of the oil and wanted to die. It was almost as bad as the cod liver oil I have tried and failed to integrate into my eating habits. Then I ate an apple, peeled, sliced and sprinkled with cinnamon, my favorite way to indulge. I topped each slice with slather of almond butter, the kind that comes with roasted flax seeds. I figured it would help. In a delicious way.

After I munched (not before, God forbid) I Googled Dr. Whole Foods's advice and found that raw apples have been found to negatively affect the innards of lab rats, but cooked apples are our friends, that the pectin can indeed aid constipation sufferers. Great. For insurance I drank a mug of Smooth Move tea, which has senna leaf in it to stimulate the bowel. You're not supposed to use it regularly because you can become dependent on it. But I was on a mission. A poopy mission.

I awoke at one-something AM in the blooming insomniac night to my abdomen dancing a raging hula, all to little effect. Groggy and hopeful I visited the bathroom. Once, twice, thrice, and struck out. Damn you laxative tea! I shook my fist at the indifferent ceiling.

I lay in bed tracing the undulation of my abdomen with my fingers, wishing for sleep but also noting the still curious absence of anxiety. This would have been a fantastic time to worry—to regret blogging about how much I love Primal, to become as filled with angst as I was with poop. This would have been the time for my heart to race with desperation, cringing and wondering, is this grain-free diet worth the aggravation?

The answer came sure and simple and clean. YES. It is worth it. My mind, unlike my intestines, remained calm and untangled. All the reason I needed to soldier on.

In the quiet dark, instead of berating myself for being a damn fool, I decided it all makes sense. I was bottle-fed as an infant. My high school diet consisted of Reese's peanut butter cups and bong hits. Before that it was Pop-Tarts and Cap'n Crunch. Throughout my twenties and thirties it was soy, rice and pasta. I'd taken my fair share of anti-biotics for myriad ailments. My guts were simply not accustomed to the new regime, not without the scouring agent they'd been trained to depend upon over their forty-two years. Constipation among Primal and Paleo eaters is typical but it has to be fixable, I thought. Then I fell asleep.

In the morning I tried yet again to ingest the flaxseed oil, this time mixed in a mug with hot filtered water, lemon juice, Celtic Sea Salt, Bragg's raw apple cider vinegar and coconut oil. It was a hot mess, a foul tribute to all the natural remedy ideas I'd picked up on. Flaxseed oil, God bless if you love it, but ew, Jesus. Eating it felt like punishment, and I have little patience for disguising disgusting-tasting foods, no matter how nutritious.

Eyeing my receipt I remembered Malibu Mark Sisson recommending a couple extra fish oil pills in the case of a sluggish bowel, and I already had a bottle of those on-hand. $6.99, a voice whispered. Six ninety-nine.

I opened my laptop again. Still groggy, still determined, I learned that a number of Primal/Paleo eaters found relief with a product called Natural Calm, which is a powdered magnesium supplement. They spoke my language, suffered what I suffered, and found a way to poop. I felt calm just looking at the container.

I grabbed the flaxseed oil, receipt and car keys. I flew out of the house.

The Natural Calm was there on the bottom shelf. It was $21.99. I was at a crossroads. I didn't want to spend that much on a constipation remedy. Bryan already breaks out in hives whenever I bring home some new superfood. But spend I did. At home I mixed it up and drank it down. Not bad at all. Chalky and tart like a children's aspirin. Totally do-able. Then I sauteed some apple slices in cultured butter, chewed them thoughtfully, took a probiotic capsule, a couple fish oil pills, and mowed the lawn.

Eventually, Reader, things began to move. And move. And move like they haven't moved in days.

The clouds parted. The angels sang. And I sat reverently giving thanks.

My insides and my outside met. They shook hands, smiled at each other, and promised to see each other again real soon.

kitty litter

2011-08-04T13:10:00.004-04:00

I woke up this morning feeling anti-blog, feeling like, why why why do I share myself in cyberspace, what kind of masochistic narcissistic nut am I? Maybe it's time to delete the whole damn thing.

But then another part of me, my Inner Wise One, I call her, new agey, I know, I am sheepish about it...But she says not so fast. Don't do anything hasty. This is who you are, go with it, accept it, and write it the fuck down. Bitch. And I was like. All right, all right.

No, that's not true. She talks really nicely to me.

Um.

Well, she does. It's just embarrassing to admit I talk to myself. But if I'm going to admit it anywhere, it may as well be on the world wide web.

I chided myself only in the nicest way of course. It wasn't an anxiety attack. I wasn't foaming at the mouth with guilt, regret, self-hatred. I could see it shimmering on the horizon though, could almost taste its metal shine. I would confess to you if it were an anxiety attack. Instead I'll be honest: it was a consti-fucking-pation attack.

I stand by this grain-free nonsense because if I had to choose between mental sanity and flowing bowels I'd choose sanity every time. I'll let the poop drain from my ears if I need to. I don't want to go back to that hell-hole of suicidal despair, of mood-swings that hold me captive and practically drooling in desperation. And because I refuse to go back, I know I can tweak my diet, make small changes that will yield brown log-like results. I have confidence in that. My sanity depends on it. And anyway, isn't that what the internet is for?

I am dramatic. But it really feels awful in the throes of it. The mental anguish part that is. If you suffer, then you know.

So the blogging ambivilence. It comes and goes. Ebbs and flows like the muscle definition line on the outer edge of my thigh, the way it appears sometimes when I cross my legs at the knee. I love that goddamned line.

In other news, I shared a cozy snuggle with Stella this morning. She crawled into my bed. I told her I wanted to stay in bed all day until I poop, that if my colon can go on strike then I can too, go make yourself breakfast, you know where the kitchen is. She thought that was ludicrous.

I am reading The Tender Bar. It was recommended to me twice this week. I read aloud to her in between stealing envious glances at her tanned legs. She asked what dawn is. She asked what aristocrat means. Then she said, "Mommy, you smell like kitty litter," and I thought, how the hell does she know what kitty litter smells like? So I asked her, "Fresh kitty litter or dirty kitty litter?" And she asked what fresh means and I told her it means clean and she said I smell like clean kitty litter and that, dear Reader, is why I can share that story with you here.

temper my temper

2011-07-28T19:07:00.006-04:00

This week the kids are in sports camp. They'll be going camping soon, at that place called Crap Creek where I no longer venture. And then the whole lot of us are off to a farm vacation. Have you heard of WWOOF? I should put the word vacation in quotes. We will be earning our keep after all, working on the farm. I hope the kids like it. Bryan hopes I like it.

This is week four of my Primal experiment. The program I am following is here. If anyone's interested, I'd love a partner in Prime. Haha! That is a bad joke. Has it really been a month since I cut out grains and sugar? Aside from my intermittently sluggish bowel (you heard it here first) it's going well. I italicize that in order to illustrate how I want to say more about how well it's going, jump up and down maybe, but I am loathe to do any of that.

See, when I first started paying attention to what I eat last Spring, my mood improved so much I thought I'd found a new religion. I learned about serotonin and L-tryptophan. Then my mood began to tank and I felt like a fool for sharing the highs, only to feel compelled to share the lowly lows. Then I cut wheat from my diet and my mood elevated again. And tanked again.

From this latest vantage point I wonder if grain and sugar were the culprits all along. Without processed foods I loaded up on sourdough bread and homemade ice cream. Without wheat, I started eating more rice and corn. A lot more.

So these days my mood is stable and mostly positive and calm. The kids haven't driven me bat-shit, so subsequently I haven't spun into a tizzy of guilt-soaked self-hatred, which I am profoundly grateful for and amazed by—amazed that FOOD can temper my, uh, temper.

That is my main reason for eating this way. Being anxious and depressed just sucks big ass wads, so whatever I can do to combat that naturally, I will.

My energy remains mostly high, I'm feeling lean and trying not to be smug around Bryan, who as usual, thinks I'm a nut job, but a decent enough nut job to keep around. He says he'll think about joining me in five months if I'm still reaping rewards.

I hope so.

Peace out y'all.

new development

2011-07-06T08:54:00.008-04:00

My drive to write usually comes from a need to be understood, to be heard, a need that for me is almost primal, as it feels ancient, and stems (you guessed it) from my childhood. This is probably why I feel so comfortable sharing my deepest darkest.

I've tried lately to share the more upbeat aspects of my life, but that shit wears thin for me. I like to keep it real yo. (Can you guess I've been watching The Wire? Mos def.)

Speaking of Primal, in the midst of a death in the family (another one, yes, I know. It's fucked up but I don't want to get into it) I was reading a book, Why We Get Fat, And What To Do About It, not only because I am interested in shedding the couple extra inches of fat on my butt, but because I love Gary Taubes and what he has to say about diet and nutrition. I read his previous book and loved that too.

If you know me, you know I have a tendency to embrace various inspiring methods toward healing with gusto, only to abandon them later. I've done this with yoga, vegetarianism and chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. The same could happen with my most recent blast of good feelings and hope, based on what I read in Gary's book.

Basically, I've gone Primal. I already knew that my emotional state was tied closely to my diet. Last March when I read The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Kieth, I stopped being vegetarian and sought out local farms from which I could buy grass-fed beef and raw milk, pastured pork, poultry and eggs. It changed me drastically. I gave up soy, nonorganic corn, got rid of anything processed. I still believe in it.

But I started slipping into my black holes again, growing depressed and hating myself like old times, wracked with guilt that I was All Wrong.

Primal is basically Atkins with an emphasis on the unprocessed. Real food, minus grains, starches, sugar. I'd already given up wheat and liked the effects, but I'd been eating more rice, beans and corn. And chocolate and ice cream. Plus a ton of yogurt.

I'm calling it an experiment. That way if it doesn't work I don't have to feel like I failed. I can say that the diet failed, that it was unsustainable.

It is hard to cut so many things from one's diet, easier if I don't go out to eat, which I rarely do, since it's not so good for our financial sitch.

For the past five days I've gone without rice, beans, corn, wheat, sugar (including fruit, save a few strawberries), dairy (except heavy cream) and starchy vegetables.

I have eaten coconut milk, nuts, steak, chicken, sausage, bacon, green beans, collards, kale, salad, eggs and avocado. And cheese. And homemade deer jerky courtesy of one of the Miller cousins.

The first two days of my experiment I had an awful headache. It was an awful day as my body withdrew from carbs like it was withdrawing from caffeine (which I don't normally drink) or some other drug. I was exhausted and so irritable and emotional. The recent death certainly helped with that.

After a teary morning walk I went to see Tree of Life and felt like a prisoner of war, watching Brad Pitt quasi-abuse his kids, and endless beautiful shots of nature and architecture and his crying wife who looked eighteen when she was supposed to be in her forties. She also looked like the director wanted Bryce Dallas Howard but couldn't get her for the project. I would post links but don't feel like doing all that HTML.

It was too poetic, too heavy, too fucking meaningful, for me on that day anyway. Maybe another day I would have lapped it up. After an hour and half I walked out, up the aisle from the front row past a packed house. I wondered how on earth I could be the only one storming out of that masturbatory piece of shit. I asked the teenagers at the concession stand if I could have my money back. They said no and tittered at the crazy lady. I'd become her, the lunatic with the frizzy hair. They probably imagined I lived in a smelly apartment with fourteen cats.

Walking out, I smacked a velvet rope stand. I wanted to pick it up and hurl it through the plate glass window. I pushed the doors open as hard as I could to show those hairy mother fuckers that I was a tough guy and when I got to the parking lot, burst into tears. What was happening to me? I cried all the way home, called my mom, tore into her about various things, including my childhood. Nice. She was, in a word, awesome. She listened, she didn't deny, she cried along with me. We bonded, and that was when she told me she is sure that Meg Ryan was on As The World Turns in 1962.

Afterwards I felt calm.

The next morning my headache was gone.

The next morning energy returned.

Maybe it's a combination of things. Emotional catharsis, Dietary catharsis.

My body is no longer running on carbs (if I am doing this correctly). Food cravings are gone. My mood is steady and bright the way it was when I first cut out processed foods and upped my animal fat and protein intake. My body is in ketosis, the state of burning fat for fuel. I'm exercising less, but feeling slimmer already. Feeling kind of like a big carnivorous cat. Thinking about starting a pull-up routine. Old school. Push-ups. Dips. Squats. Sprints. I read about it here.

We'll see if it sticks.

Thanks for reading.

giddy up gato

2011-06-28T15:34:00.002-04:00

For her last day of horse camp Bryan and I finally got to see Stella ride. Her horse's name is Gato. He is big and brown.

I "filmed" her circuit with my new super 8mm app. The "filmstock" is "Sakura," chosen by Stella because Stella likes pink.

The boy who read

2011-06-24T17:31:00.001-04:00

I reserve the right to kvell.

Is it weird that I feel guilty for singing my kid's praises? And why does it come so naturally to me to kvetch? I do it well to be sure. Is that a double negative? I brag about my kvetching skills.

My usual stance in life is to be self-deprecating and thereby kid-deprecating, which might not be the best mode, but, well. I don't beat myself up anymore. It's my new thing.

And I reassure myself that I'm not a hyper-critical monster with the concept that yeah, kids are great and all but not every one of them is Picasso or Einstein. In fact, few are, my kids notwithstanding.

I have found a lot of connection in my life sharing the scary hairy bits. It's how I bond, how I roll, and many have gone by the wayside who don't speak this language. The braggers give me hives.

Have I made friends over shared inflated senses of self? Like two balloons trying to hug, it's physically, physiologically impossible, though there are those who compete not to be the best but to be the worst. Cry me a fucking river. Two popped balloons just lay there in the gutter.

Boo hoo.

I'm not saying don't shine. Shine away. But with humility. I hear humility is all the rage.

"Hey Mom!" Hamish just called, "I got to the Dumbledore part!"

My heart swelled. I took his picture. My boy is reading Harry Potter! On his own! But just as quickly as he picked it up, he put it down and kvetched, "I'm boooooored. What can I dooooo?"

It ain't all pickles and roses.

backyard bounty

2011-06-22T21:25:00.006-04:00

Now that I've lived in this house for three years, and maybe now that I'm um, into my forties, ahem, I can feel the cyclical nature of things. Things like pre-menstrualness, holiday shoppingness, and seasonal fare.

Those raspberries? From the back yard. Just like they were last year and the year before.

Even though I've come to expect it, I don't take it for granted, not yet anyway. It still thrills me—plucking, rinsing, devouring, repeating.

Maybe one day the kids will actually try them. Yes, I have berry-fearful kids. Those scary seeds! Not even the fingertip hat trick can inspire Hamish or Stella to take a bite. And Stella eats onion grass. Raw collards. Pickles. Kale flakes. I don't get it. Oh wait I do. I never ate berries as a kid either. I much preferred the Lik-A-Stik berry-flavored powder.

Every day I offer, and every day they bellow, "Of course not, Mom!" with all the indignation they can muster in their twelve combined years.

Well.

Until they come to their senses, more for me.

In your face, kids.

It's just a milkshake

2011-06-20T08:52:00.006-04:00

The scene is only twelve seconds long but it has gotten under my skin to the point where I'm quoting it to the children.

It's just a milkshake.

I said it last night at dinner when Stella spilled ketchup all over her skirt and the carpeted floor. She cried and said, "It's not a milkshake, Mommy!" but she knew what I meant. I'd explained it the day before when her cup of root beer got knocked over at my niece's graduation party.

"It's just a milkshake."

"No Mommy! It's root beer!"

I've said it to Hamish too.

The scene is here, two minutes, eighteen seconds in. You have to wait for the thirteen-second Breaking Bad trailer to end but now I've watched it enough that I'm intrigued to watch that show too. Maybe I'll add it to my queue.

It takes us a while to catch up on quality TV since we don't have cable, and yes I am shamelessly proud of that fact. It keeps me and the kids out of a whole lot of trouble. But we have Netflix, and that's how we manage to not live completely under a rock.

I told the kids about the origins of my new milkshake line—

"Daddy and I were watching TV and there was this scene. A dad and his kids were at a diner, and they were with the dad's girlfriend. The kids, a boy and a girl, started fighting and there were these two gigantic strawberry milkshakes on the table. One of the milkshakes got knocked over and the dad got really angry, shot up from the table in a huff, but the girlfriend, she was so calm, grabbed some napkins and said, "Don't be upset. It's just a milkshake," and the dad was so surprised at her response, he looked at her like she was from a different planet. It was like he was thinking, really? I don't need to lose my temper? And he sat back down and no one yelled and no one got upset and they just cleaned it up and the dad sat there, stunned by this whole new universe that opened up before him."

They understood. Well, Hamish got it right away, I could tell by the look in his eye. Stella still cried when she dumped ketchup all over herself.

She cried, I think, because I've mostly responded by losing it when things spill. I've tried not to, but after a long week, a long day, after everyone's finally seated and finally ready to begin eating dinner the ketchup spills, well, Dammit! Now look what you've done! It's a knee-jerk reaction.

It might not have become my default response if I hadn't grown up with a parent who lost his cool when drinks spilled, or when I drew a few faint lines of pencil on his bedroom wall, or made a tidy mountain of Love's Baby Soft bath powder on my plastic vanity top, or failed to finish my hamburger at dinner. My life was a series of blistering God Dammits! And subsequent running from the belt.

But that's the way it went and then I became a mom, the kind who swore she'd do it differently and then failed. Okay I don't chase my kids with a belt. But I do lose it. And I apologize. Because I know better. The kids are just being kids, acting age-appropriately and so forth, and I know how they feel because I was once in their shoes.

So this scene with Megan and Don, it hit me hard, and since then, I've adopted Megan's cucumber attitude in times of spillage, and Reader, I tell you, it worked. My first response to that ketchup? I saw red. But then I went into Megan mode and the anger flowed like so much pureed tomato.

That Megan, she's a keeper.

And she speaks French too.

Nature

2011-06-11T18:40:00.004-04:00

Starring Danielle McGurran as herself.

The Gnome.

The Ghost.

Wardrobe by Ray Ban.

They hang witches here, don't they?

Fruitful

2011-06-10T12:40:00.005-04:00

This is one of my favorite hipsta pics so far. A complete accident. My face looks mean and ragged, not my best angle, but for the composition I will sacrifice my vanity, just this once. I like the depth.

Yeah, um. So.

I began this blog as way to keep myself connected to writing after the publication of my first novel and subsequent birth of my children, thus the original title, "The Pen and the Poop."

Because making the decision to start a family on the heels of my first book deal was, well, let's say...challenging.

And I've wanted to tell you for some time, that, well, the novel I mentioned starting back in October when I was mooning over Twilight?

After years of blogging about everything from my son's teal poop to my parenting/lumbar/creative woes, to my (at times) zealous passions for meat, yoga and Byron Katie, my confessionary confection has borne linear, chaptered fruit. I finished my second novel. It's rough and pocky and a little lumpy, but spherical enough to have a chance of being overstocked in a warehouse one day.

And though the news is relevant, it feels a little like I'm jinxing myself, especially as I sit here in the local coffee shop very much not polishing my globular sweetness in order to blog instead.

But who doesn't love irony.

The point is, I'm feeling celebratory, procastinatory appreciation for all this blog has delivered, no matter the time it took.

(It took five years. Illustrated in black and white. And clicks and links. And flesh and blood.)

So yeah.

Just. Thanks.

I have a new hobby...

2011-06-09T15:19:00.001-04:00

...and a new toy.

Hostess

2011-06-06T13:18:00.002-04:00

A few of us moms from Stella's class are swapping playdate hostessing duties since school let out ridiculously early. Enjoying the weather, sitting on the porch with my laptop while the girls have scooter races in the driveway. Relaxing during their inevitably fleeting bit of cooperative, independent fun before one of them comes running to me breathlessly to tell on one of the others.

We have new names now, well three of us do. Scout, Scout Barbie, and me, Queen Alexika. Scout named me. Scout Barbie doesn't like it. But Scout Barbie will have to put up with me being Queen Alexika for the week if she doesn't stop being so bossy.

Girls.

The Scout Princesses of Sea, Night and Sky are all French braided. Because, guess what? The lice came back. Courtesy of the neighbor boy. The lice don't get new names. Well, maybe Herman.

As I type a pest control truck backs out of the neighbor's driveway. I clicked the link emblazoned on the truck. They don't handle lice. But they do bedbugs.

Tonight, I will pray.

quatrefoil cinq

2011-05-17T17:49:00.006-04:00

We inherited a chair from a neighbor friend. It's a wing chair and ottoman. Now that I have my very own wing chair I daresay I've always wanted one. It looks smart next to the fireplace, especially at night when the antique lamp upon the mantle is lit, the one with the glass drops and the clear tube bulb that reminds me of Frankenstein's laboratory. All I need is a good book to complete the portrait of domestic bliss. Maybe a tawny port. A fire ablaze in the hearth. A golden retriever. And a butler. (Can you tell I've been reading Julian Fellowes?)

And there are the children opening Stella's birthday presents the morning she turned five, a few short days ago. That's me in the background considering fabric samples. A quality family moment. Can you see the quatrefoil pattern on the left? In the violet colorway? It's $135 a yard. But I can dream. After being lucky enough to score a few yards in silver from a friend who wanted to unload them, I daresay dreams can even come true. And I daresay I can use the word daresay four times in two paragraphs. (Thanks Jules.)

This year Stella wanted a merfairy party. That is a combination of a mermaid and a fairy in case you were unaware. I told her it would be trouble for me to make a merfairy shaped cake, that it would look blob-like and confuse the tender children, so we settled on a butterfly, whose wings I gather are an inspiration for fairies far and wide. (Don't tell her that the mer half of the equation was missing from the festivities.)

After the dull thud I struck with the leaden and dry wheat-free gingerbread cupcakes that Stella brought to her disappointed classmates at school the previous day, I tried my hand at a cake called a Pink Lady, that I found on the Smitten Kitchen. My quite tasteful friend and etsy babe turned me onto that dazzlery. And thank goodness she did.

One round, two squares, a blender and electric hand mixer later, the cake was a hit. It's a strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting. No matter that it broke two kitchen appliances. It was worth it. Dense and strawberry-sweet. Spare no floury, sugary, electrical expense. I even used red food coloring for the detailing. True story.

The birthday princess. That's not blurry. It's merfairy ocean-dust.

A fellow party-goer with her brand new handmade purse. The craft of the day.

Stella got the biggest piece. It weighed about four pounds. She ate it all too.

My mother and father, as viewed from the wing chair. I can feel their hearty personalities oozing from the photo. My mother was feisty that day, as she is wont to be when mixing wine with company. I know, I get that way too. I call it social anxiety.

My father's favorite flower is the iris. Has been ever since I can remember. He even had a couple snapshots of a glorious yellow specimen in his digital camera to share with me as I ladled various salsas and dips into bowls before the party began. So very bright is the yellow iris.

When the party was over things returned to normal, complete with the requisite art projects by a newly minted five year-old.

Domestic bliss indeed.

a simple lovely world

2011-04-25T12:21:00.013-04:00

I was dreading Spring Break as a sort of precursor to summer stupor madness, mainly because we are too poor to afford those sumptuous full-time day camps. We had no travel plans. We'd just be hanging out.

I guess I have this belief that I cannot stand or endure too much time with my children, or somebody will get hurt, or emotionally damaged, or both. And I considered home schooling. Ha.

But we got through it. Hamish and Stella are suspiciously likable. Maybe because every day they played with the neighbors for long stretches of time. The kids on the block suddenly emerged like tulips, blooming into the street-crossing, socializing category and voila, built-in play-dates.

I got so much done around the house since I couldn't actually leave. It was like wearing one of those parole cuffs on my ankle. Actually I didn't want to leave, unless I could do so alone. Because the schlep, people. The schlep. That is what my spring break was about. A respite from the schlep.

So I worked out, vacuumed the house, wiped down grease-covered kitchen shelves, did laundry, shop-vac'd both cars, which yes, I want a medal for since two children who do not belong to me have commented on the state of my vehicle recently. The first one said, lifting her white patent leather shoes off my gunge covered automobile carpet, "Your car is so messy." The second one asked out of his freshly scrubbed mouth, "Mrs. Hamish's mom? Why is your car so dirty?"

I told them the kids pimped my ride. "What, your cars are clean? Losers."

I cleaned the kids too, which was no easy feat, considering Stella's spring break was devoted to slovenliness. She shrieked and ran every time I so much as picked up a brush in her presence. She wore the same pajama top for four days in a row. I had to hold her down to brush her teeth, chase her with a washcloth, wait until she was done hissing and spitting to wipe the crusty snot from her nose.

She's so feisty.

Artist at Work

2011-03-28T17:10:00.006-04:00

Last night I had a bout of insomnia due in part to the fact that I have been discouraged by my PT from sleeping in my most satisfying position—on my side, top knee hiked up, bottom leg straight—as it "mobilizes my SI joint" or something like that, in a bad way, so that I wake up stiff and feeling ninety. So this afternoon I crabbed at Stella that Mommy would be taking a nap. (Note: I did wake up this morning far suppler than usual, praise be.)

This is what I get for chasing the dragon of restfulness (yes, with a Sharpie)—

No really, I'm not bitter. I neglect my children even when I'm not tired. For my ART. Bryan wants to get me a hat with blinking lights that declares, "Artist At Work," especially for those nights when I steal out of the house with my laptop to the local bookstore or coffee shop, so that others may know of the Important Work that is being wrought in their midst, because I am that kind of full of myself. But that's, ahem, a blog post for another day. Wait—that was it. It was for this day apparently.

Anyway.

Bryan reassures me that I am present in my kids' lives, a positive entity even, and these days anyway, I mostly agree.

When I first saw Stella all I thought was, I have to take a picture of this. Mildly warped independent creativity touches my heart because I was left to my own devices a lot as a child and I am absolutely convinced that I became an artist (blinking lights) because of this (and other, less savory reasons). If I could, I'd show you the basement walls I slathered with exterior house paint when I was four. I'd take you on a tour of the mountain of Love's Baby Soft powder I created on my spindly antique child's vanity, the floor I stapled sheets to, the capital letter 'E' I scratched into my thigh with a safety pin.

Oh! Here is one thing I can show you—the time when I'd been left alone in the kitchen with scissors. Behold.

Artist at Work.

furiously and regularly

2011-03-12T17:06:00.011-05:00

I haven't blogged furiously and regularly in a while so I'm grateful for each little red dot that shows up in my Feedjit map. Because I've neglected you. In fact I've pruned you. Did you notice? I've cut large swaths of posts, streamlining my ramblings into a hopefully coherent, essay-ish patchwork.

Much has changed. I've started drinking coffee again for instance. What a high! Also, the kids are now old enough that, well Hamish can read, and understands that I write about him. The kids show palpable embarrassment (in the form of hissy-fits and arm-yankings) these days when I talk about them in front of their faces. Blogging about them seems like a betrayal. Plus, now that they're older—Hamish just turned seven and Stella will be five in May—they're not as insufferable anymore and therefore, not as meaty with material. Like, I can lose my shit at them and then say, Jeez, sorry I just lost my shit, and they'll say, it's okay Mom, and my shit-loss does not stink up the whole day. Not that they're angels. They annoy me to no end. But on the whole I'd say parenting is getting more enjoyable. I think when they are in their thirties I will say to other moms, Oh I love this age.

I'm sure I just jinxed it.

The other reason I haven't blogged is because I've been devoting my time to writing other things. Writing novels. Plural. I mentioned working on a novel a few months back and then didn't mention it again for fear of having to let you know that I'd abandoned the project as you are my priest and I am your sinner. But I didn't abandon it. I finished it and sent it out. I am waiting to hear back, my throat poised on the chopping block.

Waiting for a YES is Grueling and the only remedy for that is to Keep Writing. So I've started another novel, still in its infancy and I have realized a thing or five:

1) With my kids so independent and my bank account so scrawny and my dreams still unrealized, I am finally Ready to Work as a Novelist. I may or may not be deluded in saying so but, This is What I Want To Do For a Living. Anyway I suck at everything else and I'm not interested in anything else.

I'm sure I just jinxed it.

2) I feel most comfortable writing about romance, infatuation, hungry, star-crossed love, and...

3) That's OKAY. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here, and

3A) There are many relevant themes that can be woven through a romance, many opportunities to have fun with the written word, and

3B) It is fun. (Who knew?)

4) I hoisted so many hopes on my first novel that I lost momentum when it didn't turn into endless opportunities and easy money. Okay I did have a kid or two right around that time, which did shrivel my career motivation for a while...

4A) I'm forty-freaking-one and I have Big (possibly delusional but according to Will Smith, that's a good thing) Dreams and I'm the only one who can make them come true. Time ain't stopping for no one, dig? I'm just a late bloomer on the Work Ethic concept. It's good news. Because,

5) I love living in the world in my head, my fantasy world, even if gets lonely and scary and bleak and stormy. I have lived there most of my life, and it feels good to have a productive outlet for it.

So here's to Keeping Going, even if it leads to humiliating failure, which I will most likely share with you.

Or else I can just delete this post.

Yeah.

In other news, I have found a new way to waste loads of time I don't really have and procrastinate becoming a gazillionaire novelist: Celebitchy. I thought I'd cured myself of my celeb habit with Star Craving Mad, but then I discovered the satisfying and often hilarious site one day when I was scratching an increasingly atypical Madonna itch and have spent Scary Amounts of Time on it. I highly recommend.

And also! Random pictures!

My mother below, post-stroke, my favorite version thus far, Ellie 2.0. Channeling Axl Rose, minus the scary plastic surgery.

Bryan and Stella holding their lumbar spines and scouring the creek bed.

We rock-collected one sunny afternoon. It was kind of sublime.

I love rocks.

Found this impromptu installation.

Creepy-cool.

Hamish is desperate for a mention in Lego Magazine. That's his space station. I hope one day his creation makes it in.

Hamish's birthday gathering. Cinderella made an appearance which I found dazzling. The boy was more interested in the Bakugans.

That's it. A longy.
xxx

duct tape and a toy gun

2011-03-01T07:56:00.017-05:00

Did I tell you I grew up around here? Five minutes away. I pass my childhood home sometimes on my way to Borders, Bed Bath & Beyond, the local cobbler. I've wanted to ring the bell since I moved here in 2008.

I've been doing a lot of walking lately. Traded my sticky mat for Pilates-based physical therapy. One of my doctors told me that jogging is out due to the arthritis. I was jogging for a while too. So I've downloaded Lady Gaga and Cee-lo Green and some muh-fucking song called Traktor...and I've been hoofing it all over the sleepy nabe in hopes of snagging some kind of endorphin rush, a feeling of exercise accomplished. I'm not easy to fool though. My arms, my yoga arms...I grieve. But they'll be back someday.

The other morning on my walk I approached my old house and thought, now's as good a time as any. I plucked the earbuds out and stepped into the driveway. The concrete steps were eroding. That should have been my first clue. Well okay moss is growing on the side of the house. And the renovations—whoever replaced the windows used those thin white plastic panes, splayed them all over the place in grandiose semi-circles. Someone put in a new front door that's supposed to look like bling—a jigsaw puzzle of beveled glass shards. This is an old stone house. It's been raped.

All the trees I used to climb had been cut down or stood dead in the yard choked with ivy. I rang the bell.

The woman who answered looked hungover. Yellow strings of hair. Beady blue eyes. Boozy eyes. Too many wrinkles. Saggy and plump. I saw bottles in my mind. Empty bottles. Dozens of them. Littering a dirty counter. It was one of those Malcolm Gladwell Blink moments.

I smiled brightly and hoped I didn't look like a lunatic or a burglar. I said my schpiel—Hi my name is. I lived here as a little girl, I'd love to see the house, you know, if it's a good time. I sensed it was not a good time.

And it wasn't. I was barred entry. "I feel funny about letting strangers in," she said. I'd told her my name. Didn't that make us friends? We live in a neighborhood with dogs and trees and outdoor furniture that is not chained to the ground. Joggers and jogging strollers abound. The elderly roam in peace. It's a friendly place.

My old house was not a friendly place. Maybe the rotting Mustang on cinder blocks in the driveway should have alerted me. I decided the old haunt had bad feng shui and I hoped the current tenant was as miserable as she looked. "I feel funny about letting strangers see my kids' rooms," she said. I pointed to the top of the house, the pair of windows each with their own little rooftop. "That was my room," I said. "It's my daughter's room," she said, unmoved.

I told her thank you and left. She had every right to keep me from my childhood memories. But I felt enraged by her refusal to indulge my curiosity. It's not my house anymore. I guess that hadn't dawned on me. I could see over her shoulder that they'd knocked the dining room wall down, that I wouldn't recognize the place if I'd been invited in. What was I looking to find anyway?

As I continued my walk I fantasized about returning, about getting her to let me in, about all the ways I could accomplish such a thing. About all the secrets I would share with her as I forced her on my childhood tour, and her shameful lifestyle I'd discover—the bottles, the filth, the severed limbs.

And I thought, I'll never do it.

But I could write about it.

now I remember laughter

2011-02-19T21:55:00.005-05:00

I wanted to wait to post till I was sure I was giddy with joy, because I tell you Reader, the winter has been a suckfest. I was waiting for the third boot to drop, you know how bad news comes in threes. But Stella's teacher who spoils me rotten with her adoration for my kids, told me I could use her brother for my third thing. He's battling cancer. So thank you Miss K. I am done now. And I will pray for your brother even though I'm a budding atheist. And with the melting snow, let's just say I should give myself the gift of one of those light hats for next winter. The sun makes everything so much better. So does a doofy Adam Sandler movie. So yes, laughter made a comeback this evening. Praise be.

On a serious note, the photo above is documentation of my children's first collaborative covert mission to break the house rules. They climbed on top of the kitchen counter, wangled the stash down from the highest shelf in the cabinet, and ate all that crap. The incident occurred when I was napping a day or so after V-day, which somehow has become Halloween junior, which grates on my nerves. I mean, Lik-a-Stik? Valentines that come attached to little bits of candy? Cupcake and cookie party? Really? We need that shit? Teachers like this nonsense in their classrooms? I ask you.

So yeah, I had this sinus infection, the kind that gives you a raging toothache and keeps you up half the night. I come downstairs, it's about five P.M., time to thaw the beef, and I hear, "Mommy's coming," and then Hamish smiles the guilty toothless smile and even his gums are blue. The jig was up. The funny thing is, I didn't get mad. I just thought, well it's about frigging time they made mischief together, and collected the wrappers from the trash can to photograph. I mean they actually threw away their own garbage. It was miraculous. Then when they were in the living room playing with their Zhu Zhu pets, I threw away all the candy they didn't eat. I am telling you now, I am stuffing band-aids in their Easter eggs, and we are giving out dental floss next Halloween. No one will come to our door. Whatevs.

I wonder what they'll do next. I'd better go hide the scissors.

awed and humbled

2011-02-08T18:33:00.001-05:00

My mom says she can see that the left side of her lower lip droops just a little bit when she studies herself in the mirror, but I couldn't tell when I saw her Sunday evening. In fact she looked better than I'd seen her in ages. She wasn't even annoying. Bryan and I think she's awed and humbled, both by the surprise attack—it was plaque in her blood that stroked her—and by the fact that she's doing so well after waiting to long to get her ass to the hospital. She admitted that she won't do that again. Hopefully she won't get the opportunity.

xo

when it rains it shits (and other tales from the front lines of suburbia)

2011-02-01T14:56:00.004-05:00

Aaaaand my mother had a stroke.

Ba dum bum!

Seriously folks, is this any way to follow up the last three posts I wrote?

Did I mention the lice is back?

Oh she's killing them. Killing the lice that is!

So Sunday morning, I'm standing around the kitchen counter fretting over the looming day. I've got the green light to take myself to a cafe with my laptop and work on the novel, which, and I thank thee o lord, is still in progress, ten pages away from 200 (can she make it?) when the phone rings.
I answer.
"Elishe?" says my mother, who sounds suspiciously drunk on a Sunday morning.
"Yes?"
"I think I had a little shtroke," she says.

And my heart drops into my mug of Roma, a caffeine-free coffee substitute made from roasted malted barley and other brown things. I like to add a sprinkle of cinnamon, a teaspoon of cocoa powder and some raw milk. Usually I don't think to add my heart, but this morning, there she is, bobbing like a bloody apple in the muddy broth.

"I called Joe but I'm mad at him because I know he'sh going to call Nancshy. You're the shecond one I tshold." Joe is my step-dad. He's a Harley riding scientific glassblower. And Nancy? She's my sister. The M.D. my mother doesn't want to worry.
"So um, What happened?" I ask.
"Well I was tshalking on the phone lasht night and I felt this tchingle on my right csheek. I had the phone on my right shide. And now the left shide of my faish is drooping and my left arm is weak. Oh Elishe, my faish looksh sho horrible."
"Oh Mom," I say tenderly, and mean it. Again, it turns out I love this woman, no matter how much Vaseline she smears on her face, no matter how many bowls of ice cream or hours of television she allows my children.
"I took shum Bufferin and went to bed. Do you think you can you call your mother-in-law and come over? I don't want to be alone."
"Sure, okay."

We hang up and I promptly break down into tears, and scream for Bryan who's in the basement watching TV with the kids. They are a cozy trio. He comes up, sees me in a state, I tell him the news, and he hugs me, then starts packing a backpack full of clothes for the kids. I start packing my new totebag with all our leftovers, because in my dawning shock, my mother's instructions sound logical and reasonable and she never has any food, save for salad dressing and mango juice. We'll just not call my doctor sister, hang out at my mom's and talk to my mother-in-law on the phone, who's a dialysis nurse in Brooklyn. Who said anything about a hospital?

It takes forever to get everyone ready. Like trudging through creamed honey it is to get out the door.
My mom calls back.
"Hello?"
"You know, why don't you call Carolyn now? And it's so icshey out there. Don't bother coming over. It'sh okay. You're not going to find a parking shpot anyway. Oh wait. I shee shum shtreet out there." My mother lives in South Philly, land of the narrow streets, copious stop signs and iffy parking.

I hang up and decide that maybe going against my mother's wishes and calling my sister is actually a good idea.
"Mom had a stroke," I say. I add this bit of superfluous dialogue because saying it out loud was weird and terrible.
My sister is brilliant. She says to go to the hospital. Why hadn't I thought of this before? Maybe because I don't have an M.D. from The University of Pennsylvania. It turns out that when you have a stroke you need to go to the hospital RIGHT AWAY. I am so in the dark about these things. A stroke, people, is a medical emergency.

I call my mother back.
"We're going to take you the hospital."
"Okay," she says, mildly defeated. "Can you bring me something to hold up the shide of my faish?"
"How about some Scotch tape?"
"Perfect," she says. But is it? It probably won't adhere to the Vaseline. But I don't realize this till later, and I forget to pack it anyway.
"Maybe I should just call 911 for you?" I say.
"Oh no. I don't want the neighborsh peering out their windowsh."
Again, this sounds reasonable. It's none of their business. Let's not cause a scene. It's only a shlight shtroke.
"Okay, we'll be over soon," I say, and lug the totebag, filled with chopped liver, gluten-free pasta, hummus, guacamole, chips and other assorted tidbits we will not eat this day, to the minivan.

Bryan and I realize that it's probably not a good idea to take the kids with us, who knows how long we'll be at the hospital, but who can watch them? Because for freaking out loud, Stella has lice. Again. Our heroes turn out to be our artist friends who live conveniently near an entrance to the expressway. They have two kids the same ages as Hamish and Stella. I pull my daughter's hair into a ponytail and get her a hoodie and a hat to wear the entire time she is in their care. We owe our friends gold. We owe them a basement-to-attic deep-clean, a massage, a Caribbean vacation, a bottle of your finest Scotch. They reign supreme. Thanks E & D!

At my mom's my twenty-five year old niece is just pulling up in a taxi. She's a gem. We share more than a few smirks and twinkly eyed smiles at my adorable stroked out mom, who's ambling around at low speed, slurring—"I managed to brush my teeth. Can you believe that?"—and not nearly as droopy as I'd anticipated. (Phew.) My mom whispers to me how much money she's got in her bank account, waving her checkbook in my face, and shows me the bills that need to get paid but tells me she's having trouble writing, and darn the luck, she's left-handed. She has trouble buttoning her coat because it's too tight and she's just had a stroke and keeps dropping her keys. She says, "Aren't I fat?" and lets the coat fall to the floor. "I want to wear the green one anyway," she announces, and shuffles out of the kitchen. Catie and I look at each other and laugh.
"It's like she's herself, but magnified," I remark and we nearly trip over ourselves getting my mother and her pills and her cell phone and her library book and her giant cataract sunglasses packed up.

Bryan digs a path to the van and we help my mother in. She tells Bryan how to get to the hospital. I quiz my mom on everyone's birthday. This stroke did not affect her cognitive skills. She remembers every one.

Bryan drops the three of us off at the emergency room. My mother tells the nice lady at the desk, "I think I'm having a shlight shtroke." She manages to sign over her life on the forms, very well I may add, considering she's lost a lot of mobility in that left arm of hers, and then mutters something about schvartzas, which Catie and I, filled with horror, demand that she cease. Then we crack up.

We speed through triage with the help of Alan, a lovely nurse with a bad toupee that the other nurses and doctor make fun of openly to us. Alan insists that my mother be wheeled to a bed which she eventually agrees is a good idea. When the doctor strokes my mother's face, asking if she can feel his touch, she tells him with doe eyes, "I can feel everything and it feels very nice." This, after asking him if he's old enough to have even completed medical school. I cringe, seeing myself in her coy ways. Bryan sees it too, and laughs it off as a Classic Elise Move. I am, of course, mortified.

Then the lady in the bed to the right of us, a wizened witchy bag of bones with an explosion of gray hair and crusty feet, starts her lunchtime show. She shouts for help. Her pleas go ignored and we learn that this is because she's insane. When no aid arrives she gets out of her bed, spilling tea, falling out of her gown, clutching god knows what to her sunken chest. Wide-eyed with terror, she peers into our little beeping lineoleum cove where my mother lies prone (so her head can receive as much blood as possible). My niece and recently arrived oldest sister (not the doctor but the English teacher) and twenty-one year old nephew and I sit surrounding my mother (bryan's gone to retrieve the kids by now), cracking inappropriate jokes and checking our cell phones. The shrunken old woman looks pleadingly into my eyes (why me?) and says, "Can you help me?" I swallow, and look around for someone to rescue me. How can I possibly be of service? My mind reels for ideas but comes up blank. The twelve year-old doctor thankfully witnesses the commotion, escorts her back to her bed and I remark that he must have gotten an A in bedside manners because this lady does not ruffle his feathers at all.

When she pulls out a stash of cigarettes and lights up, it's another story. The cigs get confiscated, the nurses and doctor roll their eyes to us because we are sane enough to be in on the joke with the staff, and we have a good old time, feeling well cared for and entertained. My mother pleads with us to open the curtain so she can see the show. She's having a hard time feeling in the loop flat on her back. My family's faces shine with a mixture of mirth and acceptance into the scrubs-clad fold. We belong! our hearts sing.

A few minutes later the old woman whips out her second, hidden stash of smokes from where I can only imagine, and lights up again. The nerve! We howl with laughter. This time there are words. "Jerkoff!" she calls Jim, another nurse on duty. "Go get your own cigarettes!" she spits.
"I don't smoke, ma'am," he responds professionally, staring into his computer screen and typing furiously.
"That's what I thought," she mutters, as if his non-smoking ways betray a paltry lack of character she obviously possesses in spades. Then, "When am I getting my own room!"
"That's what I want to know," he says, without hiding his disdain. "I'm trying to find out right now."

We were sad when they finally took her away. Then my mother got moved to her own room, after some tests which determined that her stroke wasn't slight, but a full-on regular-sized stroke. The lovely neurologist reported the effects to be moderate to medium.

Her speech slowly returned to its usual cadence and even her droop undrooped some. Rehabilitative therapy for her left side began that day. Nancy arrived and it was a nice little reunion, studded with terrible food, the loveliest staff you could ever hope for, save for one overworked and stressed out young nurse, and a lot of wires emanating from my mother like rays of electric sunshine.

She's seen the nutritionist, the physical therapist and has a lot of work to do. But the mood is light because she's still herself and she's alive.

She goes home today, my newly minted stroke mama. Get well soon. I love you. And, poo poo as my mother would say.

soup and cards and warm hearts and cookies

2011-01-19T23:10:00.005-05:00

There has been an outpouring of love and sympathy from readers and friends and family since Stuart died January 3. Bryan and I are very grateful to have such wonderful support. To those who have shared their hearts, thank you.

Here's what I have learned from this event, about myself and about grief and about Stuart and family—

1. It's better to express what's in your heart than to suppress it for fear that it will sound trite or wrong or inappropriate. If it's heartfelt, it will be the perfect thing to say.

2. It's better to share grief than to grieve alone. Grief is a burden that really does lighten when you know others are aching with you. We're all in this loss together.

3. Silence divides. Ever thought it would be better not to say anything? Maybe you thought it would be too awkward? Bad timing? I know I have. Now I know it's definitely better to speak up. Somehow a room full of broken hearts mends all. Not sure why it works but it does.

4. Stuart was a bit of a star in his hood. The restaurant owners and shopkeepers in his Brooklyn neighborhood were shocked and saddened by the news as much as anyone else was.

5. Stuart's book collection was more sophisticated than mine. He had Emily Dickinson. I have, you know, Stephenie Meyer.

6. If I don't move my body, my mind will start to smoke and curl like a newspaper on fire.

7. Grief has weight and heft and you may as well honor its brawn, and have faith it will release you. In the beginning it holds you down and presses you into the bed, the sofa. It forces you to stay in your pajamas.

8. Sleep is a welcome drug but waking up equals withdrawal. Because when you awake, the fact remains. The dead stay dead.

9. Grief and depression are the same, only they come at you from different directions. One has some perspective and other has little. Grief can lead to a depressive episode if you're prone to it already. Your body and mind register the signals and slowly the neurons fire and before you know it, the anxiety and all-encompassing despair sets in and you realize that it has nothing to do with the original loss. You wake up one morning and suddenly breakfast seems insurmountable. Grief and depression become one—the dimness, the negativity, the dark.

10. You have to take care of yourself in order not to get sucked into that black and overpowering thing. You have to eat right (don't get me started), sleep, talk to good friends. Exercise. Take a shower. Put on something that makes you feel pretty (especially Bryan). Take some vitamin D. Maybe Omega 3. Magnesium. Laugh.

11. Distraction helps. Netflix has something distracting for everyone.

12. Dealing head on helps too. Looking at pictures. Talking about it. Writing poems. Processing the loss through whatever creative outlet moves you. Crying cleanses.

13. My family is there for me in times of crisis and I am there for them too. Who knew? We can be very grown up.

14. My children are capable of sitting still during long church services if they have the right drawing materials.

15. You can eat too much chocolate.

16. Good friends are true treasures.

17. You can grieve and laugh at stupid jokes in the same minute.

18. Even Stuart's parents laugh and talk about other things sometimes.

19. Even as I feel his loss and feel so much for his parents and sister, there is much to be gained from the experience. It's nothing you hope for or want, but it's there all the same.

20. Death and growth don't do manners. They come and go as they please. You think they give a shit what we think?

21. I see Stuart's mom and dad and sister as the nucleus of a storm, the pebble that got tossed in the pond. We're the ripples. Our hearts still ache for them and always will, but these durable blood-pumpers seem to be getting a little lighter every day. The ripples all disperse eventually. The pebble settles on the soft sandy floor.

22. Life is hard. It's not supposed to be breezy. Unless it is.

Peace.

the day after the funeral

2011-01-09T14:38:00.006-05:00

I woke up yesterday morning after the funeral at my in-laws' apartment in Brooklyn with a couple verses vying for my attention. Something about the combination of a childish rhyme and a teenage suicide wouldn't let me go until I gave it whatever life I could. Life. Ha. I scribbled it down in the back of the memoir I'm reading.

Writing helps me maneuver through this death. Okay okay, it helps me maneuver through life. I am thankful for my writing habit—it's here when I need it, now more than ever.

Today my heart is especially raw and breaking for Stuart's pallbearers, a creative mix of teenagers who wore fedoras to honor their friend as they carried his coffin during the funeral.

It's subject to change, but in the meantime, here is what it became:

Rhyme for a Departed Child

I got that he was hurting
Didn’t get how much

Knew about his passion
Didn’t get his touch

His fire was explosive
Mine fit on a candle

Life for me was tepid
His too hot to handle

His view was from the ceiling
Mine was from the floor

Didn’t realize till too late
What he was fighting for

He stormed into a room
I didn’t like the sound

I spied him from the corner
Didn’t want him around

If only I’d known better
But what would I have done?

Guilt won’t change what happened
If only weighs a ton

His life seemed like a riddle
I puzzled for the answer

His meds just stared working
But his pain was like a cancer

Did he play us like a fiddle?
Did he plan this every day?

If we could have just one more hour
Would he even say?

He left no note to tie loose ends
A vest to keep from drowning

His final grace, his poise, his face
Nothing more than clowning?

Until the final memory fades
We’ll wear our worry stones

He’ll never have to share our loss
It’s we who must atone

He left a trail of broken hearts
One for every pill

When his stopped short that Monday
Ours grew loud and shrill

He flooded us under a river of tears
On his way from home

Would things have turned out differently
If only he’d have known?

He cared for all the living things
Ate no fish or steak

But in the end he killed himself
The first ironic wake

His aim was never to destroy
Yet destruction led the way

The fish are safe. The fowl, the steak
While the humans writhe today

And now we cry together
While he rests calm and free

Never knew how full my heart was
Till he left you and me

Stu you taught me wisely
Boy you taught me well

There was a method to your madness—
But your lesson hurts like hell

So take care of the angels
And let them braid your hair

And join them in their herald song
And sing to us from there

And never mind our weeping
Forgive us our despair

Your time with us was fleeting
You’re free now. Rest. Take care.

surviving stuart

2011-01-03T21:31:00.004-05:00

The phone call came at one this morning. Hours later, surfing the sheets with a bone-weary body and a busted mind I was composing this post. The last time I looked at the clock it was 5:28. I finally fell asleep only to have a nightmare about raccoons on my front stoop, five or six of them digging in my garbage. One of them lunged at me and I awoke with a start and remembered. Stuart's dead.

Stuart is my nephew. Stella and Hamish's big cousin. Bryan's brother's son. He may have had bipolar disorder. Maybe it was depression. He was fifteen. Diagnoses do not come clean and easy. He swallowed a bottle of pills. He fell unconscious and never woke up, not at home, not at the hospital.

I keep thinking, so THIS is grief. I had no fucking clue.

Our thoughts and prayers are especially with his mom, dad and younger sister. Of course they are.

Thoughts reel, twist, spiral and collapse. They pile on top of one another. For a fluttering moment it all makes sense and then the whole thing slips out of my grasp, an oily eel. His mom, I keep thinking. His sister. It echoes through the newly cut space. What does a family do?

I woke up from a late afternoon nap and there was a second where everything was the way it was before. Then I remembered and felt the weight of it on my chest like a canon ball. The day has been like a hangover. Sleeplessness. Headache. Tears. They come again and again. Thinking of how well he'd been doing, how he and his therapists seemed to have found the right combination of meds. He was brimming with potential, a towering young man with blond wavy hair he refused to cut. His grandiosity had muted, mellowed, even under the black fedora he favored. He had humility and grace the last few times I saw him. He showed us the film he'd made over the summer. He didn't spiral into agonizing despair when things didn't turn out the way he'd hoped. He seemed so healed.

Bryan mourns hard. His tears come easily, reddening his face. They come, they go. They come again. You think it's over, you're done with the crying and there they are again with every new person you tell, every new way you hold the unbelievable information to the light. The facets glow and darken. Glow and darken. Fresh pain waits in the wings, always ready. It answers to no one.

We have some sad news. Stuart died.

That's what we told the kids. Tears and fear over how to tell Hamish. Hamish adored his big cousin. They played Bakugans and Star Wars together. They spent a week over Christmas break playing. Before Stuart arrived he kept asking, when is he going to be here?

In the horrible night I scoured the internet for advice. How do you tell a child when someone has committed suicide? (And was it suicide? Was it premeditated? Or was it an impulsive effort to stem the overwhelming anguish?) I found a coping with suicide website. I found books to help parents know what to say to their children and they were helpful. I thought of my friend, the documentary she made about her mother's suicide and I mourned her loss again with new eyes.

In the morning I was bleary, pained, but armed. The website said to tell the truth, be ready to answer any questions. Keep it simple. Let them know that their loved one had an illness in their brain that made them confused, that led them to make bad decisions sometimes. It struck me as sound advice. I felt prepared.

Guys, we have to tell you something.

(Do you want to tell them Bryan? He bowed his head and wept. I can't, he said.)

We have some sad news. Stuart Died.

Hamish and Stella were bunched on their dad's lap. If you don't know, Hamish is six. Stella is four. Hamish crumbled immediately, the same way an adult would. I felt strangely proud of the way he looked at us to see if we were playing some cruel joke, registered the tears in our eyes and let his own flow. There was so much dignity in his anguish. Stella's eyes widened. She looked at us like she was seeing us for the first time. I could swear she was wondering why she was the only person in the room who wasn't crying. She scolded us. "You shouldn't have told him, because now he's crying."

We asked if they had any questions, if Hamish had any questions. He shook his head. That's all they know, all they care to know. That their cousin died.

Hamish said, "Now I have no one to play Bakugans with." He cried some more. He said, "I don't want to go to school." We said that's fine. I called the absence hotline. A few minutes later he wiped his face and asked if he could watch TV.

We said sure. I emailed their teachers.

Stella went to school. Her lice is gone, save one nit found and excised today, her teachers had been prepped in all things lice and death. Man, that's a bad pun. I didn't intend it but I'm going to leave it there.

Later Hamish asked what would happen with his cousin's stuff. We couldn't help but smile as we asked him if he had any ideas. Of course he wanted Stuart's toys. We said, you never know, you could wind up with something.

This is what I love about kids. Can I watch TV now? Can I have his old stuff? There were no questions of the existential variety, no political grieving, no wallowing. It was all efficient, practical and to the point. And he asked us not to remind him about Stuart tomorrow, so he can make it to school. The kid knows how to protect himself. Like his beloved cousin, he can teach me a thing or two.

We miss you Stuart. We love you. You touched us to the core.

Love to you all.

happy new year very much

2011-01-02T17:28:00.002-05:00

I actually have some resolutions this year. Two resolutions.

1. To please stop saying 'awesome' unless something is truly awesome. I have this thing about being in my forties and saying, "awesome!" like I did when I was eighteen. Or maybe back then I said "tubular." I'm after more grown-up words. Maybe it's part of my mid-life crisis. Whatever it is, I am on high alert. In the past four days at yoga I have witnessed two students say "awesome" when another student or teacher helped them squeeze their mat into a packed class. That it's not just me is reassuring but increases my chances of failure. I am impressionable and must work hard for this one. Makes me wonder, do we say awesome instead of thank you? I will be on the lookout.

1.B. To minimize my 'like' and 'you know' conversational smatterings. Same idea.

2. To chill. Maybe not go OCD on my family's ass every time I see a milky ring on the dining table, an abandoned plush pet in the middle of the living room, a houseful of unmade beds. I've already started working on this one, but I thought this year I'd make it official. I could also chill in other aspects of my life, but I'm so chill right now I can't remember what they are.

Oh but, chilling will inevitably include not cursing myself out every time I blurt 'awesome,' 'like' or 'you know.' This shouldn't add any pressure.

To this I could add, to relax, but I don't mean it in that patronizing way I hate, like when I'm all worked up over something important and some douche bag tells me, "Hey, relax," when I have no interest in relaxing, fuckyouverymuch. I mean more to luxuriate when I can. Stay a couple extra minutes in the shower and let the hot water soothe me. Get a massage. Take more naps. Light a candle. Do some reclining twists. Download more songs from Glee and BELT THEM OUT.

That's it. I could add more. About writing or yoga or parenting or lightening up. But that'd weigh too heavy on my ability to chill and relax.

Happy new year very much!

a very bakugan christmas

2010-12-22T08:45:00.004-05:00

I was so smug. I was sure this would be the holiday we looked back upon and remembered as the year Bakugans hijacked Christmas. If you don't know what Bakugans are it doesn't matter. They are plastic toy balls that spring open into battling dragons and things when they contact a magnet. There are tons of them and Hamish wants every one and the "battle gear" that accompanies them. Sold separately of course.

But it's not to be. Instead, this will be the holiday everyone remembers as the Christmas we all had lice.

That's right. I'd never had it before. My one recollection of childhood lice was when at camp all the popular girls had it and it was therefore coveted, like a pair of skintight Jordache jeans. We were Sneetches then I guess. Do I need to clarify that I did not have lice that summer? My high status didn't come until I became a spectacle—the one Jewish kid at camp with the Goth look and a Walkman that forever played mix tapes of U2 and Depeche Mode and the cure.

Combing insecticide conditioner through my hair, through the kids' hair, seeing those brown insects fall from my seal-wet head into the bowl of the Corian sink like a thimbleful of burnt sesame seeds was strangely satisfying. Morbidly relaxing. I counted five, six, seven adults while the matte white vessel slowly decked out, ornamenting itself with dead bugs, strands of my reluctantly graying hair, a flurry of barely there nits. Infestive.

Did I take a picture?

Yes I did.

It's not worth showing. It's gross.

I read to the kids at eleven o'clock, books Hamish picked out to quell his little sister's tears—The Wizard of Oz. My Little Pony. A puppy board book with a built-in finger puppet—while Bryan did all the sheets in hot water. Our hot water heater is so small that there was nothing but cold left for our hair treatments, which I did not interpret as a cruel joke from the gods.

Because along with lice and plastic boy toys, this holiday season finds me doubting the existence of gods. It's refreshingly bleak. Bracing, I'd call it. Wind-whipped. And surprisingly liberating. There is a brawny strength, a supple surrender in the religion of hopelessness. Because with nothing to hope for, there's no disappointment. Everything is perfect in its dull mortal throb.

But I still pray those lice stay away from our heads.

And yours this holiday season.

backtrack

2010-12-08T17:11:00.012-05:00

My brother-in-law (one of five brothers-in-law—I hope I'm not leaving anyone out) has an iPhone. I do not have an iPhone. I should never have an iPhone. In my less sane moments I think an iPhone will complete me, shore up my worth. Give me the appearance of possessing a dazzling life when I whip it out in front of my peers. Yadda yadda. The truth is that I will never finish the novel (yes I'm still plugging away) if I had such a sleek gadget. It would do me in.

Enter the Hipstamatic, a cheap app (no I'm not receiving a commission) that turns an ordinary photo into a work of art.

Below, if you will. Rewind to Thanksgiving. Fun with a borrowed iPhone. Pics by me and Chuck. The light. The color. The framing options. I drooled. And it wasn't just over the giant bird.

My niece (one of ten, above) just became a bat mitzvah. Mazel tov darling!

Another niece below. She's teaching me how to hang onto my last hours of youthful cool before I slide into middle-aged dorkitude, one downloaded song at a time. Um, Black Keys anyone? Santigold? Thank you oh guru of groove. I had NO idea.

I thought this one looked positively painterly. Coffee table. Rug. Wooden nail game my mom stole from some southwestern tavern. (At least that's the story I made up.)

Still life with Sally. These days Sally is my ticket to cooperation. I confiscate her daily in order to get Stella to move her ass. Incidentally, Sally won the runway competition. Nice tulle!

I have to admit, I love my husband's hands. Rough and veiny. You'd think he was a woodsman. And he can play, too.

I am obsessed. Can't. Stop. Snapping. Pictures. (Note the paparazzo.)

My son. I have a whole post tearing at my brain about our recent battles but it will have to wait. Anyway it's too early to tell if my latest parenting strategy will bear consistently sweet fruit. In the meantime I remain hopeful.

Twinkly holiday love comin' atcha,

50 hours down

2010-11-28T21:43:00.003-05:00

Tonight was the last night of my Anusara teacher's training with Justicia Friese DeClue, who, if I haven't already said this, is brilliant, not just because she's a gifted yogi, not because her head holds a thousand tons of information—anatomy, philosophy, possibly every page of the Anusara teaching syllabus...but also because she knows how to disseminate her knowledge and provide the safe space for her students to feel deserving, welcome and full of potential to soar. Plus, although she's steadfast in her belief in Shiva-Shakti Tantra, she's not at all gooey, and that suits me.

I am gushing, it's true. Maybe I am gooey.
When I started the training in what, October? I was poised to conquer my back pain and my inhibitions about taking responsibility as a teacher. A month later, I realize that the road is longer than I suspected. I still hurt but I don't feel as victimized by the pain. Learning my physical habits helps. So does that Anatomy Coloring Book. So does the fact that so many other students in the class have physical limitations to work with. Now I see those clenched muscles as a map drawing me closer to the destination of proper alignment and release. Because the body knows. Listening to it instead of bullying it is monumental. Empowering. I do shavasana (corpse pose) on my side now. Revolutionary! My teacher likes to say, "No pain, no pain." Why did I not ever see that before? Yoga is supposed to be fun after all.

And I'm still not sure if teaching is for me. Practicing assists on my classmates usually brings me to a stammering standstill. It's very possible that if faced with a class full of students I will pee my Supplex pants.

But you never know. There are many hours to go. And I'm learning to open to the possibilities, to bow to the teacher within.

Namaste,

enduring the assault

2010-11-22T18:05:00.003-05:00

I don't know how it happens. Or maybe I do. My childhood. My early training in dysfunctional stress management. The subsequent addictive behaviors and their inevitable withdrawal symptoms. The melt-downs upon which this blog is named after.

My whole life has been punctuated and punctured with spectacular displays of grueling self-hatred that sometimes I share with you, like now, since I've been blind-sided again, and feel desperate for the reassurance that I am not alone, desperate to make something productive of my pain.

Hope has given way to hopelessness. Happy delusion has disintegrated into what? Panic. A yearning to check out, to hide under the covers for the rest of winter until I feel safe to show my face again.

I wondered when I renamed my blog if I'd be doing myself a disservice, egging my mind on to fulfill its disorderly prophecy. But if there's anything that has come to define me it's being real about my state of mind, and I am working like crazy to claim ownership of the parts of me I make a habit of disdaining, hating, wishing to God would go away, hence the bold red title.

I don't see the point in blogging about how sweet and funny my kids are when I've spent the day screaming at them and then wishing I could die for the guilt. It shores me up to hear from some of you privately that children are an assault, a road block, a constant test and trigger that tears us inside out. Not that we don't love them. But.

Stella calls to me from the living room. My four and half year old daughter wants to know if I'm in a good mood now. The writing helps, I want to tell her, but she's ensconced in Pokemon and pistachios. Instead I tell her, no.

This morning found me waking in a panic that after forty-one years I've still got it all wrong. I know when I'm happy and productive it's a dream of sorts and I know when I'm suffering it's a dream, but the sobbing tells a different, visceral story. My swollen morning-after eyes advertise the wrongness.

I hope I have the endurance to finish the latest novel I've started, framed in the context of suburban angst and middle-aged, explosive desire. One hundred pages in, I'm terrified of letting myself down, of getting swept downstream and drowning in the depression that accompanies exposing myself on the page. It's a risk worth taking if I can just make it to the end. I'm feeling pretty sure of that.

In the meantime though, it's hell. At least I have the experience to know it would be a darker, bound and gagged hell if I didn't write it down.

I think what I'm saying is, I could use your encouragement. (I got a lump in my throat just asking you for it. Why does reaching out create a fresh wave of tears?)

And so, really. Just. Thank you.

toast

2010-11-13T13:56:00.011-05:00

My bedroom reeks of pot but I swear I haven't been smoking, even if you don't believe me. Seriously, you don't want to see me high. It isn't pretty. Did you know all the Main Line moms toke up after they put the kids to bed? It was the cover story in Philadelphia Magazine. I saw it in Whole Foods the other month. But I've always been a black sheep, despite my adolescent yearnings to fit in, so I do not partake. Is it even pot anymore? I think it would kill me.

Anyway, a friend of mine is in school for acupuncture and she's gone rogue. So that's not a marshmallow roast on my back. It's moxa. Made from mugwort. And it smells like cheeba y'all. Toasts my muscles and meridians, from what I've gleaned. I could tell you more, but I'd have to research it first and I'm already procrastinating like crazy.

It's not fully legal, our little deal, otherwise I'd link her. Pimp her. I feel lucky to gain from her services now, before she graduates, because she's good. She calls herself a fixer. I'll call her The Fixer. Subtle difference. But. It works for me. So The Fixer has been generous enough to practice on me to the tune of a couple pounds of grass-fed beef per session and I am her willing pin cushion. So far, no one's gotten hurt, the jury is still out on the results but it's a process, and I've even learned a little. About damp. And metal.

But the smell. It takes me back. Glad to Be Here Now as they say, away from those miserable teenage years. I'll take a clear mind and a muddled spine over its opposite any day of the week.

That's my ramble. Okay time to scrub the bathroom with a toothbrush. Wait—maybe I am high...

a whole lot of crunching going on

2010-10-29T10:09:00.005-04:00

Being the nutrition committee liaison may never result in removing Trix from the lunch menu at Hamish's school. It did however result in my being coordinator of the Pennsylvania-wide event called Apple Crunch. This morning was the big day. After dozens of emails and phone calls with the cafeteria manager, my co-liaison, the parents' association, the Nutritional Services secretary and the principal, there were tables stacked with hundreds of local-ish washed apples in the atrium, and a whole lot of crunching going on.

The cafeteria manager is one of the hippest looking women at my son's school, a badass chick who might look more at home in a gritty artist's studio than a school cafeteria. It has caused me to sigh ruefully more than once that Hamish's school has more of a Lilly Pulitzer than L.A.M.B. vibe any day of the week. I found myself thinking, now this looks like a woman whose kids do not eat Trix for lunch. I wonder what she thinks about the extruded corn syrup offerings... Maybe one day I will ask her. Or maybe I will ask her out for drinks and a show at World Cafe.

On the other hand, Lilly Pulitzer herself was the one parent who volunteered her time and boundless enthusiasm from the beginning, holding my reluctant hand through the entire process. She arrived to school early, her three kids in tow, to help me pass out apples. I kid you not, the woman wore a bright pink tennis skirt. Lilly probably thought nothing of my black jeans, black boots and black motorcycle jacket (I dress as if to escape the confines of my suburban life). She was too busy moving product and delegating. I gaped at her while she steered the entire operation like an NFL coach and realized that I am so not a committee person. Shouting, "Hey! Have an apple! Start your Halloween with a healthy treat!" is not in my typical comfort zone, but there I was, even having a little fun despite myself.

I thanked her profusely for her help the entire time and afterwards asked where she got her incredible go-get-it-ness. She shrugged her buff shoulders and her highlighted bob shimmered under the jumbo industrial halogen lights. "I used to be in marketing," she said, and I nodded, understanding. She is a woman born to seal a deal.

Me, I'm a woman born to sit alone at my desk and write about it.

respite

2010-10-19T21:12:00.001-04:00

Dinner with the family is so... familial. Hamish tells Stella that she should be friends with girls and boys but not with robbers or hogs. Bryan wants to know why Stella shouldn't be friends with hogs. After all, she loves pigs. At least she used to, back when she was four and not four and a half. Hamish says, no Dad, not pig-hogs. The kind of kid who hogs everything. Then he reaches for the air above his plate of chicken and pasta and green beans, and pulls fistfuls of it toward his snorting face to demonstrate the kind of kid Stella should stay away from. Bryan smiles his understanding, but I know his smile also reveals his adoration and wonder at his six year-old son. Dinner has become a time of revelation, of getting to know our kids on a more relaxed level, of witnessing their growth from feral bunnies to coordinated humans capable of using forks and finishing sentences and laughing at PG-rated jokes. There's still discipline and frustration but there's fun at the table too these past few days, the kind of fun that reminds you why you had kids in the first place, the kind of fun that reassures you your life is not over. Now Stella demands that Daddy watch as she counts her fingers. She begins counting. She starts over. And over. And over. There's no hurry. She's already eaten her chicken. Finally she gets it right. Counts those fingers the way she must have imagined it. The luxury of not rushing her to finish already is blossom-sweet. Stella, it turns out, has ten fingers. It's quite a discovery.

exhaustion is the cheapest drug

2010-10-13T17:17:00.004-04:00

Stella's going for the world record in the three A.M. nosebleeds category. Three nights and counting. Parenting in a stupor can be fun. With ample TV time.

One of the cafeteria managers on the nutrition committee thinks she has my number. Cocked her jaded head to one side and accused me of owning chickens. Almost, I said. I'm thinking about it. She implied I'm wasting my time if I think I can rid the school of hot pink Trix and milk and cream cheese. I should see the kids loading up on snacks after school at 7-Eleven, she told me, crossing her large freckly arms across her chest. Or watch the middle school kids at Starbucks. She was certain the kids would not go for it, and was there when they raised hell the day the soda machines were removed. It was one of those moments where I couldn't quite register that she was not playing for the same side, so I just nodded vigorously and agreed that of course the kids would do everything she described. I did not remind her in not-so-subtle tones that 7-Eleven and Starbucks are not accountable for educating the children of our community. I did not ask her why the inmates are in charge of the prison. I did not ask her if she would think about a crackhead in place of a junk-food-addicted child. Would she care that the addict wouldn't like it if she took away his pipe? But in my car driving away from the meeting, oh you know I gave her hell. I did. The next meeting is not until January. I'm too tired to start a petition, but maybe one day...

And now I can't concentrate any longer, my head is about to explode because Hamish is whining for something exciting to do, with a half hour left till dinner, which I still have to cook. Help me in the kitchen. How about that, kid?

heal my neuroses (dot) com

2010-10-07T18:07:00.011-04:00

Okay here's my million dollar marketing idea.

This is for the neurotic parent, the kind of mom (or dad) who's sure she (or he) didn't get the memo or the proper genetic code, the one who is frequently convinced that she (or he) is the shittiest mom (or dad) ever.

Say you're a mom who's finally made an appointment to take her four year-old daughter to get her hair trimmed, because you just can't take the jaw-clenching insanity anymore. Every day you look at your daughter's hair, a snaggled, tangled mess, your whole face tightens into a stressy mask of agony. You don't know how to tame her hair or your anxiety over her hair.

When you bathe her, which you're sure isn't often enough, you usually condition and comb it out, but not always. Life is hectic. You have another kid, dinner to clean up, homework to check, bedtime stories to administer. You're running late. As usual. Combing her hair in a gentle manner takes time. Like twenty minutes you don't have.

Other days you tackle her to the ground before school, brush in hand, the rainbow sparkle brush you bought hoping she'd be inspired enough to either use herself or let you use on her. But no. So you pin her down and brush her hair while gutteral, soul-killing screams emanate from her small prone body and tears explode from her usually life-loving eyes like salty fireworks.

Inside you curse yourself for being so shallow, for putting others' perceived judgments ahead of your daughter's relative comfort. She thinks she's a princess after all. What does she care about tangly hair? You're sure that every other girl on the face of the earth sits obediently, very likely exchanging pleasantries with her mother as she gets her hair brushed.

You bring her to school and she clings to you, not letting your leg out of her grasp. You explain to her teachers that she's been traumatized at home by your futile efforts to groom her, hoping for a crumb of sympathy. The teacher looks at you charitably. You know she's thinking you suck big crusty wads. "Not that it matters," you say, gesturing toward the quivering barnacle on your thigh. "Her hair's still a fucking mess."

You drive off in your minivan, the same one that your daughter's perfectly coiffed schoolmate told you with her nose wrinkled, is "so messy." You narrowly escape a collision and vow that this will be the day you take your daughter to get her hair trimmed, shaped, conditioned and styled in a manner that will end this torturous phase of life.

The salon is for grown-ups and the stylist is ready to send your little disheveled miracle to the hair washing sink. But again your cherub clings to you, whining, keening, refusing to sit back and have her hair washed. You cajole her. Bribe her with treats. Another stylist comes by and sits in the chair ooh-ing and ahh-ing it up to entice your daughter. Clearly you are impotent to the extreme, unable to function on the most rudimentary level.

Your stylist, clearly childless, tells your kid how all the other little girls who come to the salon love getting their hair shampooed. You look at her to gauge her thoughts, then to your daughter who is not swayed.

You lower your clenched form to your little girl's eye level and point at your lips, which are now curled in a tight line around your teeth. "See this?" you seethe. "Mommy's angry teeth are going to turn into a whole angry face if you don't get in that chair right now. One...two...three..." She doesn't move, your angel. Time is ticking. "You want Daddy to take the buzzer to your hair so it looks like your brother's?" You ask, hoping for a laugh from the audience.

You ask the stylist how much time you have left. There are ten minutes. You threaten to take away your kid's beloved library Backyardigans DVDs but know you're full of shit as the words spill from your desperate lips.

You try peeling your daughter off the floor and shoving her into the chair with brute force. You are aware of all the eyes upon you, eyes that glint with disapproval under tousled and gleaming heads of hennaed, highlighted and streaked hair. Nothing is working, and it's not working in public. Spectacularly. How can you not control your kid? they're thinking.

Finally, on the verge of tears, you call it quits. You croak your apologies, afraid you'll start bawling if you don't get out of there immediately. You don't offer a tip even though you've wasted their time, because the thought of paying for this mortification is more than you can bear. You won't be returning to this salon anyway, even though a lipstick-red business card is shoved into your palm as you make for the door.

In the car, you're too exhausted with fury to even cry. You know it wouldn't make a difference anyway. You head to the library to make good on your threat but halfway there you change your mind, realizing that maybe your daughter is a little young for the salon shampoo. Why couldn't you have had this brilliant thought then? You could have avoided the whole thing.

But it bothers you still, and you wish there was an easier way to avoid such a disaster in the future. You wonder if life would be a little more do-able if there was an app you could click on from your iPhone (if you had an iPhone), then type in your issue-- rat's nest hair, or hair salon hell, say-- and find scores of parents who have gone through the same thing. You'd know right away that you are not a birth defect but a perfectly normal parent experiencing a perfectly normal afternoon.

You'd know that three hundred other moms have daughters with nesty tangles who refuse to get their hair washed at the salon. You'd learn that all those girls you see with the perfectly smooth ponytails have lumps of tangles beneath the silkiness. How much relief would you feel then? Can this app become a reality? Maybe so. I don't have time to research it. I've got kids for heaven's sake. But I would love a cut of the profits, oh marketing geniuses and investment gurus. Until then, I will continue to share the insanity right here.

Jewy Jewenstein

2010-10-01T17:15:00.007-04:00

Tonight we're going to try our hand at being Jewish. There's a pizza party and bonfire to celebrate the uh, Simchat Torah, given by a local liberal ultra-reform Jewish community group, of which a friend of mine is currently president and sneakily persuasive in recruiting members. Plus I am a sucker. A curious sucker who would like to see if I can find the right communal fit for my Jewish ass because I've always wondered if there's a place in Jewish life for me. I am dragging myself and Bryan and the kids there despite my Teflon-like reaction to pretty much all organized religions.

As a Hebrew school drop-out (no Bat Mitzvah day, for me, ba da da da...) I flinch around practicing Jews. I flinch out of guilt. Jewish guilt. I used to hit the high holies with my parents when I was little but my Jewish education ended with my parents' divorce. Even though I was dragged to temple a few times in my youth, my parents did not love worshipping God. There was no passion to pass down to the next generation. It just didn't happen for me.

There was this one time, I was on my way to therapy on the Upper West Side, I mean how Jewish is that? And I was killing time in Barnes & Noble beforehand, leafing through some paged thing or another when the guy at the next table caught my eye and started talking to me. Eventually it came up that I was Jewish (okay now I'm having a senior moment and wondering if I've told you this story already... But it's not like I'm going to comb through my posts of yesteryear to confirm, who has the time?) Anyway, It also came up that I knew very little about my religion and I found myself sitting there being chastised for it by this Jewish stranger, for specifically not knowing where I came from, for not knowing the history of my people. Maybe I told him I was married to a goy?

Thank Yahweh I had my therapist to run to and work it through with. I marveled at how deeply affected I was by a stranger's negative judgment, but my therapist didn't. She knew my approval-seeking number. In the end I realized my people, if there is such a thing, are the people who get me, who accept me, who laugh at my jokes and support me no matter how Jewish I am.

So we'll see how it goes. I will try to be more open-minded than that raving lunatic at B&N all those years ago and give organized worship a chance. Who knows? Maybe I'll learn something interesting.

Now to find the perfect marshmallow sticks...

Shalom y'all.

swoon

2010-09-27T11:37:00.003-04:00

You know how when you're infatuated with someone you have this fantasy of spending an entire day in bed with them? Maybe you fantasize about this person spying on you in the night, even though your rational self knows that's stalky and creepy and they should totally get a life.

When I was thirteen, living in Chicago with my mom and her boyfriend, I used to picture Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran perched on my fire escape like a cat, taking time out of his hectic world tour to stare into my window and watch the rise and fall of my torso, gazing in wonderment with his green British eyes at the sheer miracle of my existence. I walked the halls of Sacred Heart High School, my kilt swinging slowly around my kneecaps, picturing him always there, always fascinated, pining for me the same way I pined for him. (Did you know I went to Catholic school?)

I don't know what I did with myself when I wasn't infatuated with some British pop star or mortal boy from another school. Maybe I did my school work. Crushing was my default escape route from the painful realities of existence, a coping mechanism I'd used since I had my first crush on Shaun Cassidy when I was five. My crushes consumed me to the point of making me feel like I barely existed in the real world, which felt ghostly good at first.

But ultimately it was terrible thing, because the fantasy eventually cracked for one reason or another, leaving me exposed to the reality of unrequited affection. It was like being dragged out of a warm bed and plunged into a tub full of ice in the middle of January. But soon after one obsession had ebbed, another one would rush in to fill its spot, and I'd go through the highs and the lows again. And again and again.

Some things you never learn.

So I spent the day in bed yesterday, infatuated. But not with a person. With a book. A book that the cocktail party judge looks down her nose at because it's too easy to read, too simplistic, too cliche... But it hooked me the way books do sometimes. The way Interview with a Vampire hooked me when I was a teenager. And The Talisman. And Go Ask Alice. The kind of book you take into the bathroom with you EVERY time. The kind of book you stay up past your bedtime for. The kind of book you don't lend.

The book chronicles infatuation the same way I have lived it, right down to the spy in the night watching the young girl sleep, but instead of the spy being the protagonist's wish, he's really doing it. I am eating this up. At forty-one, maybe it should be more shocking that the feelings are still the same - fiery, agonizing, consuming. You've probably already read the book. It came out in 2005. It's Twilight. I didn't know I liked vampire stories so much, but now looking back on my past obsessions, my Lestat phase, my Nosferatu and Dracula moments, I see that I do. I see that I am also five years late to the table with this adoration. That's just the way I roll. It took me years, for instance, to fall in love with the Spice Girls.

Ahem.

What Stephenie Meyer is doing for me with this book is to show me that there is more room for me as a writer than I allow. I keep my boundaries so narrow when I think about what to write, and that's good to know. Not every story needs to be so insufferably plausible. I'm not even talking about writing a vampire story, though it sounds like loads of fun I admit. But the way she gives her heroine (and herself!) the pleasure of living out the fantasies we have during infatuation. It blows me away that I didn't consider it myself, coming from such obsessive ilk. This is all to say, the CPJ would be much happier with me if I'd written Twilight instead of kissing it like I did yesterday, under the covers in bed, away from the chaos and hubbub.

But she will just have to be unhappy while I lay in bed, lapping it up.

Sigh.

Fear and Self-Loathing in Lower Merion

2010-09-24T17:27:00.004-04:00

So that's the title of my memoir, above. I haven't started it yet. That's the fear part. Perhaps telling you about it before it's been begun is the self-loathing part. Whatever the case it will be self-reflexive. An investigated life, as told by an unreliable narrator. Bingo.

The title for my future novel? "Love in the Time of Suburbia." I've already bought the domain. This is the thing, to not compare this writing experience to the Star Craving experience, which was mapped out, outlined and workshopped on a regular basis. I gotta work with what I got. I ain't getting any younger and my bio is collecting dust. Anyway it would be like comparing childbirth experiences. Hamish was a battle to the bloody death. I wanted to die. Stella? A dream. I ate an entire chopped liver sandwich while eight centimeters dilated. Does it get better than that? It does! My midwife was sure I'd throw it up, and Reader I tell you, I kept it down.

A teen novel. No vampires. But lots of terrible sex and bored yearning young ones with cellulite and braces and pimples who cheat during field hockey practice and walk, gossiping the whole time instead of jogging around the field. I had a title for that one in my journal, the pastel pink notebook with the skulls and hearts on the cover. There's something about teenage girls that makes me want to become a high school guidance counselor and relive the agony, guide them blindly into the fires of adolescent hell, or not. Maybe teach them yoga one day. Do they have yoga in the curriculum in high schools yet? I could be the new-agey specialty teacher who sneaks the kids special "vitamins." Or maybe give them a deranged homicidal history teacher to contend with. Fictionally speaking. Hm. So much to think about. So busy in the old brain.

Shalom,

the judge

2010-09-22T09:47:00.002-04:00

My friend Danielle came to visit us this weekend. Danielle is a creative type much like myself who I met in a writing workshop a decade ago. We discovered over the weekend that we fuck ourselves over in life by wanting to impress an entity we christened “The Cocktail Party Judge,” or CPJ. Do you know her? You might not ever drink cocktails or go to cocktail parties, but you don't need to. She lives in your head and she thinks very little of that blog of yours. She wonders why you're not writing something real, something marketable, something that would impress her. She wonders what's taking you so long, and by the way she thinks your yoga is silly and your spiritual quest a waste of time because you’re just using it as a cover for not being more successful at pursuits that would impress her, like being a bestselling novelist. You want to show her that you're worth something even without her seal of approval but really you want to show her how little she means to you in order to impress her since her validation means you get to keep on existing. Whether you meet her at the front door or in the backyard, she’s going to make sure you feel like shit.

And because your existence hinges on her approval, every time you encounter her you go dumb. Mute. You stammer, lose your cool, your volition, your nerve, gusto, zest for life. Maybe you even weep at her feet. It gets ugly-dramatic. And your creative pursuits, the very pursuits that erase the passage of time when you're happily ensconced in their flow, instead of remaining child-like and light as a silk scarf tossed into the seashore breeze, they harden into a precious leaden kernel you can neither swallow nor dislodge from your gut. You become paralyzed, you choke, and you spin in circles, possibly on the bathroom floor. You get nothing done. NADA.

I'm not sure if I was born this way or beaten into it during the dark years, say, from toddlerhood til twenty-one. CPJ needs to be outsmarted, outdone, understood maybe, and brought down to size, her pedestal chipped away at with the tip of my pencil, say. Or I'll graffiti her plaster platform, spray it fluorescent pink with my initials, carve "YOUR MOTHER" into its side so deeply with a hunting knife that it topples. Scrawl yet another novel into its fluted surface that may or may not go anywhere, title it SHIT ASS and dedicate it to her. Then I can tell her all about it the next time we run into each other. I’ll look forward to it.

swirl

2010-09-15T15:27:00.005-04:00

We were so excited to start dance class. Okay. I was so excited for Stella to start dance class. Stella's just excited to dance around the living room, usually to the tinny tunes that bleat from one of our many battery-operated plastic keyboards. It's enough for her.

But mommy was on a mission to sprout a prima ballerina and signed her up for pre-ballet creative dance classes at the most affordable joint around. The day before her first class we scored great gear from a local consignment shop. The black slippers used to belong to a girl named Bria, as did about five other pairs of dance shoes in the basket we riffled through. Bria is a serious dancer, I gather.

Maybe one day Stella will be too. She's got the elegance, the grace, the moves and the passion for the dance. (I hear it like this: "dahnse.") I know, I know I'm the mother, totally subjective perspective here. But I'm so hypercritical of myself, the kids, the world, I would tell you. You KNOW I'd tell you if I thought she didn't have it in her.

What happened is, I brought her to class and she hated it from the start. I nudged her to participate. "Ooh look, they're being elephants!" I crooned in her ear. But I wasn't feeling it. I hated it too. I'm not one to let my kid quit easily, but you can tell when the fit is all wrong. I guess this is where the hyper-criticalness comes in.

For one thing, the teacher was about twelve. I'm used to a "Hi nice to meet you, what's your name?" MO at the beginning of class, you know, where the teacher introduces herself to the students while practicing this cultural ritual called "eye contact." But it was nowhere to be found. And yes I have a narcissistic sense of entitlement, but we're talking monthly payments, recital costumes, tickets, MONEY.

Class simply begun whether or not my kid participated, and the teacher never even looked our way, let alone make a move to engage my little swan. I saw dollar signs swirl down the toilet bowl of my mind. (Did I mention we need a new oven?) If the class turned out to be phenomenal, I could overlook this. But it was more like an after-school program with costumes. A blush-toned babysitting venture with Scott Baio kids' music that made you want to stick pencils in your eyes and head butt the linoleum floor.

Stella and I sat on the sidelines for the duration while I documented the disappointment with the camera in my phone. She quipped for anyone to hear that the rest of the students weren't very good dancers. I shushed her but agreed. I whispered, "That's because they're two." And sneered at the wee ones who sucked their fingers and pulled at their garish tulle tutus, clouds of pastel froth that were obviously purchased for full price. I ached to ask the bleached out mom with the 80s nose job if anyone ever told her that her wee puff-ball (she'll be three in November) resembles Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I could have sworn the class description was for ages three to five. What was with the underage crashers? Could their parents not add? Stella stood a head taller than the rest, but was far more timid and refused to even perform a single leap across a carpet square. I finally talked to the teacher and the owner who were happy not to charge me and invited us to come and sit in on any classes that seemed a better fit for as long as we liked. I respected that and thought about it during the five minutes it took us to get home.

In the end, the studio is no love match, and Stella hates the idea of taking classes at all, anywhere, until she's ten. That's her estimation. I say, maybe we'll try again in the spring when the memory of this rut in the road is but a wisp of satin ribbon. I'm not going to squander her talents but I also don't want to murder her passion. It's a tough call. We're going to keep the ballet clothes though. But you knew that.

desperado

2010-09-06T00:16:00.008-04:00

Just spent a masturbatory hour reading my first blog posts from four years ago. And I've discovered a third reason why I blog, along with (1) exercising my writing muscle, and (2) working to bridge the gap between us by honestly depicting the human condition. Number three would be to survey the distance I've traveled on this path, a path that at the beginning was so fraught with sleeplessness, diapers and self-loathing I doubted I would emerge from it alive.

Hamish is starting first grade tomorrow. Since he and Stella were born I have said, when they're in school full-time, my life can begin again. Well guess what? It's been going on without me all this time. All the Pema Chodron podcasts in the world cannot jar me from living in the past or the future. Eckhart Tolle, come bitch-slap me, please.
What I mean is, I still have no second novel in the works, and that was my original reason for starting this blog, to keep limber, to fish out plots, themes, characters...I have started a handful of novels that went nowhere fast, and have a novel's worth of words and stories here, but it's a chaotic mess. Endurance though. That I have, and it reassures me to no end. And passion. Still, I say to the world, to the mirror, to my waiting mother: my worst fear is that I won't ever publish a second book, that I will squander my gifts.

Maybe it's time to explore this fear, to live in it and see what is actually there, like a fairy tale girl forced to sleep in a haunted wood. I suspect it's that ancient terror I was born into, that common but agonizing fear of being worth shit, and yet I know how erroneous it is to equate my worth with what pages I produce. It's another blind stab at finding my value somewhere outside myself. Not to say that writing and selling that next book isn't worthwhile. It is. I want to. I just. Am still, after four years, stuck in a rut and still beating myself up for it.

I beat myself up not only for the missing manuscript but because I know better.

In my last life I did this with boys. I yearned so much for romantic love that I strangled any chance of intimacy, forever seeking out guys unable to give me the love I longed for. And then one autumn day, drowning in another puddle of loveless tears, my soul broke open. Just like that. I recognized my utter lack of self-respect when it came to men, saw clearly for the first time how I'd been barking my throat raw up every wrong tree in the forest, and finally found the love for myself that was there the whole time. I floated on the blazing colors of this epiphany into my own arms which were suddenly more than enough. And, oh, the irony! This was when the universe showed me the money. It was a month or so later that the man who would become my husband was delivered to me. And I was ready to receive.

This is how it works. You find what you seek inside yourself. It's there, always there, not even waiting. Then you no longer need that thing you were sure you couldn't breathe without because you're bursting with your own completeness. Everything else is just frosting. And that's when it arrives, that thing you used to want, better than you ever imagined it. And you know just what to do.

And because I lived the formula, I know the formula, but try as I may, I cannot force the equation with book number two. Why? Why can't I release my death-grip on the edge of this cliff and fall into the truth of it? Why can't I see my value as clearly as I did twenty-something years ago? As clearly as I did when I published book number 1? Why can't I open this box? I know the key is right here underneath my skin. I can feel its jagged edges.

Maybe the answer is in another forest altogether?

My goal is to erase desperation. I imagine my life without it. Sitting here typing at midnight, without yearning for a single thing. The sweetness just about knocks me over. To feel so full and alive that the mere thought of pining for anything is absurd. That's what I'm after.

I'm desperate for it.

yoga of the bone

2010-08-27T08:11:00.000-04:00

So there's this really amazing beautiful yogi friend I have. I admit I don't know her all that well, haven't known her for too long, maybe a couple of intermittent years, but from the few times we've shared mat space at the neighborhood yoga studio and talked in the few minutes before practice, about yoga clothes or classes or whatever, she's always been super rocking cool and sweet, one of those people you meet whose inner light glows steady and bright and true.

Her name is Laura and it turns out she has cancer. Laura is twenty-five. At my advanced age of forty-one, twenty-five is but a wee babe even though it feels like anything but to the twenty-five year old. I get that. Still, there's an extra layer of heavy about it, as if an extra layer was necessary. But. Laura is anything but heavy about cancer. In fact, she nearly flies. Her take on living with cancer is gravity-defying, heroic and inspires awe in my heart. If she wore a cape it would make total sense. But instead of a cape she wears an Hermes silk scarf on her recently shaved head. Laura blogs about her leukemia here, in gruesome, hilarious, rebellious detail that seems therapeutic not only for her but for those hanging on her every word in various corners of cyberspace. It's a perilous ride and she's generous enough to share the thrills and the descents.

I'm posting this today because today is Laura's bone-marrow transplant, so love, prayers, strengthy-vibes, good juju, whatever you've got, take a moment and send it her way, send it to Houston. To Laura.

what can I do?

2010-08-13T14:13:00.006-04:00

My dear Hamish, my miracle of a human, my child. Is. Such. A. Fucking. Nag. I have no idea where he gets it from.

His new thing is upon waking, he says, "I hate to bring this to you Mommy, but what can I do?" I tell him to get dressed and brush his teeth. No. That's too boring. He screeches, twists, writhes on the sofa that used to look so stately and clean before two years went by in a flash. I tell him to feed Don Pepe, the blood-clot of a fish we're fish-sitting for our neighbors who are abroad.

He drops two miniscule pellets into the bowl and after this sliver of boredom relief he's back to bemoaning. I suggest Legos, drawing, collage, make his bed, go outside, have breakfast. He tells me all of that stuff is boring, but hunger takes him over in the end.

I head to the kitchen as he circles the dining room table pining for a trip to a toy store, a playdate with a friend who's currently in Taiwan (Don Pepe's big brother). He wants to print out his latest story, this one with thirty-seven pictures, but we're out of yellow ink. He stirs himself round the table, marinating himself in a foamy broth of self-created misery.

He's been up for five minutes and already I'm mouthing shut the fuck up from the kitchen sink and wondering what my part was in the creation this odious monster.

Finally he sits, his cry-hole corked by a piece of sourdough toast and a cod liver oil gummy fish who looks suspiciously like Don Pepe.

The truth is that he's a mirror image of me. Only I think I'm experienced enough to quiet my pleas for that thing that will finally satisfy me. (As if finality exists.) I believe I am old enough to understand the passage of time. And I've gotten enough of what I've wanted in life to know how flat and dull acquisition can be compared to finding fulfillment within, compared to the desire that precedes the getting. So I work on enjoying desire, in a hurts-so-good way I suppose. Maybe desire, as much as Buddhists believe is the root of all suffering, is the good part. Or maybe I'm just a masochist. And unlike a six year-old boy, I no longer need to be doing anything. Having kids has turned my brain to Swiss cheese and the constant doing for them leaves me yearning (yearning!) to lay on the floor staring out the window like a recently lobotomized mental patient.

Okay. Wait a minute. I'm having a realization here. I guess we're simply experiencing conflicting desires in the end. I don't know any more than he does. I'm stewing in the same misery marinade. With a splash of wine perhaps. But still.

We're both squirming at this point. And another perfectly peaceful morning has been vandalized by not just him, but by both of us like an abandoned car on the wrong side of town.

So my work becomes: can I perfect the art of wanting his morning storminess? You know, accept the sobering fact that hello, this is what parenting is. Can I get to a point where I want my quiet time to be interrupted, where I want him to be just as he is, without wanting to change him into some other kid who wakes up happily and busies himself with a quiet independent activity?

While he chews the last of his toast I sit across the table with my first hot tea of the waning summer, Mint Melange with a couple lemon slices bobbing in the Venus de Milo mug that he despises. I take a sip, tell him he tortures me with his morning shenanigans and that finally does satisfy him. He breaks into peals of giggles, tickled that Mommy is in agony. I crack a smile and before I know it we're laughing and staring at each other like, Wow. I KNOW you. You and I, we share something special.

Then Stella wakes up and falls to the floor in a puddle of despair when she finds out that Hamish got to feed Don Pepe.

Well, it's a life.

super hero pose

2010-07-23T10:57:00.012-04:00

This is the kids in supta virasana, a pose that escapes me in my current spinal state. It doesn't say in the manual to stick your tongue out while doing this pose. But. It's summer, and we forgot to sign the kids up for camp. We thought, hey our kids sleep late, which is true. Like until nine on some quiet reverent mornings. So why would we pay money to wake them up and schlep them somewhere when we don't have to? Of course now they wake up at the crack of ass, decline to say good morning in favor of: Do we have any plans today? And then groan as Daddy and Mommy blink and stutter. Next year my babies. Next year.

Meanwhile, will I ever be able to get supta virasana back?

Enter my new SI belt. It's the most fashion-forward item in my wardrobe these days, a velcro and woven meshy foamy thing that fastens around my hips to compress my SI ligaments and stabilize my spine. My new holistic dentist recommended it to me. That's right. My dentist.

See, it's only a short while after learning that pasture-raised animal products are good for you and soy is bad for you until you glean some scary information about fluoride that makes you want to hightail it to a distant pre-industrialized century, your world is so topsy-turvy. And when I heard that there's a possible connection between jaw-grinding and back pain, that was the end of my conventional dentistry days.

After filling me in on the sordid history of fluoride and giving me his "not-so-secret tooth oil formula" recipe, Dr. Liu told me that it's possible that jaw-grinding can cause back pain, but it's also possible that back trouble can cause jaw-grinding. So he asked me about my back pain, specifically, when it began. When I told him it was shortly after Stella was born, he went and got an SI belt and had me put it on.

After four years of failed therapies and dead ends, the only thing I could do was giggle. The pain didn't vanish but the support I felt was golden. Dr. Liu's explanation was simple: My SI ligaments loosened with pregnancy and childbirth and never quite knitted back the way they'd been previously. Yoga was worsening my symptoms with all the stretching, bending and twisting.

So I wear the belt and follow a strict list of Don'ts that includes not bending forward more than ninety degrees, bending backward, bending my knees toward my face more than forty-five degrees, twisting more than twenty-five degrees, or even crossing my legs at the knees. This leaves a lot more than supta virasana out of my yoga practice, but it's okay. A wise teacher told me that yoga is my bitch, not the other way around.

So while compressing my hip ligaments provides intense muscle spasm relief (can I hear a hallelujah?) it tweaks my left side just a little. So we work on it. And I am told to let the small stuff go. Because there's more than one way to strike a super hero pose.

Just om, gargle and rinse.

hide the lucky

2010-06-02T22:32:00.004-04:00

The only thing that is certain is that I will always figure out a way to spend money.

My new life, okay it's maybe four months old now, just cutting its first teeth, has found me in the atypical spot of not jonesing for new clothes and shoes all the time the way I used to. And if it wasn't shoes it was flim-flam for the house. Decor. Design. A table shaped like a tree stump perhaps. I still like all that seductive stuff but I don't think about it, I don't read about it, I don't care as much about it. Maybe it's all the nutrients, vitamins and minerals satiating me the way I thought the perfect pair of boots would. Of course as I type the words I fear that I am jinxing myself to high holy hell over here. I'd better hide the back issues of Lucky.

You'd think I'd be saving money, not buying all the do-dads and gewgaws I used to obsess over. But no. My grocery bill, see, has nearly doubled. Beef ain't free. And my thirst for information is insatiable. Even though I have been haunting the neighborhood libraries and downloading all the free podcasts I can get my grass-fed fingers on, Amazon is getting its fair share of Miller earnings. As are the places that sell the vitamins I just gotta have.

I never in a million jillion years thought that I, Elise Miller, would be choosing cod liver oil over a closetful of cute tops.

spur

2010-05-26T23:18:00.007-04:00

This isn't what it looks like. Unless it looks like yoga. A pro-active friend invited me and a bunch of other yogi pals to join her and a thousand others on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art a couple weeks ago to practice for an hour to raise money and awareness for an organization called Yoga Unites for Living Beyond Breast Cancer. I had fun and made new friends. Well, obviously.

So what the hell is that up there? It's an assisted upavistha konasana of course. My partner helped me bend deeper. It's important to open your hips.

Especially when your back is closed up tight like a condemned building. My lumbar is still at it folks. Maybe a month ago I finally got an MRI—talk about a nauseating experience, I had to lie down for the rest of the day after that torture chamber. Amazing though, technology. And it's amazing to learn all the things I've got going on in my back. I'm trying not to say that things are "wrong" with my back. For one thing, believing that my back shouldn't hurt when it does just makes me feel worse. Plus I'm heavily vested in the possibly delusional thinking that treating this chronic pain as an opportunity will allow me grow and learn and heal, because if I don't, I might just cry myself crusty.

Receiving that glossy, chemical-stinking bundle of ghostly pics was like my very own black Christmas. My presents? We're talking scoliosis, though you don't need an MRI to see that. You can just see it when I bend over. Then there's the bulging and protruding discs, bone spurring and stenosis. And don't forget about the osteoarthritis (a.k.a. spondylosis) that finds me inching my way out of bed most mornings as if my spine were made of glass filigree.

I just about quit yoga altogether. But my doc said I should keep practicing, that she was most concerned with the spurring—the bony protrusions growing inside the holes of my vertebrae, squeezing my nerves. So I shouldn't bend backward, she told me, but the rest of it would help. I was relieved to hear this news and surprised at my relief because after all those mental gains I'd made from changing my eating habits, I thought I wouldn't miss yoga but I did. Proper nutrition and yoga are like my new adoptive parents. So it's good to be back on the mat, and I practice so that my constantly contracted muscles might one day sigh with relaxation, open the cell door and let me be on my way.

I still have my youthful hope. But.

Does it make me feel old? About ninety. What about the cause of all this aching and paining? Did I suffer an injury? Does childbirth count? Doc says it's cumulative, that it began twenty years ago. This pronouncement coincides with all I'm learning these days, because I have come to believe that poor nutrition can literally eat us alive, (maybe especially when we are growing babies inside our bellies.)

I grew up on TV Dinners and came of age in the skim milk and diet bagels era, smoked pot all through high school which led to orgies of candy-consumption with what else but a diet Coke chaser because I wanted to be thin-thin-thin! Then drank my way through college, washing down plastic cups of watery beer with buckets of fluorescent orange Buffalo wings, French fries, pizza, chips and whatever else was packed with partially hydrogenated oils, processed flour and sugar. Then the dozen meatless, soy- and pasta-filled years. From my present-day perch, it looks like a suicide mission.

But we think we are immortal when we are young, having no clue that the crap we are feeding ourselves can find us arthritic (or worse) at the age of thirty-six. That's how old I was when I had my first bout of pain so bad I called my mother-in-law to babysit because I couldn't lift my fifteen-pound daughter.

And yes I hope and pray that just one adolescent girl—anyone really, but adolescent girls are dear to my heart maybe because I still feel like one half the time—that just one person reading this experiences a light-bulb moment, because every bite she puts in her mouth is an investment in her future body, possibly her future fertility, her mental and physical health, just about everything that will mean so much to her one day.

Okay I didn't mean to get up on a soapbox. But it's my birthday in thirty minutes so I'm milking it.

smack-heady persuasion

2010-05-19T22:25:00.012-04:00

In my last life as a childless struggling artist living in Brooklyn, I'd go apartment hunting roughly every four years. I'd walk from room to room, my imagination already planting myself in the space, picturing the walk to the subway, the soapy electric smell of the laundry room, the clicking of kitchen cabinets, the feel of the air while I laid in bed and considered my new dust motes. This was an uplifting experience if the apartment boasted period detail, hardwood floors and was situated on a beautiful block. More often the apartment smelled like mold, had drop-ceilings, fake paneled walls and the only bodega around sold three year-old Bisquick. It would take me days sometimes to rid myself of the feeling that my life had buckled in on itself in an oppressive particle-board heap, even as I knew I hadn't signed a lease, and wouldn't in a jillion years.

I have similar experiences with books and my mind can tumble just as much. I read Little Sugar Addicts just in time to start planning Stella's fourth birthday party for instance. Before I was even through with the introduction, into my malleable, persuadable head wriggled the notion that my children may as well have been smack-heads, that children the industrialized world over are doomed, that little Hamish and Stella and the rest of Earth's shorties can only be pleasant cooperative companions if they are weaned completely off sugar. As if.

I spent a good week and a half not eating sweet treats, begging, demanding and bribing my children to eat more cheese, nuts and turkey and forgo sugar. I showed them photographs of the webs spiders spun after they'd ingested sugar. I grew irritable and headachy all the while, Googling recipes for alternative birthday desserts. I'd crouch to Stella's eye-level and brightly suggest a nice fruit salad. Or maybe baked apples with cheese! What about yogurt? I felt like a heel. But a well-intentioned heel. And unlike her mother, Stella refused to be persuaded from her birthday confection of choice: a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting. A Hello Kitty cake, but not just any Hello Kitty cake. Hers must be dressed as Cinderella.

I was at a loss. I wanted to give my daughter the world, but sugar, I learned, is not love. It's crack. And Mommy doesn't want to deal crack to her babies.

One day my own sugar withdrawal got so bad that as I made breakfast (yogurt smoothie for me, bagels for the kids, which is ironic considering their carby-ness) I saw lights. Not the eureka lights of enlightenment but curves of white rick-rack edged with shimmering rainbows floating off to the left, everywhere I looked. I thought I might have had to wake up Bryan to drive the kids to school because I was having trouble seeing. Maybe I was going blind. But then the lights clouded and dimmed and finally abated leaving in their place a low-grade headache and a fatigue that saw me fantasizing about crawling under the covers all day.

It turned out this was my first ever migraine. Woo forties! The headache itself wasn't so bad. I went about my day, albeit in tears of fatigue, or maybe detoxification. But I couldn't follow through with it.

For one thing, I finished the Sugar Addicts book and my resolve for a sugar-free household melted like a Kit-Kat left in a mini-van in July. For another, I picked up the book Real Food, which has a section devoted to the nutritional benefits of chocolate. Persuaded once again, I added a scoop of cocoa powder to my morning smoothies. Every day. And I sped to Trader Joe's to pick up some organic dark chocolate bars, because they're healthy. So much for conviction.

In the end I decided that my daughter would have the cake of her dreams, only it would be made out of as much real food as possible: pastured eggs, organic sugar and flour, grass-fed organic butter and milk. I solved the Cinderella dress conundrum (a.k.a. artificial coloring) with a Cinderella candle and a real dress from Target, and Stella was satisfied. She said, "Ooh, Mommy I love my cake. What's the icing made of, hummus?" Which gave me pause about bright white food, and an idea for next year's cake.

radish

2010-05-11T22:26:00.006-04:00

Bryan continues to toil in the garden. Here is our first crop. Radishes. Mmm.

I'm less in the dirt, more at the stove, even though I really want to know how to garden. I'll get there eventually. When the fossil fuel runs out in a few years, say.

Below, my first successful chicken liver dish. Hello B vitamins. Perusing the web and various cookbooks for ideas yielded nothing that jazzed me until I remembered Steinhof, the Austrian restaurant we used to frequent in Brooklyn. They had this liver pate with gherkins and sour cherries I used to order sometimes (with a dirty Ketel One martini). After carefully draining and cleaning my pastured pound of organs (the very thing I hadn't done the first time around when I unwittingly created blood paste in my food processor) I sauteed the shit out of them in ghee, smothered them with onions caramelized in organic bacon fat, and sided the lot with gherkins and dried sour cherries. Voila, lunch for the entire week (because no one else in my family dared to eat organ meat.)

I recently remembered that I was an art major in a previous life. Maybe when I saw this cool project idea on a friend's blog. You can also get it here.

The gist: Tell the kids that you have a FUN project in store. No not in THE store. You're not going shopping. That's the whole point. You're going to RECYCLE old stuff. Tell the disappointed peach-puffins that their fingers are just the right size for the job. Just like those children Liam Neeson saved in Schindler's List.

Put them to work peeling old crayons. Hover as they make a mess all over the kitchen floor. Silently tally the crayons that have not been fully peeled. Finish the job yourself when they lose interest five minutes later.

Fill a mini-muffin tin with the peeled crayon bits, muttering to yourself that you could be outside getting some sun.

Melt the pieces in a 275 degree oven. Yell at the kids to get the hell away from the hot stove when you check after three minutes. Check again after five minutes. After six minutes. Stir with toothpick. Check again after eight minutes. Wonder what you're doing wrong. Wonder why you thought it was a good idea to use the muffin tin you impulse-bought at Williams-fucking-Sonoma. At least the other one is still in great shape. You don't need two anyway. The oven always burns whatever's on the bottom rack. Everything is FINE.

Make sure there are no children afoot when you transfer the piping hot wax-filled muffin tin to the refrigerator or else There Will Be Pus. And cursing.

Stash tray on stove-top while you spend a half-hour moving stuff around in the fridge so there will actually be room. Slam jars and Tupperware on the counter with enough hostility to show whoever's around that you have been thoroughly victimized by this "project." Throw away moldy cheese and bread and salsa. Ignore the hideous gooey hairy sticky spots in the back of the tempered glass shelf. You don't have time to deal with that shit.

Finally, stick the tray in the fridge, go lay out in the sun on the Ikea chaise lounge that is already starting to fall apart after one season and ignore everyone.

An hour later, open the fridge and see that someone (Hamish) got busy with a toothpick before the crayons fully hardened. Shake it off because you eat meat now and don't fall apart over the little stuff anymore.

Check out your starter tan in the mirror.

Bang on the back of the muffin tin with the heel of your nutrient-dense hand to release the crayon-muffins and suddenly feel high like you're on drugs because it fucking worked. You knew it would. Ha!

Call the kids back from the television. Watch them have fun stacking the new crayon muffins up a million different ways. Remind them not to hurl them at each other.

Forget to actually draw with the newly forged crayons because all kidding aside, they are tiny wonders of sensory fulfillment. They click together like castanets, smell like childhood and make crazy stackable color combos that dazzle the eyes. Watch as Hamish hoards them all in his room and feel like mother of the century.

Wake up early the next morning and peel the rest of the crayons, even the ones that aren't broken.

fairy town

2010-05-04T21:03:00.006-04:00

This is what I get for spending more time in the kitchen and turning off the TV on a lovely spring evening. I was feeling all smug with my meat sauce and brown rice fusilli. Little did I know that while my ragu blipped away my angels were behind the garage hurling river rocks through our lawn chairs.

Maybe they weren't happy with the color? The aesthetic got on their nerves? Their language is still too coarse to articulate such grievances, such attacks on their sophisticated senses of design, so when grilled, they looked stunned.

Then Hamish got it. His eyes flickered with recognition. He understood that he'd broken a fundamental Miller rule, the No Destroying Our Shit rule that usually goes unspoken because it's so blazingly obvious. Shocked into this realization he began to sob, this without me even going ballistic. Because I'm not really that attached to a stack of green plastic chairs. But the principle matters. Meaning, I raised my voice but didn't slam any doors or turn purple or scream my throat raw. I was just, "What the fuck were you thinking?" Kidding! I didn't really say that. I KNOW they couldn't have been thinking a damn thing.

Stella on the other hand, when I pointed out that they'd destroyed FIVE chairs, turned her deadly little palms skyward and said, "Well, you still have one more, Mommy." And I said, "You know what, honey? You're right. I should thank you for being so considerate to save me a seat I can actually sit on, so I can then cradle my tender skull in my hands and worry, what the hell is next? the minivan?"

What actually happened next is that we had a playdate with some new acquaintances, a few wild children of the unschooled beef-heart eating cart-wheeling tree-climbing variety-- three long-haired waifs who got right to work in my back yard creating fabulous fairy habitats out of old plastic plant pots, pot shards, dirt and azalea branches while my pale non-tree-climbing TV-loving kids gazed upon them, slack-jawed.

After this radical bunch departed a few hours later my own indoorsy brood got some ideas. They grabbed the blade-like broken plastic bits of chairs and built upon the fairy theme by creating an entire town.

They added pipe-cleaners and patriotic flair. Stella crafted see-saws. Hamish made sure the fairies had a TV, a swimming pool and a bridge with a tender name that I cannot remember for the life of me. I sat on the one good chair, writing out masking tape labels and feeling pretty good about a pile of destroyed property.

My driveway looks like the municipal dump, but hey. It's all good in the end. Because every fairy deserves a good home.

what's for dinner, kids?

2010-04-20T09:57:00.006-04:00

Dreams do come true, Reader. They do.

Because Hamish’s teacher let me into the classroom to teach the kids a nutrition lesson. And I actually went. This is kindergarten, folks. I thought I could handle it. And I did with some help. Meanwhile I remembered to pack the camera but did I remember to take pictures for the blog post? Of course not. So here is one instead of our new kitchen faucet that Bryan installed. YES.

Speaking of Bryan, I enlisted help from my trusted friend and comrade, Bryan Miller because, frankly Reader, I was afraid to go it alone. It’s been a long time since I taught and this was a volunteer effort. I wanted a safety net.

So hubby and I hatched a plan to get the kids thinking and talking about what they’re eating, to ease them into a nugget of food awareness. Our half-hour lesson lasted forty-five minutes, Only the last five or ten minutes were excruciating. Okay that’s not really true. Just when I play it back in my mind do those elongated moments become the glaring gaffe in our otherwise successful endeavor. But I ate a slice of bacon afterwards and shook it off. Because going over our time allowance is something we can definitely fix for next time. Which means that we couldn’t have goofed too badly because Teacher invited us back. Lord help us all.

First we asked the kids, Who eats food? And they all raised their hands. This was a good start. They understood, they listened, they participated and they ate. They have been trained well and I applaud Ms. H. We asked them what they ate for dinner last night. Answers varied. Grilled cheese. I can’t remember. Pancakes and Oreos. Cheeseburger and fries. Soup. (What kind? The REGULAR kind, silly.) Cake. Wonton soup. Chicken fingers. Macaroni and cheese. Carrots. Apple. Pizza. And pierogies, of course.

Each kid got a paper plate and drew their dinner. They even included their beverages. Punch. Milk. Strawberry milk. Vanilla milkshake. Water. Shirley Temple. Most of these kids enjoy dining out with Mom and Dad.

Then we congregated on the rug. Bryan and I created four food groups on the dry erase board, complete with illustrative collages which incidentally do not match the USDA's food pyramid. We divided our chow into animal products, fruits & veggies, grains and legumes.

The kids came up one by one, showed their plate, stated their dinner, and figured out which columns to write the first letter of their name. (This is where we could have implemented those time management skills.) The regular soup kid, well, at least we knew which column to put the noodles in. As for broth? Probably animal, but you never know. Were there carrots in that regular soup? No. I told you. It was REGULAR. Oh. Okay.

The most surprising thing to me was that they hadn’t heard of food groups before. Dough, for instance, be it for pasta, bread or cookies, mystified them, but they caught on and wrote their initials in the grain column. The poor legume column got nothing. NOTHING! The kids thought tofu was made from grain. Boy do they have a lot to learn.

We didn’t say a word about factory farming or fake industrialized crap that passes for food these days. But we’ve been invited back, so we’re angling to figure out a lesson that won’t find us chased through the town square by a hoard of angry parents who don't want us messing with their food groove. We’re thinking homemade cookies versus store-bought. But you never know...

kefir krazy

2010-03-30T17:09:00.008-04:00

I keep waiting for this new...tritional... thing... of mine to blow over, but I keep coming back for more. Bryan remains supportive but hesitant to jump into my new cult, as we affectionately call it, but he allowed me to drag him and the kids to Hendricks Farm to show them real food (moo) and start brainwashing them early. Cause Mommy has PLANS now. With a capital A for Agenda. I've never had an agenda before, not one that wasn't all about me anyway. I care about others now, and feeding them well so they will be pleasant to spend time with. Oh wait, I guess it's still about me.

The kids had fun posing with the cows, sheep and chickens, petting the kitty that they named Tractor Fur, and listening to those cocky roosters. Me? I perused the store, sampled some artisanal cheeses and bought a pound of chicken livers. I love chopped chicken liver, so I thought I'd make my own, a fancy recipe for liver mousse pate I found on one of my new favorite sites, cheeseslave.

But as a former vegetarian, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. My food processor wept blood. It was cinematic. In a horror movie kind of way. But I ate it. And aside from the bloody aftertaste, it was quite good. I'm still deciding whether or not to offer the leftovers to the neighbor's terrier.

That stuff, above? It's dehydrated kefir grains. That's right, I am making my very own pro-biotic drink. It's apparently a magical tonic, and I will let you know when I start levitating.

At the moment I'm still in the rehydrating stage. It's been seven days. Warmer weather would speed up the process, I've read. That science project above is the milk I've been using in my daily rehydrating ritual. Instead of discarding it, since it's raw and doesn't go bad, I'm just letting it do its thing and watching. I wish the kids were interested. It smells different every day. Sour, blue cheesy, mild. I am having so much fun over here. Does anyone have a recipe for week-old coagulated milk?

And see my bacon grease sitting there to the right? Oh yeah. Mama has a new pancake recipe now. Have you ever cooked with bacon drippings? It's like salty foam that calls you home. Creamy as a dream. I might be turning Pennsylvania Dutch. (I am a Hebrew school drop-out so this is okay with my God.)

Bryan's mom used to spread bacon grease on toast as a child. I thought that was crazy. Now? I'm the crazy one. But happy crazy. The kind where if you put me in a straitjacket I might break into song.

Oh wait. I said I was serious. And Bryan is too in his teeth-gritted way. He witnessed my first symptom-free PMS in what, years? Yes, I got my period without taking to my bedroom floor. It was... magic. So Bryan concedes that how I am eating now is good for the whole family. He even sees like I do that when Hamish eats more protein and saturated fat and less processed starch, that he's a warmer, calmer, reasonable young lad. And this is why, even though I think that Jamie Oliver is doing a fantastic job with his food revolution, I wish he'd share the fact that saturated fat, maligned as it's been, is good for us and that it's the polyunsaturated hydrogenated fat that kills our spirits and bodies. You can read more about that here.

Stella's celebrating the fact that I'm not throwing a hairy fit with all the mud and cleaning heading my way by hamming it up. She likes pigs.

Oink.

jamie oliver wants to nourish america. and I want to help.

2010-03-24T13:51:00.013-04:00

I'm so moved by this video in my current state of nutritional zeal. It coincided nicely with Hamish's parent-teacher-child conference this morning, where I got the opportunity to bring it up with his teacher Miss H., who feels the same way about whole wheat Pop-Tarts as I do. I was so super-psyched that she is on the same page with this business, I almost high-fived Bryan right there.

Miss H. is all for a change in what the kids are being offered for snack and brought up another relevant point, that the kids are being fed snacks all the gosh darn day, in addition to their three meals, and that some parents bring in two trays of birthday cupcakes, one for their child's classroom and another for their kid's aftercare session.

Hamish got fidgety while we talked, descended to the floor underneath the conference table and scraped up a rogue goldfish cracker as if to punctuate our discussion. I picked up the thing and said, Now this! This isn't even real food! It doesn't nourish our children so that they can actually absorb the information you are trying so valiantly to impart to them. And Bryan elbowed me in the ribs.

I got a hold of myself, and still Miss H. invited me to visit the class and do a nutrition lesson. Which I told her I'd be happy to do, despite my (hopefully waning) fear of responsibility. And—will she find out what a lunatic I am if she doesn't sense it already?

Okay, without further adieu...

LK day

2010-03-18T00:05:00.007-04:00

We had a playdate with a pair of twins and their mom, new friends from Stella's class. The KPs, I call the twins, as those are their initials. The KP's mom is a nurse. That's her, above. Her name is AC. Her initials stand for a Russian literary heroine. Her dad was into that sort of stuff. AC works the graveyard shift at the hospital on weekends. She has two older boys as well. That's four kids if you're counting at home. And the career. And she is so upbeat. This put me to shame when I first met her. A little. For most of my mom career, I've been getting my ass kicked with just two measly kids. I've been broigus. I've kvetched. Vented. Thrown tantrums. Curled up on my bedroom floor. Not every day mind you. But on and off for the past six years. Kind of like living with PTSD.

I gently interrogated AC when she came over, the way I do sometimes with people. I always hope they'll feel complimented and see it as charming, my rapid-fire questions. I muse that maybe they'll think me a journalist angling for a cover story and bask in my attention. People don't always follow my script though. Sometimes they bristle. But that's another post.

AC though, she didn't seem to mind and even let me take her picture for the blog. I was struck with how much energy she has to follow through with her kids, on things like manners, sitting properly at the table, and this little detail which I've since thrown into my own repertoire—she teaches them to ask, "How are you?" after they've been asked. I never thought to do this, but I'm starting now and it's a kick. Grown-ups break out in ear-to-ear smiles when asked how they are by a child. I'm tickled by this. A little less broigus. Which makes everyone happy in the Miller household.

Did I mention that AC's husband is deployed in Iraq? Yeah. I no longer have any complaints. And one other tiny detail. She home schools. I have been thoroughly humbled.

Usually when I meet someone who puts me to shame with their amazing attitude in the face of a huge workload or stress or strife, I become ashamed. I take their MO personally, and take to my bed sooner or later. This time though I just feel happy to know her, and inspired. It helps that she's not a critical bitch. She laughs at my humor and seems to genuinely enjoy my company.

I have more energy these days myself. That's what's up with all the baked goods. For one thing, Hamish had his birthday. (Cupcakes.) For another, I've been making these smoothies with banana and raw honey, coconut oil, raw milk and egg yolks. Freaking delicious, not that Bryan agrees, but. More for me. So I'm left with a lot of egg whites. I made some pecan meringue clouds and macaroons and sent some to work with Bryan.

I owe it all to The Vegetarian Myth. I read last night that the author, Lierre Keith was assaulted at a book fair in San Francisco as she was condemning the use of factory farms. Three guys hit her in the face with pepper spray-laced pies. Can you imagine actually doing that to someone who wrote a book you had a problem with? That's one hell of a book. The message boards are crackling out there. I bring it up to show my support because her book has woken me up about a lot of stuff. I'm making changes I never saw coming, and I thank her for that.

Like, we joined a local farm cooperative. I know, I know. There are so many people who've been doing this for years and feel no need to show off about it. Me, I just fell off the turnip truck and I'm sitting here gooning it up like I invented the concept. Forgive me please. I'm going through a wonderment phase. I'm even thinking about buying some chickens. Just last month I was thinking very seriously about buying some boots. Okay. I still want boots.

Stella helps with the cooking, now that I'm doing more of it. She's a whiz at scissoring carrot tops, peeling garlic, whipping cream and the now notorious egg whites. Hamish wanders in from time to time to ask when dinner'll be ready, but he's not as interested right now in the prep work.

My mood, and this is the most important, most life-changing aspect, is improving too, maybe healing from all that PTSD (Parenting Traumatic Stress Disorder). This latest book I'm reading, The Mood Cure, explains how what we eat can make us happy or make us into raving bitches who spiral into a shame-soaked self-loathing so black we have to hide under a blanket in a darkened bedroom.

I was eating the raving bitch diet my whole adult life until last month: soy, starch, canola, caffeine. And now I'm like, really? My FOOD impacts my mood this much? Because it's a new world out there now. I keep waiting to despise myself, waiting to see if I'll take some tiny nothing-puff and obsess it into a heaving rabid ogre. I keep waiting for a shitty moment to flower into a shitty self-image, and I keep waiting to go apeballs on my mother. I've seen her a few times, and it's been okay. It's eerie.

I marvel daily, how did I not know this? How did my three (maybe four) therapists over the past dozen years not know to ask what I was eating? Because they weren't nutritional therapists, that's why, says my most recent therapist, who didn't double over in hysterics when I told her last week that I wanted to take a break because I feel THAT much better mentally. Because of food. Whoa. I will see her again in June to check in.

So. Now I'm eating the mommy-has-enough-energy-and-patience-to-get-through-the-day-without-going-postal diet, which doesn't mean I don't lose it at my kids now and then. They are supremely irritating at times (like they tell me I am to them) but it doesn't destroy me like it did before. It hasn't anyway. But watch out, tomorrow after having posted this, I'll make a liar out of me. In the meantime, it comes down to fat, protein and vegetation. It's been almost a month. I'm supposed to get my period any day. I will be paying close attention. I'll blog you with my tail between my legs if this good mood jazz all turns out to be a weird trip down cuckoo lane. But maybe by then I'll be so far gone it won't matter.

Even the kids are starting to eat differently. Whole milk, less crap, more protein. Could that be why Hamish helped fold the laundry the other day?

Maybe, maybe not. The point is, the kid takes direction, his folding technique is second to none, and his help allows me a little extra time to marvel some more.

And how are you?

an unexpected gift

2010-01-26T22:23:00.003-05:00

I hugged my mother the other night.

You might not think this is a big deal or worth blogging about. But. If you know me, or more to the point if you know my mother you know she is a hard woman to hug, and it’s been years since we’ve embraced. For one thing, I usually hate my mother. She is a powerful force in my life, though not in the way she might like to be. My relationship with her sends me back to my psycho-spiritual tool box over and over, yearning to find a way to forgive us both and be kind-ish.

But hug-wise, honestly, it’s the Vaseline. Have I mentioned this before? My mom has been moisturizing with petroleum jelly for as long as I can remember. Really it’s more like shellack. Or lube. And lube and my mother in the same sentence? Egads. If you're like me, you don't want to know when it comes to your parents’ sex life, as in, Please Lord let me have been an immaculate conception. The white-knuckled prayer.
And speaking of prayers, we joke about my mom and her Vaseline in our family. You know the Lord's prayer? Well my mother does the kitten's prayer. She knuckles a bit of slick from her forehead, chin and cheeks so she doesn't leave a trail of slime, which according to my step-dad Joe who discovered and coined the kitten's prayer, doesn't do much good. The desk in the guest room is covered, he says. So we are not only disrespectful to my mother but to the Lord. Is there no salvation? I believe there is. And yet.

The ends of my mother’s hair, which she wears layered, auburn and flat-ironed in the style of women half her age, hangs wettish and lank around her face. If you spy her cheeks up close you can see bits of lint sticking, caught like flies to flypaper. Add to this my mother’s penchant for groping family members. “Get over here and give your old mother a hug!” She’ll demand, fingers splayed, arms reaching, lips stretched forward as if those twin ribbons of pink flesh could outrun her teeth, all in anticipation of some bodily contact. I cower by the door with my coat still on she grabs my kids and sniffs their heads deeply before burrowing her lips into the virgin silk of their innocent necks and covering them with audible wet smacks. They squirm and scream as she huffs their odors like a glue addict, and bellows, “Oooh I just love you so much!” And I snarl, “If you love them so much then why don’t you honor their boundaries? You’re like a rapist, Mother.” Then I give myself a mental note to bathe them.

I am such a bitch.

But the other night in addition to taking Hamish and Stella for the night so Bryan and I could go on a hot date, my mom had just shampooed her hair, let it dry naturally which I don't think I've seen on her since 1976, and had just the slightest gleam high on her cheekbones while remaining suspiciously matte everywhere else. When she held her arms out I balked at first like usual, but then I said, “You know what? You’re not grossing me out right now. I really like your hair tonight and think I will give you a hug.”

She wet her pants she was so excited, which was unfortunate. No. I’m joking. But she did beam the same way Hamish does when he receives an unexpected gift. The same childlike twinkly-eyed delirium.

We held out our arms ceremoniously and then, embraced as carefully as if we were packing heirloom china into moving boxes. She smelled clean and her torso felt soft but strong and motherly, the way it used to when I was ten and had nothing against her, before she dragged me to Chicago the summer before seventh grade, before my anger at her cauterized into the hardened scar it feels like most days. When I was fifteen she deflected my rage like a mosquito. She called it a phase as she lit another cigarette. It's been twenty-five years. As in, enough already, right?

As we pulled away from each other I was so taken with how okay it was to embrace my mom after years of not hugging that I thought, maybe, just maybe I am getting somewhere. I hugged her two more times just to see if it was still amenable, or if it had been a one-hit wonder, a fluke. But it was still okay. I placed my head to the left of her head. Then I tried it to the right. I thought, this is amazing. I am hugging my mom and I don’t even mind it. It actually feels...nice. I said, "Mother, I feel it's important to let you know... It's possible..." She lowered her chin to get a better read on my eyes. "It's possible...that I love you."

"Oh I know that," she said. "Now go to dinner and have a good time."

So we did, with me in the passenger seat, saying, "Did you see that Bryan? Three times I hugged her!" He was like, "Very good honey. You're not a total bitch after all."

"I know," I marveled as the city lights glazed our minivan.

Hopefully she’ll lay off the lube for good.

Hugs.

Dear Heidi,

2010-01-18T21:57:00.003-05:00

Dear Heidi Montag,

I feel a little weird writing you like this. I just wanted to talk. We don't know each other obviously. I'm a suburban mom. Two kids, a house, a mini-van, a dead cat buried in the backyard. The whole enchilada.

The thing is, I was in the supermarket the other day, picking up some salad things, some noshy Mediterranean bits for some friends who were coming to visit. Oh we had a good time, they just had a little baby girl who is beautiful. We went for a nice walk. It was a beautiful day. But I'll get back to the sweet little girl later. I'll get back to her and my own three year-old daughter and my eight nieces, and all my friends' daughters, and all the girls of the world. Later.

So while I was waiting in line to check out I saw you, or what used to be you on the cover of People magazine, with that giant headline, "Addicted to Plastic Surgery, 10 Procedures in 1 Day," etc. and so forth. It grabbed me the way a headline was designed to. More than Haiti even, and Haiti has grabbed me too. But I was riveted to your story. See, I'm not going to accuse you of being shallow. I come here to be brutally honest, which is why I'm writing to you today.

I didn't buy the magazine then, I wanted to, but I don't usually buy People. I'm more of an Us Weekly girl. Heavy on celebs, no human interest stories to be found. That's what I like. The funny thing is, as I slipped the magazine back into its wire cradle I looked up to see a woman paying for her groceries. She looked to be in her forties like me, I'm forty, but she was on the fifties side of the forties, not the thirties side that I cling to desperately, especially when I'm hormonal. Anyway, she had work done. She could barely blink her eyes were so pulled open, you know in that weird way where you can see white all around the iris. She also looked like she'd had her nose done, and her lips, and was wearing colored contacts. Blue of course. Peroxided hair. That woman carved all the Jew out of herself so she could look like a shiksa. But I'm not here to talk religion, though I did read that you are deeply religious. Which I find fascinating.

Okay, so I went back later that night to buy the magazine. And some ice cream that was on special. Ka-ching! Do you eat ice cream anymore? And I raced home to read all about you and your ten plastic surgery procedures and how you almost died and how your head felt like there was a jackhammer on it and how your husband Spencer was not so into you doing all this to yourself, but that God WAS into it big time, and how you don't care what people think, but the bloggers blogging about your chin really bothered you, bothered you to the point where you cut your chin off, or rather you hired that doctor to do it, since it would be stupid to try that at home. See, I'm not here to call you stupid either.

Okay, I'm going to come clean. I've considered having work done. I scrutinize in the mirror with the best of them. I've got a running list. I'm not going to tell you what's on it though because then you'd look at me, and go, oh yeah, I can see that. And then I'd feel insecure around you, and things would be awkward. But you can imagine. I've gone so far to have consultations even, where the doctor draws on you and you feel like one of those place mats you'd find in a steakhouse, the one of the cow with the dotted lines bisecting and traversing every which way. And I've always left those consultations (I've had two) feeling conflicted. Because on one hand, you have the possibility of finally not being bothered by that niggling thing that bothered you before, and you'll possibly fall head over heels in love with your new self and the world will too but they won't quite know why and it's so freeing that you want to dance topless on the tables.

But on the other hand you've got the potential for something to go, well if not really wrong, as in dying wrong, you've got the potential for weird bulges, dents and lumps that would make you even more insecure, that would throw your entire identity into this obsessive plastic universe where you're constantly strategizing your next move and suddenly you're not an interesting person anymore, you're someone with a mental disorder, plus you feel weird around your friends who thought you looked great to begin with and were crazy to mess with what nature gave you and then they start to feel insecure, thinking that you think they need to fix something.

And then there's the money. The four thousand or thirty thousand you could have saved for your kids' education, or spent traveling the world and finding out that there is so much more to you and to the world than physical attractiveness, even in Hollywood, which you implicate in your reason to do what you did, even though we all know that so many amazing talented stars did not drastically change the very shape of their face to the point where they are unrecognizable, okay well Jennifer Grey got that nose job, and it ended her career.

I have a point. And I thank you for bearing with me. The point is that I hope my eight nieces and my three year-old daughter and my friend's sweet two-month old and all my friends' daughters and every girl in the world does not learn from what you've done that they need to fix themselves. I hope they can take your choice as a warning, as a lesson. To realize that it's our individual traits that make us really cool, that having the confidence to rock a pointy chin or thin lips or a big booty or small breasts is worth more than all the finest cosmetic surgery in the world, and is exactly what inspires teenage fans of pop stars. I was one once. And I am so grateful that Madonna never did a thing to herself back then except rat her hair.

You are twenty-three years old. I cannot imagine what your mother is thinking right now. I suppose she's grieving, wondering what she did or failed to do to make you think you were so flawed you needed to risk your life and cause yourself such an enormous amount of pain. You've gone and made yourself into the poster child for self-hatred. At the very least, you were honest about the recovery and the pain. Maybe that will deter some people. It sure scared the hell out of me.

Good luck with everything staying put.

Sincerely,

day of service

2010-01-18T16:24:00.006-05:00

I'm glad I finally get that Martin Luther King Day is a day of service.

Bryan and I were happy to head to a local school and help in whatever ways we could and bring the kids along to teach them that helping people in need is not only important, but it feels good too. The kids were excited to write their names on name tags they got to keep forever and to get T-shirts emblazoned with pictures of Martin Luther King and Barack Obama even though Stella refused to wear hers.
After making sure Hamish knew who the faces on his shirt were I spent a good two minutes explaining that Obama is not dead, and that Martin Luther King would very much like Obama if he were alive today.

I would have told him more as I'm turning into one of those annoying lecturing moms you want to punch when you overhear her in the supermarket, but I didn't have it in me because before we could even get out the door this morning Hamish had to be counseled about the fact that there was no surprise present waiting for him to open when he woke up.

The kid thinks that the word holiday equals presents and he salivates as if on cue at the very mention of the H word. When Bryan and I explained that this holiday is about giving and not receiving, he went ballistic as only a disgruntled almost six year old can. Stella still doesn't know the difference, so that takes care of that.

But Hamish. You'd think we kept him in a wooden crate. You'd think we didn't hold him on our laps and tickle him, feed him, read to him, listen to him, play with him, try our best to see the world from his unique point of view and let him fly free whenever possible so as not to smother the little man. We do all those things and more.

I say this because I grew up feeling deprived and yearning, but I always equated it with feeling neglected by my parents, and misunderstood, and not taken seriously, and chased around the house by a belt-wielding maniac when I forgot to turn the lights off in the bathroom. We don't subscribe to that parenting newsletter and still. Here Hamish is whining about not getting enough STUFF. Every holiday ends in tears. We're not even out of January yet and he's asking how many days are left until his birthday.

Maybe it's the age? Or maybe it's more genetic than I thought, these feelings of longing, and it's time for me to stop putting it on my parents' shortcomings. He does remind me of me though, that's for sure. And it's not pretty, but at least I have a decade of self-investigation under my non-whipping belt to help him navigate with.

friends friends friends

2010-01-11T21:46:00.011-05:00

Last year one of Hamish's favorite friends moved all the way to Brazil.

This year, one of his new favorite friends is moving to another state a thousand miles away. On Friday. I'm hoping this doesn't turn into a sick and twisted annual tradition. The out-of-state-bound friend, her mom, Alicia Smith is a professional photographer, with gear and talent to show for it. We thought she'd brought along an overnight bag to this afternoon's playdate. (Of course we would have made up the guest room for her if she'd wanted.) A mini suitcase on wheels it looked like, just right for the overhead bin on an airplane. But no. It was her camera.

The lens alone looked like it weighed as much as Stella. Look at that depth of field, those colors, the crisp detail that reminds me to run a brush through my daughter's hair. Can you see the difference between the pics in this post and all the rest, taken with my crappy point-and-shoot, the one Stella dropped on the pavement seventeen times? Okay she dropped it on the kitchen floor. Twice. Can you tell I'm salivating for a new camera suddenly? And I thought I wanted new slippers. Hah.

Hamish's buddy is a wonderful kid, the kind you never want to kick out of your house. A goody, as my mother would say.

And speaking of new friends, there has been an explosion of them in my corner of the world ever since my last post about Jai Yoga. It turns out that yoga is indeed magic, because for sharing my darkest coldest bits I have received so much warmth and light. I went from feeling suicidal on the floor to euphoric and bouncy in a single day, to the point where I said to my therapist last week, "So level with me, am I cyclothymic or what?" And she said no, not that it would matter since the diagnostic criteria would change in a few years anyway, because at this murky mental level, the disorders are more about the insurance companies. Good to know. Although searching for an acceptable cyclothymia link to html just now, I'd totally diagnose myself with it... and get the meds to match. Bryan might too. Because when he witnessed the change in me he slumped in his seat, hung his head and said, "Just wake me when it's over."

But, personality disorder and crumbling husband aside, there is nothing more heartwarming and validating and worth so damn much than being approached by someone and hearing that they related to what I wrote, that they laughed, they cried, they posted it on their facebook page, and thanked me for having a "blog that is a real gift." So without making this too much into my Oscar acceptance speech, thank you for reading and letting me know it mattered to you, by telling me, writing me, friending or following. It made my day and drove my husband to drink. No really. He was already drinking. We've been together a long time.

Namaste,

wolf-boy

2010-01-04T23:30:00.012-05:00

I can’t believe it’s 2010, it’s such a futuristic date.

The revelation flower grown from the seed of this month’s despair is (drumroll please)... I belittle my suffering. You knew? Well I didn't realize. And, and if I can change just that one little thing, forget about trying to actually be happy, if I can just respect my pain instead of drop-kicking it to hell, then I can actually find some relief. And when I’m particularly depressed and thinking extra mean thoughts about myself, a little relief goes a long ass way.
Here’s how it happened, according to me, and being depressed, I may not be the most reliable witness, but then again, who is?

I bought a yoga class card at Jai, which is one of the best yoga studios in my part of the burbs. The main difference between Jai and the studio where I practiced before is that the yogis at Jai, yoginis mostly, are mostly beautiful, rich, and in fantastic shape. Right there I start feeling my hairy warts emerge. At the other place I felt hottish, young and able. At Jai I feel ripply and wide and ungainly. I don’t think this poorly of myself every day of the month. Remember, this is me on premenstrual hormones.

The next thing that happens is that I take a class with Erica, one of Jai's owners, and when she presses on my sacrum while I’m balled up in child’s pose, it triggers my weep response. I cry through the entire class, and it has more to do with calling uncle! to my back pain (yet again) than some profound spiritual epiphany, though as I ultimately realize, they may not be too different from each other.

Erica wears her hair blond and dreadlocked to her butt, and bedecks her feet in dark polish, toe rings and a lotus blossom tattoo. With a sparkly Ganesha sticker offering blessings to the rear window of her green Mini Cooper Clubman, Erica is the embodiment of the Main Line yoga scene. She has been practicing yoga and teaching it for many years and there is something under all that mystical bling I find I trust. Her description might make her sound flighty but her voice and persona are direct, all business and no bullshit, plus eye contact galore, which conveys compassion and genuine interest. There's a fearlessness about her that I admire.

My warm and lovely friend Katie is in class that morning. Afterwards, crouching on my mat to chat, I ask her if she can tell that I was crying and when she hugs me, I start all over again. She tells me to get a massage, which I totally should, and take Motrin, that’s what medicine is for you know... But I never really have done that. Why?

Then I let Erica know what all the tissues were about. She says to stop doing backbends immediately. Wheel, bow, flipped dog, dancing shiva, frog, and all poses that require a straight leg kicked out to the side a la doggie at a fire hydrant. She tells me that yoga can in fact worsen back pain and that most of her private clients have all sorts of chronic back pain and let’s talk about it in depth soon. I leave, dazed and joking that I’m going to have to ask Santa for a late Christmas gift, because I know her privates are a hundred bucks.

I cry intermittently for the rest of the day. On my bedroom floor. In the dark. Because isn’t this what arty depressives do? In my muddy fog I catch myself hoping I’m ‘doing it right.’ Depression that is.

I sleep some, and read LIT (I’m finally almost done) until I can’t see by the cloudy sunlight anymore. (I can’t deal with incandescent light. I just can’t.) It gets so that I’m too ashamed to go downstairs and eat even though I’m starving and Bryan’s cooked garlicky scampi which smells so good. I think suicidal thoughts. (Lots of them which I will share with my shrink on Thursday. Promise.) I think I am on track with my depressive behavior. Textbook even.

Mostly I am convinced that I am a horrible mom and wife, leaving Bryan to tend to the kids, too fragile, fundamentally flawed as a mom, professional writer, yogi, daughter, sister, friend, you name it. Flawed to the hizzah. A bed is too good for me.

Finally though I make it downstairs because I remember what Mary Karr told me the night I met her at the library when she read from LIT, she told me to take care of myself, otherwise it doesn’t matter how many veggies I get my kids to eat, how many museums I take them to... So I head into the light and through my hunched squint I can tell the kids are happy to see me by the way they jump up and down smiling and shouting, Mommy!

The salad hits the spot with its Bacos and tangy balsamic dressing but I can barely taste the scampi so I pile it with romano cheese and red pepper flakes, even Bacos, which brings it to life in my dead mouth. I wash it all down with a ramekin of peanut butter ripple ice cream.

Everything’s going okay, I’m even helping to clean up a little but my demons are too many by this point and I snap at no one in particular about a wet towel laying on Hamish’s floor, to which Bryan responds sarcastically, “Sorry, I was kind of busy with something else,” to which I seethe, “Goodnight,” and head upstairs again, slamming the door, setting a horrid example, and stuffed like a blood sausage with the validation of my woeful shortcomings.

I am paralyzed by my odiousness. But not enough to keep me from dropping to my knees beside my bed, clasping my hands and pretending to be Catholic like Mary Karr. Because ever since I started reading her book, I’ve been trying it her way, humbling myself before God, or as I see it, before the wise Elise buried deep down underneath the pile of confused rock, dirt and rubble that I mistake for Elise.

Usually I feel like I know what to pray for: a bestseller, heaps of money, confidence, thin thighs. But I am so wrecked by this day that I realize, who the hell am I to dare to think I know what’s best for me? So instead of the usual I plead, “I have no fucking clue what the fuck I am doing. Help me. Please please help me.” Then I crawl into bed, turn on the lamp, and open my book.

But Stella is wailing. Her lack of pajama cooperation has lost her dessert privileges and she won’t let up. I lay in bed with my Mary, rereading the same paragraph while I keep getting the feeling that Stella will calm down faster in my arms. I try to push it away until I remember Byron Katie's statement that wisdom is as simple as heeding that voice in your head that tells you to go brush your teeth. I’ve learned that this is true for me, so I listen to her and me both and head downstairs, pluck Stella from Bryan’s patient arms (he’s not shooting me hate rays or anything) walk her upstairs (I know, my back!) and hold her and talk to her until she’s calm. I say, Life’s hard sometimes, isn’t it, and she sniffs, yeah.

It doesn’t take much more than that.

I tell her a story about a penguin named Pretzel Nugget and princess named Nothing and how they discover friendship over a dandelion puff after warily sizing each other up, and then we walk downstairs and I get her to sleep. I feel more accomplished writing this than I did living it. By the way.

I fall asleep next to Bryan in front of a Jack Black movie and then head upstairs and fall into bed.

The End.

But no of course it's not. This is me we’re talking about. I don’t let up.

The next morning, which is today, I am still fretting and Bryan and I bicker as we herd the kids toward the car for their first day back to school. We don’t even say goodbye to each other. Not typical.

I make it to yoga where Erica is seriously wonderful, admonishing me again to not bend backwards and demonstrates on the boutique floor all the moves I should avoid. I tell her I feel debilitated with so many items off limits, like a sushi bar where I can’t order rice. But secretly I’m relieved because every pose she’s telling me to avoid I hate anyway because they hurt.

What’s more, she asks me to coffee to talk about my issues, for free. She pulls out her sleek little Blackberry while I rifle through my satchel for my calender, a clothbound hardcover book with a black satin ribbon to mark the week, and Erica remarks that my planner is so cute! She doesn’t know anyone who uses a real book! And I feel mysterious, a little English maybe, and dated.

The class this morning is taught by a blond wisp from the Jersey shore, and is for intermediate to advanced students, which before I fully succumbed to my back pain, I thought maybe I was. Intermediate anyway. At the last yoga studio I felt like one of the better students. Here, I feel like the worst. There are about ten of us, all women. A few can pop up into handstand in the middle of the room. A few can do graceful leg-lifts, while standing on their heads. Breezy contortions abound. And they all glow, dewy and polished in the latest most expensive yoga-wear. I struggle through the class, huffing and puffing and hanging out in down dog whenever we are asked to bend backwards. My arm balances, usually okay, languish tarnished in a salty puddle of my sapping confidence. It is a bona fide pity party for yours truly. I tear up again, but only a little.

Afterwards I steal away into the parking lot like wolf-boy during a full moon, wishing my down parka could swallow me whole. This has been the first yoga class I seriously considered aborting. What a loser I feel like.

Over a salty Chinese lunch a little while later I sit hunched over my sleeve wiping away a duck sauce drip and blame Bryan (can you imagine?) for belittling my pain. (Don’t even ask.) Simultaneously I see that it’s me who’s been belittling my pain, by continuing to practice yoga that hurts, by not popping Motrin, and by bullying myself for not being the perfect effortless Supermom, the evil specter who is so real in my head.

I see for maybe the first time that being honest about my shortcomings, not to be confused with the horrible things I think about myself when I’m hormonal to bursting, but simple things like, I don’t love to cook all the time, I get overwhelmed easily, my back hurts, or, I don’t have a live-in housekeeper, that if I can honor the reality of those ‘shortcomings,’ then I can stop torturing myself and be a little nicer to everyone involved. Which would be such a fucking relief.

Bryan might think so too.

Peace,

strike a pose

2009-12-31T19:25:00.006-05:00

Wanting to jump-start my flailing yoga practice in the name of all things spinal, sinewy and mental, I did find the time between loafing and resting to purchase a monthly pass to the yoga joint where my fave teacher works these days, and it was good to have a laugh again while touching my toes and minding my breath.

Daniel as you know is also my friend and wouldn't you know it, he utilizes this service called couchsurfing.org where you post a picture of your sofa (or guest room) and advertise it as a crash pad for travelers. And of course you get to crash on others' couches too. A pay-it-forward type dealio. In my current incarnation as a suburban mom, I had no idea these things even existed. So up until today I think, a young Italian gent was staying on Daniel's sofa. Cool.

When Daniel invited me to join him and Roberto at the art museum, along with another friend of Daniel's who happens to be a curator in the Asian Arts wing, I couldn't refuse. Just two days into my week off I found myself free-falling into a surreal wonderland whose doors are shut tight when it's my turn to take care of the kiddies.

Daniel gave us a tour of the Indian art collection. He knows his Hindu mythology. For sure. Gives good tour, if you will. That's our old friend Ganesha above, removing obstacles for all who care to get devotional. Ommmmm....

Below, Daniel showing off some hard-won yogic shoulder flexibility in front of a Rothko. He's like that. Performy.

Apparently so am I. But Daniel's not a fan of the huge abstracts like I am. Cy Twombly and me, bonding below.

Here's a Brancusi that caught my eye.

And here is Roberto (not above but below) bonding with our nation's own Italian, Rocky. This kind of moment reminds me to squint and try to see the world I take for granted through new eyes.

Roberto again below, not knowing quite what to do beside the Duchamp urinal but smile.

The interesting thing is that Roberto is a writer. Like me, only recently published. In Italian. That's why he's here in America, promoting his new film book, Sergio Leone: l’America, la nostalgia, il mito. I'd be very proud of him if he were my son. He's only twenty-nine to boot. So accomplished. Poo poo as my mother would say. Meanwhile I was a film major once. I should know all about Sergio Leone and his famous Spaghetti Westerns but I have the memory of someone who smoked way too much weed as a kid and all I remember is the term and it having something to do with making American westerns in Italy. Which I guess didn't interest me as much as say, Fellini, who I remember and still love.

The irony is that Roberto calls himself a fan of American culture while I sometimes feel ashamed of speaking only English and yearn to be worldly and sophisticated like a European. But as my new friend says, "The neighbour grass always seems greener, you know..."

Oh and he writes a blog too, Fontina Boy. My Italian is non-existent obviously but Roberto assures me that Fontina Boy "is lovely and acculturate such as me, just a little bit more horny. If you ever will catch up some of his Italian words, you will understand better." And what's not to love about the adorable Simpsons avatar he scored? It's just all so Italian, in that way your friends tell you, the ones who studied abroad and got fondled on a bus.

And as much as I kvetch and bitch and under-appreciate certain aspects of my life, I am wholly grateful for the experience of meeting an atypical interesting inspiring someone I'd never get a chance to meet if it weren't for my friend's couch.

Ciao,

the jew who stole christmas

2009-12-19T12:08:00.015-05:00

So Hanukah is done.

That's my dad below, helping himself to a little birch beer at the annual party my step-sister hosts.

That's my step-sister below (in plummy pink) acting like a grown-up and me under the table hanging with the kids.

Ever since I met Bryan I've coined myself the Jew who stole Christmas. Now that we have a house it means we have a tree and I've hijacked that too with my Jewish ornamentations. I live to steep the kids in a hot mulled broth of holiday confusion.

But seriously, doesn't it seem like the future of civilization could benefit from a melding of religious symbols, rituals and beliefs? Isn't the core of all religions the same anyway? Do unto others and so forth? Play nice? Eat food together?

So there's my spine, below. I finally went to get my back X-rayed, to see what all the pain is about, the lower back pain I've been heroically enduring since Stella plopped out three and half years ago. The chiropractic treatments were becoming a pain in the neck, literally and figuratively. That cracking business does not have me convinced. And laying face-down on the adjustment table while my drum-playing Chiro told me yet again that he really wanted to "come over sometime and jam with Bryan" was about as relaxing as the kids nagging me for snacks while I'm in the shower.

If you look at the X-ray closely enough you can see my IUD. Yes folks. This womb is closed for business. Can you see the osteoarthritis? Neither can I. But I tried. I mean, who doesn't love to diagnose themselves silly on the internet? My doc says I probably have arthritis given that my bone density scan showed I have osteopenia in my left hip and lumbar region, which is a precursor to osteoporosis and more importantly makes me feel old.

It's a good thing Amelia’s Plum turned me onto Erran Baron Cohen, who rocks the house with his badass Hanukah grooves and gets me shimmying all over the house irritating the children. Shimmying doesn't hurt my back so much.

social anxiety

2009-12-15T22:07:00.007-05:00

This is what happens when you leave Stella unattended. It almost made the holiday card. Almost.

We had two birthday parties a couple weeks ago, and both of them were challenging. I've been meaning to share this with you ever since it happened but the holidays came a-crashing.

The first party was at a place called BOUNCE U, nestled in a labyrinthine business complex behind a store called The Dump. BOUNCE U is a moon-bounce filled warehouse space with glossy cinder-block walls and fifty-foot ceilings lit by LED pendants the size of Mack Truck tires. It pipes in all the greatest teen hits of the day loud enough for your bones to rattle. Stella hated almost every minute of it, until I literally hauled her onto the moon slide. Then she had about fifteen minutes of fun climbing and bouncing and sliding until it was time for pizza, which she suddenly didn't like anymore (argh!), and cake, which spawned spasms of tears since she didn't get to keep the Cinderella cake topper. Oh yeah, it was a Disney princess party. Fucking exhausting is what is was.

The party the following day was held at one of Hamish's favorite school friend's houses. I was so sure we'd all have a great time that I even blew-dry my hair. And that's something I never do. Okay, it was cold that day too and I didn't want clanking icicle hair. Anyway, so we get to the party, ring the bell, the door opens, Hamish and Stella peer inside and see a bunch of faces they don't know and decide there and then that they are not coming in. I thought, oh here he goes again, my kid with his inner turmoil, his agonizing shyness around strangers or in groups, his possibly diagnosable social anxiety disorder that I should empathize with, that I should try to soften to, that I should know how to handle in a way that validates his feeling without indulging it, so that it doesn't make us both crazy. Instead, I said, oh, come in! It's cold out there! You can sit on my lap! I thought, of course they won't stand out there in the cold when they could come inside and eat crackers and decorate foam cowboy hats. I took off my coat I was so sure. But still they stayed outside. In the cold.

Other guests and their kids arrived and went inside like it was the easiest thing. My kids shivered but remained resolute. The dad host brought popcorn outside to them. Other moms tried not to stare at me. Were they thinking I didn't care about my kids catching pneumonia? Were they thinking I couldn't "control" my kids? I fell apart immediately, teeth clenched, shoulders hunched, my mind dropping into its default belief in its innate and utter defectiveness. Why are all the other kids able to come in and my kids refuse? What the fuck is wrong with us? And why must this be a public spectacle? A boy whose name I shall not share, dressed as a pirate, warned me repeatedly that the kids would be stolen if they stayed out there. I snapped at him that they would not be stolen. Whose kid was this anyway? I was beyond civil, too stressed to make nice with someone else's kid. I could hardly handle my own.

After about fifteen minutes of cajoling and a handful of threats to leave if they didn't come in, I finally went to get our coats and as soon as I opened my mouth to explain to the mom host, my friend who I love and who gets it, I was sobbing. I sobbed up the stairs as parents admonished their kids to get out of our way! (they knew we needed space) and I sobbed all the way to the car with the kids wailing behind me that "Now I'm ready Mommy!" (Hamish) and "I wanted to get a cookie!" (Stella) but it was too late. Mommy was a wet curdled mess and there was no way we were staying.

The interesting thing is that Hamish calmed down immediately. He was truly glad to leave, citing that he would rather celebrate his friend's birthday with a private playdate, which I totally get! I'm the same way! You'd think I'd have more sympathy! But in the moment I'd turned into a writhing stress case.

Later that day when we relayed the story to some friends they had some good advice which for once didn't make me bristle. Usually I just want to vent and be validated with sympathetically curving eyebrows. They told us that next time we should arrive first, which made complete sense. Hamish will feel ownership, control, and not be overwhelmed the second he walks in the door. We even got a chance to try it out Saturday and it worked.

heroine

2009-12-05T23:20:00.007-05:00

Mary Karr. I didn't read her first two memoirs when they came out.

But her latest, LIT, I am reading. And loving. Especially the parts about turning to therapy, and turning to spirituality, both of which I have done and do, praise be, not because I am alcoholic like Mary, Lord knows I've tried the drinking and drugging but it didn't stick. The pot I smoked all through high school made me feel even more insecure than I normally did, instead of mellowing me into a purring fuzzy love zombie. And the drinking I did in college and beyond was a joke. I throw up after three beers if I even get that far, and wind up puffy and headachy, needing to rest up for days afterward. So I'm fairly sober. The emotional pain, though. That's the thing. The self-loathing. The crippling lack of self-esteem. The guilt, the doubt. Who wouldn't wring their hands at the sky for relief, drive thirty minutes to spew it all to a complete stranger for weekly fifty-minute sessions?

Mary's shrink tells her two things. One, it wasn't until the fifties that mothers stayed home with their kids thus creating the kind of parenting we see today, where moms spend all day engaging and entertaining their youngsters. So don't for one second think this is normal or necessary. Go ahead and fold that laundry. Make dinner. Relax. And do not feel guilty for not playing with your kid all frigging day. Or for not wanting to. Second, the shrink tells Mary that if she waits until she's angry to punish her kid (her son's three years old at the time), if she waits until she's screaming mad, the kid will learn to stop whatever naughtiness he's making only when he hears Mommy yelling. So put him in time-out (or whatever the punitive menu offers) as soon as the bad behavior begins, and you'll never get to yelling. And the thing about yelling is that it'll create a kid who doesn't listen to you.

I LOVED this.

Because even though I was never a big engager with my kids, the nagging guilt about it has yammered in my head like a slam poet finalist all these years. And if you've been following this blog, then you know where I stand about yelling. I think it sucks for all, and I've been trying not to do it.

Mary turned to the man himself. Jesus. She became Catholic. And she gets down on her knees and prays nightly, something I've tried a couple of times and like her, I feel humble and clean when I'm done. Lighter, you might say.

The other night Mary was in town at the Free Public Library and I went to hear her read and partake in a little Q&A, and when I raised my hand to take the mic and ask her a question, my heart thundered so loud in my ears from nerves I felt like I was fourteen all over again, attending a Duran Duran concert.

I asked Mary what it was about Catholicism that hooked her, versus Buddhism, say, because Catholicism mystifies me for so many reasons. She said it was the carnality. The life-sized statue of Jesus dying on the cross. The speaking aloud names of those the churchgoers would like to pray for (which is not exclusive to Catholicism). She told me I could find out for twenty-six clams, to which I pointed glee-furiously at my bag to show her I've got it already (I got mine from the library and am half done). Then she said again that it was the carnality and that she went from not believing in ANYTHING to believing in all sorts of weirdness, like the resurrection. As a quasi Bu-Jew, it's hard for me to relate. But I'm not getting weighed down in the man-made specifics. The point of a spiritual practice for me, and maybe for Mary Karr, is to ease suffering, ease the loneliness, transmute the fear and find a purpose on this planet larger than myself. So whatever floats your boat toward that horizon without bloodying the waters on the way is all right by me.

After the reading, when it was my turn to have her sign my book, I knew I'd have little time to talk to her. It was a well-oiled operation they ran there at the Free Library, with its velvet ropes and Sharpie labeled Post-its with our names scribbled for personalizing, and I didn't want to seem stalky and weird so I chose not to tell her I'm a published author or that I have twenty personal essays that I'm dying to see published in some form and how inspiring she is to me as a writer, but instead gushed that I'm enjoying LIT so much, especially that passage about her shrink, it was SO validating, because sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy with my three- and five-year old.

She looked me right in the eye and this is what she said: My son now, he looks like something you'd win at a raffle. But it wasn't always that way. You go ahead and let them eat pizza. Let them watch a hundred hours of TV. None of that matters. The most important thing is that you take care of yourself. The most important thing is that you're happy.

I nearly jumped up and down, said, I LOVE THAT!

With her words of reassurance soothing even my aching lumbar, I floated up the street to a cafe where I ordered a warm macadamia nut brownie a la mode to celebrate, and it didn't even bother me that a trio of tipsies were bellowing across the bar at each other about the infidelity of Tiger Woods, f-bombs and celebrities have to set an example and a man has his needs hurtling every which way. Okay, it bothered me a little, but not enough to out-smug them. Only in my head. And I had some doozies.

Later, by my bed, I got down on my knees and clasped my hands and prayed for idiots everywhere. And thanked God for Mary Karr.