got dreams?

When we lived in Brooklyn and Bryan worked typical office hours, I never went to his shows. Now that we're suburbanites, you can't keep me away. Above is his gig in Bryn Mawr. I was convinced that the photographer pictured was from the Main Line Times and that Bryan was finally on his way to superstardom, albeit in a down home hometown kind of way, because while the Big Apple is up to its stem in Americana acts, I imagine the western Philadelphia suburbs are drooling for such a thing and Bryan is their man. But it turned out that the photog was a portrait artist who liked Bryan's look. So I still got my dreams.

licker

Yep, my daughter is a window licker. I take this as an omen. Note to self: buy the eco-friendly window kleener. Note 2: Maybe use it once in a while.

Since you asked, and I thank you for doing so, here's another poem... 

you can’t describe what motherhood is like
to people who don’t have kids
and even if you could
they’d never listen

because what you do that irks them
they swear they’d never do
but then when they’re in it
they can’t believe it’s them too

maybe we all despise ourselves secretly
or maybe it’s just me

log

Hamish was not arrested. The photograph above was taken for his passport at the UPS store and then promptly rejected by the passport office. But if my four-year old son were arrested, I'll bet his mugshot would look a lot like that. Stay out of trouble, boy. It isn't pretty.

And now, a poem for you—

Just as I lie down with my book and sigh
The best moment of my day is shattered
When your baby sister cries

My nerves are suddenly frayed and tattered

new religion

At school we have the option to drop our kids off without getting out of the car, sort of the reverse drive-through, or we can park and unbuckle and schlep them in, in the freezing cold, and when it's not Stella's day, I get to schlep her back to the car and rebuckle, remitten, recoat... Can you guess I choose the former method? Would you?

keeping. carrying.

Very proud of my new poster although I have a hunch that eighty per cent of Domino Magazine readers probably have one. I gotta say, when the kids, say Stella, is screaming when I'm trying to score some solitude upstairs, I take a gander at the message and an automatic deep breath fills my clenched lungs and it like, helps. Plus, it's pretty. Below, I told Stella to make her "mad face."

rachel

My niece Rachel at Johnny Rockets restaurant on Royal Caribbean Freedom of the Seas last week. Rachel's bat mitzvah was celebrated sans blow-out reception-slash-dance par-tay, but instead as a Caribbean cruise which we joined her and twenty more for.

have you been writing anything?

Now when people ask me if I've been writing, instead of growling at them and explaining that I'm a stay-at-home mom with a two- and four-year old, I can say YES. I wrote an essay about my mother and my daughter for an anthology, and it's coming out on April 1.

my brother the turkey farmer

My family is full of celebrities. My brother Jon Bermon is a farmer in Rochester at Aberdeen Hill Farm. He treats his turkeys better than he used to treat me when we were kids, that's for sure. Remember when you tied me to the pole in the basement and turned the lights out? I'll bet you don't tie up your turkeys in the dark, and that's good for the turkey and the turkey eater. Anyway, I forgive you because I do yoga now. It's good to see that my big brother has grown up into such a respectable member of society. My mother must be kvelling all over her Jones New York outlet cardigan. I'm not a big meat eater, but Jonathan has the right idea with the humane treatment and the local food movement. Please watch the video and buy his meat. That's what she said.

toughskins

"What are you lookin' at?"

Seriously. 

This morning in the mad dash to get the kids to school on time, I ran upstairs to throw on a pair of jeans, leaving them to their own TV-less devices only to return downstairs to find four-year old Hamish screaming for help, his leg stuck between the wall and the bed where his two-year old sister Stella had pushed him. That's what you get for not putting your socks on when I told you the first ninety times. And yet, how many times does Stella shriek with rage because her big brudder knocked her down, took her shoe, closed the door on her? Many, my friends. My new mantra, other than, "You gotta let that go," is "They're supposed to be irritating." It truly helps. And so do your comments. Go us.   

USA!

The kids don't know what to do with me. Mom, dancing at 8 A.M.? Before her coffee? For freakin' out loud, what is going on? "Oh! Bama, Oh! Bama, he's the new president, the new president," I sing, skipping around Hamish's room this morning. His response? "I'm hungry." Everyone I talk to can't believe the relief they feel, we didn't know how stressed we were until California's polls closed at 11 P.M. last night. I didn't go to bed until 2 A.M. and this morning Stella woke up crying at 7 because  she peed in her bed and I couldn't be happier.

In the shower, I remember one of my favorite songs from The Wiz, "Can't you! feel a! Brand new day! Can't you! feel a! Brand new day-ay!" Who the hell am I anymore? What happened to the surly reluctant mom I once was, in America's dark age, just yesterday?

I feel the pride of, well, of a mother for our country for the choice we so clearly made. As my friend Danielle wrote on her facebook page, "I am so gay for America right now." I wish I'd said it first. I hope I can communicate the hugeness of this day to Hamish and Stella. The historical landmark it is, how it fills otherwise jaded and cynical grown-ups with the same wonder a child is naturally made of, and maybe, just maybe I can get Hamish to sit and watch Obama's acceptance speech and show him what class and humility and grace and brilliance really look like. 

greetings from pukeland

We moved back to my hometown just in time to witness sports history, meaning the Phillies winning the World Series. My mom dragged my rebellious heels away from here in 1981, one year after their last win. Shiver.

My mother admits that she's so superstitious that she has to turn off the TV if the other team starts scoring. I asked her, "You mean you think you're so important to the outcome of the World Series that you actually believe it makes a difference if your, YOUR TV is on or off?"

Affirmative.

This interrogation somehow led to another admission of my mother's, that it's the wife's responsibility to hold onto her husband by being upbeat. Peppy even. I can't remember how the thread of convo actually wove its way from sports witchy mojo to marriage secrets of the fifties, but it did, and I'm a changed woman as a result. I'm going to skip right into the kitchen, make my man a Manhattan and whip up some cacciatore, all with a smile. Or not. In reality, the kids and the hubby are all puking their guts out and I am the lucky duck who gets to mouth-breathe while washing twelve-thousand sheets. Go Phils. I know how to celebrate. 

for freaking out loud

Did I mention that I loathe the Republican ticket this election? It's not like me to be so engaged. Usually I shudder a bit and then get back to my Us Weekly. I don't protest. I don't rally. I don't make a stink. This year though, I am a changed woman. For instance, I spend way too much time on Youtube watching Tina Fey and Sarah Palin, cackling with evil glee over all of it, which somehow leads to watching way too many clips of the bickering between the diabolical Elisabeth Hasselback and Joy Behar on The View. (Loved the ones with Bill Maher.) (I know I'm supposed to provide links here but I have a DVD of Mad Men downstairs burning a hole in the player and it's not getting any earlier.)

paint and preschool

Before. Hole in the ceiling. Shiny old white paint.

After. It's a more cohesive look, albeit not too dramatic a change. I like to keep the drama on the walls and out of my relationships, but for now, I'll settle for less, thank you. Tapestry beige trim. China White Walls. Dove White ceiling. Maybe one day I'll tackle a backsplash in something ceramic, richly, thickly glazed in gold or olive or something. Or, you know, knock out a wall and build a glassed in breakfast nook that leads out to a deck and wildflower garden oasis.

hem

This is my painting outfit. I like how miserable I look here. Makes me feel more literary, maybe in the Irish sense of the word. I say this because my book group, which met last night, just discussed The Gathering, by Anne Enright, a Booker Prize winner. Though short on plot, it towered with misery. And molestation. But the important thing here is that I showed up for book group in my painting outfit, because I was rolling until the eleventh hour.

So I'm sitting there at book group last night in my painty clothes, my hair is sprinkled with dove-white dots, discussing the lack of plot in this sad Irish book, dropping eggplant tapenade onto the hostess's flokati rug, and the new girl says, "those are pretty nice jeans to use as painter's pants," which I take as an accusation. I sputter an explanation, something about my overage of jeans, my short-lived but very expensive obsession with designer denim, how these are the worst of the bunch, and she says, "You don't have a pair of old sweatpants?" and I shake my head. "Old pajama pants? Nothing?" The woman is incredulous, and soon I am too. What kind of reject doesn't have an old pair of cheap ugly pants? I don't know who I am anymore.

It's not until much later that the other voice in my head, the one who knows better but doesn't speak up until it's too late, is whispering in my ear, you don't owe an explanation. You could paint in a ball gown and it's none of anybody's business. But it's too late. The approval of this woman I have known for thirty minutes isn't there for me. Worse, I have received official disapproval.

I say yes to that second glass of wine. Later I fret in bed. I am premenstrual but don't yet know this. I think about my jeans and wish I could have explained what a volatile relationship I have had with this particular pair of jeans since they came into my life half-price via ebay four years ago.

It all started with my friend L___, a boyishly tiny fashion plate whose style shone so brightly that I took it as a personal affront. I thought if I could get the same jeans she had, maybe some of her magic would rub off onto me. But I knew I'd better choose a darker shade of denim because I was afraid that in my slightly larger size, her almost greenish tinted pair would make me look like I was trying even harder than I was. So I ordered a different color, sight unseen, the photos are never the same, and when I received them, slumped with dismay. The color sucked. It reminded me junior high, all the most painful parts. And they weren't returnable since they were on sale. Oh yes, intrepid living-on-the-edge masochistic shopper am I.

I tried to love the jeans. And what's more I had to hem them. I had to commit to them on a deeper level. Twenty dollars later they're not so on sale anymore. And the tailor didn't speak very good English. And he had a weird rash around his lips. So when I explained "original hem," to him like my stylish friend taught me, meaning that the distressed original hem would be cut off and then reaffixed to the hemmed length, he said, "Okay. I do." And when I returned for my jeans that I tried so hard to love, they were very much not done the way I had asked, but hemmed with the too-too fresh denim of the freshly cut cloth.

I knew I should have taken them to someone else. The rash was a warning that I let go unheeded. I complained, tried to weasel out of paying, scolded the infected tailor for not listening to me, all to no avail. "It's impossible," he told me.

"But you said it could be done!" I cried.

"Need big machine. Two thousand dollar machine to do this."

My eyes widened. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

He shrugged. His rash mocked me.

I stormed out of the store, desperate, deranged with fury. Now the jeans were not only the wrong color, but they no longer had the weightiness at the bottom that makes them drape and drag sexily. So at home, after glaring at them for a couple days, and putting them on, taking them off, over and over, trying to pose in front of the mirror just right so that the hems would look the way I wanted them to, berating myself into loving these damn jeans dammit, I grabbed my seam ripper and got rid of the hems.

I felt better knowing the rashy man's thread was no longer piercing its way through my regrettable purchase, but I still had the original hems—in my impotent tirade I had the rash-man pick them out of the garbage for me so I could show him the subtly worn edges that made the hems special and worth preserving. I brought the hems home so I could whip myself with them.

I forgot about the jeans eventually. I even wore them on occasion, but over the months I amassed enough additional pairs of jeans (all to compensate for this lousy pair) that it was no longer a life-threatening issue.

And then we bought this house and did some painting and I had no proper painting pants. I would wear Bryan's jeans, which were baggy and uncomfortable and needed belting, or a pair of his boxer shorts, but if company was over or I had to run to the store for another quart of HC-172 from the local Benjamin Moore store, I had to change my pants, and that's a drag. So I wanted a pair of jeans I could feel comfortable in, and even a little foxy, and upon opening my heavy jeans drawer, knew these were the ones.

Writing this down now I realize that even if I had explained the situation properly, the new girl from book group still wouldn't approve. I wonder why she didn't think my shirt was too nice to paint in. That was a gift from my mother.

smorgasbord

It's a beautiful morning for a walk or a jog. It's crisp and cool and sunny, and here I am true to form, squandering it indoors, working on my pasty complexion. Above is the chair we found on the curb a couple weeks ago. I covered it with one of those Urban Outfitters bedspreads.

Hamish's first day of pre-school. He found his favorite toy right away, a broken alarm clock in the shape of a robot. The head moves up and down and everything. Today was the first day he cried when we dropped him off because he didn't have time to gather his "bug finders" which are two compass/magnifying glass/mirror gadgets. One he uses himself and the other he shares with his new close friend A____, also from Brooklyn. I was praying there'd be more like us out here—New York City refugees looking for some affordable real estate, natural beauty, good public schools, and an all around easier way of day-to-day living, plus a close-ish proximity to the overpriced apple, and we found our first family who fit the bill. We've already had them over for brunch and they are all lovely, stylish people. When we met we wondered where the others are, but we are totally okay with being pioneers.

I don't structure nap time, which could be a detriment to my mental health, but Stella manages to fall asleep when she needs to, wherever she might be.

Who says sleep needs to happen horizontally?

Ah, sweet rest.
Here is the current state of our kitchen, which am angling to paint something in a jewel-tone or at least saturated, to harmonize with the grey countertops and backsplash and the wood cabinets. I'm thinking yellow-green, but Bryan isn't 100% on board. Light grey looks like ass, you can see the test-patches, and I also thought of a stormy blue-grey but I know it'll just depress me as the days get shorter.

I'm lapping at my new issue of Domino for some inspiration I can pirate, so we'll see what happens. So far, I've been practicing restraint with my paint choices (except for in the kids' rooms) because I get sick of things quickly. It's working so far, but this room wants a darker color, but it doesn't want to sacrifice light, especially since that big gaping hole in the ceiling is being sealed up.

Oh there she is again snoozing away in her ninety-nine cent top from Old Navy.

And here she is awake on her first day of school. We drop the toddlers off in the playground and then they get to watch us recede into the parking lot distance so that they can cry all the harder. Our heartstrings, they weep.
The coffee table we found on the curb a month back. Four cans of yellow spray paint later and YOWZA. 

perch

Kathy Calderwood sent me a present, this beautiful, tiny superball painting. I hung it in the niche at the top of the tiger stairs. I call this niche my perch. Hamish calls it the deck.
The black banister.
Shelves I bought from the deceased next door's daughter. Painted them "Artichoke Hearts." I have next to nothing to put on them yet.
The master bath is 99.9% complete. Still have to hang the hand-towel holders, and I'm sensing the need for a vase of cherry branches. Or something.
I forgot to turn on the shower when I took this pic like they do in the shelter magazines.
Another perch.
This is where I come to blog.
Painted the fire screen white. That was my friend's idea, and a good one.
Painted the porch floor white. I'm going for a space-aged look out here.
My friend gifted me this amazing Maharam fabric as a housewarming. It's called Quatrefoil. I got these consignment shop chairs upholstered in it. Very exciting. I gaze upon them often.
The bedroom is very spare. Some people call it spare. I think it's unfinished. Add a loveseat at the foot of the bed? A settee? A giant flat screen TV that rises via remote control from a custom-designed bench? Dunno. I also wish the headboard were a little higher so I could sit up in bed and lean against it like they do on TV instead of lie practically horizontal with my book, which I suspect isn't as cinematic. But oh well, if that's my biggest problem, right? The mattresses these days are just so darn thick.
Hello again, chairs.

soap for sale!

Nothing like a shot of commerce in the tender arm of a four-year old. Hamish spent a good part of the weekend shilling homemade soap on the front lawn. He made four bucks. What will he buy? Maybe more soap. I found a recipe for homemade soap online that called for shredding unscented soap with a cheese grater and mixing in bits of lavender. Did I mention we have a lavender bush in the backyard?

Maybe next time we'll attempt the lavender cloud cookies. Mmmm, egg whites. Oh yeah, the thing was, I only had Dove soap, the smelly pink kind. But it was either that or order lye online and that was not happening, not for this spontaneous-compulsive project mom. If I can't make it in five minutes from crap found lying around the house than it ain't getting made. Plus I was motivated by my old pal Guilt, feeling a little frayed around the edges after way too much time spent drooling in front of the TV. I needed to be able to say to Bryan, to you, the world, "Guess what Hamish and I did today? We made soap!" And then bask in your approval and mild impressed surprise and possible envy.

Hamish's pal was game to sell as well and everyone who stopped bought, which tells you a little about the pace of our nabe. S-L-O-W, folks. Some people waved charitably from their cars or lawn-tending trucks, which we moms cheerleaded, "That counts! You got a wave!" But more than a few marks were oblivious to the cherubic and hygiene-minded cuteness on the sidewalk, to which we would tell the kids, "They're too busy breaking the law talking on their cell phone," bristling with indignation.

The thing that really puffed me with pride though was Hamish's fearless spirit, the way he shouted to every car or passerby, "Soap for sale! Twenty-five cents!" and shook his cardboard sign at them. I could use a bit of that—the focused intention that doesn't give a shit what other people think, because I don't have time to care, I have soap to move.

you'll choke!

We have raspberries. Growing in our very own yard. I am still blown away by my new life, by my suburban riches. I keep marveling to myself, mouth askew, "I have a driveway, a yard, a raspberry bush..." I must look like a mental patient to the neighbors.

As I nibble a sweet berry I must note, Stella has officially turned terrible two. She still has her positive qualities, but holy magoly.

All she wants when I'm around is her daddy, to pick her up, to help her with her Crocs, to get her cereal, blah blah, and like another little girl we know, only wants to do everything "all by self!!!!" which means that I get to stand outside the car while she attempts to buckle herself into her carseat, or I get to stand holding heavy (reusable) grocery bags on the back stairs while she attempts to open the screen door, God forbid I touch the handle! Who do I think I am? Satan?

Lots of flinging of bananas, smearing of milk, asking for food and then not eating it, refusing to get dressed, insisting on wearing flip flops that never stay on her feet, while I stand there grinding my teeth and talking like a Sleestack in order to keep my cool.

My cool, heh heh. Yeah, right. And then the other night my mom was over, bless her almost seventy-five year old heart, and she was nagging the kids, and doing her worry jig, "don't run around with beads on your neck, Stella, you'll get strangled!" and "Stella? Where is she?" panic mounting in her voice as if the UPS man just stole her out of the house, and then "Hamish! don't put that plastic thing in your mouth, you'll choke!"

And by then both my eyes were twitching, and the words erupted from my mouth like bad fish, "Oh Mom, let him choke!" at which point my mom spit out her seltzer all over me, and I got down on the floor with a wad of paper towels, grateful for laughter, because I'd just about forgotten it existed.

lulu miller 1992 - 2008

Stella's stitches are out, her scar is but a pink wisp, I am happy about the lack of disfigurement and that this ordeal is now behind us. She screamed her head off through the whole removal process while Bryan and I held her down and sung Twinkle Twinkle, ABCs, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Rainbow Connection, whatever we could think of. The songs were the only thing that coaxed her frightened little body to relax beneath our grip.

Turns out we should have removed the band-aid a day or so before we took her to get the stitches removed because everything got compressed under there and the skin had started to grow over the stitches. Remember this, parents, the next time your kid bashes her head into the sharp, unforgiving corner of your otherwise well-behaved furniture. It would have taken five minutes instead of fifteen, but we are through it.

Meanwhile, the cat died Wednesday. She was sixteen years old, hyperthyroid-compromised, and died of heart failure at the vet's, they euthanized her, after collapsing in a pee and drool puddle on the guest room floor. We buried her in one of the boxes my overstocked novels were packed in. I made sure to take the novels out first.

At the funeral we reminisced about how reluctant Lulu had been to accept Hamish into the fold, how Stella pulled her tail and delighted in her kitty-ness. Hamish said he was thankful for the box of Nerds he got from the free snack table at the vet's while Stella cried, "Box! Box!" her small shoulders heaving with sorrow for the dirt-covered corrugated cardboard. Lulu, you are in a better place now. Tell your brother Giuseppe we said HI, and rest in peace, old gal.

stitches

Monday was the day Stella and Hamish were roughhousing in a usual way in Bryan's and my bedroom while I clacked contentedly on my laptop down the hall in my office. Before long, she started wailing and staggering toward me. Nothing out of the ordinary. I said, "Come here, baby, what happened, did Hamish hurt you?" Not to be unfair to my son, but this is how it usually goes.

So I swept my lovey-dovey into my arms and walked toward my bed, laid us down and then got a glimpse of her face, where blood was now pouring. Above her left eye, bisecting her eyebrow was a gash as deep as a Pop-Tart is thick, and twice as long. Gaping. Two dark drops bloomed on my pristine white pillow case (yes, I'm that shallow even in times of crisis) and I was off and running, shouting "Hamish!" in a panic-strangled voice. I'd glimpsed him running to hide among the vacuum cleaners in the crawl space cabinet under the eaves opposite my bed.

Down in the kitchen on the floor with Stella on my lap, I swiped at her head with wet paper towels to no avail. The blood kept coming while she screamed and batted my hand away. I grabbed the phone and dialed Bryan's cell. He'd left for work about fifteen minutes earlier. I begged him to turn around and come home, we have to go to the hospital, Stella's been cut, please come home, pleasepleaseplease. I called my mom, told her to meet us at the E.R.

When Hamish finally came downstairs I had him look at his sister's face, to make him aware of what he'd accidentally done. I stressed that I knew he didn't mean to and that I wasn't angry at him, and felt bad that he'd been the cause of her injury, but I also wanted him to know that his actions have reactions and any time I can teach him to be accountable is valuable, even if it means seeing that a playful shove can lead to a deep gash on his sister's face. His response was typical for his age, at least I like to tell myself it was: he giggled and hopped up and down, flapping his wrists like a dandy fairy. I restrained myself from hurling him across the room.

Five stitches later, Bryan and I have been inducted into a whole 'nother level of parenthood. It makes us stronger, cloaks us in great swaths of character to have held our daughter down in the emergency room, while she lay swaddled taut in a sheet like a Russian orphan, screaming as she was sewn shut until her face turned purple and her eyes bulged.

But she got over it. And even though it's typical kid behavior, it still awes me. The whole victimlessness of it all. Meanwhile I tossed and turned the first couple nights, the image of that wound, so deep, the layers of skin so thick you wouldn't have been able to tear them with your teeth, and hugged myself for comfort. Two mornings later, around five A.M., Hamish screamed, "Mommy! Mommy!" and I went running to him. "I had a dream about the doctor's," he said and I crawled into bed with him, reassuring him that everyone is safe and that he's okay. We fell back asleep. I felt vindicated, for Stella, and reassured that the gravity of the incident really did reach my son. I almost hate myself for not trusting him to have a compassionate conscience. We'll see how he reacts when the stitches come out. 

Changing the subject, Hamish has been flexing his creative eye with some art photography. Here are a few of my favorites.