Grumpy Moi

Boy am I grumpy! A kind of “Don’t talk to me, Mark, I need to go into the other room and scowl” kinda grumpy.

My frustration with the nanny has re-emerged from where I’d swept it under the carpet of my consciousness. This time it may be too big to sweep back under there again.

Today I was in the car heading home at 5PM. Well, it was actually 4:57. And I get a call from Shelly saying did I remember that today was a 5:00 day, not a 6:00 day.

And no. I’d forgotten. Got Wednesday and Thursday confused.

So I’m in the wrong, but come ON. It’s the way she talks to me:

Her: [in a stern and pissy voice] This is not good, Kristen. I am going to miss another appointment.

Me: [getting up my gumption to not be intimidated] Another one? Did you miss one before because of me?

Her: [evading my question] I have to leave at 5:00.

Me: I’m sorry. I messed up. But let me call the neighbor to see if you can drop Kate off there so you can go.

Her: No, it’s already too late.

Me: [thinking "too late" doesn't fly when it's not even 5:00 yet] No it’s not. Let me call her.

Her: [sighing with annoyance because she would clearly rather lord this over me than let me attempt to fix the situation] Okay.

I reach Jennifer, a nice human (hooray!), who says it’s no problem and Kate can come by I call Shelly back to tell her and she says, “Okay. Leaving now. Bye.” And hangs up. Soooo pleasant.

When I call Mark to rant, he comments that it’s only 5:03. Yes, this entire interaction took place before 5:03 when she was set to work until. Mark made the wise comment that she really shouldn’t be planning her post-work activities with such maniacal precision that one minute of lateness will set her schedule off kilter.

And all this when it’s not like she arrives in the morning with Swiss-clock timing. A handful of times she’s arrive 5-10 minutes late, and of course neither Mark nor I have mentioned it to her. And of course, she never mentioned it either.

God this pisses me off.

Celebrating Stupidity

So I’m walking by the local bookstore, Diesel (totally cool place that makes you want to read every book in it), and I always stop to look at their window displays. In part, Kate just loves to look at all the books and say, “Book! Book!” as if alerting the other pedestrians that an anvil was about to fall on their heads. And I too just like to look at the books, but I keep my, “Book! Book!” on the inside.

Today they had a calendar in the window, one of those daily calendars that is small and you tear a page off each day, called Stuff on My Cat. The cover shows a lounging cat covered in small yellow Post-Its. And yes, there were 363 pages with other pictures of, as billed, things on someone’s cat.

(Yes, I had to go into the store to take a closer look.)

I couldn’t help but wonder when stupid things like this became so acceptable to so many people. And I’m not saying I’m above the celebration of it all. Maybe it’s these damn internets that allow everyone to let their freak flags fly. There is so much out there for us to process, that we’ve just had to move in a totally inane direction in order for anyone to stop and pay attention.

I’m by no means a dumb-stuff connoisseur, mind you. Our friend Jamie is pretty good at digging up cyber-weirdness and delighting in it. And every once and a while I’ll come home and Mark will need to drag me to his computer to show me something that he saw at work and found outrageously funny. One time it was a website that showed what happened when you left a gummi bear in water overnight–or for some faux-scientifically significant amount of time. What happens, somewhat unsurprisingly, is it gets all bloated. Anyway, Mark found it incredibly hilarious and I think I looked at him with disdain and thought, “I’m married to a 14-year-old.”

Ah well, one person’s stuff on a cat is another person’s waterlogged candy.

Everything Old Should Stay Old

In the line at the grocery store today I saw that Luke and Laura from General Hospital are getting married. AGAIN.

This is madness. I haven’t watched that show for, God, 20 years. (Feeling old now.) And I tuned into two of their weddings way back then.

Have they continued to obsessively renew their vows in all these years that I haven’t been watching? Or did one of the actors somehow return from their trailer park in Arizona where they were living in obscurity and beg the network to give them one last go of it?

At any rate, the passage of time has at least given Luke some perspective on hairstyles. The long shaggy male perm cum mullet is blessedly gone now, and he is actually kinda cute with short hair.

Which isn’t to say I’m watching again though.

Halloween Redux and a Poke in the Eye

For anyone who ever doubted me, I did succeed at making the damn Halloween costume for Kate. I can’t say that I figured it out on my own. After my overwhelmed pattern-opening moment, I called a friend, Melissa, who is crafty with a loom, a sewing machine, and God knows what all else. Over the course of three tutorials in which I covered her house with tufts of craft fur like lava covered Pompei, she deftly guided me through the often utterly incomprehensible directions, and even made great time-saving suggestions to boot. (Don’t sew on the arms, just have her wear a black shirt underneath.)

Why is it two women who don’t even know each other super well can work during the days, take care of their toddlers through their dinners and bedtime routines, and still summon the energy to successfully–and even pleasantly–work together on a fairly complex crafty project, when a young guy can’t even teach his girlfriend how to ski without all hell breaking loose?

At any rate, the costume was adorable! Kate was a starlet–well, a skunk really, but a dazzling one! At the neighborhood Halloween parade Mark kept nudging me so I wouldn’t miss it when the other parents cooed over the cuteness of it all. (And frankly Mark being proud of my maternal craftiness was all the flattery I needed to consider going another round with this home-sewn costume concept next year.)

In a more recent turn of events, nanny Shelly informed me one evening last week that at the park Kate was playing with a baby and was so excited. “She really wants one.” Somewhere in the amazingly-good but not perfect English that Shelly speaks I misconstrued her to mean that Kate wanted a sibling, not a baby DOLL.

So once I sorted my way through an initially suprising suggestion that turned out to be a quite reasonable one, we went to Target. I resisted the urge to wait until I found the ultimate sweet and cute and not plastic-tacky doll for Kate and just get her one, since by the time she is 27 and I find one that I think is worthy of being her first doll, she probably won’t care.

What was funny was the day we went to Target I’d met Shelly and Kate at a sushi place for lunch. When I walked into the restaurant, Kate was so excited to see me she started squealing. Then squealing seemed to continue to appeal to her after she’d gotten over the fun-ness of having me there, she sqealed more and louder. So Shelly said “Shhhh, Katie.”

Well, at Target when I handed her her soon-to-be First Official Doll, the first thing she did was look at it gravely and say, “Shhhh.” Finally Kate can manage someone else’s behavior instead of being the low man on the totem pole. I’m sure that’s fun for her.

The second noteworthy thing she did upon receipt of the new doll–after the requisite hugging and kissing of it–was take both her thembs and bear down on one of its eyeballs. It had those old-school kind of eyes with lids that open and close and eyelashes. It’s one of her ways of giving the doll love: hug it, call it “Baaaaby!”, give it kisses, and gouge at its eyes.

Yesterday I went into her toy box to get some toys I’d stowed away for a while so she’d think they were all fresh and new when she got to play with them again. I found an angel doll that Mark’s stepdad’s mother had gotten Kate. I handed it to her and she grabbed it with her wild-eyed happy look. “BABY? Baaaaby!” Then she went for the eyes.

Let’s just hope that these little Equus-like episodes are all a harmless expression of a baby’s bodily exploration, and we’re not raising a little future Abu Ghraib prison guard here. Sheesh.

Talking Up a Storm Now

We seem to be in a learning, growing, changing spurt in this house. And not just Kate. It seems like there is something churning through all of us.

Mark is busy at work tackling a big feature story which at times has had him feeling frustrated, but ultimately has been a great project for him to take on. And finally it seems to be in the wrap-up final edit stages (knock wood) and so it’s nearing time to settle down and feel proud and relieved and ultimately thankful for taking on the challenge in the first place (since writing isn’t really a job requirement for him).

And I’m still on the upswing of my new-job learning curve. I’ve started to get to know the team and am feeling lucky to be part of a friendly, un-political and talented office. Sure, I’ve battled with intermittent frustrations–mainly about the client services lack-of-savvy that seems to pepper the ranks–but ultimately what I’m learning about people I’m appreciating and feeling grateful for. I’m also getting to know the clients and seem to have made some modest but real inroads in relationship-building there. I’ve tackled some challenges, crossed some things off my To Do list, and managed to have a feeling of job satisfaction minus the up-all-night stressing component that seemed to be part of the last job at least.

And our glorious little Kate. She is just shining and sweet and aglow. She is crawling and trying to stand–until she realizes she’s not holding onto something and she topples over. And she is saying words like a fiend: apple, doggie, turkey, book, ball. Most words you can make sense of. The one that’s totally off base is pumpkin. She says something that sounds like “BA-bi” for pumpkin. She’s also learning things like where her feet, teeth, hair is. She’s clearly a small sponge, and we just need to remember to keep adding information.

All this learning is leaving us all pretty tuckered out by night’s end. So Kate’s been sleeping through the night (knock wood) and Mark and I are intermittently keeping each other up by sleeping restlessly and thinking of everything we have to do, or going out like lights.

Oh, and on a totally different topic, today when the nanny left she said, “I love you, Kate,” which was very sweet.

It’s Just Too Soon

Sunday Mark and I were in Babies R Us buying some crap we probably don’t need. They were playing Christmas carols. On November 5th.

That’s just wrong.

Baby Born!

After many weeks of bad-news calls from Amelia, I answered the phone yesterday to hear her say, “I have a baby boy here!”

Yippee!!! Malcolm Francis Myrick was born on November 1st at around 1PM in Washington, DC. He weighs 5 3/4 pounds, and is 20 inches long.

Today we got to see pictures–Bismarck has already busted out some photo montages complete with music!–and he is adorable. Mark thinks he has Amelia’s eyes. Amelia thinks he has her hair. I don’t know yet what Bismarck thinks, but from the pictures it’s clear he’s one proud Papa.

We are sooo happy for Amelia and Bismarck. I know that Grandma Frances is out there somewhere smiling down on her beautiful grandson.

No no no

I remember being at a friend’s baby shower a couple years ago, long before Kate was a twinkle in my uterus. A new mom with her teeny baby was there, talking to the mom of an older kid. New Mom was seeking out all manner of advice, and at one point asked Older Kid Mom, “Do you tell him no?” And I swear I wanted to lean forward and say, “Come again?,” but I was just overhearing a conversation from across the room, so I tried to just tune my ears in more inconspicuously.

Older Kid Mom actually said no. No, that she doesn’t say no to her kid. I felt like screaming across the room, “What the hell are you talking about? Is this seriously some new parenting approach? You’ve GOT to be kidding!” But again, since this was not my conversation, I managed to stifle my incredulous reaction.

Fast forward to the McClusky house a couple years later. As you peer into the windows you see that the woman who’d been babyless at the earlier baby shower has had a child of her own. And wow! What a beauty she is.

But I digress…

So anyway, a few weeks ago Mark and I finally gave into the reality of our need do more–okay, some–babyproofing. Kate’s still not walking, but walking be damned, you can cover some serious ground on all fours it turns out. And everything not intended for infant exploration is of course infinitely enticing, like the fireplace (even sans a blazing set of logs, still not the blest place for play). Also, the stereo, which is perfectly at Kate-level and offers a wonderful variety of knobs and buttons for the pushing and the twisting.

Thanks to his natural house-handiness and some research conducted with other new parents facing the same problem, Mark managed to rig up a Plexiglas shield which he Velcroed to the front of the stereo case. The other night Kate crawled up to the stereo and even though she couldn’t get at it, she looked at it and said evenly, “No no no.” Well, it sounded more like, “Nnnnuh, nuh, nuh,” which as it turns out is exactly what I say to her.

It’s funny in an oh-that’s-what-I-do way having your admonishments tossed back at you. Turns out something you come out with in the heat of the moment is actually making an impression on that little mind! I think it’s why so many people end up freaking out when they hear themselves use the same expressions with their kids that their parents used with them. You just have some weird reflex to say something before the volume on your stereo is turned up to an eardrum-splitting decibel.

Kate has since busted out the “no no no” a couple other times. Reaching for the knob for the drain midway through her bath, she turned to me and said, “Nnnuh nuh nuh.” Crawling along the hallway and stopping to look at the electrical sockets (at long last, covered with childproof plastic plugs), she looked over her shoulder at me: “Nnnnuh nuh nuh.” It’s like she’s stored away every place in the house where I’ve ever said it to her, and says it back to me to show me she’s paying attention.

Well, I guess I’m not that far off from the Mother Who Doesn’t Say No. I guess I’m trying to soft pedal a bit on the stern “No” and heck, it seems like it just might be working.

Seems like it might finally be time to watch all our language around Miss Kate. It’s ultimately cute and funny hearing the no no no mimicry, but I’ll be less charmed hearing her repeat what I scream out when I stub my toe some day.

Nannies and Boyfriends

Sometimes I wonder if my brain works very differently than other peoples’. It seems that I can’t have an experience without somehow tying it to something else in my life. I mean, I guess that’s how we all operate on some level, to process change. But for me sometimes it feels more like a game of Concentration. I turn over one Jack and know I’ve seen another Jack somewhere…but where was it? It’s fun to me to make the connection.

So Shelly. Our nanny. As I’ve not been shy about sharing, we got off to a rocky start. I was returning to work after a year off. Mark was traveling for business. Shelly was new to all of us. And in addition to the new job, new team, new industry, I had a new commute which I’d yet to understand the traffic/distance and timing ins-and-outs of.

Most of my family and friends offered their shoulders for me to unburden myself upon that first week. I was going to be 5 minutes late getting home on my second day of work, and Shelly’s reaction was less than easy-going. It was a stressful interaction with her that dominoed to Kate also being stressed, and especially without Mark here to help me wrangle with it, the whole experience lead me to question where she was truly The One to care for Kate.

Well since then the job has become less new. I have an understanding of the intricacies of the commute. Mark has been traveling less for work. And I ironed out some issues with Shelly’s hours that allow me more wiggle room in my drive home. She and I have also gotten to know each other better. And she and Kate have clearly forged a bond.

And yet, the outpouring of support from those family members and friends who had my back when I was sure the nanny should go, haven’t all caught up with our current state of contentedness. When they inquire whether we’ve found someone new, I feel the need to justify and explain why we haven’t and how we’ve had a change of heart. And still I worry that the kind inquirer won’t really believe me, or think I’ve made the best decision.

It leaves me feeling like you do when you and your boyfriend have a fight, or break up, or he just does something jerky. You do what any typical gal does–reach out to your posse for support. And often that support comes in the form of “you’re too good for him,” “you should ditch the dope” and sometimes even the candid I’m-telling-you-this-because-I’m-your-friend-and-care-about-you “I never really liked him in the first place.”

Which all gets a bit sticky once the incident that set off all the need for all the extra love and support is past, and you find yourself back together with said BF and feeling all butterfly-stomachy in love again. Those conversations in which you and you friends fantasized about him getting afflicted with a lifetime worth of he’ll-never-date-again acne suddenly need to be swept under the carpet by all parties. When both groups are together again, say, you sitting on your parent’s couch snuggling with the guy who they know did you wrong, you’re aware that your parents are secretly still cursing him, but you want them to see that he’s changed! He’s different now! Everything is okay–really.

Alas, I fear that’s where I’ve landed with poor Shelly. Will she ever meet a friend without them wondering what it was she was so hopped-up to get to that she couldn’t stay 5 extra minutes with Kate that evening? Are they judging me and Mark as parents who really should find another nanny but are maybe just too lazy? Or worse, don’t care enough about who watches Kate?

And maybe in my most self-doubting moments, do I fear that they are right?

In my Mental Game of Concentration, I have to compare it to yet another thing. It’s like looking for apartments. When you’re looking, you want it all–hardwood floors, fireplace, parking, walk to BART. And when you finally get a place you’re thrilled that you didn’t have to take that place that was so dark, or expensive, or whatever. But you still can torture yourself with the fantasy that the perfect reasonably-priced rental with a hot tub in back and a Viking range was out there and you missed it.

Ah, well. Yesterday I went for a walk with Kate when I got back from my work trip in LA. I was looking up at the Berkeley hills and remembering when we just moved here how I felt so misplaced in this neighborhood. (After a dozen years in Noe Valley, it’s no wonder.) But now, I look up at those hills and revel in their beauty. I look at our little local library and the coffee shops and people with their yoga mats tucked under their arms waiting to cross the street, and I think of how lucky we are to be here. Without a doubt, this is home now.

Our rocky start aside, I’ve been getting some of that feel-good vibe from Shelly recently too. Seeing the great healthy meals she cooks for Kate, the way she teaches her little games and how to blow kisses. The care and concern she’s expressed in the past couple days about Kate’s runny nose.

Hopefully some day all the friends who have ever heard me kvetch about Shelly will know that Mark, Kate and I feel content and lucky to have found her, and confident that we have the right nanny–even if there may be one out there who’s just as good who charges a little less.

Sending Love to Mrs. D, Wherever She Is

Amelia’s mother died today. I don’t think I’ve even begun to fathom that she is gone.

She was as good as a second mother to me. Someone who I leaned on when my mother was sick and then departed. I don’t know what it will be like to go to Bristol and not be able to visit her. Sit at her table in her bright kitchen with the fish wallpaper and the multi-colored chairs that Amelia painted in high school. Sit at the table and have a cup of tea or cocoa and maybe some Greek dessert Mr. D brought home from one of his restaurant-owner friends. And talk in that totally comfortable homey way that has no pretension or need for a can-I-come-over-now? call or even the need to be showered, social, or in a good mood.

The thing is that it’s not even the more recent visits to Mrs. D’s kitchen, centered around taking Kate to show her off, that are most fresh in my memory. I remember sitting there on freezing RI nights in high school like it was yesterday. I swear there were times when it was colder in their house than it was outside, and that’s with the wind coming off the water. (Mr. D was renowned for being cheap about turning up the heat.) I’ve also been there for countless Forth of July’s from childhood to adulthood. I can hear in my mind Mrs. D with her unique almost haughty-sounding accent. She’s holding me in front of her with her hands on my shoulders pointed at some Greek or Italian relative, and asking, “Do you know Kristen? Fred and Vicki Bruno’s youngest? Well really at this point she’s practically my daughter too.”

Once in high school when Amelia’s lose-a-few pounds diet had clearly gone beyond the point of healthiness, I confronted Mrs. Demopulos in that same kitchen. Somehow I’d managed to find a time when no one else was around and I screwed up my courage to get to the bottom of things. Why had she let Amelia get so thin, so sick? Why wasn’t she doing anything about it? How could she let this happen?

In my New England upbringing I’d never dream of calling an adult by their first name, never mind being so brazen and disrespectful as to confront them this way. But I was also driven by the passion of a teenager who knows they are doing the right thing. And by my love for Amelia, whose health and life I was suddenly scared shitless about.

God knows what I had said that day or how I said it, but Mrs. D in her proud manner and New England private way stiffened her back and brushed me off. It was the first (and only time) I felt a divide between us, and that fact alone made me even more scared about how catastrophic whatever was happening had the potential to be. In a clipped manner and with few words, she assured me they were dealing with it. She gave me no insight into what “it” even was, or what they were doing, or how I could help, and most of all she gave me no assurance that it would be okay. And eventually it was. But I never talked to Mrs. D about it again, and really never talked to Amelia about it either.

I always love going home to Rhode Island as anyone who knows me knows. It’s beautiful there. I’ve got family and friends who have known me since I toddled out of the bathroom at Sam’s Pizza with my pants and underwear around my legs asking for help. The food is good and familiar and practically all the places that I’ve liked eating at since I was a kid are still in business. And everywhere you go people, some who you don’t even recognize, know you. There’s something about that history that keeps a gal real and grounded.

So, in the time that I went off to Ohio for college, or to Paris to study, or moved to NYC, or finally away to San Francisco. In the time that I had small jobs that grew to bigger jobs, or boyfriends who I was crazy about, or brought home, or just talked about dreamily, or lamented that I’d been dumped by. In the time that I had bad asymmetrical haircuts, or gained my freshman 15, or thought I was Miss Thing for wearing a suit to my big-deal job, I always had home to touch down on to put everything in perspective.

And no matter how cool, or smart, or city-savvy, or in love, or engaged or pregnant you are, when you’re sitting at the table at the Demopulos’ house, you are still just Kristen. Still just Fred and Vicki’s youngest. There’s no air that you can put on that can’t be seen through in a second. What’s amazing was through it all I was never laughed out of the place. I was never called on my attitude or pretension or fashion-don’t of the moment. And I have no doubt there were many times when they had to stifle laughter or the desire to slap me back into reality. And sure, sometimes I did get brought down to earth. But mostly I was cheered on, questioned, inspected, embraced, and told to put on one of the many sweaters Mrs. D had made. “No we won’t turn the heat up.”

The last time I saw Mrs. Demopulos she gave Kate some books. She’d asked me what it was that Kate really needed and I’d turned her in that direction. Of all the special books Kate has gotten from family and friends, for some reason no one but Mrs. Demopulos has inscribed them, and I’ve often wished people had, since many of them are real keepers.

When I first introduced Kate to Mrs. D last Christmas I handed the baby to her and said, “This is Grandma Frances.” It was my little way of expressing the respect and special place that she held in my world, and by transference, Kate’s. At the time I didn’t even know that it had registered with her. But this summer, after she gave me the books and verified that we didn’t already own them, she grabbed a pen to inscribe them, and as she wrote she slowly said aloud, “To Kate, with love from Grandma Frances, July 2006,” and I was touched that she had clearly taken note of (and maybe even pride in) her special title.

What’s surreal about the fact that Mrs. Demopulos died today (a phrase it horrifies me to even type) is that it won’t even really hit me that she’s gone until the next time that I’m home and I have to fight the way my body is hard-wired to go to her house to see her.

But I don’t even pretend to suffer a millionth of what her family is going through now. Amelia is giving birth to what would be Frances’ first grandchild in two weeks.