Revisionist History

I was late picking up Kate from school yesterday. Again.

When I walked into her classroom she was helping the teacher pin some of their work up on the wall. It was a project about the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration. The kids had painted cool life-sized skeletons and had talked about people and animals they’d known who’d died.

Kate’s quote—the longest one by far—was hanging front and center.

“My cousin’s fish died. My grandpa’s dog died. I helped feed her breakfast. I had a cat named Edwin who used to sleep on my bed. Recently, Edwin died.”

It’s true that Cousin Gavin did have a fish—a few I think by now—that went the way of the toilet bowl. In fact, the first one expired on a weekend when Mark’s mom was babysitting, requiring Grandma to deliver the first Sometimes Things We Love Die lecture. I like how that life lesson extended across the country to Kate.

And yes, my father’s beloved wire-haired Dachshund, Katie, passed away recently. Somehow Mark and I decided to name our daughter Kate when there already was a Katie in the family—albeit a four-legged one. So trips home to Rhode Island inevitably resulted in all of us having to clarify child from beast.

“I’m taking Katie for a walk!” I’d call through the house. “Katie the Girl, not Katie the Dog.”

And then there’s the cat Kate mentioned in her school’s, uh, ‘death unit.’ The thing is, we ain’t never had a cat. Now, I certainly don’t like the thought of Kate telling tall tales. Especially those that are writ large in the middle of her classroom. But when I read her comment yesterday, I was actually kinda proud of her lie.

I mean, many kids would say their fake cat’s name was Snowball, or Boots, or Fluffy. I just love that Kate’s cat-we-never-had is called Edwin. Maybe it’s her crafty way of ensuring that any babies that might come into our family someday won’t be given the same name.

Expectation Setting 101

Last week I tried on a Vera Wang wedding gown.

No, no, I’m not getting married, or remarried, or even renewing my vows. I’m happily hitched, thanks. And, I haven’t actually tried on any dresses recently. The Vera Wang wedding gown is my favorite metaphor to describe venturing into territory you can’t afford.

Back when I actually was on the market for a nuptial frock, I acted prudently. One of the benefits of holding out to meet your second husband (and skipping over the first), is that nearly all your friends have gotten married before you. So you learn from their mistakes.

I don’t even remember now who it was who told me, “Don’t—I repeat DO NOT—try on a Vera Wang gown. You will look stunning. You will fall in love with it. And it will be impossible to go back to the dresses that are in your price range.”

What you have there is good advice.

Shopping for real estate gives one another good opportunity to learn this lesson. Pop into the open house for a multimillion dollar fabulously-renovated Victorian (with garage!) and you will be ruined—RUINED, I say!—when your agent shows you the $750,000 ranch-style fixer that’s in your budget.

Alas, time goes on, and without vigilance we slip up. For me, it was at an EBISA event. No, not a sushi restaurant, EBISA the East Bay Independent School Association. They host a fair where all the local private schools have booths and gleaming 4-color info packets and engaging teachers and smiling students. All the ingredients to reel you, if you happen to be me, in.

I’d spent the night before sitting up in bed scouring some materials Mark brought back from a similar event at Kate’s preschool.

“This one doesn’t even talk about the teachers,” I bellowed from the bed to the bathroom, where he was brushing his teeth.

“I have no idea where this school even IS,” I mutter, flipping through the pages as Mark pulls off his t-shirt to climb in bed. “You’d think they’d at least include the school’s address here somewhere.”

But one place totally drew me in. Quotes from alumni discussing how the school shaped them to become thoughtful, caring adults. An interview with a long-time teacher who was retiring, and her words about the school being like family. There were the requisite pics of happy diverse students in creative classroom settings. And an unexpected section about their commitment to service-based learning. An academic backbone and a heart.

“Oh my God, this one!” I say to Mark, slapping his back as he attempted to sleep. “I LOVE this school. And… Oh God.  It’s TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS a year for kindergarten.”

At the school fair the next night, I bee-lined for their table. I saw the head of the school, whom I recognized from their flyer, and two fresh-faced teachers who radiated enthusiasm.

“Okay, so I feel in love with this school last night, reading your folder in bed,” I proclaimed, surprising myself with my dramatic opening statement. But I got the attention of the head of the school. She laughed and put her hand on my arm. “Great!”

“It reminds me of the school I went to in Providence called Wheeler,” I said. And oddly, I suddenly felt the smallest bit choked up.

“Oh, Wheeler!” She said. “I know it! A wonderful school. In fact, for years I sat on the board there.”

That was it. It was like the cupid of expensive private schools came and shot me with his bow, a direct hit to my nostalgic heart. It was like it was meant to be.

I mean, I’m not one to look past those obvious signs in life. And this one was huge. Neon. Indisputable.

On the drive home I was giddy. Because of her late September birthday, Kate wouldn’t qualify for entry until fall of 2011. But I was so fired up, so ready to become part of their community, their family, the thought of having to wait seemed like torture.

But by the next morning, the real torture was the crushing reality of the school’s price tag. How could we ever swing $20k a year? And for 13 years in a row? And that’s not even taking into account Paige’s eventual tuition.

“I guess we could just pick which one of them goes there,” I told a friend later on the phone. “You know, like, ‘Sorry Paige. You need to stay back on the farm and work. Kate? Well, she had more potential for book-learnin’.'”

Later in the day I drummed up the idea that I could get a job there to get discounted or free tuition. I’m no teacher, but there must be other things I’m qualified for. Janitor? Crossing guard? Lunch lady?

I called My Frienda Brenda, a college chum who is currently kid-less. “So,” I tell her. “It’s totally depressing that in two years we may be spending $20,000 a year on school for Kate.” But really, once I sober up to the fact that we’ll likely never afford it, what’s more depressing is that we may not be.

Chalk One Up for Me

People are constantly going on about how Paige is a mini-Mark. And some folks say Kate looks like me.

Frankly, I don’t see it at all. I mean, Paige looks like Paige. A small delicious dumpling with loopy blond curls, a button nose, and pudged-out cheeks. She’s still got those inverted knuckle dimples on her hands. You know the ones? I meant to take note of when Kate went from having those to getting normal convex knuckles, but I missed it. It must’ve happened overnight.

Anyway, Mark. If you ask me, he looks nothing like Paige. He’s a grown man for God’s sake. Lean—in case you haven’t met him—and all chiseled and angular. Not many pudgy parts to him.

I guess when I look at those two I just see Paige and Mark.

As for Kate, it’s even harder—or maybe just weirder—to see myself in her looks.

Which isn’t to say that Mark and I aren’t constantly labeling the things that the girls do as being either him-like or me-like.

Kate screaming a conversation from one room of the house to another? My genes. Her morning rat’s nest hair snarl? That’d be me. Kate’s love of sour cream, non-stop banter from the moment she wakes, and occasional “No one’s paying attention to me!” whining fits? Well, uh, that’d be me too. I’ll also lay claim to both girls’ ability to pack away the pasta, and Paige’s Herculean ability to sleeeeeeeeep.

As for Kate’s skinny butt, obsession with books, and tendency to hang back in new places? Mark, Mark, and Mark. Also Mark: Paige’s love of bikes and music.

At our nephew’s eighth birthday party this summer, Mark discovered something he never knew about me. It was at a pool party, at some fancy suburban community center. There were three pools, and they had one of those bright blue three-story water slides. The kind that have an enclosed tube that loops around like a big spiral staircase and spits you out at a high velocity at the bottom.

When Mark first laid eyes on it, he practically shoved the kids, bags, and towels in my hands and ran towards it, arms flailing overhead. He was giddy, grinning, and asking permission if I could watch the kids so he could do it, as if I was his mother. It was sweet.

Later, back at the kiddie pool, still all smiles from his water slide high, he asked if I’d gone on it yet. I looked over at the thing and said softly, “No.”

“Oh my God, GO!” he commanded. “You HAVE to go on it RIGHT NOW.”

So I went. Spurned by his excited insistence. Buoyed by a desire to be the mother of two who might not wear a bikini any more, but is still game for a good time. But really, scared shitless.

As I got closer, my spontaneous bravado faltered. I still wanted to go down the thing, to surprise myself with how much fun it’d end up being, but I needed back-up. So I enlisted the birthday boy who was waiting in line for some other treacherous thrill ride. I tried coming off like I was rallying him to join me for some big fun. Really I just thought it’d be nice to have some family around at the time of my demise.

En route we saw my niece. I got her to come along with us too.

At the slide, the teen monitoring the line indicated I’d have to go up the staircase alone. “One at a time,” she droned, staring blankly ahead. Here I was taking my life in my hands, and she’s just wishing she was texting her boyfriend.

I had a tight feeling in my gut, but dropping out of line at this point would be embarrassing. So I butched up and trudged onward alone.

At the top, another compassionless teen instructed me to “just lie down with my arms crossed over my chest.” How fitting, I thought. They make you assume a corpse pose.

Motivated only by my wish to get it over, plus pressure from the long line of young sadists behind me, I assumed the position and pushed off. My niece, who’d picked up on my anxiety (smart gal), cried out behind me, “When you see the light Aunt Kristen, hold your breath!”

It was every bit as horrifying as I’d feared. Claustrophobic, jarring, and with a slamming plunge into cold water to cap it off.

For 15 minutes afterward, I shook. I fretted. My stomach flip-flopped. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t trusted my instincts, and vowed over and over in my head, “NEVER AGAIN.”

Gathered round the picnic table, shivering and soothing myself with pizza, Mark was astounded. He had no idea I’d been so afraid, that I hate those fucking things, and that even after it was over the experience could continue to seize me with terror.

Rather than suffer the spectacle of my supreme wimpishness alone, I felt compelled to drag my sister (the birthday boy’s mom) down with me. “Well, SHE’D never do it either!” I said to her friends, pointing to the woman who bushwhacked her way through remotest Mexico, outwitted spies sent out to trail her, and shot films solo (and on the sly) in Asia’s Golden Triangle heroin hub. That gal’s sweet-talked her way out of tight spots and international dramas that’d leave James Bond stymied and whimpering.

They didn’t believe me. So I called over to her.

“Ellen?” I said, nodding my head in the direction of the slide.

“SHIT, no!” she said, knitted her brows together in horror. “You crazy?”

I turned back to her friends smugly, and reached for another slice of pizza.

A couple weeks later, I returned to the scene of my trauma. Or tried to. I wasn’t with a PTSD therapist, just a friend and our kids. But I screwed up the times, and it was closed. As a consolation prize to our disappointed wee ones, we went to some other suburban dream park, replete with a mushroom-shaped water sprinkler, paved wading creek, and a playground the size of Delaware. (I’m telling you, that playground was bigger than Rhode Island.)

The kids stripped down to their suits the second we arrived, and ran off willy-nilly, not sure where to head first.

Basking in the serene sense of suburban safety, my friend and I got to chatting and weren’t hawkishly watching the older kids. And mid-way through some “We have GOT to get sitters and all go there” kinda conversation, Kate runs up to us tear-drenched and screaming. I could barely understand her.

“It’s not like the one at school! It’s not like the one at school!” she shrieked, shaking and snotting and wailing loudly as I snugged her up in a towel.

A minute later Owen cruised up, smiling his sweet charmer’s smile. My friend turned to her son. “What happened to Kate, Owie?” Ready to accuse him of wrongdoing, as we often do with our own kids.

“Uh, she went down the slide,” he said, then took off to get in line for the swings.

The slide. Ah yes. Well that explains it.

That right there would be my genes.

Mama Bunny in the Hizouse

Should I be concerned that inanimate objects appear to be speaking to me?

I mean, you’d think I should be, but the thing is, everything they’re telling me is so damn encouraging—so just-what-I’m-wantin’-to-hear—how could I turn a deaf ear to it? Why, they’re all but tapping me on the shoulder bellowing, “YO! Bruno!”

So here’s the thing. We got this bunny book for Kate at a yard sale. And I know what you’re thinking. That I’ve got to stop imagining the universe is communicating with me through my yard sale loot.

But we’re reading this book the other day. And it’s wrapped in cellophane, clearly some library rip-off that some folks had the audacity to sell to me for 25 cents. And I had the poor taste to buy.

So this book, which I only feel half-bad about owning since I’m bound to mistakenly return it to the library one day anyway—it’s a real cute old-timey book. Great illustrations of bunnies all dressed up in Victorian-era clothes.

But I admit that when I first cracked it, despite the lovely pictures, I was hesitant to read it to Kate. Based on there being a lot of words. This tends to not be an issue with my own books, but with the read-aloud kids ones, I mean—honestly? I’m usually just trying to meet my two-books-before-bedtime quota in the fastest way possible.

Admit it. If you’ve got a kid, you’ve done this yourself. Maybe even skipped a sentence or page or two, before the twerp got wise enough to call you on it.

But this day, knowing Kate wasn’t going to nap anyway, it seemed like I’d get the most horizontal time and snuggles myself by reading a long book. And, as it turned out, some of the pages were text text text, but others had really big space-taking-up pictures.

So the book explains that there isn’t just one Easter Bunny. What single cotton-tailed beast could deliver the world’s Easter baskets in one night? There are, it turns out, five. And when one of them gets too long in the tooth (couldn’t resist that), they call a meeting of all the world’s bunnies and pick a replacement.

So this one country bunny, our protagonist, as a kid she used to say she’d be an Easter Bunny one day. And, being rag-tag country stock, folks mocked her.

Then, like many a hapless country lass—especially one of her well, breed—she took up with some fellow and “much to her surprise” had, get this, twenty-one baby bunnies.

Next page: Her dream of Easter Bunny careerdom is shot to shit. I mean, she has TWENTY-ONE babies to tend. Twenty might be doable. But twenty-one?!

And if the fact that she “stopped thinking about hopping over the world with lovely eggs for little boys and girls” while she changed what one can only imagine were GAZILLIONS of diapers—if burying her dream wasn’t heart-wrenching enough, then some male bunnies come onto the scene and say, “Leave Easter eggs to great big men bunnies like us.”

At this point, I’m clutching the book white-knuckled and wild-eyed. “DOWN WITH THE WHITE MALE OPPRESSOR BUNNIES!” I’m screaming, causing Kate to recoil from me, fearful and confused.

“Let’s here it for working Mama bunnies!” I bellow. “We CAN have it all, sisters!!!!”

So then, I’m pawing my way through the now tear-stained pages, heart racing, while Kate likely stares at me in abject terror. Though by this point I’ve frankly all but forgotten she’s in the room. That I’m ostensibly reading to her.

What happens, you ask? Does the Mama bunny rise up?

Well, blessedly, thankfully, she just waits a while until her bunnies mature some. Then she comes before the Grand Bunny Dude who picks the replacement Easter Bunnies. And where at first he doesn’t even consider her (misogynist), she manages to eventually get his attention and he comes to see that Mama has Got. It. Going. On.

And, yes. She gets the job.

Honestly, at this point I was quite wrung out. I mean, I was thrilled, relieved, and well, really a whole host of emotions. But what lingered with me longest, what I was thinking about as I closed Kate’s door and set Paigey down in her crib, was a calm and certain feeling of readiness.

I sat down at my desk and sent out a few emails, asking around about nannies. It seems this Mama bunny is finally ready to get back into the game.

Brown is the New Green

My brown thumb is on display right now. Out in the open for all to see.

You see, I’ve got these tomato plants. And, I mean, I think the Presidential Victory Garden is charming and all. And I do my best to feign interest when my fervid gardener friends ramble on with glassy-eyed glee about their purple beans and pygmy harlequin kale. Good for them for getting into it. (And good for me when they share their spoils.)

But me personally? I’m not swept up in the whole ‘grow your own’ movement.

But my tomato plants came to me special—raised from seeds from my friend Jack, whose wife packed me off with them after a visit their house. It seemed silly to pass up the offer. Coming up with a reason to not take the plants would take energy. And I’ve always maintained a healthy level of apathy with all things garden-related.

I want to be clear and say right now they aren’t dead yet. But damn they are thirsty!

I mean, I put them on the wall along our front steps—right out there in plain view—with the express intention of seeing them as I pass by several times a day, and prompting my mind to ignite the thought I SHOULD WATER THEM.

So far though, it’s not worked.

In fact, like kindly folks who feed waifish wild cats, our gaybors occasionally water them for me. Sweet men just can’t bear to watch the things die.

But knowing others have had to pick up my slack hasn’t even helped. In fact, I’ve come to learn (and accept) that I contain a finite amount of nurturing. Some people might have a bottomless-coffee-cup supply of caregiving. But mine, well, it eventually just runs dry.

I’m keeping two human children alive, people! So sorry that I can’t also tend the tomaties.

Like the front-stoop plants, I’ve positioned Kate and Paige conspicuously inside the house so when I wake up I’m bound to notice them. After padding around scratching and stretching for a while, and making myself a big mug of tea, I eventually look down at them, see the word MILK I’ve written across their foreheads in black Sharpie and think, “Wait a minute here… They might want something to drink too!”

Getting them milk makes me think they may also want food, and before you know it I’ve even thought to dress them and point to where the toys are.

So far this system’s worked for me.

But really, I’m prouder of those two girls than I ever would be about growing even four tomatoes. They dazzle me daily, in an amount equal to if not more than they exhaust me. If I’m ever in some family-packed setting where another parent asks me “which ones are mine” I’m only too happy to pull out my laser pointer to proudly identify them. I spend whole days marveling in disbelief that they’re mine.

But on the flight back from New York, and the other day at our library, people’ve seen Paigey scooting on her bottom—still not walking, and doing her asymmetric upright hopalong-like crawling thing—and have looked up at me and asked, “How old is she?”

And it crushes me.

I’ve found I ALWAYS WANT TO LIE. I’m not proud of that, but I’d almost prefer they think of her as an overgrown 7-month-old with timely developmental milestones, than an 18-month toddler who, when they learn her age, I’m certain will look at her with pity. Will think, “That poor cute curly-haired girl has something wrong with her.”

It may be egocentric or petty or neurotic (or “D, all of the above”) for me to assume these random strangers are spending any time thinking about or judging my kid. But I fear that they are, and that they do.

It doesn’t seem realistic for me to ask these people to come home for dinner with us so they can bask in the amazing loving dumpling radiancy that is Paigey Waigey Wiggle Pop. For even just a half hour. Just 15 minutes! Her bionic loveableness has nearly brought folks to tears in a five-minute grocery store line. If those people experienced a drop of her charm, they’d be binding their own kids’ legs to get ‘em to scoot just like her. It’d be the Parenting cover story!

If they just knew her they’d see that all that sweet loving juju she’s sending out is just short-circuiting her walking skills temporarily. She’ll be up and about soon enough. Then she’ll be wielding her pure love power on the move. And look out people, because IT WILL BE BIG.

I’ve no doubt there’s a remote mountaintop of hopped up Tibetans looking at a photo of Paige this very minute and Google-mapping their way to Rockridge to dub her the next child lama. She’s just that amazing.

Which is why it confuses and saddens me oh so very very much when someone looks at her, raises a mental eyebrow, and assumes something’s wrong.

Something most certainly is wrong with my tomato plants. I’ve made no attempts to hide that from peering neighbors and passersby. But see and think what you will, I’m 100% confident and here to tell you that my Miss Paige is perfect.

Putting the Braces Back On

I used to be the Patron Saint of Interns. It was, of course, a self-appointed role. But one I took quite seriously.

The thing is, at one point in my career, or rather, the making of my career, I held quite a number of internships. Positions in TV newsrooms, hippie liberal radio stations, and various magazines where I’d earn a meager stipend, or sometimes just an appreciative thump on the back.

The hope being that the inverse ratio of earnings to hard labor would have some karmic redemptive upside.

I’ve lost count now of how many of those posts I’ve held. But suffice it to say, years into real grown-up paying work, my friend Mike and I were catching up on the phone and he asked how my internship was going. Sadly, I fear he wasn’t kidding. But that did become an evergreen joke for us when, over the following years, I’d worked my way through positions of mounting managerial responsibility and in our long coast-to-coast calls he’d ask the same question.

Good times, those.

Alas, aside from dignity-robbing name tags, epic Xeroxing tasks, and occasional demeaning-to-my-education lunch runs (I won’t even get into the pervy remarks from crusty old newsmen)—aside from all that, the biggest challenge with my Intern Era life was my short supply of cash.

Well, actually, I don’t know how much it really bothered me then. I mean, I think I attached a certain nobleness (not to be confused with the richy-sounding term “nobility”) to bushwhacking my way through a poorly-paying, romantic, writerly career path. But looking back, I can’t imagine how I did it.

I mean, I always managed to eat (and drink), God knows. And much as I worked towards self-sustainability, this Daddy’s Girl has thankfully never lacked anything of true importance. That is, even when my father’s definition of importance and mine differed. For some reason, he was maniacal about never allowing a child of his to sleep on a futon, of all things. Guess it seemed all Gypsy-like and what’d-the-neighbors-say to him.

Anyway, back then apartment-establishing jaunts to Target required first off, that I borrow a car. And once there, accumulating crap was a practice in restraint. Necessities like mops and cleaners and such went head to head against fripperies like ceramic Italian-esque pasta bowls and bright striped shower curtains. Sometimes home decor, to the extent it could be humbly called that, won out over specialty toilet bowl bleaches.

Thankfully, I never contracted any illnesses from my less-than-sterile but kinda cute living conditions.

These days Target is still the soup kitchen to my soul. But I shop with heedless abandon. Bolstered by their don’t-need-the-receipt-just-your-credit-card return policy, I toss whatever shiny thing I see into the cart.

Clothing? Well, I prefer not to buy it there (for reasons of snobbery alone), but sometimes a little cotton short catches my eye. And who knows if it’s the Small or the Medium that’ll work best. Buy both. Return one later. Candles, brooms, weird flower-shaped sprinkler attachments for kids to run through on hot summer days. A hectare of Size 4 diapers. I never leave the place without mindlessly spending, well, a lot.

The thing is, somewhere between the Intern Era came, well, the hoped-for karmic career redemption patch. Widely known as the American Dream. Or more precisely, the Internet Boom. Right here in Northern California, USA. And instead of having to desperately take an ‘Intro to the Internets’ class at The Learning Annex, I’d somehow managed to retool my media career into an internet business-type kinda job before all the hoopla kicked in.

Looked up from my laptop one day to discover I’d become a cherished ladder-climbing leader at a company where 27-year-olds made Vice President, bought homes based on the momentary health of their unvested stock, and earned bonuses their hard-working parents no doubt found obscene. I traveled non-stop, managed teams in multiple cities, and spent my days telling people twice my age how to run their companies. All that, plus shrimp cocktail and top-shelf booze at Friday afternoon office Happy Hours.

Like many folks at that time, I felt pretty damn invincible.

Unsurprisingly, my spending habits changed. I could buy one of those loft condos with Corian counter tops if I wanted! Buy last-minute tickets home to RI. Go to swank dinners with friends, order beyond the dinner salad, and not dread someone’s inevitable suggestion to “split the bill evenly between us.”

But more than the stuff I could get, what struck me most—initially, at least—was the lack of worry that my new financial sitch afforded me. More than the thrill of ownership any of the crap I bought, knowing I had what I needed to comfortably take care of myself gave me a supreme sense of contentment. A deep, proud-of-myself-for-making-it-so self-sufficiency and security.

And I realized yesterday that my memory of those days, that feeling in particular, is starting to fade in my mind, alongside the Intern Era. With the Global Economic Recession lurking in the pit of everyone’s gut, and me intentionally unemployed and Living La Vida Housewife, it’s hard to remember spending freely on a credit card that someone else (someone I’m not married to, that is) pays.

Prudence seems to dictate a throttling back on spending. It’s not that a crap run to Target will have us living on the street—blessedly. It’s just that, well, used to be we had two jobs and no kids. Now we’ve got one for the four of us. I’m no math expert, but that nets out to less all around.

So I get it right? I’m able to intellectually understand all this. It’s just I’m not certain how to get there. Regroup with that little voice in my head that used to say, “You can’t afford this.”

I mean, it seems obvious, right? Just spend less. But I’m deadline driven, motivated by fear, and perform best under pressure. I know that I should ratchet back, but I’m not feeling a sting to do so.

And Mark, poor dear. His concerns in this arena should be all I need to react. But I’m not getting spurned on. I’m not kicking into thrift mode with any of the novel glee or romantic challenge of it all.

And I can’t help but think that the monumental passage of the Intern Era’s to blame.

It’s like people who wore braces as teenagers, or however old you are when you do that. Elastic bands with colors or cutesie names, nightmares about corn on the cob, fears that getting inextricably locked with a co-braces-wearer during a make-out sesh might not just be urban legend.

I, thankfully, never had them. But I have to believe that once you get your braces taken off, you put all that gnarly, miserable, clingy-food-bits trauma behind you. Close that door and MOVE ON. You just get out there and enjoy your new straight teeth life, and revel in the knowledge that you’ll never be able to fry an ant with the glare off your teeth again.

That is, until as an adult you discover that your teeth have somehow moved. Shifted when you weren’t paying them any attention. And now you need to get braces AGAIN.

Which, is kinda where I feel like I am today. Perfectly straight teeth, thankyouverymuch. But having, despite myself, to go back to that uncomfortable place of restrained spending, at Tar-jay and beyond.

Well, that, or get a job. A job, or maybe a high-class internship.

Solid Ground

“What about earthquakes?”

It’s the refrain I often hear when I tell East Coasters and Midwesterners I live in San Francisco. And though I always want to ask them if there are buses where they live, and if they ever cross streets, sometimes I actually bite my tongue.

The fact is, well, aside from a summer a couple years back when we had a hearty smattering of earthquakes, all with epicenters just miles from our house—aside from that unsettling patch, I really don’t worry about quakes. Or at least, that’s what I thought.

But apparently it’s taken me being here on the East Coast to plumb the depths of my subconscious fears. Because before nodding off to sleep, at both my Dad’s house and my sister’s schmancy Cape Cod digs, I remember having the smallest mental twinge, realizing that I had nothing to worry about.

I’m not sure whether I was unthinkingly planning an emergency exit strategy—how I’d sweep through one room to grab one kid, then dispatch Mark to grab the other—or if I was unwittingly wondering whether the glass on the art hanging over the bed would shatter into a million razor-like shards when it fell on us, or maybe I was wondering how long it’d take to walk to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts, a perfect alternate Red Cross Center where we could ride out the mayhem until the utilities were back up and running.

I mean, I’m not AWARE that I was thinking any of those things, but in both houses, just moments before nodding off, I remember a little uptick in my wakefulness, then a settling back down with the reassuring thought that those walls weren’t going anywhere. I was on solid ground.

Our two-week vacation is nearly complete, and it wasn’t until today that I took the girls for a quiet morning stroll along the harbor’s boardwalk. Kate, a stroller addict who I’ll no doubt be pushing to prom in a broke-down MacLaren, skipped along the whole way, pointing to fishing boats, peering terrifyingly close off the edge of the pier, and marveling at the white face of a floating dead fish.

Our stroll ended at a lovely open park, which we wandered though to arrive at The Beehive Cafe, Bristol’s newest and most charming caffeine hole.

Why, I wondered, had I waited until today to do this? Sunshine or not, it would have been the ideal start to every day we’ve been here.

But it’s a late-arriving realization (along with my unsuspected earthquake fears), leaving me with no recourse other than to plan longer visits in upcoming summers. Maybe rent a house. And when she’s old enough, enroll Kate in Bristol Yacht Club sailing lessons, in the hopes that my genes have failed to pass along my reckless nautical habits, and that years from now crushes on Junior Instructors will still carry one through a full season feeling giddy, while remaining utterly sexually innocent.

I mean, I lay out these summer plans in my mind, then flip-flop to think I could convince Mark to just move here. You know, put up with the winter too.

See? Told you you could set your watch to this feeling emerging from me about now. Emerging, that is, like some alien from Sigourney Weaver’s midsection. Impossible, as it were, to repress.

Tuesday or so I called John and made a dinner date with him and Jim. We dined at a sweet small place when I was in town last, and had a memorable, hilarious, and slightly boozey dinner. An evening where I felt I started to get to know (and love) Jim—a somewhat intimidating task when you consider how well and long I’ve known (and loved) his partner, John.

So, that dinner had been so lovely, I was fearful we had little hope of replicating it. But, I’m an optimist.

Plus, I had a babysitter.  So really, how bad could it be?

When I climbed into the shower that evening, having slung the kids in bed promptly so Mama could go out (yay for grannies!), I realized my travel-sized worth-its-weight-in-platinum shampoo was out. A wet walk through the bathroom revealed nyet in the shampoo category, and Joan was across the big house—my sleeping babies freshly a-doze between us.

I’ve never done Outward Bound, but back in the shower I figured I could do something crafty, and reached for the Cetaphil face wash. I mean, we used it on the girls’ hair when they were wee, right?

Let’s just say that that night at dinner I looked like a greasy droopy-haired mope, AWOL from the asylum. Early in the evening, I confessed to John and Jim about my hygiene challenge, apologizing that when my hair dried it’d likely be less than adorable. But an hour or so later, it became clear that it wouldn’t even get so far as to appear “dry.”

When the madras-pants-clad owner hustled the check to our table at night’s end—it being clearly later than the employees were keen on still being there—I reached for it. “Oh!” he trilled, in a voice less gay than the term ‘trill’ might imply. And looking over at John and Jim, “I wish a beautiful woman would buy dinner for me!”

Jim glanced at my limp asylum dreads, then up at the restaurant owner and said, “Me too.”

Well one thing I can look forward to back in Cali (the potential for trembling earth aside), is my own ugly green shower, overflowing with embarrassingly costly shampoo. Clean hair, here I come!

The Give and the Get

One of the things Kate gave me for Mother’s Day this year was a large pack of multicolored plastic beads and some stringing thread. Beads exactly like the ones she’d used in a project at school a few weeks earlier, but clearly hadn’t gotten her fill of.

It was one of those gifts like lingerie from a boyfriend. Not intended for the recipient at all.

Alas, at Kate’s age, I’m willing to forgive the misdirected sentiment. As long as I don’t get doll house furniture for Christmas.

This year for my birthday (which regretfully fell on Mother’s Day), I also received the BEST PRESENT EVER. My from-womb-to-tomb friend Amelia sent it. Just to make me love her even more.

Some expectation setting. This gift ain’t for everyone. But it’s silly it’s so perfect for me. Which is what makes it such a home run, right?

Okay, so this perfect pressie was a pair of flip flops that have Velcro over the strap part. And, like the Pappagallo bag that was the fashion peak experience of my tweendom, there are all different colored and patterned straps you can buy to stick on them. For me, Amelia generously got me tan stripey Burberry-esque ones, some black ones with white polka dots, a red and orange kinda floral pattern, and, as an obvious nod to my early days of over-achieving preppydom, (which Amelia won’t let me forget, and why should she), some with pink lobsters.

I know, I know. Wrenching Velcro straps off your flip flops to change out the look is absurdly hokey. But as a stay at home mother, I’m the Imelda Marcos of flip flops. I mean, in a strange reverse of dorm living, the only time I’m not wearing flip flops is when I’m showering. Oh, well and sleeping of course too. At least, as far as you know.

A couple months ago I saw UGG flip flops at Nordstrom. They had furry soles, and a plain rubbery strap. My brain was churning madly to process them and determine whether it was brilliance or blasphemy. And really, it’s only in the Bay Area that it could ever be warm enough for flip flops and concurrently chilly enough for faux fur. But I seem to remember there being something dumb or ugly looking about the straps. I mean, aside from how blisteringly absurd and cavewoman-like the overall look of the shoes were.

Anyway, I didn’t try them on. If I had, I might be wearing them right now, and lamenting that they don’t make a high-heeled version for the party I’m going to tonight.

At any rate, my fabulous Amelia-given mood flip flops delighted me from the moment I spotted the package on my front porch. The only downfall of their coming into my life being that, when I opened them, my impassioned exclamation “These are the best. Present. Ever.” appeared to hurt Mark’s feelings.

Mark has, it’s true, given me some divine gifts. One Christmas at my dad’s, I tried on a jacket from Mark I’d long coveted and spun around the living room, happily modeling it over my PJs. What I failed to do before slipping it off, was put my hands in the pockets. Where a blue Tiffany box was waiting, housing a stunning ring. (We were married at the time, in case this comes off as some weird in-the-presence-of-my-father engagement scenario.)

I was thrilled with my gift, but it was my father who shook his head for days marveling over Mark’s clever romanticism. It’d seemed impossible for Dad to like my hubbie more that he already had, but that move sent Mark into the stratosphere of adored sons-in-law.

Ah well. I only wish poor Mark was able to experience a level of gift recipiency (how’s that for a word?) akin to mine. I mean, you never think you’re a bad driver, right? But God knows they’re all over the roads (so some of you people must be). And, well, you never think you’re bad at buying presents, but recently I feel like, despite myself, I’m being led to that conclusion.

For Mark’s birthday in November, I got him a bunch of different things, big and small. Some from me, some from the girls. One thing I’d seen in the back of a magazine—I know, I know, this should have been my cue to retreat—was a, God this is so embarrassing to even say, well, a t-shirt that said Dunder Mifflin. You know, the name of the paper company they work for in the show The Office. Mark loves that show. Mark often wears t-shirts on the weekends. I thought, this is funny! This is good! He will like this!

But then, a few months passed by, and one night I realized he’d never worn it. And it hit me. “That shirt,” I said to him, amazed it’d taken so long for me to figure it out. “It’s utterly dorky, right? I mean, you’re pretty much embarrassed to ever wear it. I’m right, aren’t I? Am I right?”

His two second pause and slow, “Well, no….” said it all.

I was howling with laughter. Literally slapping my thighs, amused and amazed that I’d somehow totally missed its immense dorkosity.(Though, a few weeks ago, a good six months after his birthday, when he’d splattered something on the shirt he was wearing and we were safely home for the night, Mark did, charitably, toss it on.)

What else? For our first Valentine’s Day, less than two months into our love thing, Mark got me a hope-it’s-not-too-much-this-early-on watch. (I loved it. It wasn’t at all too much.) Me? I bought him a silver cigar cutter. Is he a cigar smoker? Why, no! What then compelled me to purchase this gift? I’ve got no idea. He’s literally used it ONCE.

Then there’s the tragic Wine Spectator subscription that keeps coming and coming. Piling up on our coffee table. Sitting around in its large-formatted glory. Taunting me that Mark (or I) never manage to read more than the cover lines. (And “Great Reds Under $20″ seems like the kind of thing you’d want to know about too, right?)

I can rattle off other bombs of gifts I’ve given Mark. I’ve also struck out grandiosely on gifts for my dad. Tartan vests, genealogy tracking software, phone headsets for home use. The list goes on.

Along the way I must have done some good work, but I’ve watched enough Law & Order and CSI to know that you need to stand back and look at the evidence unemotionally. Let it speak for itself. And these things, well, they clearly indicate I don’t have much of a gift for, well, giving gifts.

But I’m a die-hard optimist. And egomaniac. I refuse to feel that all hope’s lost.

Maybe I’m better at buying gifts for females? Maybe I subconsciously give some good gifts and some bad ones, to underscore the goodness of the keepers?

And maybe with some luck I can alter fate. There may be some adult ed class out there where I can sharpen my gift-giving skills. I mean, if grown men and women can learn to flirt in classroom settings, there must be hope for me.

If not, for our wedding anniversary this summer, I can always enlist Kate to help me shop for Mark. I think a pink Hello Kitty change purse may just turn the tide on my poor track record. Besides, it’d look real nice with his gray Dunder Mifflin shirt.

Chickens and Other New Friends

What can I say? I’m my father’s daughter.

Which is to say that I love people. To the extent that any time I encounter someone new, I get all silly excited and need to cinch in my personality girdle so as not to freak them out and scare them away with my unleashed extroversion and super power of non-stop talk.

I get all “Can I pet the rabbits, George? Of Mice and Men Lenny-like. Fearful that my over enthusiastic adoration could result in the tragic unintended death of the very objects of my delight.

So, my Dad. My wedding presented him with a thrilling experience to revel in a sea of humans. Many new people to him—friends of Mark’s and mine who he’d heard about over the years, and who represented a fine pool of pre-approved potential cohorts.

And it was so easy. They were all conveniently making their way to his small town, a special delivery straight into his social lair.

Fresh blood!

The day before our wedding, our most excellent friend Gary—whom I like to talk about here in hopes that as my most devoted reader and fervid lurker I might incite or somehow bewitch him to post a comment—was meeting us at my Dad’s house to help Mark with the rehearsal dinner booze run. (Gary being, quite literally, an expert in the alcohol arts.)

Mark and I got hung up in the Mayberry-like town office where we had to get our marriage license, running past the time when we’d asked Gary to arrive at Dad’s. Under normal circumstances this would be no big thing. It wasn’t like Gary’d not be understanding about our lateness, or frankly had much else to do that lazy afternoon on his visit to Bristol, Rhode Island. He was, quite gallantly, at our service.

But as Mark and I made our way through the painfully slow air-conditioning-free paper-pushing, there was a certain low grade agitation we felt to hurry the process along. Gary was one of the first guests in town and was arriving alone and unwittingly at my father’s door. The poor guy had no idea how he was presenting himself directly into the eye of the storm. It was like my father was standing there rubbing his hands together, desperate to ensnare the first object of his charm, intellectual banter, and letter-writing. (Dad is, perhaps single-handedly, working to keep the practice of letter writing alive. He developed no less than three new correspondents at our wedding who I believe he still communicates with via the USPS to this day. Some day I’ll tell you about his writing a letter to me nearly every day I was at college. Oh, and his envelope art.)

Anyway, who was I? I mean, where are you?

Right then. My Dad. And Gary. Once Mark and I had our marriage license in our literally sweaty hands, we hopped into our car like Bo and Luke Duke, slapping the rooftop through the open windows and hooting that we needed to get to the house and pull my dad off Gary, stat.

On the short drive through town, around about the sea wall coming up to the house, we see my father’s car approaching and then, like a slow dream sequence, passing by us, with Dad driving and Gary in the passenger seat—looking out and mutely beseeching us with wide eyes.

“My God, he’s got him!” I squealed to Mark, slapping a hand down on the dashboard. “Damn it, where the hell is he taking him? Do you think we should put out an Amber Alert?”

Blessedly, moments after passing us, we saw Dad’s car slow down and turn around, heading back to the house. And in the driveway learned that, after all the waiting around in the living room, my father offered to give Gary a tour of the jewel of our small peninsula-shaped town, its beautiful harbor, or ‘HAAA-buh’ as Gary put it, not unkindly (or inaccurately) emulating Dad’s local accent.

Anyway, the fact is, Dad’s one hell of a charming and interesting guy, and was adored by young and old alike that weekend. But it’s fun to make fun of his rabid new friend fetishism, mostly because I think if I talk about him a lot, it’ll detract people’s attention from mine.

In the past several months we’ve gotten a new batch of neighbors around here. And I’m all a’tremble with the excitement of it all.

For an excessively social stay-at-home mother, fresh blood in the neighborhood is tantamount to having your best friend move into your prison block ward. These are the few people who, aside from the ones that I gave birth to and whose noses and asses I tend to wiping, I get to see and interact with every day. To most people, a friendly nod from the mail man is a fleeting blip with no notable social merit. But to me, a raging people person who’s often confined to my domestic workplace like a wild cur tethered by a chain to a spike, even the smallest outlets for social stimulation are greedily devoured, wholeheartedly savored.

One set of new neighbs are an adorable unmarried couple who happen to be the former tenants and chums of my Mama Posse friend Mary. And get this, she’s a children’s clothing designer! How lucky is that? It’s like having a member of Schlitz family royalty move in next door to your alcoholic ass. She’s even already given the girls a bag packed with beautiful brand new duds—free!

On the other side of us, a deeeelightful sweet funny couple, two guys, relocated from Palm Springs. It was all I could do to not drool on their fabulous mid-Century furniture (that aqua couch!) the day they moved in. Never mind harboring secret fantasies of us all shoe shopping, or doing home avocado and oatmeal facials while watching old timey movies—me snugged on the couch between them, them not knowing how they ever got on before knowing me.

And then across the street, the object of my latest most ardent friendship crush, is a hilarious quirky columnist for the local alt weekly, a fried-chicken crazed foodie, musician, and, get this, nanny! I mean, hell-o-ooo. Pinch me!

Each time I see one of these people on the sidewalk, it takes every morsel of my self-restraint to not wrap my arm around their heads in that about-to-give-a-noogie stance, and just squeeze them with love and unbridled joy. (Note earlier excessive-rabbit-petting Lenny-like behavior.)

Tonight we went to the kids clothes couple’s house to meet their new chickens. Well, chicks really at this point. Turns out they’re requisitioning a part of their large front yard to, yes, chicken farming.

And I must confess that, beyond Kate’s immediate through-the-roof delight to hear her very own petting zoo was moving in two doors down, it took me a bit longer to come around to this idea. Chickens? I mean, I’m not sure where chickens are supposed to live, but isn’t it in some large unsanitary warehouse-like facilities where they’re tightly packed and pooping on each other before they make their way to Styrofoam and plastic grocery store packaging? Or, barring that, out grazing on some wide open farm in Sonoma, tended to by kind hippie folk? I wasn’t sure how to meld our urban-suburban Rockridge ‘hood with the concept of live poultry.

But I can follow a social cue like a Lab on a pheasant. When these neighbors would remark about other people’s reactions to their chicken-adopting news, they’d say things like, “She was all, chickens?! Aren’t they loud?” or “Wait, won’t chickens SMELL?” And I was all laughing alongside them and scoffing at the petty ignorance of those other neighbors, when really I was thinking, “Well, uh, aren’t they? Don’t they?”

But, you know, wanting to be one of the cool people, before you knew it I was leading the scoffing sessions with other newcomers. “Can you believe she thought that chickens would be crowing in the morning like roosters? How naive!”

Tonight as we were huddled inside Chicken Daddy’s small bathroom, where the chicks are in a crate with a heat light til they’re robust enough for coop livin’, Kate and some of the other neighbor kids got turns holding the little puff balls. And another Mom and I remarked on the cuteness of the two with racing stripes down their backs, which we learned were called Americanas, which in my mind for some reason sounded like some kinda Cuban cigar. But what do I know.

Chicken Daddy started talking about how the gender of the chicks is determined by someone called a, get this, chicken sexer. (Or should that be “Chicken Sexer” with caps?) But how weird-slash-cool is that? The way a chick’s gender is determined is, he alleged, a well-guarded secret and something that’s actually impossible to assess by just looking at the wee thing’s privates. And so, these people called—I just have to say it again—Chicken Sexers, do some sort of black magic juju laying of the hands or something on these chicks and proclaim with astonishing accuracy whether you’ve got yourself an egg-layer or a crowing cock.

But I was running late for Baxter’s yoga class, much as I wanted to stay and learn more, when Chicken Daddy started to say something about some big renowned Chinese Chicken Sexer, that I really wished I could have stuck around to hear. Like this Chinese dude is the Chicken Sexer Grand Master or guru or something, who holds the secret and is never wrong. Must hear more about this person, and print out a poster of him for my closet door.

Anyway, so it looks like at some point down the road we’ll be getting some fresh fresh eggs from down the road. And Kate will start spending time communing with the local chickens instead of begging to watch Blues Clues, or taking up drugs. And frankly what a breath of fresh—if not slightly chicken-shit fetid—air that’ll be.

Plus, it’ll give me an excuse to get out there and bask in the glow of all our divine new neighbor folk, who I just can’t wait to get my hands on.

Johnny Can’t Read Music

The girls and I got to spend an afternoon with my sister Judy and her adoptive Indian parents this week. And by the end of our visit I was convinced that everyone who doesn’t already have a set of these—Indian parents, that is—should get one. Judy’s no fool.

We ate an incredibly delicious home-made Indian lunch, and, not unlike our Italian kinfolk, the more we ate had a direct correlation to how delighted our hosts were. There was a lot of fretting over and playing with the children, and we capped off the afternoon with a cup of chai tea that was so warm and mellow and sweet it nearly caused me to curl up in Amma’s lap like a drunk cat sleeping in the sun. Finally we took a tour of the fabulous Eichler house’s equally fabulous yard, snapped a few photos of everyone with the girls on their laps, and called it a day.

What I was taken by in meeting these lovely folks was their warmth and welcome, and seeing how much a daughter my sister had become to them. But later on the phone, Judy also told me about Appa’s impressive background in academia, and Amma’s—and her parents’—staggering brilliance as musicians. Something for which her family is renowned in India.

Presenting, of course, the perfect opportunity for me to remark to my sister with my highest quality sarcasm, “Oh I get it! That’s why you two are so tight! It’s the whole music thing.”

One of my family’s favorite pastimes, aside from rhythmic throat clearing, unsnarling our hair in the morning, and doing laundry, is making fun of our profound musical ineptitude. No doubt I’ve mentioned that somewhere in this here blog before.

If we are not in fact all tone deaf, we’ve spent the better part of our lives believing ourselves to be. Oddly, from as far back as I can remember, my father has boasted about this as if he’s reporting my oldest sister was elected to the Senate. At any rate, it seems to have become a self-fulfilling familial prophesy.

Which, as you might imagine, has impacted our singing. And our staggering un-Von Trapp-ness can’t help but make me think of a meeting the four of us had with a priest the day after our mother died. We were planning the funeral program. And the priest, Father McSweeney (God bless him), a delightful world class Irish nut job, was enthusiastically, gleefully, talking us through some options of song choices.

He was waddling about the room at a frenetic pace, flipping through song books and clucking in his thick brogue, “Oooh, that’s a good one! A good one, indeed!” Despite our heavy sadness—or maybe because of it—he was determined (I resisted the urge to say “hell-bent”) to whip us into a little sing-along. So he suggested some old standard hymn that was beaten into our childhood brains and started in, beckoning to us vigorously with his arms to join in. We got through just a few verses before our collectively cracking voices had us cracking up laughing, and had old McSweeney bellowing cheerfully ceilingward, “He loves us all, no matter! He loves all our different sounds of praise.”

I guess it’s the closest you can get to having a priest tell you your singing sucks.

In my father’s stint years ago as president of his local Rotary Club, he was required at the start of each meeting to lead the group in singing “On the Road to Mandalay,” a tradition I find both charming and absurd. Anyway, Dad’s voice is so bad—and actually quite booming—that he decided quite early on that he’d lip sync the words for the sake of the group. Something that must’ve been obvious, but that no one called him on. (One of the rare times I can imagine my father determining that not talking was the best course of action. Yes, I’m my father’s daughter.)

In terms of actual instrumental training, as kids my sisters had a limited stint of uninspired piano-lesson taking. But by the time I arrived ten years later, my parents couldn’t summon the energy for me to go through those likely fruitless motions.

I’ve joked to Mark that my instrumental prowess is limited to playing the three-note “Hot Cross Buns” on the recorder. But truth be told, I’ve forgotten how to play even that.

It’s all my very long way of saying that I know I don’t get the music thing. And frankly, along with the other socially-alienating fact that I’ve never seen Star Wars, I’m pretty comfortable with it.

But then a couple weeks ago I bought a toy for the girls when I was at Target. The sad fact is, I rarely seem to think to but them toys. So I was pleased to have remembered that I have kids and kids like to play. And in that happy frame of mind I removed a little red plastic xylophone—you know the typical kiddie style-one with the different colored keys—from the box. It’s got the drumstick thingy attached to it by a string, I guess so you don’t lose it, or so your kid doesn’t swallow it and disembowel themselves from the inside.

And as I’m admiring this new plaything, which was certain to bring them hours of creative fun, this white paper fell out of the box.

I was dismayed. Yet a second look at the packaging confirmed that the toy is for children ages 18 months and up.

Now, is it just me, or am I not correct in assuming that in a little more than three months time, it’s unlikely that Paige will be able to utilize this music sheet? I mean, aside from the fact that she’s got the Bad Music Bruno Gene Mutation (albeit tempered by Mark’s musical skillz). Still!

Now, I’m no expert, but I couldn’t help but wonder if some kinda color-coded sheet music, or even one that identifies the letter notes that’re printed on the keys, might be more, uh, user-friendly?

Who knows. Maybe I’m totally wrong here, and come this summer, I’ll be walking past Paige’s room and will hear her pounding out a mean “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” on the xylophone. I’ll peer in to see her crouched down to follow along on the paper, perhaps tapping her foot to keep time.

I can only hope for as much.