Check Me Out

So, not be all self-horn-blowy or anything, but I thought I’d mention I was recently featured in a Ladies’ Home Journal article about mom bloggers.

And since I may never have a crack at an Oscar speech, I’d just like to unfold a little square of paper, smooth down my Bob Mackie gown and say: “I’m truly honored to be part of a group of such rad, talented, and fabulous women. Who all look ten years younger than they are. And who, I’m sure, never yell at their children. Y’all rock.”

Anyway, check it out if you’re looking for some good new reads. There’s a Finnish Mama who props up her napping baby in hilarious little scenes and photographs them, a foodie whose blog is excellently called My Kids Eat Squid, a design diva who hasn’t let reproduction cramp her style, and an astrophysicist who, amongst other things, writes about her ongoing duel with inflammatory breast cancer (a brutal kind I’d never heard of that forms without a lump).

Oh and of course Dooce is in there too. Right after me. (Heh.)

And if you’re too loyal to even consider reading another blog, you can go straight to my part. I’m #6 of 12.

Makes me feel like a calendar girl.

WMNRSMTR

Years ago, driving across the Bay Bridge, I saw a car with the license plate WMNRSMTR.

As you may know (from my excessive blathering about it), I’m from Rhode Island. A place where vanity license plates—and those with low numbers—are regarded as the pinnacle of social worth.

Not to show off or anything, but my first car, a major jalopy, had the most-excellent plate, KB 2. It was because I was dating the son of a Department of Transportation employee. That car’s been off the road for twenty years now, but my Dad (FB 14) is still proud of that license plate.

Aaaanyway, I was driving behind WMNRSMTR. It was clear that there was a message in there, but not so clear what it was. And I’m usually great with word things. It’s those pastel dotty posters you’re supposed to stare at until you see the wolf baying at the moon that I have trouble with. I almost never succeed at having the image emerge, and end up just lying to whomever I’m shopping with at Spencer’s that I saw it.

But I digress.

So here’s me, alone in my car, trying to crack the code:

“Wim… Nurse.. Mutter…”

“Wih Minners Matter?”

Then more determined:

“Wim NERsum Terr!”

“Wimin URS Tur!”

And finally:

“Wim NER Smerrterr?”

[Click!]

“WOMEN ARE SMARTER!”

Yeah, yeah, I get the irony.

And speaking of women, but really just a total tangent, I realized the other day that my gynecologist’s office is on BUSH Street. No joke! How good is that?

So a couple months ago I went on a day-long yoga retreat in Marin. I’ve done this before but always with my friend and faithful neighb, Jennifer. This time I was flying solo. So at the lunch break I was sitting somewhat dorkishly at the big communal table, having one of my twice-a-decade moments of shyness. Just hoping one of the other yoginis might put their play-with-the-outcast-on-the-playground skills to work.

A trio of older women, in their 60s or so, were sitting to my right. And one of them got to talking in a loud and animated enough way that I felt I could scoop hippie vegan soup into my mouth and look at her. You know, pretend that she was talking to me too.

She’d lived in a chicken coop in Georgia, she said. Yes, a chicken coop. Starting when she was 20 until about—long pause, looking up sideways to think—until she was 26. “It had a packed clay floor,” she pointed out. As if we’d all maybe been picturing parquet. They cooked on a grill and had an outdoor water drum that was painted black that they used as a shower.

I was instantly jealous.

When I was 20 I was living in Ohio. Sure that’s rustic and all, but I mean, I had indoor plumbing.

She’d moved to Georgia from Minnesota with her “pack,” as she called them. A group of about eight who I couldn’t help but imagine as a bra-disparaging partner-swapping commune-like klatch.

Again, more envy. Or maybe just deep deep fascination.

And they were potters, of course. That’s to say, throwers of pots. (By this point in the story I think I’d pulled my chair nearly an inch from her, abandoning my soup, enraptured.) They—her “pack”–had waited for their potter’s wheels to arrive in the mail first, then they hit the road for Georgia.

I couldn’t help but wonder how many pottery wheels they had, and why they didn’t just have them shipped straight to Georgia. But I didn’t want to ask too many questions. After all, I was kind of auditing the story as it was.

After more good stuff about one klatch member who was a professor getting fired, and some details on the rigors of heat-free winter-living, she mentioned  she now owns a gallery in Berkeley. The woman at her left has a gallery there too. They said the names of the places, which I of course instantly forgot, but in my mind I envisioned visiting there a lot. Buying stuff. Becoming an apprentice. Keeping a pet cat there.

Even though I kinda hate pottery.

Then this other woman pulls up a chair with her bowl of soup. And for a moment my verging-on-creepy fixation with the gray-haired pot-throwers was broken.

The new woman started chatting with the instructor about how she’s out of town so often for work. So, I summon some social courage and ask her what she does.

And DO YOU KNOW WHAT SHE SAID? She said she is a bee broker.

A BEE broker!!

I didn’t know what that was but I instantly wanted to be one too. BEES! Of course!

So, I say, “So, uh, what is a bee broker?”

And do you know what she said? She said that she has some big rig that’s filled with hives that she brings down to Modesto to the almond farms. She then sets her bees free in the fields. It’s like the farmers rent them! Then at night when it gets all chilly the bees fly back into the truck to go to sleep with in the hive, or have sex with the queen, or do whatever it is they do in there. Then Ms. Bee Broker heads off to another farm.

I almost hugged her.

Now I was going to have to split my weekends between Modesto and the Berkeley pottery studios.

All this talk was more energizing than all the hold-one-nostril breathing and triangle-posing the first half of the retreat had served up. I loved every one of these women. If these gals by were so amazing, what were the ones crouched over their vegan soup over there like? I wanted to start going from woman to woman, looking intently into each of their faces and interviewing them all documentary-style.

I mean, I was feeling like the odds that the next person I’d talk to would be a Bed, Bath & Beyond employee was pretty low. But the thing is, if she had been, I think I would have suddenly slipped into a reverential trance, and praised all that was holy about mattress pads. I was ready to find the love in everyone.

Without drugs!

After lunch and before my yoga, we all hiked to the beach. This hike is pretty crazy gorgeous. If you’re ever in California, call me and I’ll take you to this place. It’s along a super lush valley where these Buddhists have a homestead. You pass all their perfect vegetable and flower gardens, then a silly idyllic horse pasture, and then the path narrows and it’s all just and trees and flowers and birds and butterflies and nature and shit.

What I mean is, it sure is purdy there.

Then when you arrive at the beach, you get that positive ion hit. Whatever that high is that you get from the ocean water. Someone told me about this once and I still believe that there’s something to it, even if it’s really not true.

But clearly in the mode that I was in I needed no more highs of any sort.

Beachside I wandered up to a group of co-yoga-retreaters and sat on a driftwood log with them. (See how socially brave I was getting?) We were looking out at the water, and I was feeling certain one of them was about to tell me something that would make me weep and hug her ankles and think that the world was a beautiful beautiful place. You know. I was just waiting for that.

Even better, I got some excellent book recommendations. These gals were older, but let’s just say we were reading at the same level. We all clucked with praise for that great hedgehog novel. And then they bantered about the name of a few other amazing reads. Eventually I’d borrowed a pencil from one of them and an ATM receipt from another and wrote the all the titles all down. We even talked about our favorite children’s lit because—get this—one of them had been a children’s librarian for, like, 30 years or something. Joy!

If I were to spelunk a few layers down on my desk today, I may even find that paper today and read those books.

Just a day or two after it opened, I went to see the Sex and the City movie with a Mama Posse friend. I never read movie reviews. Having even the smallest inkling of what to expect in a movie destroys it for me. I spend the whole time waiting for whichever scene it is that’s funny or dumb, and I can’t even enjoy my wine. (Yes, smuggling red wine and plastic cups into the movies has become par for the course for me and the Mamas.)

But in the days leading out to my Moms Night Out, Mark, bless his heart, made sure I knew how utterly decimated this movie had gotten by reviewers. It’s badness delighted him.

But whatEVER. We still went. And all of Oakland was out in their fancy. I mean, black girls in stilettos and what looked like prom dresses. I mean, it’s Oakland. If there was any Prada, I didn’t see it.

Me, I was in flip flops.

And do you know what? I LIKED the movie. Sure it was vapid and silly and predictable, and there were probably some culturally-offensive jokes, but it was entertaining. Yes, I actually chuckled—full-out laughed a bit too—and found it perfectly un-intellectually engaging.

On the way out, I think I even complimented a woman on her purple clutch, awash with feel-good audience-mate comraderie.

I’m not exactly sure what all those reviews said—because if I’m disinclined to read reviews before seeing a movie I’m even disinclineder to read them after. Maybe those writers were preparing to see Amistad, and were taken aback when the movie was more about Manolo Blahnik shoes, low-cal cocktails, and menopause. You know, I think they were missing the point.

While I’m at it, do you know what movie I also saw last week? The latest Twilight movie. Oh yes I did.

And I LIKED THAT TOO.

Sure, I’d had—-okay—a few Mai Tais beforehand. But even without cheap rum coursing through my veins I think I’d be squealing over the dreamy barely-legal cast and walloping my poor friend’s arm during the shirtless scenes. It was entertaining. I enjoyed myself.

And where’s the shame in that?

I’m hardly going to defend the artistic merit of either movie. But I will say, that in a theater full of women who likely spent their days working in courtrooms, or classrooms, or at The Sunglass Hut—or hell, wrangling with clay or bees or young children—for us gals it felt good to put our hair down and our feet up and let the low-browness of it all wash over us. I mean, isn’t that why men watch wrestling?

From what I can tell, despite what movies we may make a big show of going to, that license plate was right. Women are smarter.

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.

Not Quite Ready to Be Set Free

Yesterday was Kate’s first visit to a dentist. And as we sat in the cheesy Hawaiian-themed waiting room, another mother came in with two older kids. Her daughter immediately flounced to the floor to engage with Paigey. And the mom pulled up a tiny surfboard shaped chair, sat, and smiled down at them.

After a few minutes she looked up at me and said, “Please pardon the loud rumblings from my uterus.” A comment which took me a beat to grock, but then totally slayed me.

Me: “Oh God, I hear you. She’s my baby and she has the same effect on me.”

Her: “Here I am, I’m 43, and I already have three kids. When’m I going to get over this?”

Which brings me to the rhetorical question, just how supremely do women rock?

I love that within three minutes of being in each others’ orbits this total stranger and I are revealing our deep down irrational-but-real want-another-baby cravings. It’s the kind of intimacy that some men who were college roommates and have been playing tennis together every Saturday since the first Bush administration still haven’t achieved.

And her remark is timed perfectly to my just-the-other-night musings. Paige refused to nurse, which had me convinced she was harboring a devastating rife-with-hearing-loss ear infection. (I’ve never understood when mother’s say their kids just stopped wanting to nurse one day, since that’s so not been how my boob-junkie kids roll.)

Paigey was back to her old milk-chugging self a few hours later, but the experience got me thinking as I was a-sway on the ugly Dutalier glider. If I were to suddenly stop breastfeeding, it seems like I’d need to put my body to another practical use. Truly. In much of the past four-and-a-half years I’ve either been gestating or breastfeeding, and odd as it is even for me to realize, it’s set me in a kind of groove I’m not sure how to get out of.

Doing neither of those things seems so, uh, kinda lazy. Or maybe it’s not that so much as just not productive enough.

Years ago when Mark (then I) started seriously obsessing over cooking, we read Michael Ruhlman’s excellent The Making of a Chef–a great first person account of a foodie journalist being thrown into the mix at the hardcore Culinary Institute of America. Aside from food chemistry and knife skills, clean-as-you-go, and never serve anything that you know ain’t right, one of the critical things you learn at cooking school is how to be crazy efficient. If the walk-in’s at the end of the kitchen, you think of all the things you’ll need from there so you can make just one trip. And on the way back to your station you grab the Chinoise or mixing bowls or grater that you’ll need from the drying racks. It’s all piled up in front of you so your arms are breaking and you can barely see, but the other thing that you learn in cooking school is cooking is hard work. That is, it’s physically taxing.

In cramped, fast-paced, and (proverbially and literally) hot restaurant kitchens, running around in circles is for rookies. It’s just not done. It confuses your mind, expends unnecessary energy and ultimately puts you in the weeds. In other words, a quick way to find yourself out on the sidewalk, considering getting an office temp job to pay the rent.

So Ruhlman. He describes how this hyper-efficient planning and intense economy of movement unsurprisingly slipped over into his out-of-the-kitchen time. (Kind of like when I played so much backgammon in college I’d look at a pub booth packed with people as a cluster of pieces–all safe since there wasn’t one sitting out alone. For my brain at least, that was the result of excessive backgammon. Imagine if I’d used that time to study!) So Ruhlman described how one day he realized he was getting ready in the morning in turbo efficient mode. Get socks and shoes and grab car keys and knife case all in one quick sweep of his apartment. Socks and shoes on mechanically fast, grab keys and knife case, and up and off you go. Or something like that.

And so here I am, just three days away from Paige’s first birthday and realizing how this mother thing has managed to wire me in a similar way. Efficient? Yes. Getting kids bathed, diapered, dressed, fed, snacks packed, car toys grabbed, hats, sweaters, shoes that have been already pulled off put back on. All that glamor that you know every mother–including your own back in the day (call her right now and thank her, please) goes through.
 
But aside from the machinations of kid tendin’, there’s of course the physical connection us mothers have. And whether we’re precious about it and read non-stop about how it all works or not, it just happens. We’re using our bodies to the fullest of their capabilities, like old-school VCRs that–though baffling and unused to their max by most folks–without even reading the manual we’re instinctively able to do the trickiest things to like updating the clocks, and setting them to advance record.

It’s actually weird how mindlessly one can grow a healthy baby.

There are the glossy hair ‘I am woman hear me roar’ pregnancy highs, and the all-my-friends-are-dumb-when-they’re-drunk-and-I’m-sober resentment. Stuff even outsiders can cotton to. But more discreet, and ultimately more powerful, is the latent accustomedness your body seems to develop for being put to these practical maternal uses. So from where I’m standing, at the precipice of not having such a physical Mama task ever again, one might be left feeling somewhat un-tethered. A bit lost.

It’s the place where some woman, no doubt, feel liberated, set free. Back to one’s skinny jeans for good.

But for me, and it seems for the dental office Mama too, it’s a much harder transition. Bittersweet in all the love and intimacy and care that was associated with all those bodily demands, despite how grueling they could sometimes be. There’s an unaddressed expectation, a void that some of us reckon with, when our bodies are suddenly not called into service any more.

Perhaps I’ll have to take up tennis. My mother always played a wicked doubles game. Maybe I can just try to make that do.

A Word from Mr. Kristen McClusky’s Wife

Got my knickers in a twist and sent this letter to the head of my former prep school today.

A justifiable rant, or am I off my rocker?

Dear Dan:

As an alumna and lifelong fan of Wheeler, I want to thank you for the great job you’ve done helping me feel connected to all that’s happening at the school. I appreciate hearing about everything from curricular enrichment to campus development, how my donation dollars are being spent, and even being kept in the loop in times of tragedy. All these things have made me feel closer to the Wheeler community than I have in years. If I didn’t live 3,000 miles away, I’d send my daughters to Wheeler in a heartbeat.

I’m sure it’s in that same spirit of inclusion that somewhere along the line correspondence to me from the school started to be addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Mark McClusky.” My husband has attended some Wheeler events with me, and even he commented on how odd it is that as a result my own name has dropped off all mail from the school.  

I know this is likely is a matter of old-world etiquette. And in that vein, it makes me ponder whether Mary C. Wheeler herself was ever married. I don’t believe she was, but I can’t help but wonder if she had been–even back in 1889–whether she’d have named her progressive all-girls school something akin to The Mrs. John C. Smith School.

It appears that you are mindful about how you present your own name in school correspondence–sometimes signing with the familiar “Dan” rather than using your full name and title. I’ll continue to look forward to receiving news from Wheeler. I just hope that going forward you’ll be as thoughtful about how you address the envelopes as you are about their contents.

Best,
Kristen Bruno McClusky, ‘85

About Me

I realized recently that my blog lacks an About Me section.

The problem is, my personal IT support technician/spouse is away on a business trip, so I’m unable to alter the site’s, uh, complex architecture singlehandedly. (Besides, it makes Mark feel so needed when I let him do these things for me.)

While I await his return, here’s my first take on how I might describe myself:

I’m a mother of two from Oakland, CA who hates mushrooms. My ears aren’t pierced. Well, they were once, but those holes closed up decades ago. My mother died of pancreatic cancer. Women who’ve had natural childbirth are my heroes. I’ve never seen Star Wars. I’ve been a VP, toy reviewer, CNN producer, and state park employee. My favorite holiday is July 4th. I love surprises, resist change, and can’t tolerate wimpyness. I adore old women. I’ve had migraines that have put my right eye out of commission for weeks at a time. I once ate a 24-course meal. I’ve never competed in the Olympics. I went to cooking school to become a pastry chef, then decided against it. I’ve chatted with Mick Jagger. I loved high school and was unimpressed with college. My father’s name is Ferdinand. Altogether I’ve taken 13 years of French. I’ve never had a perm. I’ve lived in Rhode Island, Ohio, Massachusetts, D.C., New York, Georgia, California, France, and England. In a life riddled with happiness, motherhood has brought me supreme contentment. Some people think I have nice hands. I once spent a raucous night out with the White House Secret Service. Sometimes I want to eat my children. I don’t know how to follow a football game. My husband spent the better part of his career at Sports Illustrated. If I were President, liking coconut-flavored rum wouldn’t be uncool. I pronounce ‘aunt’ AHHHnt and ‘apricot’ with a short ‘a.’ Cats scare me. I have a terrible memory. The greatest compliment I’ve ever gotten is that my daughter Kate looks like me. I can dish it out but I can’t take it. Math Game Day in fourth grade always gave me a stomachache. My father is afraid of heights and peach fuzz. A psychic once told me I was a famous ballerina in a past life. I skipped having a first marriage and got a brilliant trophy husband at age 37. I’ve never had braces. For a made-for-TV movie I once played a woman who choked while eating in a restaurant. Parades often make me cry with joy. If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning. The love I have for my husband and daughters can best be described as rabid. I’m an obsessive yard saler and recovering packrat. My super powers are the ability to sleep anywhere and parallel parking. I’m the youngest of four girls. I disagree with the way the word ’segue’ is spelled. I didn’t make a million dollars before turning 30. I look dead in both yellow and light gray. I once stuck a pussy willow up my nose. Seeing a person carrying a box of hot pizza always delights me. I think people who put lines through their sevens are pretentious. If it’s not too much to ask, I’d like a high school marching band to play at my funeral. I know how to say the following things in Polish: ‘underwear,’ ‘Grandma,’ ‘ass,’ and ‘I’m going to throw up.’ I’m a wannabe Jew. If it weren’t for house cleaners, I’d get around to changing my sheets about as often as frat boys do. My best piece of financial advice is to pay for babysitting now instead of marriage counseling later. I’m an avid recycler. My greatest life’s work has been ridding myself of any trace of a Rhode Island accent. It wasn’t until my mother was gone and I had children of my own that I realized I’d inherited her brilliance for tackling tough laundry challenges. I can’t be inside on sunny days. I felt betrayed my senior year of college when the hippies cut their hair short to get jobs at investment banks. I’m not even a little bit country. My last meal would include a Del’s Lemonade.

How much room do they give you in those blog templates for the About Me section anyway?

Well, this will have to do for starters.