Tell Me that Story Again

Last week I did two things I never do. I turned on the TV when both girls were awake. (I think Paigey’s still too wee to develop a boob tube habit). And I tuned in to—of all things—a telethon. Specifically, the ‘Hope for Haiti Now’ telethon.

Weird, right? But in my defense, replacing Jerry Lewis with George Clooney goes a long way in my book. And it was for a good cause.

Anyway, the second the TV clicked on, Kate ran out of her room like a junkie moving in on a fix. It was both thrilling and confusing to her.

“Wait, the TV?” she asked in a frenzy. “Are YOU watching TV, Mama? Can I watch too? Please? Please?!”

I swear the girl would happily watch Hogan’s Heroes if I let her.

But this was music. People strumming guitars and soulfully singing songs like “Let It Be.” So I figured, what could it hurt? She perched on the arm of the couch and immediately went into a glassy-eyed zombie stare, letting the TV’s narcotic hit wash over her.

Then Matt Damon and Clint Eastwood started talking about some courageous man, and it seemed likely they were about to get into the details of how the dude had died. So I hit Mute, and when Kate protested I made up some excuse .

Eventually I decided to venture into the what-happened-in-Haiti waters. Age-appropriately, I hoped. “Blah blah blah earthquake… Blah blah people got hurt… Blah blah houses fell down, everyone very poor. People there need help. And money.”

More music, volume back up, and me in the kitchen to check the roasting veggies.

Kate, calling out from her couch perch. “Mama?! Tell me that story again. What’s the shaky ground thing called again?”

“An earthquake.” I walked into the living room.

“Oh,” she said, turning the idea over in her mind. “Do they have those,” I braced for her question “–in Rhode Island?”

“Oh, in Rhode ISLAND?” I said, exhaling. “Nope! No earthquakes there!”

“Oh.”

Two second pause.

“Do they have ‘em here?”

Crap. “Well, uh… Well, uhhh, nnnnnooooo. Well, not like that. I mean, it’s just not something you have to worry about.” I handled this nearly as poorly as I did when Kate asked me in front of a neighbor how babies come out of their mommies. (Don’t even ask.)

At dinner, it was like I could feel Kate’s brain processing what I’d told her. While tuned into the telethon she’d seen a doctor holding a baby with a tube in its nose and its head all bandaged up. A couple times she said, “Tell me that story again, Mama.” And a couple times I tried to get though on the phone lines, hoping I’d get a chance to chat up George Clooney or Julia Roberts as I made a paltry donation.

The phone lines were busy, which was great for the telethon, but dashed my hopes of hobnobbing with the real-live pages of People magazine. Or of doing anything to pitch in.

Kate was clearly worried about the Haitians, and getting ready for her bath asked questions like, “When those people got hurt when the ground shaked, did they have blood?” For my part, busy signals aside, I was feeling frustrated that we’re not in a position these days to make the level of donation I’d really like to.

And then, like a good Italian girl it hit me. Kate and I could cook. We roll up our sleeves together, do what we do best–bake!—then host a bake sale, right out in front of our house. We’d donate everything we made to help the relief effort.

She LOVED the idea. Her concerned line of questions turned instantly to excitement. “We’ll make Rice Krispie Treats! With little M&Ms! We’ll make chocolate chip cookies, Mama!”

On Sunday we had our sale. We timed it to get foot traffic from our nearby farmer’s market. And we made $189. People were amazingly generous, handing cash over to Kate without even taking a treat, or giving us a twenty for one item and telling us to keep–or rather, give away–the change.

I love our neighborhood.

The next day, we visited Mark’s office to sell the left-overs, and tacked another $71 onto our earnings. And since we were feeling unstoppable at that point, I called Kate’s school and arranged to spearhead a bake sale there too.

Kate said she thinks all the kids in Haiti are going to get Hello Kitty band-aids for their boo-boos, on account of our two bake sales. And damn it, I hope to hell she’s right.

The other night, in our bleary-eyed first adult words to each other after the kids were in bed, Mark told me he was proud of us. But quickly added something like, “Why is it you and Kate decided to save the world after we handed in her school applications?”

Ha.

Well, this morning Kate has the first of her private school assessments. (Two more to go after that one.) We’ll bring her to the school for a 90-minute visit where she’ll play with other kids, probably do some writing and drawing, and be asked some questions.

I’m hoping that Kate won’t have tired of her “Tell me that shaky-ground story again, Mama” question. And that she’ll ask me in front of the school’s Admissions Director. That’ll give me a chance to gently recount once more what happened to the people of Haiti.

Then I can set her up by asking, “And what did we do about it, Kate?”

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.

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.

In the Know

Every once and a while Kate takes it upon herself to enumerate the things the people in our family “know a lot about.”

Here’s what she came up with at dinner last night:

Herself
* Cars
* Bunnies

Mark
* Cutting (not a la Angelina—cutting as in carving meat, cutting pizza, etc.)
* Cooking things
* Fixing things
* Blimps
* Everything
* Tools

Paige
* Babies
* Talking baby language

Me
* Babies
* Mommies
* Planting flowers

Now, I don’t mean to be petty here. I’m the first to admit that my husband is a modern day Renaissance Man, but saying he knows a lot about everything? Sure there’s cycling, linguistics, technology, music, The Simpsons, installing car seats, comic books, writing, barbecuing, gadgets, soothing crying babies, science fiction, cutlery, online communities, reading super fast, urban planning, the Civil War, and molecular gastronomy. He knows a ton about those things. But, Kate’s paternal adoration aside, isn’t saying he knows a lot about everything a bit of an exaggeration?

Well, if you were to ask him, he might not think so.

In college, Mark and his BFF, Christian, used to play an aren’t-we-so-young-and-brilliant game, its premise being that they could recite off the cuff three facts on any given topic. While drinking beer at the local watering hole, one imagines.

The Eiffel Tower? It’s in Paris. It was named after its engineer, Gustave Eiffel. It’s the tallest building in Paris.

You get the idea.

Anyway, however good Mark may be at that game, by my count three data points—even if he could produce them on virtually everything—does not, in my book, constitute knowing “a lot” about those subjects.

But really, of course, I’m just jealous. Since it saddens me to think that Kate doesn’t perceive my ken as extending beyond the maternal arts. What about all I know about yard sales? Parallel parking? Taking really hot showers? Unrelenting sarcasm? Downward dog? Or toe picking, for God’s sake? Don’t those things count for anything? Or maybe it’s just that in Kate’s mind they fall under the vague rubric she calls “Mommies.”

I really shouldn’t blame Kate entirely for my petite neurotic reaction to her dinner-time game. She’s just calling it as she sees it. Really I should be thankful she didn’t add “Bellowing, ‘Can I please just have one minute here?’” or “Putting little girls in Time Outs” to her list of things I know a lot about.

Fact is, I’ve been doing a fair amount of wondering what it is I do know a lot about, all on my own. Trying to remember what I’m good at. Something that might be applied in such a way that I can make some money from it.

Because, after a glorious trip to the beach on Sunday, sandy sleepy kids piled into the car and u-turning our way out of Alameda, Mark and I stumbled into a conversation that I knew was coming eventually. The one in which we faced up to the fact that it’s time for me to get back to contributing to the family’s bottom line. Hopefully in no soul-sucking cubicle-dwelling full time capacity, but by freelancing or project work, or some utterly ideal, flexible and lucrative, creative part-time job.

So on Saturday night I went to bed, a sometimes-ashamed-to-admit-it Stay At Home Mom. And somehow by Monday I woke up feeling, well, unemployed.

What a difference a day makes.

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.

We Love Gay

A few years ago we went to a wedding in Philadelphia, the bride’s hometown, and I was blindsided by just how much I liked it there.

And I wasn’t alone. Throughout the weekend other guests from San Francisco made comments to the bride like, “This is actually a pretty cool city. Who knew?” Backhanded compliments, for sure.

Living in the Bay Area for more than 16 years now makes me often wonder about what life’s like elsewhere. But since moving is so complicated, and we’re forever stymied about where it is we’d go, I process most of my curiosity through pretend play.

So one morning when we were at that wedding in Philly, I woke up, rolled over and said to Mark, “Let’s pretend we live here, okay? So… Here we are! We live in Philadelphia! What should we do today in this city that we live in?”

Mark humored me for a short time, but ultimately found the game more absurd than socially enriching. And of course, he’ll never forget it. Sometimes still if I’m doing or saying something, he’ll turn to me and ask, “Are we pretending we live in Philadelphia again?”

One of the other places I invariably find myself fantasizing about being a resident of is my wee hometown of Bristol, RI. Or at least some place like it.

On our recent visit there I took the girls to the town’s newly expanded stone facade library. In the fabulous new children’s area–replete with huge windows, soft-sided animal-shaped chairs, bins filled with toys, an outdoor path through a lovely little garden, and of course books books books–I couldn’t resist imagining that the girls and I would be regulars there if we lived in town. Bringing them to proudly return books in the drop slot, pick out a new batch, and sit in on story time–all at the very library on whose once-mildewy basement carpet I spent many childhood afternoons of my own.

The other folks there during our visit–a father with a boy somewhere between Kate and Paige’s age–were hardly the friendly cohorts I was hoping to encounter. Paige made every opportunity to engage them, and her powers of charm are nearly bionic, virtually impossible to resist. But somehow, in what I attributed to a brusque New England attitude, both father and son barely made eye contact with us. Likely even found our presence there annoying.

It was nearly enough to shatter my sunny we-live-here-now fantasy.

So anyway, a few months ago when I was throwing dinner together, Kate was playing on the kitchen floor with Paige and announced, “Mama, I’m gay!”

Which, hey, is fine and all, but I have to admit, coming from a three-year-old took me a bit off guard.

But I managed to find a kindly response that also aimed to garner more information. “Oh really, honey? How’s that?”

Kate, who was encircled by books–a fairly typical setting for her–held up one with the pages open outwardly to face Paige, and explained, “I’m gay, and it’s story time, and Paige is one of the children coming to story time.”

(Then to Paige in a slightly affected tone.) “Good morning, children! Welcome to story time!”

At which point I realized she meant Gay–capital ‘G’–not gay, gay. Gay being the name of the beloved grandmotherly children’s librarian right here in Rockridge.

Now Kate adores Gay and it’s easy to see why. She is adorable, though not in a baby bird kinda way.

Once I was walking behind a klatch of mother’s who were heading to the park after story time and they were all cooing over how much they dig it when Gay reads books–doing all the voices for different characters and singing songs that require you to move you hands one way or another to act out things as you sing. As much as you can’t imagine enduring this stuff as a non-parent, trust me, it’s equaling surprising to find yourself one day getting into it.

In fact, I’m sometimes like a maniac getting us out the door so we don’t miss Gay’s opening “Good morning dear Earth, Good morning dear Sun” song that somewhere along the line I decided I just love love love and that in its simple way makes me kinda sorta just happy.

Chalk it up to sleep deprivation, a deficiency of daytime adult conversation, and the presence of a kindly woman who’s happy to entertain my kids for a half-hour–somehow that story time gives me as much a hit of serotonin as it gives the wee ones for whom it’s intended.

After the stories–which are always related to some sort of train or family or mitten theme–Gay is besieged by the small beasties, reaching out to get either a sheet to color in, or a sticker. She even gave out blueberries one day after reading the Maine classic Blueberries for Sal. Something I found generous and fun, and delicious for greedy blue-mouthed Kate, even if there was a part of my brain I was trying to ignore that was wondering, “Are-they-organic?”

During my “office hours” here at Chez McClusky I’m often surprised by the small things that trigger Kate’s curiosity. They’re usually such commonplace things it’s weird to realize Kate has no clue about them. You know, like what happens to stuff we put in the recycling bin, how corn is grown (not on a tree!), that dogs have a special sense of smell. Often whatever Kate and I are discussing turns into the thing that she wants to get books about at the library.

On Tuesday we made applesauce, and Kate got all freaky-obsessed over the seeds–as she’s wont to do–which got me explaining about Johnny Appleseed, which got Kate wanting a book about him from the library. Plus, after listening to the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang soundtrack for years now, I recently mentioned that the music was from a movie–actual live-action footage that could come to her through the TV, a rare treat. This information had her nearly blow a gasket.

So on drizzly Tuesday we sauntered to the library, just a two block walk from home. Kate got Gay in her cross hairs immediately and run up to her desk, pumping adrenaline and panting as if she were about to evacuate a burning building. “Gay! Gay!! Do you know what? Chitty Chitty Bang Bang IS A MOVIE. Did you know that? Do you have the movie, Gay? And also, you know what? We want to get a book about Apple Johnnyseed too. Do you have that, Gay?”

Gay’s reaction is perfect. She mirrors Kate’s excitement in a genuine way that makes me feel like she gets Kate–and truly likes her. A mother’s joy. And while she looks up whatever Kate requested–she’s animatedly sharing factoids about “Johnny Appleseed, sweetie, not Apple Johnnyseed.” And she pokes out a finger towards Paigey’s belly. “Hello, Little Sister. Don’t you look proper today in your wool hat.”

My excitement to interact with Gay is nearly as great as Kate’s. I just keep it more on the DL. Although I doubt she even knows our names, Gay is someone who, in the midst of some seemingly endless empty days of having to find this or that thing to do with the kids, knows us. Which can sometimes provide just the amount of comfort that I need to change my perspective on the day.

But after Paigey’s poke it’s back to Kate. And I stand back as Gay shows her a few different book options which she paws through quickly, while whining, “The Chitty Chitty Bang Bang DVD! I need that too!”

Ah, ever the ingrate.

Prompting me to remind Kate to use her manners. And Gay to dismiss my comment with an unspoken don’t-you-worry-about-that-we-have-business-to-conduct-here-Kate-and-I as she ambles over to the movie section.

“Oh you are right!,” she clucks. “I did almost forget that, didn’t I? Now let’s make sure no one else has taken that out…”

Thank you, thank you, Gay, for being our most exceptional small town librarian in this big city of Oakland. We are oh so lucky to have you, parents and children alike.

What’s more, whenever we see you I don’t even have to pretend we live here.

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.

Crashing and Burning Across the Finish Line

Saturday afternoon Mark made his long-awaited return from Vegas.

He entered the house to see the typically-banned-from-TV Kate lying languid on the couch, a Sesame Street-watching zombie, hear Paige wailing miserably from her crib, and find me splayed out in bed with a brain-crushing migraine.

Not exactly the Bree Van de Kamp meets Heidi Klum greeting I’d had in mind.

But in the glamorous, fast-paced, take-no-prisoners Domestic Engineer life I lead, reality often misaligns with expectations. 

When I was in high school my friend’s little sister was crazy fired-up to have been asked to prom by a guy she’d been moony over for months. As mature oh-so-over-it-all seniors, my friend and I marveled from the sidelines as her sister dragged her mom dress shopping to every mall in Rhode Island (which I think was a staggering three shopping centers at the time, maybe four). She obsessed over limo rental, where they’d eat, and whether she could trust her best friend and her boyfriend to be sufficiently un-dorky double dates.

When the big day arrived–much to our collective relief–she bathed herself silly for hours (ah, those bygone epic soaks with Cosmo and Glamour), then got her nails done and her hair up-doed. A couple hours before the event she decided to bleach her moustache, left the stuff on too long, and burned the shit out of her upper lip.

Which just goes to show it’s sometimes the home stretch that screws you. 

As for me on Saturday, I eventually managed to drag my sorry ass out of bed and wince into dim light without recoiling in agony. And a couple hours after that I even combed the sleep-induced rat’s nest snarl out of my hair. I’m not sure I ever got around to brushing my teeth, but the way things unfurled that day I think Mark planted our long-anticpated welcome home kiss atop my aching noggin anyway.

Thankfully by yesterday I was back in the pink. We romped with the girls at the beach in Alameda, drank beers at a kid-friendly burger joint for lunch, and rolled our eyes at each other over Kate’s intermittent three-year-old no-I-won’t-ever-put-that-jacket-on fits. I got to sleep in, had what I’d humbly report was a fabulous hair day, and managed to perform myriad other maternal and wifely, uh, ‘duties’ with a little that’s-what-I’m-talkin’-about spring in my step.

Mark’s back. I’m back. Yay.  

Confessions of a Dirty Woman

No one ever thinks of themselves as being unclean, do you think? I mean, I think it’s like craziness. Those who are don’t think that they are. And therefore you can never really know if you’re dirty or crazy, or God forbid, both.

Unfortunately, as Mistress of the Mansion here, I’ve recently gotten some distressing clues about the state of our cleanliness. But instead of sweeping this information under the proverbial carpet, I thought I’d just come out and confess. Maybe sharing this will aid in getting me the help I apparently need.

So, last week for us was rife with celebration. We hosted a big fun holiday shindig Saturday night, dined in SF with visiting friends Sunday, and had an over-the-top 20-or-so course dinner at The French Laundry on Tuesday.

Wednesday, when I should’ve been holed up filling out my Betty Ford Center application, I was out schlepping the kids around somewhere. And when I unfolded what we refer to as the Silver Stroller–since anything even remotely gray is silver in Kate’s charmed world–I pulled down the rickety worthless visor to found an uneaten yet terribly unappealing crepe–strawberry and Nutella, if you must know. One that’d we’d greedily ordered as an extra and which had been wedged in the visor since our jaunt to the local Farmer’s Market uh, three days earlier. I ran it inside the house–disgustedly holding the edges of the paper plate by my fingertips like it was a live mouse–while Kate screamed after me for all the ‘hood to hear, “What is that, Mama?”

Um… Ick!

One more reason to expedite our now Silver ‘n Brown Stroller to live out the next few million years teetering atop a bunch of other abandoned crap at a dump. (Sorry, Al Gore!)

Later that very day, while preparing a sumptuous meal for my family, I reached into the cupboard for the lettuce spinner. When I opened it I nearly Edvard Munch screamed to see it already contained some lettuce. From the party on Saturday night! And what’s more, it had also developed a noisome pale green liquid sloshing around in the bottom of the bowl.

How utterly charming.

As if these two incidents–in the same day, no less–weren’t enough reason for me to call a producer from Oprah and give myself over as the subject on their next filthy housewives segment (a nice counterpoint to their always-riveting OCD hand washing shows), there’s more.

So, in the winter sometimes ants come into the house. This is not unusual for these parts, and I’m not trying to defend myself here but I will say that the ants in Northern California are SUCH WIMPS. I mean, the first small smattering of rain sends them running inside frantic-like. They’re all, “Oh, it’s wet out there! Oh, it’s chilly! We’d really be much happier trooping along in a creepy single file line around the grout in your bathtub, or swarming around that raisin your kid dropped in the front hall.”

Don’t get me wrong. We loathe, detest, and abhor the suckers. Mark wields his stink-trail killing can of lemon scented Pledge like he’s Rambo with a ‘roid rage, and undertakes what he maniacally calls a “bloody genocide” while I tend to the crying cowering children in the other room.

And, now that I’ve laid my secret ant shame bare, I’ll go so far as to reveal that at its worst I’m plagued with nightmares that I’ll come home some day and an ant will be sitting in his boxer shorts on our couch, drinking one of Mark’s Firestone Double Barrel Ales and watching Bravo reality TV.

Such attitude they have! Such entitlement! And worst of all, such large families.

But, as I said, you can litter any home around here with the highest grade free-range organic Agent Orange and a few of those little suckers will still ferret their way indoors. So, at least I know that my filth is also that of my neighbors.

Until yesterday. I was changing Miss Paige. Had her up on the changing table and cooing some lovesick Mama blather into her sweet punum, and seconds after tearing open the diaper Velcro, what do I see marching dizzily across her bare butt cheek?

Well, I think you know.

After Mark and I lamented that this was about the most tragic thing that could befall our sweet cherub’s innocent pudge, we resorted to epic overuse of the expression “ants in your pants,” and have been delightedly accusing Paige of having them since. Using cute baby voices of course.

I’ve long contended that the elevator buttons at Target were some of the dirtiest places on earth. (Think of the cumulative effect of all those germ-infested nose-pickers who insist on pushing the buttons…) But after the events of this past week, I’m fearful that there’s a considerable amount of filth much closer to home than I’d care to admit.

Forget John Malkovich. I want a portal into Kate.

I collect brother-in-laws named John. I currently only have two, but my sister Ellen is single so there is a chance that I could add a third to my set some day.

My one brother-in-law John–the Coastie who’s married to Mark’s sis, Lori–he and I have a long-standing joke about the Miller’s $30-spending-max holiday gift exchange. It goes back to when I wasn’t yet married into the family, as he was. He delighted in taunting me year after year about whether or not I’d be on the gift exchange list. Then he’d dangle his inclusion in my face by saying “Neener neener neener!”

It was clearly a very mature joke, and likely not funny to anyone other than John and me, but isn’t finding those perversely-amusing common grounds to laugh about when you’re flying on tryptophan and bourbon what brings families closer together?

So anyway, now that I’ve made the grade and am officially and securely part of the gift exchange, I got an email from Mark’s cousin Maggie’s fiance Josh. (You following that?) Due to his engaged status he’s in the mix this year (though frankly I think he was last year too and the Millers are growing a bit lax about the exclusivity of membership). He got Kate to buy for this year and wanted some ideas about what she might like.

Pondering what gift booty would delight Little Miss Kate made me realize the extent to which three-year-olds live in an altered LSD-trippy parallel universe. One where the most mundane everyday objects take on a fascinating sheen.

Like, we were at a toy store yesterday and amidst all the cool fun stuff and actual toys, Kate spotted a plastic placemat with pictures of something like goldfish on it. She woozily, adoringly clutched it to her chest like a diamond tennis bracelet from Tiffany.

“This placemat, Mama,” she whispered with reverence. “I love this placemat. Can I please get it?” Then, realizing there were others with different designs she started yanking them off the rack with delirious glee. “Oh look they have more! There’s this one? I love this too! I want all of them, Mama! Can I have all of them? Please?”

Invoking my well-honed powers of Resisting a Child’s Desire to Buy Crap, I heard myself say, “If you really want one you can ask for it for Christmas.” Then I thought what an absurd Christmas list item that is. Other kids want dolls, Legos, Thomas the Tank Engine. Kate wants a placemat. And she’d truly be BLISSED OUT to get it.

Before having kids I cracked up hearing that my friend Shelley’s son slept with his beloved Wiggles video. As in, clutching the actual video in the box, not having it playing while he slept. Well, joke’s on me when Kate spends a rainy winter night cuddled up with her stuffed dog Dottie and a placemat.

Kate’s other Christmas list items are barely better. Somewhere along the line she suddenly decided that scarves were the coolest things EVER and spent the better part of a 75-degree day pleading with me as if her existence depended on it–and how could I be so cruel as to deny her?–”I want a scarf, Mama. A SCARF! I need one right now!” The small plastic bowl with a snap-top lid that a friend recently left at our house became another object of lustful desire. They’ll be happy to know she had to hug it during several potty sessions. (I ran it through the dishwasher.) And truly I can’t think of any gift she’d love more than a package of seeds–poppy seeds, flower seeds, any type really as long as they are little and plentiful. I’d even wager you could wrap up a dust bunny in a little box and Kate would ceremoniously carry it to her altar–I mean her play kitchen–with the intensity and loving care you’d reserve for a baby bird.

Anyway, I hope all these things are providing Josh not only some good gift ideas but also the realization that, as a man on the brink of marriage, the next big plunge into parenthood could result in becoming the owner and operator of a small person who you love madly madly madly but whose passions and interests you can rarely make a whit of sense of.

But hey, it keeps things lively around here.

As for Paige, she’s also happily entrenched in her own trippy reality. Sadly we’re past the stage where she’d wave her arms around, catch sight of one hand, then slowly turn it over and back in front of her eyes, examining it as if this brilliant device was something she’d never seen before and wasn’t right there, attached to the end of her arm. God, Mark and I loved that.

If Paige was writing an online dating bio she’d add the fringe on the bottom of the couch to her list of interests. Despite whatever real toy she’s given to wrangle with on the floor, she’ll eventually roll herself over to the couch and flap one hand slowly through the tassley fringe with deep contentment.

And whenever I carry her in my front-pack and we walk under a tree, Paigey arches her whole body backwards to stare up at the leaves and the light and laugh and laugh and laugh. I mean, sure, leaves certainly are funny, but they’re not quite the laugh riot Miss P makes them out to be.

All this fascination with the mundane has made me realize how much being a mother is like working a crowd of drug-addled concert-goers. Most of the time I’m in a Stadium Security role, just trying to coral the happy trippers, and make sure it all stays mellow and fun and no one loses an eye. But inevitably somewhere in the course of the day I’m more like a Rock Doctor triaging bad trippers in a tent, helping them get through fits over inanimate objects they’re convinced have come to life to torture them. You know, managing a situation like: ” This sock is hurting me!!! It hurrrrrts meeee! Bad sock!! BAAAAAD!!”

Oh sure. A bad trip like that? I’d say I take on one of those–sometimes as many as three–nearly every day.

And to think I don’t even have a walkie talkie or a medical degree.