peevish mama

I opened up my comments today to find the following:

“I am very sorry I did not pay attention to you when I was in 5th grade. It only had to do with the fact that girls were not on my mind. I do miss Way School and the simpler times of life. I am glad that I could be of help with the frog.”

The comment is from none other than – are you ready for this? Jeff freaking Borglin!!! My fourth grade crush! I wrote about him in a post last year about falling in love with music and in my infinite naivete, it didn’t occur to me that this post could somehow land right in his lap. But it did. And he has reached across a span of thirty years to what, WHAT? Apologize for having ignored me when I was at dawn of my ugliest awkward stage and the high noon of my goofiest annoying stage? Who can blame the poor guy? Certainly not me.

Of course, I can think of no better surprise than to google my name (not that I’d ever do that) and discover a luscious little memoir piece written by some boy from my past, but he is not me. I cannot even begin to imagine what he thinks about all this business, let alone whether he even remembers me! His message is so terse and spare, he gives nothing away. Jeff freaking Borglin!!! JEFF FREAKING BORGLIN!!! (Notice I will hereinafter refer to him exclusively as “Jeff freaking Borglin” to thwart any further google searches. So crafty.) 

The more I think about it, the more humiliating this is. I could DIE! And by die, I mean in the fourth grade way, not the fast approaching middle age way. Incidentally, this is why I would never join Facebook. Obviously I’m not cut out for these kinds of blasts from the past. This is almost as embarrassing as the time I wiped out in front of his house whilst trying to do a dance routine on my bike to the song Electric Avenue. Almost. 

Ever the sceptic, Doctor Dash reminded me that it could be a trick. But there appears to be a legitimate email address and he used the proper appellation for our school. Moreover, who of my friends would go so far back into my archives? And wouldn’t said trickster have posted something a little, uh, juicier? Such as: I remember you, Peevish Mama, so many years ago, so beautiful in your powder blue moon boots that didn’t match your tan and navy ski jacket, which your mother told you, but you didn’t care about because you wanted those boots so bad. No, wait. Strike that. How about: I remember you, Peevish Mama, so many years ago, so lovely in your powder blue moon boots. It was only the paralyzing potion of love and fear that kept me from talking to you at the bus stop, but oh, how I wish I’d had the words to turn your sweet face in my direction. Every single day of my life, I regret not having beckoned you out of the bushes behind my house where you and your friend used to spy on me while I watched TV. And when you fell on your cool bike, it took all of my strength to stand on my lawn with my mouth agape and my football in my hand when all I wanted to do was to run to you, cradle you gently in my arms and croon the remaining verses of Electric Avenue in your ear.  Right? People, am I right? THAT might be suspicious.

I think it’s him. I do. 

OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!!! 

In the last twenty or so hours:

I find my thoughts hovering around my friend, Circus Lady, who is grieving for her dad. I made her soup. What else can I do?

I hear of Alexander McQueen’s death. A fashion designer I have only admired from afar, way out of my reach in every way, but he was only 40.

I spend the darkest hours of the night awake, reading by the light of my phone. The last time I checked the time it was nearly four o’clock a.m.

My youngest daughter pushes me to the brink, no, beyond the brink on the way to school. I yell and say things I regret. I am left feeling like a rung out dishrag, ashamed at myself for my rage and lack of self control.

My cleaning lady tells me she’s pregnant. She is one day older than me and is giddy and scared as any woman pushing forty would be at such unexpected news. It’s all right there, written on her face. I notice we are both standing with our hands clasped in front of our hearts. A gesture of joy? Surprise? Supplication?

I try and fail to find a red fez for Supergirl and I am disproportionately sad about it.

I am too tired for this day.

I know it’s not cool to judge anyone in yoga. It’s not even cool to look at anyone in yoga, but you know what? The Sensual Dough Man was asking for it. Last week I went with Lady Roller Girl aka Lady Tabouli and we made the mistake of putting our mats next to the most undulating man I’ve ever seen in my life. As we waited for class to begin, he took himself through the most dramatic porno-esque cat and cow series I’ve ever witnessed. Seriously, that kind of spinal curvature is best saved for the boudoir. His shirtless, clammy, pasty white bod just wouldn’t quit writhing in my peripheral vision and try as I might to ignore him, I couldn’t. I was relieved when Lady Rollergirl came back from the bathroom and blocked him from my view a bit. Lest any of you guys start to feel sheepish about your yoga warm ups, do NOT worry. There is no way you could do this if you tried. And yesterday I went to yoga at a different studio, hoping to sweat out some of the alcohol from the dance party and some of the nitrates from my morning bacon binge and who was there in all his fleshy glory? Yep. Fool me once . . . I put my mat as far from him as possible. There was no way I was going to get sucked into his business again. But I did. Oh, did I. And this time I had to peer around twenty people to catch a glimpse. How annoying.

Normally I don’t have any problem tuning people out at yoga. I don’t look at anyone. I certainly don’t judge anyone. If I ever go with Doctor Dash or run into a friend I have a certain warm awareness that they are there, but that’s it. Once I saw a mole on the sole of a woman’s foot and I was half tempted to tell her to get it checked out, but I didn’t because she was kind of bitchy and also had the look of someone who is no stranger to the dermatologist, if you know what I mean. Plus, what do I know? Right? I shouldn’t have said anything, right? Ug. Now I wonder.

In any event, it’s such a funny thing to come across a character who jars you right out of your sweaty zen moment, right out of adulthood for that matter, and takes you back to feeling like a jeering middle schooler. The Sensual Dough Man makes me feel wicked and twelve. What is wrong with me? What is this sick fascination? It’s like he needs his own soundtrack. Dare I admit that I am secretly loving being grossed out by him? I thought I was finished being the bitchy youngster. Apparently not.

I’m really going to have to grow up and get over this because apparently, he likes yoga as much as I do. Ommmmmmmm.

Let’s not mince words. I’m in funk. A thoroughly funkified funkmaster funkty dumpty funkalicious funkafreaky funk. I feel like I’m looking at the world through the musty living room curtain of a nonagenarian smoker, my thoughts veering wildly from: mother fucking mother fucker it’s colder than a mother fucker in this mother fucking god forsaken ice hole of a bung hole of a place, to the decidedly more upbeat and pithy: What’s the point of anything? To make matters worse, it also seems I can’t write my way out of a paper bag. In a classic chicken and the egg quandry, I don’t know if I can’t write because of the funk, or if I’m in the funk because I’m not writing. As frivolous and silly as this blog may be, I must admit that it does bring me some pleasure and even a measure of peace from time to time, so the yawning silence of my keyboard has got me down. In the dumps. In the dumptastic, dumpgusting, dumptopia, dumptragic, dumpster diddy dumps. Speaking of dumps, that last post, the one about winter, I felt like a constipated old woman (yes, the one with the dirty sheer curtains) hell bent on taking a huge dump only to squeeze out one unsatisfying, measly, rock hard pellet. I know that’s gross. Sooooo gross. So so so gross.

But look, can’t you tell I’m feeling better already? 

Actually, the reason I’m feeling better is that yesterday I got to take in a double feature of girl love. First there was a tasty riotous lunch at Blackbird Cafe with Nanook, Birdie and Pretty Young Thing for a belated celebration of Crackerjack’s birthday. Two bottles of wine would barely begin to wet the whistles of this crew after sundown, but tucked into a cozy table in the middle of the day with no kids, it felt deliciously decadent and before long we were shrieking and chattering like a tree full of crazed baboons. It was lovely. A total breath of fresh air. Happy Birthday CJ!

And then last night as a few of us were lingering at Lady Biker Babe’s house after book club, my funk was detected. They are nothing if not astute, this bunch. They are nothing if not fixers, this bunch. They can sniff out and snuff out a funk a mile away. I mentioned my writer’s block and the fact that I can’t seem write my way out of a paper bag. Actually, I don’t think I used the words “paper bag” at all, but bear with me, I’m trying my hardest to stay away from the dump metaphor. Instead of poopooing the paper bag, they saw the paper bag. They nodded, quietly acknowledging the paper bag and then without a lot of fanfare, Lady Shutterbug handed me some pinking shears. Then Lady Homeslice used her socked foot to slide a nail file in my direction over the couch cushions. On her way out the door, Lady Doctah Poodle wrapped my fingers around some knitting needles. Lady Tabouli (whom I’m temped to rechristen Lady Rollergirl after a story I heard last night – she gets to pick) palmed me a tiny switchblade and Lady Biker Babe tossed a lighter in my lap. I don’t remember anything specific that anyone said, I just know that in their own way they were helping me fight the funk. They were helping me fight my way out of the paper bag.

So, what else can I do but just try, right? What else can any of us do? But. Just. Try.

There have been some recent events, which I’m not at liberty to discuss, that have gotten me thinking long and hard about females, friendships and feelings. For better or worse, I’m not sure if I’ve ever given more than a glancing thought to these issues. I pride myself on my relatively drama free life. I love the ease of all my guy friendships and my low-maintenance girl friendships. The last fight I was in was in seventh grade when my best friend Sweet Sue and I broke up for a whole summer. I can’t even remember why. I do, however, remember seeing her on the first day of eighth grade in Mrs. Strong’s classroom and just adoring her violently Sun-Inned hair and realizing, in a rush, how much I had missed her. We made up. Just like that. Then once in college I got really mad when my friend La Peruanita took my big red boxy sweatshirt, which if I recall correctly, wasn’t even my sweatshirt and might actually have been her sweatshirt, but I had kind of adopted it and it was a crucial piece of my wardrobe. She heard about my ire through the grapevine and the wretched thing reappeared in my milk crate in due course. Crisis averted, I suppose.

When I wrote about the Babe-o-matics recently, it occurred to me that it was remarkable that six girl/women had made it four years with zero drama. But in retrospect I wonder if that was really the case. One of the original Babe-o-matics chose to cut ties with us a few years after we graduated. The rest of us have tried to work through the why’s of it, with little success. There is never a time that we get together that she doesn’t come up. It might be something that has to do with her more than us. Or maybe, something did happen and we missed it.

I have another more recent friend who would say time and time again – she doesn’t like me, or that one’s hot and cold with me, or she has it in for me, or I never know where I stand with that one. And I would listen with a mixture of fascination (because what’s more fascinating than someone else’s drama?) and scepticism. I find her loveable and thus constantly felt like Jerry Seinfeld’s mother shrieking in my best Jewish old lady voice How could anyone not like you?  And every once in a while I’d feel a little frightened by it – like is this ever going to trickle over to me? Because I have a horror of this kind of thing. I don’t think I could go through even one day suspecting that someone I deal with on a frequent basis has a beef with me. It would drive me absolutely bananas. And so I avoid the whole kit and kaboodle.

No drama for this mama.

But I wonder if my drama free life is really as drama free as I think it is. The recent episode that got me thinking about this made me realize that I sort of stomp through life in big boots and maybe I need to be more careful. The whole thing took me by surprise and I realized that I’m just not tuned into this kind of thing, at all. And because these people are special to me, I felt bad about it, even though I wasn’t directly involved in it. As a rule I don’t feel a lot of angst or insecurity or competitiveness with other women and I choose to assume everyone else is the same. Maybe in my fervor to steer clear of sticky situations, I have let myself become impervious to other people’s fragilities and feelings. Maybe my mellow, low-maintenance, confident schtick is really a cop out – because I don’t want to tangle, or tango, or whatever.

Assume socks are drama. It’s possible I’m the guy who truly doesn’t see them on the ground when he walks by. Or maybe I’m the guy who doesn’t want to pick them up, so he pretends he doesn’t see them. I really don’t know. I hate that second guy. On the other hand, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life picking up socks. Isn’t it better to turn a blind eye, sail on above it all, and if you miss a couple hurt feelings here and again, so be it? Or is it better to be open, to be perceptive, to be sensitive to the drama like my Jerry Seinfeld friend?

I don’t know. I don’t know which is better. And maybe it’s not even a choice so much as a reaction you can no sooner control than fear or surprise. In any event, I think I’m keeping my big boots. And I’m not saying I’m going to pick up any socks, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll try to see one every once in a while.

“Everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” Paul Bowles

I came across this quotation weeks and weeks ago over at Sweet Juniper (a blog I love written by a stay-at-home dad and a fellow Detroit homey and ex-attorney). It’s been been steeping in my mind all these many weeks and unbeknownst to me, coloring the mundane in deeper, richer shades. Sometimes you read something and it stops you cold. Sometimes you read something and it creeps up on you. In either case, one small string of words allows you to see something in a completely new light – manages to unearth the thing behind the thing.   

I constantly struggle with the idea of being present, being awake, staying in the moment, living in the now. Especially when it comes to my kids. It’s something I aspire to, it’s something I work on, but it’s not something for which I have a natural aptitude. I am analytical. I am a worrier. I am hyper verbal. I am impatient. I am easily bored. I am a malcontent. And all of these things conspire against me to take me out of the moment. I go to yoga not only for my body, but to try to quiet my mind. I write this blog in an attempt to pay attention, to elevate the minutae to the level it deserves, to give the stuff of life the credit it is due, to remember. I make promises to myself. I start fresh nearly every day. Sometimes more than once a day.

I look into my childrens’ eyes, at the striations in their irises and try to stamp them into my memory: Saint James: stormy sky filled with black birds, Supergirl: green grass and honey, Devil Baby: blue cotton candy and swirls of sweet cream.

But inevitably, I fail. The whining gets under my skin, someone runs through the house in muddy shoes, I have to make dinner, the laptop beckons, I just want to collapse on the couch to watch a show with Doctor Dash, the phone rings. It is so easy to get pushed out of the moment. And such a struggle to get in, to stay in.

And if you think I’m so intent on being present for the benefit of my kids, you would be wrong. I seek this for purely self-interested reasons. In the most ludicrous feat of mental and temporal contortionism, I find myself worrying about a certain time in the future when I will be filled with regrets at all the small moments with my children that were lost, ignored, overlooked, or just plain wished away. I will ache for the time when all they wanted was my attention, my time, me. I manage to have piercing nostalgia for the time that I’m in right now. How is this possible? Why don’t I just fully relish every waking moment with these guys now, and save myself the regrets later? It seems so simple, but the doing of it is anything but.

Which is where Paul Bowles’ beautiful words come into play. We all know that whatever phase of life we are in is fleeting, that time flies, that all those cliches and platitudes are true, but perhaps that’s all too amorphous to mean anything. The notion that specific things happen a certain number of times is chilling. But it’s concrete and something I can wrap my head around. It is something I can call to mind and feel in my bones every time Saint James climbs into my lap. Every time Doctor Dash carries Supergirl to bed after she has fallen asleep in ours. Every time I read a book. Every time I make a puttanesca sauce. Every time I hug Devil Baby in the morning, breathing in the biscuity smell of baby dreams and pee. How many more times will I get to do that? It’s pretty easy to figure out. She’ll probably be out of nighttime pull-ups by this spring and after that, mornings will never smell the same. How many more letters to Santa will Saint James write? One? Maybe two? And what about all of those things that have already been counted to their finite end? How many times did I nurse my babies? When I was in it, it seemed limitless, infinite, but now, on the other side, it’s one of the things I miss the most.

It’s not possible to live in a count down. It’s not right. But the idea that every act, memory, sensation, emotion has a number while terrifying, is oddly helpful to me. It gives me something to hold on to, a foothold, a way to stop myself from spinning and taking everything for granted. It makes it easier to stop and look and say yes, I’m here.

Believe it or not, there are whole chunks of time when I float along writing whatever it is I write on this blog without getting all freaky deaky about it. Times when I feel like it’s fun for me, maybe fun for a few others, and I don’t give it much thought beyond that. But the thing about a blog is that it’s a solitary endeavor. I just put thoughts and words out into cyberspace and there is no one there to stop me. To check me. To laugh in my face. To go pshh, ya, whatever. I just deck myself out in my own particular brand of crazy and there’s no one to give me the stink eye and send me back to my closet.

I’m the peevish unabomber and like everyone who holes up with their own thoughts for too long, I start to go a little batty. And if you can indulge me in my stretchy metaphor that this blog is a remote, dingy, one room cabin filled with papers, empty cans and beaver pelts, then I dare say you’ll humor me in taking it a bit further and agree that this blog can also be a big, moist yellow batter cake with white buttercream frosting that serenely sits on a cake stand with the songs of angels wafting about it.

And the thing about lonely shanties is that every once in a great while, there’s a knock at the door. 

And the thing about beautiful white cakes is that it’s only a matter of time before a big gleaming knife cuts right through it.

And the thing about this blog, is that from time to time something jars me into realizing that this isn’t all just in my head. That all this crazy talk, all these absurd musings are real, that they’re out there and anyone can read them, giving them an up close and personal tour of the inner workings of my mind.

And then I feel deeply deeply sheepish. So sheepish in fact, that if I were one of those dolls that has another doll under its skirt that you unveil by pulling the skirt over the first doll, then the first doll would be Peevish Mama and the doll under the skirt would be Sheepish Mama. You see?  I’m doing it again. I can’t help myself. I do love those dolls though.

A few months ago, Dash and I were out to dinner with Pipes and his lovely girlfriend Sassy Jewels and Pipes mentioned that his youngest daughter had asked whether she could read my blog. Now I’ve known this little chickie since she was four. She now babysits my kids. I understand that she’s quite a little writer and I adore her. So my reaction was something along the lines of OF COURSE THE FUCK NOT!!! Luckily Pipes was on the same page and I don’t have to worry about corrupting the girl with my ruminations. But it made me stop for a second and take stock. There’s a lot of my “stuff” in here, and it’s not for everyone.

I had a similar reaction in another situation when I ran into my friend La Chilenita walking with her friend. Oh, smiled La Chilenita when she saw me, this is my friend so and so and this is her first baby and I was just telling her about your blog! And I thought, oh dear God! This poor young naive mother will be prematurely and irrevocably tainted with my weary venom! She doesn’t need to know about how it’s all going to unravel for her a few years and kids down the road. Let her enjoy her baby and the smug belief that she’s a good mom. She doesn’t need to know how much she’s going to yell. She doesn’t need to know how much food off the floor she’s going to let her kids eat. She doesn’t need to know how many times she’s going to forget chess club. She doesn’t need to know she will disappoint her kids. She doesn’t need to know she will disappoint herself.

But I eventually shake off the cringe. I tell myself that if it doesn’t resonate with someone, doesn’t catch their interest, they won’t come back. It’s simple, really. Doors are made to be knocked on. Cakes are made to be eaten. Blogs are meant to be read. That is until you get a comment from the Minneapolis Farmers Market where, in simple terse words, they thank you for supporting farmers. Waah? All of the sudden you’re pulling your skirt over your head becoming Sheepish Mama doll again, because, really? Really? Did I really just subject this nameless, faceless, innocent at the Minneapolis Farmers Market to Squash Claw? Oh dear God.

I feel like I haven’t written anything in a while, but I have a really good excuse. It is SUPER hard to type and rub hand sanitizer into one’s hands at the same time. It’s harder than walking and chewing gum. Harder than patting your head and rubbing your belly. It’s also treacherous for the computer. Although come to think of it, this thing is seriously nasty and could use a little Purel sponge bath. It would be delicate work, but I think I could do it. Right about now, Doctor Dash is shaking his head and jumping off the kitchen stool to come find me and make sure I’m not really going to attempt this. Had he just kept reading, he’d learn that I have a better idea, one that doesn’t involve q-tips and a steady hand. I think I’ll just put the laptop on a cookie sheet and bake it in the oven for like five minutes at 350˚. That should take care of the germs, right? Sometimes I really surprise myself with my good ideas. I am a problem solver.

Anyway, you’ll have to excuse my writing hiatus while I’ve turned my attention to the world of microbes. For the last few weeks I’ve been feeling like a sitting duck, just waiting to get hit. It has been a total horror show: kids were dropping like flies at school, mothers were barricaded away in their homes feeling miserable, whispers of week-long fevers swirled around in a fetid stew of rumor, and yet we soldiered on. Every day when the kids came home from school I’d make them wash their hands, knowing full well that whatever germs they had encountered during the day had long ago sashayed through their mucus membranes and were mixing margaritas and grilling hot dogs in some corner of their little bodies. Still. Never hurts to wash your hands, unless by hurt you mean turn your hands into the dry wrinkly digits of an eighty year old woman. Their smudgy prints on my iPhone, which used to be nothing more than a small annoyance now portended illness and misery, which I frantically tried to erase with Clorox wipes and a prayer, only to find one of them playing DoodleJump moments later (thanks Chief Big Voice), starting the vicious cycle all over again.

Incidentally, it’s nice to see that the world has caught up with my life long germ-phobia. Such sweet vindication. I love seeing hand sanitizer every where I go. I never pass a bottle without a little squirt of peace of mind. It’s about time people. For the love of God, can I assume you will all stop touching the paper towel dispensers in public restrooms? Use your elbows. Of course this just means elbows are the new armpits, now that all coughing has been redirected to them. You may be wondering if I’m still going to my Saturday night square dancing gig. Not on your life. I’d sooner blow my nose in a dirty kleenex in the street than do si do with someone’s putrid contaminated elbow. Those days are ovah.

My kids were all sick with a fever this week, but it wasn’t THE FEVAH. I suspect it wasn’t the big pig flu because they were done with it after a day or so. Nevertheless my house sounds like a TB ward and I think we’ll have no choice but to just burn it down when they’ve finished spewing germs everywhere. I’m doomed, of course. How can I not be after a few well placed sneezes in my face? What ever happened to the ah ah ah part of the ah-choo, where you have time to move away, or at least close your eyes? Kids these days. Right to the choo, with no warning whatsoever. I’m doomed.

And yet, big pig still looms. There is no rest for the weary and until I can get my hands on that stupid vaccine for everyone, I can’t do much more than wait. And fret. And sanitize.

Take one.

On one end of the beach is a girl. She’s running with a huge smile on her face, her braces catching the light of the sun, the green rubber bands in her mouth strained to capacity. She’s wearing a plaid kilt, navy and dark green with thin lines of red and yellow, and an oversized white oxford shirt, tucked in only at the front. On her feet she wears knee socks pushed all the way down and loafers with one penny tucked in on heads, one on tails. The girl believes this to be a clever way of beating the odds of life. Under one sock around her ankle is a thick band of multicolored woven friendship bracelets. Months later when she grows tired of them she will cut them off and sew them to the pocket of her jean jacket. She is sporting a formidable lion’s mane of dark permed curls, scrunched to perfection, redolent of Vidal Sassoon styling mousse, bouncin’ and behavin’ as if they have a life of their own. She wears dangly earrings and a gold class ring bearing the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but is otherwise unadorned, save a scrunchy around her wrist. Her face is tan and line free. Everything is either a joke or a drama.

A woman is running toward the girl, if you can even call it running because she hasn’t done any cardio in ages and is a bit winded. Also, she’s wearing tall boots and skinny jeans, neither of which is particularly conducive to the long gazelle-like strides of the girl. No matter, thinks the woman, she’ll get to me eventually, running’s no good for my joints anyway. She watches the girl’s knock-kneed gait, her flailing arms, and wonders when she lost the unselfconsciousness, the joy of pounding the earth with the soles of her feet. Probably on this day, the day that sports died. The woman has gobs of gold jewelry stacked on her wrists and around her neck, some of it real, most of it faux, all of it gaining a certain je ne sais quois by virtue of being piled on in a more-is-more-mish-mosh, or so she thinks. One of the few perks of growing older, she believes, is the freedom to over do it with the jewelry and fur. Subtle, be damned, she thinks as she feebly slogs through the sand. Understated be damned. The woman’s hair is straightish, her future husband having extracted a vow in 1992 that she would never again perm her hair. Her face is no longer tan, no longer line free. Everything is still a joke or a drama, only less so. Or maybe more so.

There is no way to be sure anymore.

One thing and one thing only has brought the girl and the woman to the beach and set them on a collision course for each other: Jay Z’s Young Forever featuring Mr. Hudson.

CUUUUUT! That’s a wrap!

Holy buckets, Jay Z! This song is just TOOOO much! Do you know how much I used to love Alphaville? Do you have any idea how much I had to finagle to get Sister Church (her real name, no joke) to agree to let us sing this for our class ring ceremony Junior year?  Do you know that she made us replace “are you gonna drop the bomb or not” with “are you gonna sing the song or not”? Do you know that we stood in the chapel in our blue blazers and plaid skirts, our arms around each other, singing our hearts out in a teary crescendo until we were all sobbing in a florid display of adolescent group-think copy cat feminine hysteria? No, seriously, it’s true. This kind of stuff happens all the time at Catholic all-girls’ schools. Apparently, we wanted to be forever young, really really bad.

Listen, Jay Z, you better believe I’ve been trying to figure out my fascination with hip hop because, frankly, it’s vaguely unbecoming for a mother of three to drive around in her minivan with heavy base shaking the bumpers, my childrens’ heads, barely visible through the tinted windows nodding in rhythm to some seriously unsavory tunes like a bunch of bored hoods. I actually considered that I might be doing it out of peevishness. That I might be doing it because I like to imagine Lil’ Wayne standing on a corner and the look on his mug when I drive by with a little Mrs. Officer on deck. What’s that you say? Lil’ Wayne is totally down with Minnesota housewives? Good to know. I suspected this went beyond peevishness anyway. 

With this song, you helped me figure it out. Sweet Jay, you have managed to take the addled, melodramatic, swelling synthesizers of my teens, the anthem to long drawn out sighs, daydreaming and feverish journal writing and mash them up with your song (a doozy, by the way, well done). In a genius bit of alchemy, every thing I love about hip hop rose to the top like thick beautiful cream: First of all, it’s collaborative and creative. I love that artists are constantly showing up on each other’s tracks. It actually seems like the norm and I’d love to know how it happens. Do you guys text each other? Dude, I think you introduced me to Santigold with Brooklyn (Go Hard). I love that sampling is one of the building blocks of hip hop – there is nothing like decontextualizing something to give it a brand new shiny veneer, new legs, new life. I love that it’s about beats not tears, stories not drama (for me anyway). And sometimes it’s just about a party, unobscured hedonism. I love that it’s quick and dirty: the fastest way to a good time, to shakin’ my booty, to a laugh and a drink.

When I was a teen, the emotions were big and sweeping and all my synth pop seemed tailored made to wrap me up in a big blanket of ennui, all the better to wallow in. I’m done navel gazing. Now, I’m looking for a little relief from the monotony of emptying the dishwasher, of that umpteenth drive to soccer, of that mountain of clean laundry that needs to be folded. If a song makes me dance in my kitchen with my kids, makes me laugh, makes me blush, makes me lunge at the pause button so my kid doesn’t hear the rest of it, then that song is doing exactly what it needs to be doing for me.

So let’s dance in style, let’s dance for a while. Thanks for the memories, Jay.

I’m not sure why I’m so obsessed with Saint James’ musical maturation, but I am. It’s fascinating to me. Maybe it’s because I was such a late bloomer when it came to music (and admittedly fairly regressive considering the tunes that are passing my ears these days). Or maybe I’m just obsessed with Saint James. He’s just so darn cute – exactly the kind of boy I would have had a crush on in fourth grade: the cute, smart, quiet one. 

The other day I went to pick him up at school and was scanning the school yard, doing a Where’s Waldo of shaggy haired dishwater blond boys, when I spotted him with a little clump of older kids huddled around an iPod. Two of the boys each had one earbud in his ear and the rest were standing by with heads bent toward the ground, listening by osmosis, I suppose. Being the fiendish mother I am, I stopped in my tracks, bit my lip and feeling all gushy and mushy, decided to give him a few more minutes to listen. Or maybe I was giving myself a few more minutes to watch. I never did find out what they were listening to, but wouldn’t I like to know! (You see? Even though I’m a total crazy mother, I’m savvy enough to control myself so he has no idea I’m a crazy mother!)

A few days later I was putzing around the kitchen, Saint James on his perch at the laptop, when I hear a little She Wolf. Aaahh, Shakira! What’s not to love? That girl taps into my basest and most hoochie Latina impulses, the ones that were basically eradicated by virtue of growing up in snowy Michigan as the first born daughter of Argentine parents who had no tolerance for hoochiness. I happened to glance over and realized he was watching the video, not listening on iTunes as I had assumed. I watched for a couple seconds from a distance and Ay caramba sweet sabrosa Maria Magdalena Madre de hoochiness! does Shakira have it going on in this video! I thought I was familiar with her pelvic gifts, but she takes it to a whole other level with the cage and the skin colored leotard. She does this move where she starts on her stomach, holy shit, and ohmyGod you’llknowitwhenyouseeit!

In the past, I’ve been rather blithe about censoring music. I don’t believe in it, mostly because I choose to assume most of it goes over their heads, and when it no longer goes over their heads, then hopefully they’re old enough to understand that it’s entertainment, that it’s part of a whole, that it may represent someone’s truth, but doesn’t have to be their truth. As a prolifically profane person, I take the position that all words should be loved, regardless of what they are and how they are strung together (not true for words of hate and racism, but true for my sweet, sweet cussin’).

But visuals? Visuals are a whole other ball of wax. Watching Shakira gyrate around in her cage, my first impulse was to leap across the kitchen, landing on my side with my chin in my hand in a perfect breakdance denouement, the laptop shutting with a soft click under my deftly placed ass. But I couldn’t. That would embarrass him, maybe make him feel guilty about checking out this Shakira he keeps hearing on the radio. I’m the one who has been encouraging him to explore, after all. Furthermore, if we lived in Argentina (or Brazil, Uruguay or most places in Europe, for that matter), he’d see the likes of Shakira shaking their moneymakers in commercials for everything from yogurt to snow tires. After all, she’s just singing and dancing. Cough, cough. In the few seconds that I stood frozen like a deer in Shakira’s headlights, he clicked out of the video. Had he seen enough? Had it made him uncomfortable? Had it bored him? Had it scared him? I felt like I needed to address it somehow, someway, so that he wouldn’t be left holding a big bag of confusion. So I cleared my throat and plunged right in:

Me: Well! Well! Wooowee! Wow! Some of those South American ladies sure do know how to shake their bootays! Phew! My goodness!

Saint James: . . .

Me: Holy moly! Um. Guacamole. Ya, they have a whole other way of dressing and dancing! Don’tcha think? They are something else. Some of those. Uh. Ladies. Woowie.

Saint James: . . . 

Me: Um, ya. So, ya. I think that everyone’s used to the ladies acting a little crazy down there. Like it’s no big deal to dance so, like, hubba hubba. Er. 

Saint James: . . .

Me: Wooh. That dance is a little much, but I really do like Shakira. She’s got a great voice. She’s from Brazil!

Saint James: Columbia.

Me: . . .

I feel like I’ve been sucker punched by Mother Nature. When fall hits us in Minnesota, it hits us hard. One minute it’s boiling out and I’m marveling at how much my kids stink when they come home from school – sweaty and sticky, the smell of playground, jostling, new friends, and a wee bit of stress clinging to their warm heads. Without the benefit of the pool to wash them off and with the shame of a teacher to smell them, I force them to bathe every night. Sorry, you stink I answer flatly to the groans and eye rolling. They do. Stink.

But seemingly overnight the weather turns, and this week in particular, with the cold driving rain, our noses are rubbed in the mess of Autumn. Get ye inside, Mother Nature seems to hiss as the rain drops pelt my kitchen windows, And like it. 

But I don’t like it. I’m feeling bereft. Unmoored. Discombobulated. I haven’t made peace with the darkness, for one thing. As the daylight retreats earlier and earlier every night, I cower in my kitchen. The drives and drop-offs, the errands, the stuff of life that now need to happen after dark take on a heaviness, a sense of sacrifice. The hour belies the black curtains outside my windows which make me want nothing more than to curl up under a blanket. I glance at the clock, time for bed on the tip of my tongue and wilt: What? It’s only 7:20? 

And soon the cold will come to stay and every move out the back door will require armor, literally and figuratively. Winter is a battle. You suit up and you suit up your underlings with layers of protection against the cruel air. You hunch your shoulders, put your head down, squint, grimace, let out a war cry and run into the danger. Every time. Every time you open the door. It’s exhausting.

And then when you come back in, it’s a whole other kind of carnage: Boots, mittens, hats and coats left for dead all over the mud room floor – a winter massacre in the mud and melting snow. Once I found a pair of snowpants standing straight up, they were so caked in mud. Did I mention we have white tile floors in the mud room? I cannot even begin to understand what kind of a person would install something so monstrously and offensively impractical. Idiots. 

Believe it or not, I actually like many things about winter in Minnesota. As someone who has a near Pavlovian reaction to the sun that makes me race outside and stay there for as long as possible, it’s nice to take a break, to have an excuse to hole up, to feel no guilt for the hours spent indoors. I like fires. I like cooking hot things in big pots. I like living in a city where people refuse to surrender and find joy in every season. I like tiny dancing. Wait, I LOVE tiny dancing. I like scarves. I like tea. I like books. I like boots.

I like winter. In its own time. I’m feeling rushed. Pushed. Bullied. I’m not ready to let go of the ease and the sun, the warmth and the long lazy days, the relative lack of responsibilities and places to be. But what I want doesn’t matter. I need to make peace with the paradox of a busier calendar when we’re supposed to be hibernating, of having to move quicker when I want to slow down.

What I want doesn’t matter. I know what I need to do. I need to get some thick winter blood and some balls. Maybe a cute pair of boots. Winter’s coming. And I best be ready.

We recently discovered that the shower head in our bathroom has two settings: a cleansing, reasonable and perfectly lovely setting and then a wretched, awkward, freaky, horrible setting. One is a proper shower, the other is more a violent sputter – like when you laugh with beer in your mouth and it comes out your nose. Dash likes the latter. And apparently he is not ashamed. He is also impervious to any and all mockery and bullying I can throw his way on the matter.

Every single time I step into the shower, I am taken by surprise by the erratic sputters of water, prodding me like a gangly adolescent boy giant trying to give a back rub to a girl giant at a campfire at the top of the beanstalk. Every time, surprise turns to annoyance. Every time, annoyance turns to incredulousness and I think to myself: OhmyGod, like, for real Doctor Dash? Again? Seriously? I cannot believe this matters enough to go to the trouble to change the setting every single blasted time you get in the shower! UG! Seriously! 

And every time, I change it back.

There seems to be some law of nature that I mustn’t be allowed to sit on my laurels, wallow in any semblance of contentment, cruise along a highway of satisfaction or otherwise exist in a state devoid of neurotic self torture for too long. My last post about traveling soccer was what, two days ago? I was feeling good about sports. I was beaming at my boy’s skills. I was basking in the afterglow of a game well played by my really handsome son with great footwork and even better hair.

But along came Top Dog Hockey Camp to do me in. I was already feeling a bit sheepish and stupid about my kids’ over-scheduled lives. I try like the dickens to weed out extraneous activities and avoid chasing that elusive prize of having the most “well rounded” kid. But I have failed. Miserably. There is, quite literally, no end to all the things a kid can do these days if you have the time, money and inclination to sign’em up. There are wacky building laboratories for blossoming inventors. There are music, theater and dance programs at our top notch and beloved Children’s Theater. There are naturalist and biology classes at myriad nature centers where kids can learn to do field research, monitor and preserve ecosystems and generally muck around and take stewardship of our earth. There are rock camps, art studios, pottery studios and writers’ lofts. And that’s but a tip of the iceberg, not even touching sports!

I believe you can’t do it all. I believe you shouldn’t do it all. I believe kids need time to be bored so they are forced to seek out neighborhood friends, crack a book, climb a tree, color all over their bodies with face paint, make potions in buckets out of mud and sticks. I spent an entire summer concocting perfumes with my friend using petals from her mother’s garden. I believe in idle time, lazy time. I love myself a bit of leisure. I do.

Then how to explain the hour of cringing guilt I spent on the top bleacher of the Augsburg Ice Arena yesterday?

We didn’t put Saint James into “BIG HOCKEY” because that particular year, Devil Baby was a squawling, colicky newborn who had us on the run. As a couple, Dash and I were in total survival mode and taking on what we perceived to be a huge lifestyle commitment just wasn’t in the cards. Doctor Dash had played hockey and loved hockey, so we thoroughly tortured ourselves, but ultimately decided against it. Eventually we found out about  neighborhood park hockey where the kids play for a much shorter season, splitting their games between indoors and out. It seemed a perfect fit for us. Saint James would still learn how to skate and we liked the “pond hockey” vibe of the whole thing. This year Supergirl played too and we had a blast. They’re cute, they look like they’re skating underwater, they score sometimes and when you don’t think about the kids in real hockey, they actually seem pretty good.

Last summer I signed Saint James up for Top Dog Hockey Camp because his buddies were doing it. As luck would have it, he broke his pinky and couldn’t go. So this year, I was determined to use our credit and signed him up again. On the first day I was a little shocked to see how small all the other players were, but it was on the last day, when we got to watch a scrimmage, that I realized what we were dealing with. A self selecting group of campers, these puny babies were skating circles around Saint James. I sat in the bleachers thinking he looked like a retarded giant compared to the rest of them. (Hush now, I said retarded giant, not giant retard – big dif). Saint James never looks like the retarded giant. But he did yesterday. These much younger kids possessed that fluidity and ease that comes from lots and lots of hockey. Beautiful to watch. As opposed to Saint James tripping onto the ice holding the bottom of his stick. Who holds their stick from the bottom?

As I watched with increasing dismay, I felt myself shrinking. Oh God, it’s my fault for being so lazy that I didn’t sign him up for hockey and now he sucks and it’s too late and he must feel so bad being lapped by midgets and why do I even care, this isn’t his sport, but I love hockey, I got the hots for Dash watching him play hockey and now Saint James will always be awkward on the ice which is blasphemous for a Minnesota boy and no one will get the hots for him and it’s all my fault and Devil Baby’s fault and I suck and he sucks and we all suck and oh God get me out of here. 

Sigh. Yes, I know. Psychotic much?

And after it ended Saint James did feel bad. He’s no fool. I didn’t even get to take a shot on goal, he grumped while I helped him get his gear off. I really didn’t know what to say – the kid was right. But as it tends to go with him, the clouds eventually lifted and in the quiet minutes before he went to sleep, he told Doctor Dash that he liked the camp, that it was good overall. Oh, my dear sweet little retarded giant, way to be a trooper.

So I guess I just need to chill out. Lesson learned: it’s OK to suck and play anyway. It’s OK to play for – dare I say it? FUN! As much as I fancy myself to be mellow about my kids “performance,” I suppose I’m not all that far removed from the mothers frantically rouging their daughters’ smooth cheeks for beauty pageants. I want to be mellow, but I am not mellow. I need to chill. The hell. Out.

Every moment is a teaching moment, if you’re a calamatizer. I bought this vase for Doctor Dash’s birthday, but let’s face it, it was one of those gifts that was really for me. I just used his birthday as an excuse to get it. What, after all, does a thirty-nine year old non-gay male need a vase for? I love it. I hate guns, but I love this.

When we took it out of the box, the first thing Supergirl did was point it at her face. No! I jumped. Never, ever, ever, EVER look down the barrel of a gun. EVER . . . Even if the gun is, um, ummmm, a vase.

Apropos of vases, get a load of this sweet thing. You know what it is, don’t you? The first flowers I put in wilted almost immediately. I suppose one can assume tequila is kinder to fauna than it is to flora. Remember to rinse well.

So perhaps I anthropomorphize. A bit. But I think Pingo is pining for his lover. He just hasn’t been the same since Pearl passed. Could it be?