peevish mama

Maybe you’ve already seen this, but I’ve been in spring break unplugged mode and I just stumbled upon it and it made me feel like weeeeeeee! Apparently, the National Geographic Channel actually pulled off recreating a house flight inspired by the movie UP. Check out more pics here. So neat.

So, on a seemingly (but never entirely) unrelated note, yesterday we had no real plans aside from a date with the couch and a US v Argentina friendly soccer game at 6:00 p.m. We had a lazy Saturday morning and I managed to scoot out of the house for a noon yoga class. When I came back, Saint James had a friend over and they promptly took off for the community center down the street to kick a soccer ball around. Good boys. The girls, though, were bored, whiny, bouncing around the house and getting on each other’s nerves and mine. I finally got so exasperated that I kicked them out – it was a beautiful sunny day and they needed to be outside, breathing in the last bits of cold winter air. Go build a school of snow children, I snapped as I shut the door. They stayed out for a while, came back in soaking wet, pink cheeked and smiley, just the way I like ‘em.

Later that night when we were cleaning up after dinner I found a paper magazine subscription insert on the counter. I was about to toss it in the recycling when I saw that Supergirl had meticulously filled the whole thing out. Name, Address, E-mail (made up), Number of Issues – all in neat, tiny, purple letters. I still tossed it, of course, but not without a twinge of guilt. She was so bored, sooooooo bored, that she filled out a magazine subscription card.

But let’s be real, here. I shouldn’t feel guilty. Not at all. We just spent three glorious days in Lutsen with Nanook, Gear Daddy and familia. They got to ski and snowboard their hearts out, bunk up and giggle into the night, feast on all sorts of yummy food, celebrate Nanook’s birthday, watch American Idol with peeps, color, bicker, chat, spy, and generally scamper around a big, cool house while the grown-ups talked, drank, cooked and cast a lenient eye over everything they were doing. It was a blast. What is wrong with coming home from that kind of trip and just chilling out?

If you were to look at my shoulders, you wouldn’t see the devil and angel taking turns whispering in my ear. Instead you’d see Julie McCoy, our fave cruise director, on one shoulder, hatching plans, leading adventures, planning field trips, always thinking of ways to make my kids’ lives more FUN. On the other shoulder you’d see Joan Collins in a silky dressing gown, maribou kitten heels and a very large martini glass muttering that these kids need to learn to occupy themselves. The truth is, I like doing excursions with them because I’m a bit of a “flee the house” kind of a gal. But it’s just that kind of on-the-go life that has made them so intolerable if we ever do want to hang out at home. If they don’t have friends over, they are pretty much guaranteed to be driving me insane. Which makes me yell at everyone and shoo them into the car for – you guessed it – an excursion.

As far as I can remember, my parents didn’t spend all their free time trying to keep us entertained. There were giant swathes of idle time in my childhood, which I filled by reading books and the backs of shampoo bottles, playing Dukes of Hazzards, spying on the neighbor boy and convincing my brother I was a wizard. I know this isn’t anything new, but I wonder what my kids are missing out on by being constantly occupied and entertained. There are so many things that can only be learned with ample time: how to get along, how to love books, how to French braid hair, how to climb trees, how to choreograph dance routines to the entire Grease album and then the entire Xanadu album. I bet the dude who thought of floating that house had lots of idle time in his youth (and she brings it back! bam!)

The way things are going, it seems like our children’s generation, more than any other, is going to find success through knowing how to hustle and being creative. Seems to me, those are just the kind of skills that may be borne of a little boredom. At the risk of sounding like I’m rationalizing my laziness (which, don’t get me wrong, I’m totally comfortable doing), I think I need to be less Julie McCoy and more Joan Collins. And maybe, just maybe, my kids will be better off AND I’ll get to do more of this:

The Summer Day – Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan,  and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention,  how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me,  what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I love this poem. It’s so simple. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. But I do know how to pay attention. I see a pink cheek, small freshly painted blue nails and the twist of  a braid on a late winter’s day and I know to pause and take note.

Is this what I’m supposed to be doing with my one wild and precious life?

I think so.

What will she do with her one wild and precious life?

To ponder that exquisite question too closely or for too long is like staring into the sun. Better, for now, to stick with my moments.

It’s no secret I’m addicted to live music. The more I go, the more I want to go. It’s kind of preposterous, except that it’s not. There are very few things in this world that make me feel so alive (sorry, I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true) and so, like a rat who has figured out which pellet spits out the tasty treat, I keep going back for more. I can feel the top of my head pop open and my heart fly around the room. And I can’t wipe the grin off my face for days. That joy, that juice, it lingers and lingers. The problem (if you can call it a problem) is that we are lucky lucky lucky here in the Twin Cities. It’s so easy to go, really not much more work than going downtown for a meal -you  just wear flats. At certain times of the year it’s actually hard to choose who to see. Obviously, I can’t go every night, or even every week (nor would I want to), but I’m not going to lie, when I pass something up, my mind wanders over to that loud, sweaty space as I’m wrangling the kids to bed and I can’t help but wonder what sort of magic I’m missing out on.

This past couple months I’ve seen some gems – a trifecta of beautiful ladies and then the amazing Fitz and the Tantrums, which you knew about. I’m not going to torture you with my amateurish and annoying reviews, but to the extent that I’m going to be reading this blog when I’m an old biddy, sunning myself on a chaise lounge in Florida like a tawny lizard, I want to get it down. Just so I can say, boy oh boy, have I seen some things, Marco! Did I have some times, Marco! (Marco would be the pool boy). I want to remember, because even right now when I’m living it, sometimes it’s hard to believe.

First up. The queen. The QUEEN! Ms. Lauryn Hill. At First Ave. After all these years. We knew she was going to come on late so we had our sitter come at ten o’clock. Yawning and moaning after the kids were in bed, I was so close to letting myself fade away, but Dash and a little green tea pushed me through. Once inside, she sent out her DJ and wild horses couldn’t have dragged me out of there. Five children later, she’s as incredible as ever. Truly one of my top five shows ever. (Five is an extremely elastic number in my world, but I really mean it this time.)

Then came Dessa. Young, smart, drop dead gorgeous, girl-about-town and CEO of the Doomtree Collective. Big Red, Nanook and I became fans after she curated a hip hop series at the Guthrie and wanted to see her perform. We knew she could rap, we didn’t know she could sing. Boy, can she sing. And she’s really into collaborating, as you’ll see from this clip. We saw her at The Cedar which had partnered with the Jerome Foundation to commission local artists to create and perform new work together. Really cool. She’s brainy, wordy, sexy and funny. What’s not to love?

And last but certainly not least was Robyn, the pint size powerhouse from Sweden. Thank you to Rosalita for spearheading this adventure. And when I say adventure, I mean adventure. She, Nanook and I were instantly engulfed in the happiest, gayest First Ave crowd I’ve ever experienced. She’s a little Madonna (but with a good voice), a little Gaga (without the theatrics), a little Gwen Stefani, a little Pink. And not for nothing, Europeans have such a different sensibility with regards to what it means to be sexy. She’s as sexy as the day is long, but sexy like Bjork: smart, empowered, unique sexy. Quirky sexy. Some of our artists could take a page out of her book, fo sho. She’s a fiesty, kick-ass pixie and I could have watched her and danced with the gays all night. She is phenomenal – total electronica, 80’s pop, and it’s infectious. We got the fever and spent another happy, silly, dancy few hours at the Saloon afterwards with Rosalita’s hilarious hair posse. Top five, people!

And finally, Fitz and the Tantrums. Talk about lingering joy. They were SO GOOD. Thank you to Creeper Bud for turning me on to them and insisting that it was not an option to miss this one. I would drop everything to see them again. Only next time I suspect it won’t be at Bunkers. Lucky us. Lucky, lucky us.

Now where’s that Marco with my drink?

So I realize that as of late you’ve been getting mere crumbs here at Peevish. I’ve been holding out on you, keeping a bit of a secret this winter. You might know about it if you read the beef jerky recipe, but I realize that dehydrated meat is kind of a niche interest and I won’t take it personally if you didn’t. You see, along with my other New Year’s resolutions , I also promised myself I would learn how to snowboard this winter. Except, unlike those other resolutions, this was a promise I made to myself with quaking knees and more than a little trepidation. Frankly, I hadn’t learned a new trick in a really long time and I was scared. I was scared I would get hurt, scared I would fail, scared I’d be driving myself home from my first lesson with snow down my pants and my tail between my legs. That’s why I didn’t want to write about it. I didn’t want to jinx it. I didn’t want to widen the audience that would be privvy to my totally sucking.

But I did it. I learned. Every time I go out, I get better. I can honestly say it was one of the most challenging things I have ever done. I am really proud of myself – like puff out my chest and strut my tail feathers proud – make the sign of the horns and yell AWWWWWHAAA proud. Law school, babies, knee surgery, you name it – I am most proud of myself for learning how to snowboard. It was as much a mental game as a physical one for me, especially at first. Every time I drove to the hill, my heart pounded in my chest and a repeating loop of Wile E. Coyote-esque crashes and wipe-outs played out in my head. Every time I slid off the chairlift for my first run of the day, I was convinced the snow was slipperier than the last time, that the trees were jumping around, trying, just trying to take me out. And don’t even get me started on the freaking children – whole hoards of school kids littering the hill, getting in my way and generally causing me to eeek and panic at every turn.

But here’s what I learned: I learned that if you tell your crazy brain to fuck off and just keep going, your body miraculously starts to do the right thing. By some magic stored deep in our muscles and nerves, it starts to stick, it starts to work. Now I go around the kids if I have to. I dig the slippery snow. I have a renewed faith in my physical self. In the past, I’ve written about going from feeling invincible as a girl to utterly betrayed when I blew out my knee at 17. I don’t think I ever really recovered from that. I have been walking through this world carefully, defensively – but no more. Snowboarding is empowering and exciting and it’s all mine. I did it. I did it! Me!

Here’s what else I learned: It’s frigging fun to go fast on your own juice. To skiers and snowboarders, wake boarders, kite boarders, surfers and all those other ers out there, this is a ridiculously obvious statement. But when is the last time I went fast? On my bike? It’s fun, but not like this. People, there is NOTHING like carving down a hill. NOTHING like it. Goddamn! It makes me want to yell profanities and pump my fist in the air. It turns out that buried in the body of this 40 year old woman lives a randy 15 year old boy. Hossing down chicken fingers covered in ketchup and Cholula hot sauce in the car after snowboarding = TOTAL BLISS. For real.

And here’s yet another thing I learned: You never know when you’re going to make a friend. When I took my lessons at the beginning of January, I never considered that I might meet someone. But I did. Her name is Shreddy Betty. She’s a mom of two boys, one tough cookie, a bit of a danger grrrl and as crazy about our new little hobby as I am. We make plans by text and meet up after the kids have gone to school to play on the slopes. We call each other dude and pump fists after a good run and laugh and laugh. We laugh a lot. Because what’s not funny about snowboarding mommies? We both bought boards a few weeks ago and are figuring out how to tame these spirited fillies, so much faster and more sensitive than the rental beasts we were riding before. It’s always a blast and we’ve been out in some crazy-ass weather: 10 degrees below with the windchill, but as sunny as a lemon ice pop one day; 35 sweltering degrees that turned the snow into quick sand and a pile of laughs the next.

So there you have it, the reason for the crumbs. Even on the days when I woke up frothy to write, I’d come back from snowboarding feeling completely sated and quiet. And I just couldn’t find the words to write about my biggest news. I was too freaked, too blown away, too smitten.

Still am.

It’s fun, man. So much fun.

Doctor Dash says I’m a smiler. I don’t do it intentionally and it’s not necessarily because I have anything approaching a sunny disposition. I think it’s kind of a default setting for my face. And I can’t help but look askance at this particular default setting because, at 40, I’ve started to think about smile lines and such. I’ve got ‘em. Oh baby, I’ve got ‘em. Sometimes I actually force my face out of a smile when I’m driving because why on earth do I need to be smiling when I’m by myself in the car? Just because I like the music? Ridiculous. And think of the wear and tear on my face! Actually, I don’t mind crows feet on people – I think they are kind of sexy, a sign of good livin’, big laughs and high times. Those marionette lines around the mouth, though – oof, not such a fan and unfortunately smiles bring those babies on too. But this wasn’t meant to be a post about wrinkles and Botox.

No, the other thing I’ve noticed about smiling is that I respond really strongly to smiles. On two occasions over the past few years, women whom I had presumed to be unfriendly turned out to be fabulous, wonderful, sweet-as-pie mamas once I got to know them. They just aren’t smilers. Hell, my very own husband isn’t a huge smiler. In fact, that’s why the Babe-o’s and I referred to him as The Asshole until we got to know and love him. Never in a million years would I have thought myself primitive enough to require the baring of chimp teeth in order to recognize someone as friend, not foe. But there you go. I guess I need those chimp teeth. I am nothing but a primitive smiling chimp. Not that chimps are primitive. They are AWESOME.

This article in the NY Times about the states of mind that produce smiles and what allows people to parse the meaning behind smiles is fascinating. To me, anyway. And if you see me grinning to myself in the car, do me a favor and just give me a honk to remind me to cut that shit out.

It’s time for Tiny Dancing. High time for Tiny Dancing! The lake is one hundred percent frozen and maybe, just maybe, the winter blue blahs (that sounds like blue balls, heh) are starting to scratch at your door with pale skinny fingers. If you need a perk up, and I know you do, grab your iPod and make a beeline for the center of your lake of choice. Mine is Harriet and dear, sweet, lovely Harriet brought me more than a touch of peace yesterday. It was cold as all hell, but I was in a Sunday funk, so off I went. I couldn’t believe mine were the only footsteps out there. I felt like a bedecked and beswaddled Robinson Crusoe. All alone in the middle of our little city, save the ice fishermen, free to do as I please on a gorgeous white expanse of wind swept snow.

Come on, people! This is new ground! Found ground! A place to go that you can only get to for a couple months out of the year, its solidity completely belying its true ephemerality. That alone is reason enough to go, no?

As if unfettered, outdoor, hidden-in-plain-sight dancing weren’t reason enough.

Post script: Don’t be alarmed by how close I look in this pic. Dash took it last year and I’m sure the zoom was involved. Plus I’m not really in the middle – just bustin’ a couple moves on my way.

According to Devil Baby, sometimes babies drop out of God’s pocket and fall into ladies’ bellies and then they are born by shooting out of ladies’ butts. Only sometimes though. If they don’t fall out of God’s pocket, they just shoot out of ladies butts. Spontaneously. Which means that chances are good that with all these babies dropping out of pockets and getting shot out of butts, you could get hit, so take appropriate precautions, is all I’m saying. And all of this simply because Devil Baby’s school had an author come in to read and sign books and said author is with child, igniting Devil Baby’s curiosity and imagination. When I asked her who told her about this pocket business, she said it was Supergirl. Sigh.

Remember when Jamie Lynn Spears got knocked up and I was trying to figure out how to explain the whole debacle to Supergirl? Well, I found this series of books by Robie Harris and I think they are wonderful. When I sat down to read it with Supergirl and Saint James, however, Supergirl scampered off in short order, uninterested in or unable to digest the topic. Saint James, on the other hand, loved it. It felt so familiar and normal to be reading a book together, shoulder to shoulder, that it completely mitigated any awkwardness or wondering how to phrase things on my part. He was genuinely interested, curious and amused by the (admittedly) preposterous sounding facts of life.

My little conversation with Devil Baby was a good reminder that I not only need to purchase the next book in the series to read with Saint James, but I need to revisit the first one with the girls. This time Supergirl will probably sit through it and Devil Baby will scamper off, but such is the process I think. Pass the knowledge along, bit by bit, but come back to it often. In the meantime, helmets and parasols to protect from those flying babies.

Atticus to Scout:

“First of all,” he said, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view -”

“Sir?”

“- until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

We just read (or re-read, in most cases) To Kill a Mockingbird in book club. When we picked it a few months ago, I knew I would go to the third floor of my house and find the ragged paperback I had read when I was in sixth grade. This book has survived countless moves across the country and more importantly, my periodic book purgings. The pages are yellow, the spine is cracked, there is a piece of tape over the inside cover page and it is filled with highlighted passages and my little twelve year old notes, penciled in bubbly letters. Inside the front cover, my name is crossed out and Maestro de Bife’s name written below, he having read my copy when I was away at college. I had no idea my book had been in such peril, in the hands of my adolescent brother. He is either kind to books, or didn’t read it.

I’ve been reading the book for a couple weeks, sort of taking my time with it and savoring it. My little notes are distracting in a very sweet way. It’s hard not to stop and read the definitions I had so earnestly written in the margins: for protruded: thrust out, for tirade, long outburst, for viscous, thick, for druthers, choice. It was the first novel we read in Language Arts class and the first time I wielded a highlighter. I remember wrinkling my nose at my friend Sweet Sue drawing a rectangle around a passage and coloring the whole thing in with her highlighter. Surely, line by line was the proper way to highlight. There are even a few spots with liquid paper carefully dabbed on the pages where I had changed my mind about something I wrote.

This book has lived vividly in my imagination as much because of the beautiful, compelling and humorous work of literature that it is, as for its symbolic position of being the book that really taught me how to read. I had been a bookworm for a long time, chewing through books at breakneck speed, but this is the first book I remember reading in the active sense: carefully, with attention and some sense of rigor.

Reading it again, holding that same copy in my hands, I felt like I had slipped into some secret tunnel straight back to my youth. At one point we were talking about Maycomb and the freedom that Jem and Scout had to roam around the town. Lady Crow Call said, You guys, it was just so fun to be a kid! We all remember that feeling of running around our “perimeter”, knowing like the back of our hand the best climbing trees and hiding spots, the dark spots (Boo Radley’s house), the light spots (Miss Maudie’s house) and all the well worn paths in between.

All you really needed for an adventure was to open your back door and find your best neighborhood friend standing there, barefoot and ready to go. The freedom, both physical and psychic, that we all had as children, allowed us to rub up against the edges, dip our toes into the scary stuff. And if it wasn’t really scary, we made it scary. I wonder now, if part of the magic of our childhoods might have had something to do with the fact that they were laced with a small amount of fear, that delicious frisson of the dark and unknown. (Of course, I’m not talking about real fear stemming from abuse, war or other atrocities that some children face – that’s a whole other ball of wax and there is nothing magical or redeeming about those situations.)

For me, and for Scout, mundane terrors loomed large. A highly active and colorful imagination and an early penchant for calamatizing kept me on my toes – running up the basement steps, checking under the bed at night, holding my breath as I passed cemeteries in the car. I was afraid of being embarrassed, carrying my lunch tray like it was the holy grail, so sure was I that I would die of shame if I ever dropped it. I was afraid of our neighbor named Hank and his giant dog, who I was convinced would maul us to bloody bits. I was afraid of the infirm woman who lived behind us and used to conduct stake-outs from atop our swingset, waiting for her to pass by a window or, horror of horrors, come out into the yard. My biggest fear was that my mother would die, like ALL the mothers in ALL the shows we watched in the seventies (seriously, what is up with that? Think about it! Eight is Enough, The Love Boat, The Brady Bunch, Nanny and the Professor, My Three Sons, Family Affair, Diff’rent Strokes!)

I felt a twinge of compassion for my younger self as I was reading this book, for the innocent, ignorant, impressionable and scared little girl I was. I remember the pit in my stomach and the anxiety, but I’m pretty sure my parents didn’t know. By all accounts, I was normal, if kind of mouthy and moody. I don’t think anyone knew when I was scared. That was me, but a different me and until I re-read this book, kind of a forgotten me. I think children carry around a significant amount of fear, just by virtue of being children and not entirely in control of their destinies. To remember that, to climb into the skin of a child and walk around, as Atticus would say, is a really lovely thing to do, especially when that child was yourself.

Four Monkeys by Andy Warhol 1983

It’s one of my many New Year’s resolutions. I’m sitting here in the sunroom on a sunny, frigid Sunday morning and I hear a rooster. Why do I hear a rooster? To my knowledge, we don’t own a rooster. But such is life with little kids. Now they are fighting. Apparently rooster sounds are annoying to the non-rooster types in the family.

When will I not find a plastic chicken drumstick under my pillow? When they are grown. When will I not find pink socks in my coat pocket? When they are grown. When will I stop catching rejected mouthfuls of food in my palm? When they are grown. When will I not have to clean the banana smoothie I just made out of the radiator? When they are grown. When will my phone be where I left it? When they are grown.

When will I get to stop doing giant mountains of laundry? When will I get to stop cutting up apples? When will I stop impaling the soles of my feet on the legs of plastic horses?  When will I stop reminding practice piano, brush your teeth, grab your lunch, hat, coat, backpack, clarinet? When will I stop hearing “mommy” a million times a day?

When they are grown. Which I most definitely do not want. Not yet. So I will embrace it. All of it.

By some miracle, I have found a few minutes to myself. And by a few minutes, I really do mean a few minutes. Soon Doctor Dash and the kids will stomp through the back door and I’ll jump up to find out how Dash fared on his first ski outing in 25 years. Devil Baby will inevitably yell I’m doooo oooone! from the toilet in her melodious husky voice. I don’t have time for this. I have presents to wrap and chimichuri to make. I could be setting the table for tonight or even folding the heaping basket of clean laundry lurking in the basement. But I’ve just got this glowy peaceful feeling in my chest and I want to catch it.

A few days ago a dear friend of mine handed me three knitted washcloths tied up with a ribbon when they came over for dinner. I clutched them to my chest because I knew exactly what they were. Her mother, suffering from severe memory loss, knits and knits, cranking out five washcloths every day. If my friend’s mom is anything like my friend, I know she must find much peace and comfort in the doing – allowing her fingers to be active and completing something tangible when every thing else might seem confusing or muted. They are so very beautiful and I’m touched and honored to have them since I know it’s not easy for my friend to give them up. The next morning I laid them out on the dining room table while the kids were having breakfast and I my coffee. I couldn’t help touching them, admiring the neat stitches and rereading the stunning Maya Angelou quote attached to the ribbon: . . . people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel . . .

My kids were very curious, wanting to know the story, if she could recognize anyone, who got her the yarn etc. and took turns checking out the washcloths, each handling them exactly as I might have expected them to. Saint James tossed it in the air and caught it a few times, like a pizza, Supergirl bent her head to study the stitching, Devil Baby rubbed it on her face and then put one on her head like a beret. Handmade objects have a special magic anyway, but so much more when they are an actual physical embodiment of a mind that has been plunged into mystery. They are little pieces of my friend’s mom and I can’t help thinking she is continuing her narrative, in her way, stitch by stitch, row by row, and sending it out into the world.

We all know sometimes things are so beautiful it hurts: a sunset, the face of a lover or a child in a certain light, snow coated branches, a song. I wonder if the opposite is true? That sometimes things hurt so much they become beautiful. I don’t know the answer to that. Perhaps that would be too convenient. But it is what I wonder as I look at my three perfect washcloths.

Merry Christmas, my friends. Hold your loved ones close and enjoy this beautiful holiday weekend.

Remember Saturday morning when I was all kinds of foul weather swagger? Well, Mama Nature brought it. And I, for one, was impressed. I don’t even know what we totaled in the end, but it was a lot. There were snow drifts the size of glaciers, kids getting swallowed up whole in the middle of the lawn. I spent all day watching cars get stuck in the street. Doctor Dash was out snow blowing for three hours. It was tremendous. And tremendously fun. When I set off with Lady Tabouli to go to Lady DK and Doctor Mister Lady DK’s holiday party on foot, we looked like Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton’s hos, so beswaddled and begoggled were we. We either had to tightrope walk in the few existing tire tracks, or post hole up to our thighs in the snow, and we did both, for about an hour, laughing in white puffs of air the whole way. Yes, this storm was a doozy. A good one. The best in a while. But then after a lovely, cozy, relatively snowbound weekend, we got two (count ‘em TWO) more snow days – as in, days off of school.

As my friend Lady DK says, My kids are lovely people, but . . .

I think we’re in the clear, but I say that as I knock on wood with all the knuckles of both hands and feet. That’s TWENTY knuckles, mother fuckers! It is dangerous to underestimate the louse. You need to go in hard. Like a psycho. And you need to keep at it, day after day, like a psycho marathoner. Endurance is key. I think Doctor Dash would agree that I was indeed a psycho last week, and as I breathe my first few tentative sighs of relief (With the wood knocking! With the wood knocking!), I realize that this battle was not without its casualties – namely, my sanity and the signature blond pouf.

How else can I explain the fact that I paid $22 for a hard cover book called 100 % Official Justin Bieber: First Steps 2 Forever: My Story? I was at the bookstore buying this, when Supergirl approached clutching the Bieber tell-all to her chest. I totally don’t want this at all, she blurted, but (Devil Baby) would want this so bad. What is it with my children and their inability to admit love for the Bieber? I can totally admit I love Justin Bieber. So far Devil Baby and I are the only ones who will come clean, but I know there is more love for that young teen nugget in this house. I know it. Since I am understanding and benevolent and INSANE, I said If you read it to her, I’ll buy it. And now we own it. If you want to borrow it, just let me know. I should be done with it any day now.

Further proof that I have lost my mind? I can’t stop buying accoutrements for our new Halloween Spooky Town that I’ve set up in the dining room. WHAT is my problem? These Lemax collectibles are NOT MY THING. In fact, before the lice, I would have sworn on my life that NO collectibles were my thing. But look at me! I have been to Michaels three times looking for the Dreaded Zeppelin with the mechanical spooky blimp that spins around. I want it. I want it so bad. I HATE Michaels, with its smell of cinnamon, vanilla and craft-loving old lady – it’s like Mrs. Claus is  standing in front of a fan and waving her skirt at us. Bluh. But the collectibles are all half price, you see? And, well, the kids are only young once and they love our Spooky Town, right? And I really do love Halloween. So, so, so much. And also, I am not well. Not well at all.

And if it weren’t enough that my sanity is gone, gone also (and arguably more tragically) is Saint James’ signature blond pouf. Panicked with having to pour through several pounds of hair (this family has A LOT of hair), we asked Saint James if we could buzz him. He acquiesced rather than submitting to hours of my nitpicking and sighing and belly aching and now he looks like this:
Beautiful, no? But you know me and my unhealthy love for THE HAIR. This is the first time in his life he has ever had it short and lately we had a good thing going because he and I sort of banded together on the hair thing and we would shut down Doctor Dash whenever he suggested a haircut. It wasn’t just me loving the locks – Saint James loved them too! And I would say to Dash with a cavalier swish of my wine glass, Oh, please, who cares about hair? Respect the lad’s wishes. He’s entitled to have an opinion about his own hair. Let him be. Let him be. La-di-da. Di da. Who cares about hair . . .

Although he looks like a handsome devil and I can see the soft skin on his temples for the first time in ten years, I am bereft. I know hair grows but something tells me he’s going to like it this way and that I’m not going to see da pouf around these parts for a very long time. If ever. So let’s take a moment to say our good byes to the golden pouf. I thought better of putting together a montage set to music for fear it would seem strange, so I leave you with the pictures below. The golden pouf was in rare form a mere two weeks ago at the NSC Cup – extra golden, extra poufy, barely contained by the gigantic bandana. Sigh. Good times . . .

At this time last week, I was a naif. A rube. A foolish, frivolous little woman. I did things like cook and read. Sometimes I went to yoga. Ha, ha, heh, heh, YOGA! Imagine that. Sometimes I even watched shows on TV. Oh, and I did all sorts of other indulgent stuff like open mail, look out the window, shave my legs, and eat yogurt. One time, I even shopped for boots online. I looked at a bunch. It took a while. What an indolent innocent, I was. What a fool.

Little did I know that in a matter of hours I would discover that something sinister and foul, tiny and insidious, had crossed the threshold of our home and taken up residence in the heads of the people I love the most. That’s right. Believe it. We had – I can’t even say it. We had . . . cough cough . . . it rhymes with mice. Oh, I’m not ashamed. It’s everywhere right now. No. I am SHELLSHOCKED. I have never worked this hard in my life. My hands and nerves are raw and cut up. I am battle weary, bone weary, way past the point of sceeve and reason. I am angry. I am wrung out and scarred.

I am exhausted.

And yet, though it defies belief, I discovered that it is possible to love your children more than you did. There is still unchartered territory in the heart, more room to step into, to turn around and look from a different perspective.

It is a simple truth: when you look at every hair on your child’s head, you love him or her even more.

Now excuse me while I go dig an underground swimming pool in my back yard, fill it with vodka, and jump in. Whether or not I put cement blocks on my ankles, I have yet to decide.

Photo by Devil Baby

I have been thinking a lot about happiness and hope lately. I think people think I’m much more of an optimist than I really am. I’m not. I’m actually quite cynical. Once, I stumbled upon the term “a Russian soul” and I had a shiver of recognition. I’m not Russian, but I’ve read enough Russian literature to know: I’ve got a Russian soul. Subject to melancholy, a worrier, glass half empty, prone to fits of pique. You know the type. Maybe you are the type. But I don’t want to be the type, hence the perpetual noodling.

Life is short and a failure to see the beauty and count your blessings is actually, when you think about it, a careless act of cruelty. To yourself. But it’s so hard to be positive and present, right? And therein lies the rub. It’s kind of emblematic of the human condition. Or maybe that’s too sweeping. It’s emblematic of my condition – let’s leave it at that. We’ve talked about this before, many times. It’s a preoccupation of mine because despite my Russian soul, I want to be happy. I try to be happy. Every day, I start over, and my level of success is sketchy, at best.

At book club, during an intense and difficult discussion of The Road, the Ladies wondered how the protagonist was able to keep going, or why he bothered to keep going when nothing he could perceive with his senses or imagine with his rational mind would lead him to believe that there was anything worth living for. Quite the contrary, the danger to which he was exposing himself and, more poignantly for our book club, his son, should have outweighed any naive spark of hope he had stoking in his heart. And yet he continued on. When many others had chosen not to, he did. Is it a defining characteristic of a person to have this hope, this will to push forward, whatever the cost? Why did some, quite understandably given the circumstances, choose to opt out of the devastation, the evil, the horror that the world had become? We wondered about ourselves, what would we have done? It’s impossible to know, from the comfort of Lady Pretty Twigs’ warm and comfy living room.

On Friday night I went out with Creeper Bud and Hot Breeches to see Jamie Lidell at the Cedar. (He deserves a separate gushing music post and I will do it if I have time, but for now, suffice it to say that this vaguely nerdy British white boy has seriously got it going on.) Our night was the best kind of sandwich: a wildly entertaining soulful and booty shaking concert stuffed between two great meandering beery chats. At one point after the show we were talking about global warming and the general “hell in a handbasket” status quo (ya, I know, why, right?) and how it’s hard not to feel completely dejected about everything. Hot Breeches nodded knowingly and said, Ya, but you just can’t let yourself go there. And it’s true, we can’t. We’ve got children to care for and lunches to make. We’ve got lives to live.

I realized then and I said to my sweet companions that I think that I gravitate toward things that are beautiful or funny or whimsical or enlightening as a reaction to the dark. When I see something that strikes a happiness chord in my chest, I go after it, like a dog after a squirrel. I chase and dig and bark. I find out more about it, take a picture and put it on my blog. It is my attempt to fight the part of myself that sits, legs dangling, over a chasm of despair. These are some bad times, environmentally, economically, morally, religiously (Catholic church, I’m looking at you!), and I don’t see enough evidence that the things that need to happen to make things better are happening. But on a micro level, in day to day life, there is plenty that gives me hope. I just have to keep my eyes open.

I took this picture a couple weeks ago. I saw this sign on my walk and went back with my camera later because I was so touched by it. I was struck not only by how lucky we are to live in a city where 1. people are actually around and 2. people will actually help, but also by this individual’s need to reach out and offer his or her thanks to those people; enough to compose a letter, print it out, cover it in plastic, put it on a stick and stake it firmly in the grass. It gave me hope.

This blog, Peevish Mama, started out as a place to bitch, to vent, to put my mommy angst. I wanted to redirect my frustration and ire away from my brood and into the ether. But when I look at my “peeves” category versus my “pleasures” category, I’m surprised by the difference. You want to know the score?  Peeves: 24 Pleasures: 86. Not bad for a peevish mama with a Russian soul. I guess.

And now for a bit of happiness, here’s a little Jamie Lidell for your viewing pleasure.

Thanks to a fortuitous bit of timing, I was able to meet The Wishing Tree Lady yesterday and she couldn’t possibly be more lovely. But I just as easily could have missed her, had I lingered at home just a bit longer. A little bit of kismet, I think. We were all comfortably ensconced in the backyard after school, enjoying this gluttonous string of fantastic weather: Supergirl on the monkeybars, Saint James drilling balls into his rebounder, Devil Baby sweeping leaves, Doctor Dash and I sipping adult beverages. I wasn’t going anywhere, except that earlier, I had promised Supergirl I would take her to the wishing tree after school and she was holding me to it. I decided we would make a break for it, just the two of us, but Devil Baby got wind of our plans and insisted on coming. I sighed, looking longingly at my wine and my chair. Forget shoes, just hop in the car, let’s go, quick.

When we got there, there was a cluster of people around the tree, including a woman cutting down the wishes. There were no more paper tags. Supergirl’s eyes filled with tears and she started walking back to the car. I called her back. Surely there was a way for her to add her wish. The woman with the scissors found a couple blank sides that Supergirl could reach to write on. It’ll still count, I whispered. I waited for Supergirl, reading more wishes and listening to the gentle chatter around me. A man who had apparently stopped to ask about the tree and ended up helping to cut wishes handed me a pair of scissors: It’ll help them come true if you help. He smiled and continued on. Maybe so, I thought. I held the scissors in my hand and looked around. The sun was setting over Lake Harriet, Supergirl was reading wishes, Devil Baby had made a friend (a cute little dark haired boy who turned out to be the Wishing Tree Lady’s son) and suddenly there was no better place in the world to spend the next ten minutes. I started to snip. So, is this your project? I ventured.

It turns out that the wishing tree is part of a bigger project, specifically, The Hokey Pokey Project, which The Wishing Tree Lady, also known as Deb, also known as Mrs. Hokey Pokey (to me, anyway), has undertaken with the simple goal of making people smile. Every week for one year, she will pull together some cool thing in a public space to that end. She’s doing it for the smiles, but also to teach her children “that they can be a source of joy for friends, acquaintances and strangers . . .” My God. Can you imagine what this world would be like if we all did this? She calls it a “modest” project, but when you think of the implications, the symbolism, it’s huge. Especially now, when everything can seem so bleak. And if you think of the ripple effect, there is no way to know how this could turn out. I am smitten by the concept of putting something into motion which then takes on a life of its own.

As for the hundreds upon hundreds of wishes, Deb says she wants to spread them out on her sidewalk, count them and read them. There are at least 400 but likely many more because when the tags ran out, people started writing on the backs of tags and even on leaves. Incredible. She promises they won’t be thrown away but she’s still not sure what she’s going to do with them. Maybe they’ll resurface in some way shape or form as the Hokey Pokey Project evolves. Check out her blog and keep your eyes peeled for more joy to come.

And if you have the good fortune to meet Mrs. Hokey Pokey, make sure to thank her.