peevish mama

Often, when I walk around my beloved Lake Harriet, I think of the Wim Wenders movie, Wings of Desire. Ah, ring a bell? If you were like me, you would have shuffled into an art house or slipped in a VHS tape circa 1991, when movies were films and you had time and emotion to burn. Maybe you held your boyfriend’s hand, shifting elbows and fingers to find the clasp that felt like two puzzle pieces locked in place. You would have been blown away by this beautiful dark German film and then talked about it, earnest and teary, hunched over beers in a loud bar, feeling separate, special and immune for the emotional and artistic journey you had just taken. It would have underscored what a compelling medium cinema could be, how challenging and gorgeous and smart, in the right hands, with the right story – almost better than books and music. For a few years anyway. Until you got over yourself, ditched the metaphorical beret and really got down to the business of living for someone other than yourself. Movies were a way to try on other lives, try on other truths, all so very important to a young woman trying to figure herself out. Wings of Desire was about an angel who was weary. As he walked around the sooty gray urban landscape, he could hear people’s thoughts. The words, sounding like papery whispers, would flood him and the burden of so many voices, so many worries and desires, was taking its toll on the angel.

This has always stayed with me. It’s easy to forget that each and every person we pass has their own internal monologues running through their heads. They have private thoughts and preoccupations that are given body and pulled into long swirling strands by words, silent words. When I circle the lake, I’m usually by myself and my mind is on fire. I daydream, I analyze, I remember, I imagine, I plan, I brainstorm, I wonder, I decide, I vow, I fret, I exhalt. I take epic journeys forward and back in time. I think about the angel’s burden, the burden of being privy to all of this and I wonder: the woman walking with her head bent slightly to the left, what is she thinking? What if we could hear each other’s thoughts?

Yesterday I stumbled on this tree of wishes at the lake and I was captivated. Flicking gently in the wind are all those voices I wonder about. I stopped and read a few, and then a few more, and then a few more. I couldn’t stop. I don’t know who started it, but people are responding. They are responding with whimsy, with pain, with pleading, with wide-eyed hope, with pragmatism, with honesty. As I read, I could hear the whispers: I wish my mother would stop fighting with my brother. I wish for a clean bill of health at my next check up. I wish for a dog. I wish for equal rights for all regardless of race or sexual orientation. I wish for world peace. I wish for lots of snow this winter. I wish K would propose to me. I wish for our cancer journey to be short and our outcome to be a miracle. I wish for my baby to be healthy. I wish for a happy marriage and lots of babies. I wish for more lake friends. I wish that I get divorced and have my kids 90 % of the time. I wish for love, happiness, success and confidence for my child. I wish my knees would stop hurting. I wish. I wish. I wish.

In case you’re wondering, she wishes for dolphins to swim in the lake.

And me? Well, only the tree and the air and anyone listening to the whispers can know.

the only thing to do is sit on the steps and cry, offering up your sorrows to the dark and patient trees.

This morning when I opened the lap top after the kids had gone to school, their last google query popped up. It said: is t.i. in jail again? In case you were wondering, not that you were wondering, the answer is yes. Yes he is.

And to my children, with your plaintive little google search and Cindy Lou Who eyes: best you figure it out now, T. I. is a thug. You can like him, you can like his music, but he’s a thug. Come to think of it, I think we need to talk about jail too, because all jails are not like the one we saw on the side of the road in Wisconsin when we went hiking. That jail looked kinda nice, right? All those prisoners sort of milling around, enjoying the sunshine in comfy chambray shirts – it almost looked like a picnic for carpenters or something. That’s not what jails are like. Not at all.

Sometimes I think raising kids is all about minor corrections in misperceptions. But I’m definitely guilty of being an over-corrector. I think there is some benefit to letting them muddle about in confusion to a certain degree. They don’t need every little thing explained to them, do they? Maybe, in some cases, we just let them figure it out. Maybe going to jail twice speaks for itself.

And a chestnut on the sidewalk? Sometimes that speaks for itself too. There is nothing – no acorn, no sock, no stuffed animal, no rock, no Barbie – that can remain in St. James’ path without him having to kick it. And kick it again and then try to dribble it. I don’t even think he realizes he’s doing it. The other day he was kicking my brand new t-shirt with the tags on across the floor of my bedroom.  When I yelled at him to stop he looked surprised – like I had interrupted him while he was shredding thru Real Madrid’s defense. On Sunday he kicked a dog turd that was lurking on the sidewalk and got it all over the front of his new indoor soccer shoes. As he dragged his toe on the grass to clean it off he sheepishly admitted he had kicked it on purpose. Nasty? Check. Hilarious? Check. Lesson? Check. Now he knows that just because it walks like a chestnut and talks like a chestnut, doesn’t mean it is a chestnut. You just can’t kick everything in your path. But damn, over-corrector or not, had I seen that chestnut, I never would have let him kick that chestnut.

So I’m driving Devil Baby home from preschool and she says: Oh… My… God… Mom. We got popsicles for Reed Sprinkle’s birthday and it was, like, sooooooo amazing. For whatever reason, I lowered the rear view mirror to catch a glimpse. Maybe because she sounded so old and tweeny, to settle the incongruence between the voice and the face. Or maybe because she was amusing me. Or maybe it was that Reed Sprinkle that caught me. Reed Sprinkle? Whatever the case, without thinking, I lowered the mirror and there we were – framed together in a small telling rectangle. Belied by her words, her face is still the face of a baby – creamy round cheeks and shining eyes. I, on the other hand, well, not so much.

It’s odd to catch a glimpse of yourself live, especially next to the poster child for youth. There is something unsettling about seeing yourself when you’re not looking at yourself – like those video cameras in stores that you don’t know about until you see yourself, shockingly haggard, on a grainy monitor. But these surprise sidelong glimpses must represent the truth, no? At least more of a truth than when you actually look in the mirror, sending alarm bells to your unconscious which mercifully calls forth teams of tiny men in pastel leotards with “denial“ calligraphied across their taught rumps to leap about our minds unfurling long bolts of gauzy sheer fabric to soften the blow and shroud the truth. Right? Am I right?

Reality bites. But what was I supposed to do? Keep staring at myself in scared awe, rear-ending the car in front of me, essentially pulling a Narcissus, modern minivan mommy style? No, I smacked that shit shut. And I turned my attention back to Devil Baby, because what can be more important than a little girl talking like a big girl and the road unfurling before us both?

So today I pick up my phone after the hopeful ping! ping! of an incoming text and see the following message from my friend Creeper Bud. “Dear Transvestite Rollerblading Santa. I can’t get you outta my head.”

It was so unexpected and amusing to me that I actually snorted, sprayed my iPhone with saliva and had to wipe it off on my jeans.

A couple days ago we took our Edina-calendar preschoolers (translation: after Labor Day start date; further translation: torturous antsiness, and I’m not talking about the children) to the park in an attempt to let them run around, cancel each other out and leave us alone for two minutes. Being intrepid little shits, they were soon down in the creek near the park, picking up shards of glass and throwing sticks in the water. Creeper Bud and I meandered over and were just sort of chatting and hanging on the fence watching the kids when, like a vision from heaven, a tall, pasty, lanky, flat-assed, white bearded figure in a shiny melon-colored Olivia Newton Johnesque unitard careens past us on roller skates with a lightening-quick wooooooooosh.

The ensuing seconds were a confused and delighted jumble of what the hell? what in the hell was that? was that a man? was that a beard? was that a leotard? was that a SHINY BELTED LEOTARD? giggle, giggle. it was. What the fuuuck? Was it belted? no I think it was a fanny pack. a fanny pack! of course! a friggin’ fanny pack. oh my God! What the? giggle giggle. that was awesome! Come baaaaack! Creeper Bud saw him first and got a better look than I did, but I’m absolutely titillated by my fleeting glimpse. It was all so fast, so breathtakingly, heartbreakingly fast, and sooooo freaking freaky deaky. I mean, come on. Ladies don’t even wear that kind of get-up to loop the lakes, let alone seventy year old men. And why keep the beard? I mean, it works – it totally works – the juxtaposition of it all – it totally works, but WHAT IN THE HELL?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This is why I love Minneapolis (or any city, for that matter). You can be standing in the most boring place on earth (Lynhurst Park), minding your own business, when the City decides to cough up a little gift and hand it over on extended palm, sending Tranny Saint Nick zooming by to wake you up and make your day.

Creeper Bud and I are considering a stake out, with sandwiches and beer, to see if we can catch another glimpse.

*postscript: After going around and around, I just couldn’t come up with a better nickname for Creeper Bud. It suits her, but not because she exhibits any shady penchant that the name implies. It’s just that we met at preschool, chatted from time to time, saw each other once at a party and the next thing I knew, we were friends. Our friendship just sort of crept up on us. So, her moniker is literally, quite literal: Creeper Bud.

For starters, I could have sworn it was Eddie Murphy in Flubber, not Robin Williams. Shows how much I know. Secondly, I’ve been sort of obsessed with the idea of Flubber lately, and I know no better way to expunge absurdities from my head than to write about them in a public forum. Also, as you may have noticed, I haven’t been writing much lately. Have you noticed? So why not just wow you, and woo you with some seriously shitty shit. Writing about Flubber, after a long absence, over a critical juncture (das right, homeys – I turned 40!) is not exactly the equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but kind of. Or hoisting myself on my own petard, but sort of. Or throwing good money after bad, or making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Whatever it is, it’s sort of lame, I admit. But here we are. I’m busy, I’m stuck, I’m distracted and I can’t get flubber outta my brain.

We had a little fest in celebration of our birthdays and somehow managed to lure all our best MPLS peeps along with an ALL-STAR cast of out-of-town college buds to our house on a steamy night in late August. I suppose it’s the nature of the beast that fun things vanish in the blink of an eye. You plot and plan, you spiff and shine, you make everything just so, and then your brothers jump out of nowhere wearing Lucha Libre masks ten minutes before the party, sending you into an elated tizzy from which you don’t manage to climb down until after four a.m. And the thing about a tizzy is that although tizzies are a blast, it’s hard to focus in a tizzy. After the party, through that woozy, satisfied, hungover, happy haze, I was haunted by all the people I didn’t get to dig in with, all the people I didn’t get to fully love up. I wondered about all the funny exchanges I missed, all the random connections that were unearthed or newly forged. I looked through pictures for clues, seeing a bunch of really happy people, looking damn good, but I wanted a do-over.

And I wanted to be Flubber. I wanted to be Flubber so I could boing-a-boing-boing into a hundred tiny pieces and spread myself around the party and not miss a thing. I would perch on shoulders, hoop earrings, watches and rims of glasses. I would hang out in guys’ breast pockets, ladies’ cleavage, on cocktail tables and cigarrette packs (which, by the way, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many non-smokers, smoke so much. It pleases me, I’m not going to lie, because the implication is drunken, decadent abandon and that was, for sure, what we were going for), and I would miss nothing, laugh at everything, and DO! IT! UP!

OH FLUBBBAAAHHHH!!!!! TOGETHER WE WOULD BE UNSTOPPABLE!!! FLUBBBAAAAHHHH!!!! Alas, Flubber is not meant to be and so I have to be happy with my foggy memories, some great pictures, the random tidbits my friends are willing to share, and faith in the party process – once you set everything up, bring everyone together and the magic starting time ticks past, the party swells and takes on a life of its own, following its own course, its own rhythm, and if you’ve brought the right people together, it’ll be fun – no matter what. Even if I didn’t hear it or see it with my own two eyes, I’m pretty sure fun was had. And that’s what it’s all about. Setting aside my own grabby, selfish, Flubber fantasies, fun was had.

But if you think the Flubber obsession ends there, you’d be wrong. A couple days after the party, Doctor Dash and I got on a plane headed to British Columbia. My parents stayed with the kids so that we could take our first extended, grown-up, sans brood vacation in ten years. Before we knew it, we had hopped in a sexy black convertible and were on the road to Whistler, hair flying, wind on our teeth, laughter trailing behind us like streamers. We were giddy. We were Thelma and Louise. Well, maybe not Thelma and Louise, exactly, but you get the gist. It was awesome. For the next three days we gorged on the Pacific Range – we hiked our faces off, took a million pictures, set up self timers on boulders like we used to when we were in our twenties. We rented a canoe and checked it all out from way down low, portaging, paddling, picking our way around sharp turns, disentangling ourselves from the poky, gropy foliage lining the banks. It was AWESOME. It was everything we used to do before kids but couldn’t possibly do now because of the short legs factor. And the whine factor. At night we ventured out and drank beers with tourists and youngsters, wondering where we fit on the spectrum between tourists and youngsters. Actually, I doubt Dash wondered anything of the kind, but despite all evidence to the contrary, I think we still got a little youngster in us. I do. In Vancouver we stayed at the super chicLoden Hotel and ate and walked our way around that beautiful city for two more days. Every day was different. Every day was a blast. And yet, through it all, I missed our guys. Not every minute, not even very much – just when I saw something they would like and my thoughts strayed to them. And at night. And in the morning. And, not surprisingly, the Flubber returned to me. If only I could have left a little piece of myself at home with them. Just enough for them to clutch in their warm little fists as they drifted off to sleep. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Oh, it would be so perfect. Oh, boohoo, FLUBBBEEEERRRRR!!!

So there you have it. Flubber. Genius. Sigh. Who knew?

It’s funny how you can go years and years and years and never once think about the fact that as humans, we go through two entire sets of teeth. But then you have a couple of elementary school-age kids and woah, all of a sudden, it’s ALL ABOUT wiggly teeth, triumphant extractions, bloody smiles, the tooth fairy and let’s be frank, cashola.

A couple days ago Saint James lost a tooth, one of his eye teeth, when biting into a sausage sandwich. Blame it on that crusty French bread. He dutifully tucked it into the shirt pocket of the mouse on the tooth pillow and under his pillow. The Tooth Fairy managed to show up, but she’s wondering, as the number of teeth rattling around in her jewelry box increases by the day, is this just getting gross? It seems so cruel to toss them, yet, aside from their almost unbelievably teensy wheensy size, they aren’t all that attractive to keep around. And will they really want these when they are older? Like, would I want my baby teeth? I’m thinking no. And aside from throwing them out or stashing them, what else could you do? Bury them? Yikes, that has scandalous murder investigation and false imprisonment written all over it! For the love of God! Do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT bury any teeth in your backyard! I keep thinking about that service that turns your cremated loved one into a diamond, but I have no time for the size of the diamond I’d scrape out of these tiny teeth. Now if that Arkansas woman with the 17 kids saved all the teeth, she might just be able to cobble together something worth flashing around the neighborhood Walmart. And not for nothing, but once you get beyond the front teeth, they actually do get bigger. It’s starting to feel a little ritualistic, even Jeffrey Dahmerish to keep collecting all these teeth. If I was some freaky potter, I would make an abstract sculpture representing the yin and yang of motherhood and I would stud it with all the baby teeth, but, alas, I am not. What do you do with the baby teeth?

It’s as if the universe is mocking me for yesterday’s post because it seems that every where I look today, I just see a whole lotta stupid. Today I was cruising along on my bike when I came upon a short freaky guy dressed in one of those paper space suits from the early eighties, blocking the ENTIRE path with what at first glance appeared to be a giant tricycle, but in fact was one of those three wheeled scooters that you stand on with legs astride and sort of swerve into motion. He was showing it off to a black guy standing at the side of the path. My knee jerk reaction was to think: get the fuck off the path – a menacing hiss in my brain which I suppress and release as a bitchy pfft, or ugh, or Jesus. But in the split second it took me to register the space suit, the ride and the interested nods of the guy on the side of the path, I remembered that darling note I got yesterday.

We can choose how to look at things and in that moment I realized: Hey, wait a second, this is exactly why I love living in a city – this city. I love that I can hop on my bike and ride through pretty wooded trails and around sparkly lakes and still see peculiar, quirky, original or down right freaky characters. Today I saw a fat lady in a colorful mumu huffing and puffing her way back to fitness. I saw dear old ladies walking arm in arm, their permed little heads bent towards each other conspiratorially. I saw a man in waders using a metal detector in the lake, pairs of women running and venting, and more beautiful pregnant watermelon bellies than I could count.  I also saw a super hot rollerblading blond with VOLLE  YBALL written across the back of her shorts. Had the guy at Speedy T’s been so anxious to retain the sanctity of the crack that he chose to move the Y over to the other buttock? And why was she wearing them? Maybe she works at Speedy T’s and wearing the shorts was the equivalent of a pastry chef eating a crooked cupcake. All of this on one ride. And Paper Spacesuit guy.

Good for Paper Spacesuit Guy that someone was curious about his toy and took a second to ask about it. His blocking the path was a good thing, not a bad thing – perfect strangers sharing a moment in our common space. A good thing. I swerved off the path with nary a sound of annoyance escaping my lips. See? You can teach an old bitch new tricks.

And not for nothing, who am I to be annoyed? I am preposterous. I am riding around on a giant cruiser called the Red Betty with a leopard print seat and black leather tassles on the handle bars in a halter top, giant sunglasses and cushy headphones. Not exactly working on shaving any time off my rides, right?

It’s all how you choose to look at it.

Today someone left a note on my car with this question scrawled in giant irate letters on a torn piece of paper towel. I’d like to take a moment to answer, you asshole with the delicate pink floral paper towel and black ball point pen, because it’s a valid question.

The answer is: very stupid.

I parked in a spot that basically blocked the end of the row of cars at our club. There’s currently a giant hill of sand being used for the golf course renovation and today, in my hurry, I parked right next to it. It was a bonehead move to be sure, but there were absolutely no other spaces and I was frantic to catch my kids’ last races.  I was only going to be ten or fifteen minutes so I went for it. I had this vague notion that I would have to back out the whole row to exit, but somehow, in my rush, the thought failed to evolve to completion: everyone else will have to back out too.

I’m not going to lie. The note bummed me out. It felt so rude, so aggressive, so underhanded, so unnecessary. I mean, let’s be real. Is it really that hard to back out? Is it really worth getting all pissed off and scrounging around your car for paper and a pen? Is it really worth it? My sense is no, but it got me to thinking about the difference between being stupid as an immutable quality (the note writer’s implication) and doing something stupid. What made me frown and crumple up the note with an unpleasant rush of adrenaline was the fact that I wasn’t getting the benefit of the doubt. Yes, I did something stupid. I do stupid stuff all the time. I just dropped my iPhone in the pool the other day. My sunroof is probably open right now and it’s raining. But I am not stupid.

If I were to be truthful, though, how often do I give others the benefit of the doubt? Do I draw this distinction when I see a giant white SUV taking up two parking spaces at Lunds? Do I think about possible mitigating factors (explosive diarrea, late for a job interview, wasp in the car)? No, I roll my eyes, I sigh, I feel superior, I might even mutter the word stupid along with some choice adjectives. I am just as impatient with other people’s stupidity as today’s scribe was with mine.

The note today, while surprisingly dickish in this land of stoic vikings, was a good reminder that we should all chill out and give each other a break. Maybe we should all be a little more patient with each other’s stupid moves, because sooner or later, we’re going to do something stupid too.

Having said that, I feel a little better now. But not better enough, so I’d simply like to add FUCK YOU, YOU PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE PIECE OF SHIT! TAKE THAT ROLL OF PAPER TOWEL AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS, YOU ANGRY LITTLE BITCH*!

Sigh. Much better.

*I don’t know if it was a woman or a man, so either way, this works. Sadly, I have a hunch it was a woman based on the availability of the paper towel and the penmanship. It just chaps my ass even more that a mama would dis another mama like that. You put a note like that on a minivan that looks like mine, and there be no doubt you be dissin’ a mama.

I know I have a teensy little habit of taking something I’m experiencing and projecting it on the whole world, but something is definitely up. All my friends are feeling all freaky deaky, and quite frankly, so am I. We’re careening toward the end of the school year and I feel like we’re all driving runaway cars, pumping the breaks to no avail. Where did the time go? It feels like we were just wiping our brows after putting Christmas away and here we are in a deluge of end of the year obligations. Seriously, could we possibly pile on more stuff right now? End of the year masses, field day, plays, spring concerts, class picnics, graduations, class parties and on and on. On the one hand, it’s absolutely lovely. On the other hand, we may be getting too much of a good thing here. Everybody I know is racing around clutching camcorders with crazed smiles plastered on their faces which do nothing to hide the panic lurking in their eyes.

Yep, PANIC. Because in a few weeks we are ON, babies. ON. ON. ON. 24-7. Children all up in your business ALL THE TIME. No breaks, except for whatever camps and activities you’ve managed to sign them up for, which will require more running around with crazed smiles and more yelling hurry up, grab your waterbottleballracquetfishingrodclubscleatsclarinetloom.

I am really of two minds here. On the one hand, I love summer. I love the sun, the heat, the water and the not having to do anything. But then I went and filled us with activities because I’m no fool – the idle is not idyll. The quiet lazy afternoons never pan out the way I envision them. We don’t sit in the shade and eat popsicles and draw and fish and read. Possibly because of the frenetic pace we keep during the rest of the year, my kids want action and adventure. Or T.V. And honestly, we don’t even do that much. I suppose it’s relative, but I DO draw the line sometimes. For example, I drew the line at Irish step dancing earlier this year because of the wigs. I also draw the line at fencing, curling and golf. I don’t like golf. I’m not sure it’s an environmentally sustainable sport – especially in the driest areas of our country. It seems elitist and I will run the risk of subjecting my kids to forever being shitty golfers, but if they want to learn they can learn on their own time and their own dime. Plus the outfits are not cute. I pat myself on the back about golf, but then I signed up Supergirl for another run at Circus Camp, because obviously, the trapeze is a life skill that will serve her well. I signed Saint James up for a month long Junior Naturalist program and a drawing class. Why? Because this is their bliss and what can I do, but follow their bliss? And this is how I get myself in this pickle of the anti-Huck Finn summer.

It’s a paradox and I’m making a huge muddle of trying to explain it, but here it goes.

I sign them up for stuff because I don’t want them to be bored and drive me crazy, but in the end I’m crazy anyway and maybe even contributing to their being bored by keeping us on the run all the time. On the other hand, I only sign them up for stuff they love. These lucky, privileged children just happen to have a lot of interests. Take all that and dip it in guilt for not being 100% perky about all of this because a) I chose this life; and b) shouldn’t I want to be with my kids more more more? and c) I’m damn lucky to even have this to complain about, so I should just shut the hell up. Right? Right.

So I, like many others, spent the last few weeks with the calendar, various program catalogues and a furrowed brow, trying to figure out the right amount of stuff to put in our long summer days and how to physically get everyone where they need to go at the times they need to be there. I won’t know, until I’m neck deep in it, whether I got the right proportions of free time to camp time. And by then my freakydeakiness will have worn off, to be replaced with a numb exasperation with myself and my kids. The days will seem hot and endless and long and then all of a sudden it will be late August and I’ll get all freaky again, dreading the crush of school and all that entails, looking back longingly on our summer that seemed to stretch like taffy, and I’ll wish to be back here, right where I am right now.

Here’s St. James waiting anxiously to be scooped up for his very first ever weekend away. He’s beyond excited to be going to his oldest buddy’s cabin for a couple nights. I, on the other hand, wish I could have limbered up and climbed right into that little rolling suitcase. Instead I made him a sandwich to take with him.

I’m still in disbelief.

About the sandwich.

But I will say this:

It made me feel better.

I’m gonna level with you. I’m having some angst about this blog. I know. Again. Can you tell? Can you sense my floundering? Because I can sense you sensing my floundering – shaking your head and tsking sympathetically, murmuring poor, poor Peevish as you  x out of the site. I feel like it’s so obvious that I need to address it, lay my cards on the table.

It boils down to this: I’m just not feeling it. I’m not finding the desire or fodder for posting with any regularity anymore. And that would all be fine and good, except that it makes me sad and it makes me anxious. By some miracle, I seem to have cobbled together a real, true readership. You all. All you. You sexy beasts. Man oh man, would I love to collect all of you lovelies in a sunny field somewhere with beer and music and mushrooms and just talk and dance and play! Did I just write mushrooms? Heh, heh, er, ahem, cough, cough. See, that leads me to my next point which is the WHY of it all? Why the angst?

As usual, I have been cogitating on the subject for a long string of days and I have a few theories. First, my other food writing gig kind of forced me out of the closet with regard to this blog. I thought about keeping them separate, but the truth is, my only qualifications for getting that gig was this gig. Sadly, commercial real estate law does not a food writer make. Either does a loopy blog, but at least it’s closer. As much as I try not to think about it, there are all sorts of new people reading Peevish Mama, namely my lovely parents and in-laws and, possibly even some of their friends. Helloooo there. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to include them in what has become a much bigger piece of my life than I ever imagined when I began almost two years ago. The problem is that I find myself being more careful about what I write, more critical. And careful and critical are not, when all is said and done, a place from which I’m inspired to write.

Old habits die hard and even though I’m walking up the steps to 40’s front door, I still feel like a kid and I still, in an old knee-jerk visceral way, feel the need to please this generation of folks, hide things from them, skirt around the truth, reveal only the good part of myself. It’s silly. I’m not giving them enough credit for understanding that these are just words, that this is all just venting and processing, light entertainment, silliness. I’m also deceiving myself (especially in the case of my parents) if I pretend that they aren’t already deeply familiar with the mean, dark, naughty, irresponsible, lazy, cynical, ornery aspects of my personality. Who am I kidding, right? And my cursing? No one curses with as much panache as my mother, who at least has the decency to do it in Spanish. When my Peruvian friends blanched at the expletives flying out of that pretty lady’s mouth, I calmly handed them the official line: she grew up with five brothers. That is also the excuse I used to explain my swearing to Supergirl: Chuchi grew up with five brothers. Someday Supergirl will drop an F-bomb, her daughter will call her on it and she will say: Your great grandmother Chuchi grew up with five brothers. All this by way of saying, everyone can handle a little fucking swearing. Moreover, as sweet Nanook pointed out yesterday, most of this is good, happy, goofy stuff. My kids are wild and wonderful and exhausting and we’re all muddling through as best we can, using humor and honesty (and beer and wine and tequila and gin and vodka) as our balm. There’s nothing all that subversive here, as much as I love to believe I’m the picture of urban gansta sophistication. In the end, I’m kinda regular, if a little verbose and neurotic. No surprises here.

Another theory: at this time last year I had had knee surgery and was on crutches and this blog was my life line. For six weeks I wrote ferociously, running far and wide with my thoughts and words, since my legs couldn’t carry me. This spring, right now, I’m just in a moving and doing kind of mood. All the things I didn’t get to do last year, spring cleaning, weeding, cooking, yoga, the soccer jamboree, neighborhood festivals, bike riding, concerts, I want to do now. Sitting and writing just isn’t as appealing as it was when there was a foot of snow on the ground.

Yet another theory: I hate the internet. And by that I mean I love the internet but I don’t want to love the internet. I want to spend less time on my computer, not more, and yet it’s hypocritical to write, to expect others to read, when I don’t want to spend time reading all the other great stuff that is out there. There is some beautiful, funny, compelling writing happening every day and it’s disheartening to realize that most of it will go unread, at least by me. As per theory number 2, there are only so many hours of the day and as of yet, I am unwilling to shift my time and attention away from real books to cyber-prose. So I have to draw the line somewhere. I assume everyone else is feeling the same way, so I figure why keep adding to the noise?

And lastly, I had put a two year collar on this little endeavor, and I’m coming up on two years this Mother’s Day. I wonder if somehow I’m subconsciously letting it go, so it doesn’t feel so wrenching when and if I ultimately do. I had hoped to keep writing for at least two years, but I never thought about abruptly forcing myself to stop after two years. And the truth of the matter is, I’m not ready to stop, hence the angst. OK, scratch this theory. My subconscious is so heavily scrutinized that there’s nothing “sub” about it. It’s highly unlikely my writer’s block has anything to do with this. Yep, scratch this one.

So maybe I keep going, but in some new way that I have yet to figure out. Maybe I take more breaks, do more living with less writing. Maybe I have a little faith that you’ll still visit, even if I’m not doing flips and handstands all the time. Maybe I need a little time to acclimate to my new readers – forget about them a bit, find peace with the prospect of their scratching their chins and wondering: is she serious about wanting to give psychedelic mushrooms to a crowd of people in a field?

None of you will ever know, will you?

To say that my relationship with dandelions is fraught would be an understatement. On a glorious spring day in the early seventies I was assiduously collecting them and using them for tickets to go down the slide when all of the sudden I was scooped up by a wild-eyed teacher, who rushed me inside and called my parents. My eyes were swollen to slits and I was taken to the hospital and given a gigantic shot in the ass. I slept for seemingly ever – kinda like Snow White – and woke up with a tacit understanding that there were things in the world that could make me itch. As I grew, my list of itchy things grew: pollen, grasses, molds, dogs, cats, weeds, dust mites, etcetera. I pretty much stayed clear of dandelions for the rest of my childhood, ubiquitous as they were on every school playground.

Fast forward to early 2000. I’m a young mom, with a house on a creek and a whole hell of a lot of dandelions. In my youth, I spent the summers pretty much bathing in the chemical mist of the white Chem Lawn truck. Usually, my mother would shoo us inside, but I can remember plenty of times the guy would spray under us as my friend and I perched a top the swingset and watched, breathing in that stinging sweetish chemical smell. Doctor Dash and I couldn’t, in good conscience, spray our lawn, even though the Chem Lawn truck had changed the letters to spell Tru Green - not with a crawling baby, not with a creek down the hill. So we began to pluck them, one by one and with numerous fancy implements. On by one. By one. And here it is, nine years later. And I’m still plucking. It’s what I do when I’m outside. Nothing is more satisfying than digging in with the weeding fork and pulling out a big nasty root, all wrinkly and hairy – squeeeeee they scream. But it’s downright Sisyphean, this trying to keep the dandelions at bay the old fashion way. Every time I turn around, there’s an army of bright little heads, sprung out of nowhere, mocking me in the grass. The theory, as I understand it, is that if you keep plucking, each year you get less and less dandelions. Well, I’ve been plucking for nine years and . . .

Good God.

So imagine my delight when I saw this op ed piece in the NY Times. The author basically challenges the notion that green golf course lawns are more beautiful, hence more desirable than weedy, natural ones. Dandelions, after all, look just like flowers. Isn’t the difference between a weed and a flower in the eye of the beholder? I’d say so given my annual bickering with Dash over what he’s allowed to bushwhack in the yard. What I see as healthy ground cover, he sees as invasive and aggressive weedage. He wants space between the “legitimate” plants. I tend to be more inclusive in my definition of who gets to stay in the yard. But I digress. The author writes: “. . . my eco-friendly ethos dovetails suspiciously with my laziness.” I love that. It is so my m.o.

Now if I could just convince everyone else, I’d be in business.

I’ve been dying to sit down and write a post about our trip to Tulum, but in the last couple days we’ve been home, I’ve been a whirling dervish of activity and I just don’t want to interrupt myself. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I started with the mountain of salty, sweaty laundry from the trip and that quickly snow-balled into washing and putting away the winter gear, cleaning out the fridge, washing kitchen windows, organizing the mudroom closet, and a trip to the garden store to see if it’s too soon to plant ground cover. This never happens to me. I tend to have fits of industriousness lasting no longer than the effects of my morning coffee, into which I must cram all of my household duties. Maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t had to cook or clean for eight days. Maybe it’s the fact that spring has arrived. Who knows? But it’s been two whole days of takin’ care of business and I’m going strong, babies. This must be what those meth-addicted housewives on Oprah feel like – knocking out chores as if they were bowling pins! I’m afraid this laptop is my anti-meth, so I’m going to forstall writing for a little longer and ride this wave of assiduousness as long as I possibly can. I’d better go. I can feel the diligence draining out of my fingers with every word I type. I’m off. But you know I’ll be back all too soon – lazy beast that I am.

I’m kinda known for being a weeper. There are certain sure-fire triggers that’ll always get the water works going: sad movies, happy movies, children singing, extreme frustration, weddings, funerals, Baptisms, First Communions, chopping onions, handwritten Valentines cards, gin, and soccer games when my son’s hair is looking especially awesome. Note that Irish step dancing is NOT on my list. 

I’m not quite sure what happened today, but I took Devil Baby to Saint James’ school to watch Corda Mor (a local Irish step dancing school) perform, and when they started, I felt that familiar prick in the place where my eyes and nose meet up for coffee. Jesus, I thought to myself, trying to pull it together. What is up with me? The step dancing girls were even wearing these crazy curly wigs which came in only three colors: blond, brown, and mouse brown. That really should have been more than enough to pull me out of the moment, but alas, no amount of fake hair was going to thwart my melancholia. Irish step dancing? Really? I’m not even Irish. 

I definitely tend to have a physical reaction to huge displays of talent, but that runs more along the lines of chills, not tears. When Shaun White nailed that crazy second run on the half pipe after he had won the gold, you could have grated cheese on my goosebumps. Same with exceptional singing, rapping, dancing, guitar solos – chills, baby. But Irish step dancing? Really? 

Devil Baby sat in my lap, rapt and clapping in time with the music. I peered around to catch a look at her expression and she was all eyes, her mouth pursed in a perfect little O. Do you like it? I whispered in her ear. She reached back, placed her whole hand flat on my cheek and held it there for a moment before withdrawing it to continue clapping. I realized in a rush that it wasn’t the girls on the stage who were making me emotional, it was the girl in my lap. I had done this very simple thing that required no effort or money at all and she was LOVING it. She has historically been so unpredictable that I had kind of stopped trying to take her to things, show her things. Remember our last story time? Ya, well, that was our last story time. I don’t know how to explain it apart from admitting that she’s naughty, I’m lazy, time flies and then, poof! I find myself on the verge of tears because my daughter is actually sitting in my lap, snuggling with me and enjoying something. Enjoying something with me. Together. It dawned on me that even though we’re always together, it never feels like we’re together. 

And then I really lost it.

This is what I’ve wanted all along. This. This was an absolute given with Saint James, an absolute pleasure with Supergirl. This. This is why I decided I wanted another baby. This. Could it be that it’s not too late for Devil Baby and I to have this?