peevish mama

Soul Daddy sent me a song via email a little while ago, saying simply that it was his new favorite song and he thought I might like it. He believed it was about my hometown. I was amused by his sign off: Dig. I love the ambiguity. Descriptive or imperative? I didn’t listen to the song right away because I was heading out of town and the email got buried, pushed out of sight by the volumes of emails that come my way every day. Last night I remembered all of a sudden and flew to the computer. One does not ignore a song gift from Soul Daddy. Sure enough, it’s a gem. Mayer Hawthorne grew up in Ann Arbor and says he was influenced by Detroit’s rich soul and jazz history that came to him over the radio when he was driving around with his dad. I’d say this much is clear.

Dig.

Mayer Hawthorne – A Long Time

And to listen to Soul Daddy’s radio show, Hip City, on St. Louis Public Radio Station KDHX, go here. I love to tune in when I’m cooking. I always learn something and I always find myself shakin’ it.

I just may swoon.

Paul Newman is so gorgeous that it took me minutes to register the denim jumpsuit. And, I must say, he is owning it.  He is annihilating that denim jumpsuit. I think I need some smelling salts. And Clint. Good lord, Clint, who was already so awesome at this point and yet, AND YET, had 99% of his awesomeness ahead of him. Check out this tumblr of Awesome People Hanging Out Together. There are so many gems. SO MANY GEMS! Like this –

So fabulous. Oh, and this!

Damn. Just go look. Quick!

And here’s my own personal contribution to Awesome People Hanging Out Together in honor of Maestro de Bife’s birthday today! Maestro de Bife and Devil Baby April 30, 2011, Naples, FLSaint James, Supergirl, Doctor Dash and Maestro de Bife, April 28, 2011, Bonita Springs, FL

Happy Birthday little bro! xoxo

Admittedly, this 41st birthday of yours was lost amidst your week of working nights and a whole hell of a lot of soccer. Just like last year. But also, just like last year, our amusing friends manage to contribute a little levity. Oh, Fox, you crack me up.Dearest Dash, my side kick and fave man on earth: Happy muted, tainted-by-work, birthday. We appreciate every thing you do for us and we love you, you sweet, sweet mofo.

xoxo

Red Vogue is an amazing photographer and lately she’s been trying her hand at video (although the word video seems too banal for what she does). They really are moving photographs and to me they possess the same quiet, authentic, purity of her still photos. This video of Supergirl is such a snapshot in time – it captures her right now, age eight, suspended between being a little girl and a big girl. Actually, who am I kidding? She’s a big girl. You can see it in her eyes, her self-conscious laugh – she is no longer a naive baby, no longer an open book. She’s a girl – with all the complex feelings and  self-awareness that entails. Supergirl is as open a person as you’ll ever meet, yet in this, I see her safeguarding a little piece of herself. I guess this is what we do as we mature. We gain dimension. We develop an inner life, which, I suppose, by definition, makes us less visible, or rather, less readable to others. Sniff. It squeezes my heart. Oh, how it does.

We did it. Yesterday Doctor Dash and I got a wild hair and we bought a dog. She’s a chocolate labradoodle and oh, Saint Francis, Patron Saint of Animals, is this girl ever sweet! Those of you who know me, know that I wasn’t looking to get a dog. Until all of the sudden, I was.

When Saint James’ second African dwarf frog died a few months ago, something big shifted in me. I realized I couldn’t take any more tears over fish and amphibians. I was done. He just wants something to love, I wailed at Dash. We can’t keep torturing them with fake animals! It’s cruel! It’s unfair! So we started by taking our hayfever guy to the allergist to make sure he wasn’t super allergic to dogs and started looking on-line, clearing our histories after every search so the kids wouldn’t get any ideas. All the labradoodle breeders were far away, so inertia took over and we figured maybe we’d start asking around. Maybe. But the psychic shift had happened and it seems when you open a door, someone is bound to walk through it.

Enter: Foxy Brown

Dash’s boyhood dog was a chocolate lab named Calvin, so when he saw this little girl’s picture in the paper this weekend, it was love at first sight. Still, we didn’t do anything for a day. And then all of a sudden, when we were at the Linden Hills Festival with the kids yesterday, I made Dash call – just to find out if she was even still there. She was. And something about it felt right. Nanook gave us a little prod and by the time we peeled ourselves off the sunny hill a couple hours later and gathered the kids, Dash and I had decided to drive out to St. Paul and meet her. I had heart palpitations on the way there and nausea on the way home. Somehow this felt like a bigger deal than having kids! What the hell were we doing? I must have transmitted my queasiness to Foxy, because she puked on me in the car. Poor little thing. Between the nerves and the motion, she didn’t stand a chance. With that first little accident and the doleful look that followed, however, she basically put her paw print right in my heart. I don’t know what that says about me, but she’s got me.

So far, she’s been a rock star. She slept all night, she hasn’t had an accident in the house (yet), but I’m under no illusions. This is going to be a ton of work, starting with the fact that we can’t leave everything lying around on the ground any more. We had about a nanosecond of peace and quiet as Devil Baby turned a corner and morphed into a chatty, funny, industrious, ready-for-kindergarten girlie girl. I guess that’s what allowed us to jump back into the fray.

Honestly, why did we jump back into the fray? I don’t know. As Nanook pointed out, some people are just open to a certain amount of chaos in their lives. Moreover, every time Devil Baby bravely approached perfect strangers and used her big voice to ask if she could pet their dogs, it used to tweak my heart a little. Watching Supergirl learn how to handle Red Vogue’s strong and spirited golden boy, Patrick, used to tweak my heart a little. And to say nothing of the deaths (R.I.P. Pearl, Pingo, Bubbles, Horace and Messi) – no one boy should be expected to endure so many frail non-mammals.

Needless to say, the kids are over the moon. Especially, Supergirl. Yesterday she said to Doctor Dash You made a good choice here, dad. You know, you won’t regret this. I hope that’s true. And in my heart, I know it is.

We are ready for you, Foxy. Welcome to the clan, sister.

Once upon a time there lived a girl who had never been to Vegas. She considered herself lucky at life, but unlucky at games of chance and was therefor uninterested in what Vegas had to offer.

And then one day she went.

She knew that going anywhere (even Siberia or Peoria) with her posse of 8 maidens would be a good time, yet she was still surprised. And. Yet. Still.

She danced so much and laughed so hard that now she wants to move to Vegas, except for the fact that she’d be dead of exhaustion within the week.

Everywhere she went, day or night, she was wrapped up in the booming soundtrack of her favorite dance tunes, except for that one lounge by that one door where the Sinatra impersonator wooed them in with “My Way” and sent them off with “Free Bird”. Sinatra and Skynyrd? Is that even possible? Is that even legal?

Part Oz, part Disney World, part heaven, part Hades, the town pulsed like some kind of organism. From time to time, it revealed bits of darkness and melancholy that made the girl turn and pause for but a moment, and then run to catch up with her friends. She marveled that a place could be so tacky and yet so gorgeous. One second she was oggling the sad sacks at the slot machines with fluoresent drinks growing warm in oversized beakers, or the showgirls making eyes at the wolves, wondering where their mothers were and the next her hands were itching to touch the art, plunge into the fountains, caress the Jurassic palm fronds – to see if they were real.

Was any of it real? She was intrigued by the poetic madness, the collective understanding, the endless, feckless revelry. What a slice of life, she kept muttering, not sure anymore if she was even saying it out loud.

But mostly, and most wonderfully, the girl felt that she and her maidens had finally met their match. As long, hard, loud, and wild as they wanted to rollick – as much as they wanted to dance and drink and laugh and carouse, Vegas rose up like a chivalrous and indulgent knight  (or cowboy) to make it happen. In this oasis of over-the-top, nothing they could do was over-the-top. There was no question of turning in early. There were dragons to be slayed. And slayed they were.

Or at least she thinks so.

Did any of that happen? Does Vegas even exist?Only one way to find out.

I am so amused. Just as I was fretting about my kids not knowing how to entertain themselves, Saint James and the neighbor boys went on a rap writing rampage. They’ve got 12 songs written and have recorded two. Of course I’m biased, but I think they’re quite good. To the extent rap is a medium for telling your story or a fantasy version of your story, I’d say this is exactly what Saint James, er, Lil’ Ziggy and his posse are doing. They have each written their share of songs, they feature each other and provide the hooks for each other. It’s all very funny and extremely cute. In his song, Mercy, Lil’ Ziggy goes through a long list of mahem caused by the boys, including letting loose, riding a moose, playing ping pong and getting a deuce, spraying graffiti on someone’s hood and stealing fire wood and then the refrain, sung in a high falsetto, imploring the cops: You see those storm clouds above, asking for bloooood, all we want it mercy. Just give us some mercy mercy mercy. Tonight Tonight.

The last verse:

Bring it down!

Officers came said we had one last chance

We don’t care, cuz it’s not fair

We’re not done, let’s have some fun

Up till three hours past one

We put foam in a jacoozi (sic) then everyone else went snoozy

We posted on youtube, got a million views

We were rude, but we don’t regret it cuz we got all the credit.

No one came to edit, they all just fed it.

See? That’s some story telling right there. No one came to edit, they all just fed it? I love that! If you don’t know my son, you’d probably be alarmed by this, but honestly, he’s a gentle guy. Last night we were lolling on his bed while Doctor Dash read the raps out loud and Saint James was just laughing and laughing. I have no doubt he knows the difference between right and wrong –  understands that there’s quite a bit of terrain between a yarn and the truth. And to me, that wild acreage is a pretty fun place to play.

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.

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.

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

photo by Stacy Schwartz

Last night Dash and I went to see Arcade Fire with Lady Tabouli and Mr. Lady Tabouli and again, at the risk of sounding like an undiscerning gusher (don’t I always do this when I see live music? I know I do), they knocked our socks off! In fact, not only did our eight collective socks get knocked off, they got blown out of the auditorium, down the corridors, out the door and are dangling from high wires outside of Roy Wilkins. Socks fully and completely knocked off. We are sockless. As often happens, a couple factors coalesced to make the show one of the best I’ve ever seen in my life, not the least of which is simply: this band rocks. For real.

I had just finished reading The Road earlier in the afternoon, although the word afternoon seems like a fake cheery cardboard cut-out word for what it really was: dark, sad hours wrapped around the last eighth of a book that left me sobbing, empty, tired. The Road is a post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son’s journey at at time when the world as we know it and all that we recognize as goodness, humanity and hope has been burned, raped, pillaged and left to blow about in a wasteland of gray ash. The book is devastating and beautiful and it stays with you, seeping deep into your skin, changing the color, the taste, the smell of everything around you. Like that ash. It’s incredible. And awful.

So, fast forward thru a cold water splash on the face, dinner and smooches for the kids, a cup of steaming green tea, a chatty minivan ride with our pals, burgers and cocktails, a hilarious three block dash through the rain until finally we bust onto the spectacle that was Arcade Fire. Keep in mind, I’m still wiggy from The Road – I’ve got it weighing on my chest through the giggling and leaping over puddles, and then all of a sudden, my jaw drops and all I see is this huge band (8 of them!) with this HUGE sound, and all I can think is: Perfection. It’s fucking perfection.

We are swallowed up whole.

They look like Mad Max meets thrift store meets Project Runway. Survivors and journeymen, championing beauty with powerful music and haphazard sartorial flourishes. Glittery dresses and combat boots, navy gas station jumpsuits bedazzled with red lightening, tight button down shirts that read as military rock-a-billy, savagely shorn hair and sweat. Sweat every where. Five men and three women going nuts, letting their freak flags fly, holding nothing back and giving us the FULL DRAMA.

They sound like nothing I have ever heard before, singing in strangely uplifting harmonies and running around changing instruments between songs like its musical chairs. Two of the women play electric violins and look like wild fairies as they work their bows and voices into a frenzy. And not for nothing, who gets to sing AND play violin at the same time? Is that even allowed? They were screaming! All of them were. The third woman, Regine Chassagne, a Haitian beauty, was like an angel in a sparkly gold dress and jeweled fingerless gloves singing in her haunting, gorgeously imperfect voice one minute, then wailing on drums, on piano, and killing an accordion the next. The lead singer, Win Butler, sings himself raw, lurching, kicking, climbing and clamboring all over the stage. But what a voice, a voice kind of like Bono’s, a voice that by its limits, by its humanity and earnestness grabs you by the throat and forces you to open your mouth and contribute.

It sounds freaky and it WAS, but make no mistake. These guys are a big stadium rock band. Their songs are anthemic, swelling and crashing like giant waves. Arcade Fire makes you sing and scream and clap your hands. They give you the blood sweat and tears, the blood guts and glory, but it’s smart, breathtakingly technical, complicated, textured and completely modern music. Post modern even. Beyond that, maybe even, dare I say it? Post-apocalyptic! Nah, that’s just me and my Road-tinted glasses, but, man, if there was ever a right band at the right time. For me. My God. There’s a piercing frantic joy that sort of cuts out of these dark and moody chords in their music and it felt so right. Just right. (For real information, like the playlist and an actual musical analysis, go here.)

And speaking of modern, Janelle Monae at First Ave. tonight. Finally!!!! I may swoon, my head may explode. I’m so excited to see her. I have been waiting a long time. A long long time. More gushing tomorrow, I’m sure.

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?

Look what happens when you actually let your minivan sit idle in the driveway for an afternoon. All of a sudden, Supergirl has time to invite Big E, her best buddy, over to play. After some deep popsicle conversation on the swing set they set off for an adventure down at the creek with Saint James. They come back soaking wet. I suppress the urge to warn them about giardia. They leave again, brown shoulder butting brown shoulder as they scamper down the hill. After a spell Devil Baby and I decide to join them. I sit on a park bench. A park bench! When is the last time I sat, just sat, on a park bench? Saint James comes out of the water and folds his cool wet body into the side of mine. I watch Supergirl and Big E slither down a big rock into the water, floating on their backs as the current carries them gently downstream. I watch mallards swim by, giving them suspicious looks and wide berth. I watch Devil Baby rip leaves into teeny tiny chlorophyl confetti and throw them into the water, fingers spread wide in a celebratory flourish. I watch Big E give Supergirl a boost into a tree that is entirely too tall for them to climb and then her reach down to hoist him up – like traveling acrobats – gypsies – feral children. All of this because I stayed put. For one afternoon.

Nanook of the North has a pet phrase about a person’s love language, meaning, in short, the things that make us feel loved or the things we do to show love. Every one has a different love language and the dialects vary infinitely depending on the subject and object. When Doctor Dash empties the dishwasher, he’s speaking my love language. When I cook for friends, I’m speaking my love language. When eight of my rowdiest loveliest chicas pick me up at my house in a giant white limo stocked to the rafters with champagne and hip hop and take me to my favorite restaurant (Bar la Grassa) and then my favorite dance hole (Bunkers) and love me up and give me funny cards and a tiara and the cooooolest leather and gold necklace and jump in/dive in/cannonball in and fully revel with me, all because I’m turning 40 in a few weeks, then those girls are speaking my love language – yelling my love language.

They thought about what I love, they plotted and planned and then busted it out like NOBODY’S business. At one point, sitting at the head of this table of smart hilarious beauties, I truly felt like my head was going to pop off and roll across the floor until stopped by the foot of a waiter, still grinning and cackling. I could melt and swoon and cry. These women, beautiful mothers and party girls both, taking life by the scruff of the neck and singing Give it to Me, Baby! (who doesn’t love a little Rick James?)

Lady Homeslice, Naughty Cop, Lunchlady Rocker Chic, Hot Breeches, Pretty Young Thing, Birdy and sniff, sniff, Nanook and Crackerjack, you get me – you got me – you took me to the moon and back. Thank you, sisters. Thank you for partying me up like ganstahs, like rock stars, like FULL ON RIOTOUS MAMAS. My heart is full, my hangover is gone, and I feel loved. I hear you. I hear you loud and clear!

And let it be written: As of the July 9, 2010 WE STILL GOT IT!