peevish mama

I’m obsessed with tea.  I’ll admit that I wasn’t always such a fan.  A couple winters ago, the winter that Devil Baby was a red, squalling, bundle of colic, to be specific, Doctor Dash started into an infuriating little nighttime tea ritual.  He of the poor circulation and chilly extremities would endlessly putter around the kitchen, readying his steaming cup of whatever, while I watched with growing irritation, usually with the baby attached to my nipple rendering his offers to prepare a cup for me impossible to consider.  I don’t know, something about drinking a scalding liquid over my squirming baby’s face just seemed like a bad idea.  I would watch him through narrowed eyes, feeling my skin prickle with annoyance, thinking he looked so nebbish – so self-indulgent as he sipped and slurped his cuppa.  

I resented his doing something to make himself comfortable when I felt so very uncomfortable.  I resented his making me feel like we were eighty.  Every once in a while, no longer able to contain my disgust, I’d let rip something super mature and intelligent like “Tea is so gay,”  or “You look like Steve Perry when you purse your lips like that.”  

As with many things over the years (i.e. fish, Radiohead, black coffee, Goodfellas, the Yankees), I have come around to Dash’s point of view and then some.  I have taken his penchant for tea and rolled it and patted it and marked it with a P . . . because now Peevish Mama can’t live without it.  I’m especially keen on Lotus teas, with their attractive whiff of the orient packaging and seemingly endless therapeutic benefits.  Heaviest in my rotation are Bedtime, a soothing blend of valerian, chamomile, passion flower and skullcap to help reduce occasional anxiety; Detox, a healthy balance of burdock, dandelion, Indian sasparilla and juniper berry to give my body a natural advantage over pollutants (i.e. liquor, salt); and Immune Support, a lively combination of astragalus, elderberry, echinacea, lemongrass and peppermint to strengthen my body’s defenses (against the petrie dishes that are my children in winter).  I also indulge in green tea, English breakfast tea (with milk and sugar), and hot cider (which is not tea, but is still steamy and old lady-like).  

Why the tea?  Well my house is freezing, for one thing, so I’ve always got my hands around a warm mug and a scarf around my carotid arteries (another Dash tip).  Those chilly Brits are most definitely onto something with the tea and scarves.  And truth be told, I like the ritual of it.  If I were really serious about this, I would forgo the microwave and wait around for the merry whistle of the tea kettle. I would steep loose tea in a mesh ball (like the one I wanted to put tiny Beck in). I would drink out of dainty floral tea cups with matching saucers. I’d be all spot of tea this and spot of tea that – and I’d cultivate the yellowest set of choppers you ever laid eyes on.   

You would think that after eleven years of marriage, you know someone cold.  You think you know his idiosyncracies and quirks, his likes and dislikes, his pet peeves, his turn-ons.   You can smell mood changes on the wind, track shifting interests by the dog-eared pages of magazines, the cracked spines of books.  

But, but, but . . . then he starts in on something new, slowly at first . . . and then with increasing impunity, with nary a care for how I feel about it. Until the day when, in an act of unfettered defiance, he fills the front compartment of my minivan with the most flamboyant and shocking assortment of fruity gum I have ever laid eyes on.  You open the doors of my minivan and it smells like Chiquita Banana’s leotard after Sweatin’ to the Oldies.  Bluh.

Back in the day, if we had been going on a road trip, a Plenty Pack of blue Extra would have been all we needed to be happy.  Through our twenties, peppermint was the mainstay, although we occasionally ventured over to Trident – sometimes you simply want a smaller piece of gum in your mouth.  At some point during med school, Doctor Dash started experimenting with green gum and dark blue gum.  I can’t say I was happy, but I eventually learned to tolerate a piece of spearmint or wintergreen gum in a pinch.  Plus Dash had to study a lot, so I figured his little gum forays were a way to keep the monotony at bay.  Harmless.

Then things started getting weird.  I began to find crumpled wrappers guiltily stuffed into his pockets, strewn behind his bowl of loose change – paper wisps whispering a secret, smelling of something foreign and unwelcome.  I could no longer turn a blind eye and pretend I didn’t know.

There it was:  cold, hard evidence of Orange-mint. Melon-mint.  

Dash was dabbling in flavors that don’t exist in nature and are obviously the lewd invention of fast talking slick jicks with overdeveloped masticator muscles –  guys with shiny ties and lots of product in their hair who sit with their feet on their desks and pride themselves on being able to come up with flavor profiles that’ll knock the socks off Jamie Lynn Spears – Wrigley Company idea-men with loud voices and a low tolerance for any resistance from the lab guys, who they refer to as the nerkles, as in: “Tell that fucking nerkle I don’t give a shit if acai berries are combustible when you mix’em with spearmint! Make it happen!”

And it seems like the faster these guys come up with audacious concoctions, the faster Doctor Dash and a bevy of thirteen year old girls line up to buy them, eager to try the next big thing.  Oh my God!  This Pomegranate Passion is like sooooo amazing!  Oh my God, it’s like totally my new fave!  I am soooo over Bubblemint!

Call me old fashioned, but I just don’t think it is becoming for a man approaching forty to chew Maui Melon Mint, or Sangria Fresca, or Fabulous Fruitini.  His packs of gum should not be peach or pink or lime green.  He should not be co-mingling with a demographic that is all about the mall, sparkly lipgloss and Miley Cyrus.  It’s simply not appropriate.

Come back to the mint, Doctor Dash. 

Last year Doctor Dash and I celebrated our tenth anniversary.  We booked a room at the Graves Hotel and had a crazy delicious meal at La Belle Vie.  We chose the tasting menu and as the graceful and efficient waitstaff paraded out course after course on winged feet, Dash and I sat in the luxe and civilized room, our faces flushed from the wine and turned our plates slightly to admire the gorgeous and unfathomable creations being set forth by the kitchen.  What a feast!  Really, truly, it was an amazing dinner – the best I’ve ever had.  It was an unforgettable anniversary: indulgent, celebratory, luxurious, happy.

This past Saturday we celebrated our eleventh anniversary, although “celebrated” is a bit of an overstatement.  We were in the throws of moving to our new house across the creek: Casa Norte.  We left Casa Sur staged for showings, taking with us all unsightly evidence of our existence, like the TV.  Apparently, buyers like to believe that they won’t watch TV in their new home. They like to believe that they will better themselves in myriad ways, metamorphizing into bookish intellectuals, gourmet cooks, charming hostesses, green-thumbed gardeners.  So, happy as I am to procrastinate moving anything I don’t have to, I strategically placed a bunch of smart books around our extremely edited home, so they can dream on. Dream on.

As each piece of furniture was carried out the door, I watched the anxiety mounting for Devil Baby.  Her eyes bugged, her mouth formed itself into a cheerio and she wailed, “Oh noooo!  It’s goooone!”  The poor little thing bounced around like an errant ping pong ball, crying, being shooed out of the movers’ way, relentlessly demanding a Dora bandaid and generally being ignored as we frantically packed and cleaned.

The first night we slept at Casa Norte was a disaster.  My visions of a fun camping adventure flapped away like frantic bats as Saint James and Supergirl took turns freaking out.  You know, the kind of behavior that is really about something else.  The kind of behavior that, if witnessed by anyone outside of your nuclear family, causes you to say things like: “I don’t know what’s gotten into him, he’s never like this, he must be really tired, he’s had such a longdayweekmonthyear.”

I think Saint James’ exact words, if I heard correctly through his blubbering, were:  “I hate this house.  This house sucks.”  

On our eleventh anniversary Doctor Dash and I were trapped in that wretched moving fugue . . . the sense of melancholy, dread and rootlessness weighing down the boxes even more than the objects within.  Dante should have included a tenth circle of hell where the eternally damned pack and unpack and repack boxes, relentlessly hoisting, heaving,sweating.  Isn’t it always boiling hot and humid as the breath of a dog on moving day?  It just is.  I would like to know if anyone has ever moved in the winter.  It just doesn’t happen.  It’s like Newton’s law, or Murphy’s law – Peevish Mama’s Law: if you move, the dew point will be seventy and every nook and cranny of your body will be as moist as the day is long to add to the general misery already inherent in moving.

Because it was our anniversary, Dash and I had plans to stop by a friend’s 40th birthday party for a couple drinks before heading out for dinner.  Ambitious, no?  It had seemed like a good idea when I booked the sitter two weeks ago.  I couldn’t imagine, however, bringing everything to a screeching halt to shower and make myself presentable.  I couldn’t imagine switching gears so abruptly:  from resigned, depressed, downtrodden, stinking, pack mule to lively, sparkly, sweet smelling gal about town.  

Mostly, I couldn’t imagine leaving our emotionally ragged kids with a sitter – in a house with no furniture, no less.

We needed to circle the wagons and chill, not drag our tired carcasses to a dinner we would have eaten in exhausted silence.  Fortunately, Doctor Dash was on the same page, so I cancelled the sitter, cancelled our plans and instead we took the kids for an evening swim.  I would love to say that the swim tuckered them out and they slept like babies, but on night number two they were just as riled up and out of control as the first night.  After much drama and crying and bed swapping, everyone finally drifted off.  

As silence slithered from room to room, ultimately wrapping itself around the whole house, Dash and I poured a couple glasses of wine and poked around, flicking light switches, stepping on bubble wrap, peering around unfamiliar corners, running our hands along the smooth banisters.  

We like this house, although we are a little awestruck.  She’s a faded beauty, a fancy and imposing madam.  Like Dame Judi Dench after a wild and protracted bender. She’s in need of someone to pick her up, dust her off, get her all primped, painted, pretty and ready for the Oscars.  I think Dash and I are up for the task.  We padded around, talking in soft voices, trying to decipher how we will make this strange and beautiful space our own, imagining the possibilities for this new shelter of ours.   

Happy eleventh, baby.  

My friend Susie and I used to scope out “hot dads.”  We would point them out to each other with a frantic whisper - hot dad two o’clock - take a nonchalant look and nod approvingly - Aaaah, yeeees - with fiendish Cheshire cat grins on our mugs, our braces catching the sun.  We were like twelve!  Little Lolitas!  How did we even know to recognize a hot dad?  Must have been some nascent maternal stirrings in our skinny tween bodies, some evolutionary trait honed through the ages to help females pick a good mate.  In actuality we were quite the innocent Catholic school girls, but I’d say we were definitely on to something with the hot dad thing . . .  

So let’s hear it for HOT DADS!!!!  Wooohoooooo!!!!  You guys just don’t get enough props!!!  Here it is baby!  Here’s my shout out to all the hot dads who are out doing their thing . . .  jinging the jingy with the wife, biking with the kids, doing the dishes,  brandishing the barbeque tongs, coaching soccer, trimming the hedges, looking, frankly, hot while you’re doing it!  

Happy Hot Father’s Day!  That’s right men.  Just know that just because your mamas aren’t hunting you down and ripping your clothes off every damn second, it’s not because you’re not hot.  No sirree, it’s because you’re too hot and we are too tired (for the time being).  Not too tired, however, to feel highly appreciative of the serious eye-candy you all are providing for us all over this good green city.

And, of course, Happy Hot Father’s Day to Doctor Dash – the hottest hottie Daddy-o I know!  Now he’s going to be all embarrassed.  Am I crossing the line?  I think not.  I am the picture of discretion.  I am nothing, if not discrete.  So no, it’s fine . . .  love, love, love the hot dads.  Who doesn’t? 

And I super duper dig mine in particular.  It’s funny, although I thought I loved and adored Doctor Dash before having kids, he irretrievably stole my heart and buried it somewhere very very deep the day Saint James was born.  I felt like a wave crashed into me when I saw him holding our beautiful squalling boy, just beaming with joy.  He looked how I felt and sharing that intense happiness, all wrapped up in a light blue blanket was heady indeed.  Saint James was us, yet totally separate and unique and outside of us.  We were a triangle now, and boy, now we were really IN.  

And with each new kid, Dash has shown new colors.  Supergirl brought out a different kind of tenderness – a magical sweetness reserved specifically for fathers and daughters.  Supergirl’s eyes were so enormous as a newborn that she looked like an alien, or a nocturnal animal.  She was adorable and freaky-looking at the same time and Doctor Dash fell for her, hard.

Devil Baby, with all the scares she gave us, worried him sleepless (although he kept it to himself).  His relief that she and I were going to be alright seemed to galvanized itself into a zen-like patience.  He was my safety net and my punching bag during those bleary months when I couldn’t seem to make her happy.  He didn’t say much. The torrent of words, the frantic venting, that was all coming from me.  He let me speak and cry and simply held her.  He gave me the physical separation I needed for a few moments to actually SEE her.  And those minutes of watching him get to know her while I sat a few feet away were priceless – little nuggets of sanity I gobbled up greedily.  In a way, I fell in love with Devil Baby, through Doctor Dash’s eyes.  He was my guide because she and I were so inextricably wrapped up in the crying and nursing and rocking and soothing, none of which was working, that I felt like she and I were one sad, exhausted creature.  He needed to be there, to create physical and emotional space between us, to quietly push us into a triangle, so I could see what he saw, so I could fall in love like he was.   

If Saint James grows up to be like Doctor Dash, I will be a proud and contented mommy, indeed.  I will sigh and hug myself and feel goosebumpily satisfied to have put a good man out into the world.  Dash is a good man. And what can be hotter than that?

Your dancer for money . . . Good old Tina . . .  I’ve had this song in my head since last night, so I was forced to buy it on iTunes and it makes me chuckle.  

It’s no secret that Doctor Dash and I have been feeling a smidge stressed lately.  We’re trying to sell our house in an excruciatingly slow market with three very messy kids.  Getting it picked up, cleaned and “staged” at a moment’s notice is taking its toll.  I, for one, can attest to feeling like a pulpy worn out nub of exposed nerves and I’m sure everyone will be happy to get the old mommy back when the house finally sells.  The old mommy: the one who could live in happy squalor and would greet soccer cleats in the house with mild annoyance as opposed to hysterical, weepy rage.   The new mommy: the one who puts an aesthetically pleasing ratio of red and green apples in a bowl and hisses that the apples are not for eating.

Last night Doctor Dash and I got a babysitter and stepped out for a sorely needed téte-a-téte over dinner, with tentative plans to go see Hookers and Blow (a great throw-down-and-shake-your-thang band) with some friends.  We had both been feeling morose about the house and decided to skip the wild carousing and linger over a delicious meal instead. We went to Sapor in the Warehouse district.  (Incidentally, a little gem of a restaurant, the food is tasty and gorgeous – we like to eat little plates in the bar – very mellow and civilized.) 

Predictably, after a couple glasses of wine, Mama starts to feel festive again.   I decide that I would like nothing better than to shimmy and shammy my way to a little r&r at H&B.  Doctor Dash, of course, has had a long week at work and is just jonesing to take our little party back home for a relaxing and romantic denoument.  So we go back and forth, a heated and complicated little tango of self-serving arguments, words like “squelcher” and “party girl” left unspoken but hanging in the stifling air.    

And so we were stuck.  And then suddenly we were unstuck because lovely Doctor Dash relented and agreed to go to the bar for one drink if I promised not to be a barnacle and leave willingly and quietly when it was time to go.

Which brings me to Tina.  The band was smokin’, as usual, and I was working it out on the dance floor with my super fly lady friends Nanook of the North, Crackerjack, and Birdie while the husbands bellied up to the bar and watched the silliness.  At one point, I turned around and looked on in horror as Doctor Dash took one last swig of his beer . . . I swear it was in slo mo . . . and placed it firmly on the bar.  I smiled at him, held up the three-quarters-full gin and tonic I had been nursing and started to shake my booty like a crazed hoochie mama!  I was in a fever!  I was dancing for my life!  I knew I was about to get pulled off the dance floor with a big wretched cane and I wasn’t finished!  I was dancing for Doctor Dash because I figured there was a 50-50 chance he was either amused by my ridiculous antics or turned on by my ridiculous antics.  Either way, it could bide me some time.  And sure enough, it did – all the way to the end of the blazing hot set.  At which time we bid our friends good night and left hand in hand . . . with me sweaty, grinning and humming Private Dancer.

Doctor Dash to Saint James on researching his second grade habitat project: “Just go upstairs and google beaver.”

So why blog?  My reasons are manifold and since I haven’t really planned out this first entry (I was more just sort of ferreting out a cool background), I’m just going to say that it has a little something to do with having too many words in my head flapping around like a bunch of nasty pigeons.

Sometimes all these words get strung together into thoughts  which are incredibly convoluted and, frankly, out there.  By way of example, I have actually imagined spawning a tiny version of myself who, after landing deftly on the countertop, arm of the couch or where ever I happen to be, scrambles up my sleeve, does a neat pike dive into my ear and hangs out in the bubbling hot tub that is my mind, rather enjoying the churning and the noise, but completely oblivious to the outside world.  

I have also composed entire paragraphs in my head depicting my travels in India, a travelogue redolent with the scents of turmeric and clove, frangipani, tuberose and water hyacinth . . . are you feeling me?  There’s more: dusty cows, swirling saris, warm sheets of monsoon rain, piles of gold and saffron in the markets, secret maps etched on the hennaed hands of brides.  I have never been to India, and, more importantly, do not have a job that would require me to document my impressions of India should I ever go there.  

Better to get all these words out, no?

This whole being in my head thing sounds a bit escapist, I’ll admit, and so this would be a good time to introduce the three short people who live in my house.  Wait.  One step back.  There is also one tall one, taller than me, actually, and I’ll call him Doctor Dash.  He vetoed Doctor Love because, he, unlike me, is not so sure that no one will ever read this blog.  In fact, Doctor Dash has enumerated a whole honkin’ list of things I’m not allowed to write about, but we’ll just see about that.  

I WILL NOT BE CENSORED!

Actually, I will.  I will censor myself to protect the innocent because this is just a lark, a little free therapy, and I intend to avoid any unnecessary mortification of loved ones (myself excluded).

Doctor Dash is very smart, which is very sexy – which is not to say that he wouldn’t be sexy were he not smart – I just wouldn’t be married to him.  He’s also funny, to me anyway.  We met our senior year in college when we were young and fun and about 15 pounds heavier each.  We met at the age when we both lived in flannel shirts and 501’s and drank copious amounts of beer and smoked copious amounts of woops!  We basically got to grow up together.  He wrapped me up in music, I wrapped him up in books and I’m so thankful I didn’t play too hard to get for too long.  (Yes, I was peevish back then too).  He gets me and really, what else could I ask for?

Our oldest lad is a heavenly seven and I will call him Saint James.  He loves all creatures, great and small, and wants to be a naturalist when he grows up.  He’s got the circadian rhythms of a teen.  He’s a killer reader and a pretty great soccer player too.  He’s got a big pouf of dirty blond hair, my eyes but in sparkly blue, an infectious cackle, a gentle soul, and, currently, a horrible case of hay fever.  

Our middle child is fabulously five and I will call her Supergirl.  She’s fearless and sporty and has the biggest green-brown eyes you’ve ever seen.  She craves speed, physical peril, and candy.  She rides her bike like the wind, is never cold and has the world’s dirtiest feet at the end of a good day outside.  She, I suspect, will also have many words in her head someday because she loves to chat and sometimes, honestly, you feel like you are talking to a teenager (albeit, a relatively agreeable one).  She’s determined and fierce and does a mean one-handed cartwheel.

Our youngest, God help us, our youngest is almost two and I can’t decide whether I will call her The Boss or Devil Baby.  Yes, that’s right.  I love her, I’ll keep her, but SHE’S FUCKING KILLING ME.  There, I said it.  I’m sick of all the pitying looks I get at Supergirl’s preschool as I wrestle 28 pounds of bucking fat and muscle to the car every day.  Devil Baby likes to stay and push the toy shopping cart around.  If you fuck with her plans, there is hell to pay.  She has porcelain skin, blue eyes, doe colored hair, and the steely innards of a mob boss.  She can be hilarious and she can make you want to stick your head in the oven.  She likes Elmo and tearing down the street on her big wheel.  She does not cooperate.  She does not compromise.  She does not listen.  She is killing me.  But I love her.  

I love them all.  And so I will write, a bit, to make myself a little more sane, a little more patient, a little less peevish.

Ah, yes, and why peevishmama?  Well, I think I’ve pretty much covered that.  Suffice it to say that I like the word and it captures, perfectly, how I feel 94% of the time.  And by the way, it’s not just my husband and kids making me peevish.  No, sometimes it’s everything and everyone else and they, Doctor Dash, Saint James, Supergirl and Devil Baby are the only, and the perfect, antidote.