more losses

I went to Borderlands Books the other day and stopped in my tracks. The window had a huge memorial to Ripley, the adorably ugly hairless cat who was the store mascot. Ripley was my cat-away-from-home, a particularly friendly and charming animal with a raucous voice who loved attention. Just two weeks ago I'd had a long snuggle with Ripley, who'd followed me around the store until I picked her up and held her. The children often pestered me to go see Ripley.

Ripley's untimely death at age 7 due to cancer brought back all the grief I'd been suffering over my poor Ray Charles, euthanized before he'd turned two. I cried.

And then I learned that my favorite restaurant of the last few years, Las Ramblas, had closed. The Sober Husband wasn't sympathetic over that last loss. "Restaurants come and go," he said callously. "And don't you like that other Spanish restaurant? That one we went to?"

"They don't even have churros there!" I said. "It's not the same!"

He rolled his eyes. "I can see your point about the cat; that's sad, but I think you're being over-sensitive about the restaurant. Isn't your favorite restaurant Fleur de Lys anyway?"

"I can't afford to eat at Fleur de Lys these days!" I said hotly. A meal at Fleur de Lys sets me back $200-300 a person. "I haven't been there since the nineties! How can it be my favorite, if I never get to eat there?"

I could see the Sober Husband visibly censoring himself on the topic of my spending out of consideration for my bereaved state. Soon enough the children's merry squabbling distracted us from our depressing conversation.

multilingual

First grader Lola informed the Sober Husband today: "I speak many languages. I speak English, pig Latin, gibberish, and Momdude. 'Daddude' isn't really a language, so I don't speak that." She gestured animatedly. "It's really kind of geeky talking, tech stuff."

Without rising to the bait, the Sober Husband took her back a step. "When you say you 'speak Momdude', what do you mean?"

Lola enjoyed the chance to explicate her learned theories. "Well, for example, when you ask Momdude a question she doesn't want to answer, she does this." From where I was, I couldn't see what she did, but the Sober Husband oohed and aahed over her acuity.

"Wait!" I interjected. "What is this?"

Lola came over to me. "Let's say for example, I ask you, 'Are we getting kittens?', and you don't say anything. You do this." Lola stuck her chin out at an angle.

The gesture had no familiarity to me. The Sober Husband chimed in. "It's true. When you're asked a yes or no question, and you don't want to say no, you do that." He moved his face in an imitation of Lola's, in a way that looked completely alien to me. He continued explaining. "You reject the binary nature of yes or no questions." He and Lola beamed at each other. I was nonplussed.

horribleness!!!!!!!!!!!!

today i went to the orthodontist and he brought horrible news... BRACES!!!!!!!!!
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (running around the room screaming,).
i have lost all of my baby teeth and i have 2 wisdom teeth... so now i "can receive treatment", meaning get horrible horrible painful horrible braces and also wearing headgear! but i don't have to wear headgear at school...but still horrible!


-Iris

p.s. from her mother: she has 2 "twelve year molars", not wisdom teeth, and also I got a parking ticket while we were at the orthodontist, Lola's earring got ripped through her earlobe in gym, and a bee flew in our car as I was driving, causing Lola to go into hysterics and nearly making me crash the car. It's been a lovely day! On the bright side, Iris's orthodontist is named Jetson Lee, which I consider possibly the best name ever. If you're going to have an orthodontist, it might as well be one with a breathtakingly awesome name. - the D.H.

interludes with Iris

The Guilt Trip: The children do love to hold a grudge against us, the parents, and recently Iris uber Alles spoke at length about a well-cherished parental misstep.

"Remember the time you forgot about me? And I was the last person picked up from extended care? The extended care teacher went home already!"

"When was this?" I asked cautiously.

"In February."

"Oh, when I was recovering from surgery. It wasn't my fault, then."

Iris remarked cuttingly, "Daddude, you only came to get me because I used the computer at extended care to text message you! You forgot about me! Everyone had gone home, and I had to sit out front by the receptionist!"

The Sober Husband's attempts to defend himself were shouted down, but soon enough he was off the hook, as Iris grew distracted by another convenient target of resentment, her little sister. "Lucy got to stay home that day, because she was 'sick.' She got to stay home with Momdude! How come Lucy got to stay home and just hang out with Momdude?"

Her future in politics: Recently Iris remarked, a propos of nothing, "I want to be a politician when I grow up, or a designer. I would like to be a politician because they control people's lives and run things!"

She's being encouraged in this ambition by her teachers. The other day when I picked her up at school, her teacher murmured to her as he held the car door for her, "Iris, tell your mom about how you're going to be a politician."

"Tell me about what happened today that you're supposed to tell me," I instructed her.

With great relish, Iris announced, "Today I questioned authority." She paused to let that take effect. "I asked why we get report cards, and the teacher said, 'So we can see how good a job we are doing teaching you.' That is so not true! So I said, 'Then the teachers should get report cards, not us.' Then someone said we kids should give them report cards, but I said no, it should be someone in the administration, because kids might take it out on them that we don't want to go to school." Iris carried on. Evidently she'd next veered into a perennial flogging-the-dead-horse topic of hers, the ERB standardized test, which Iris views as an offensive waste of time, and the teachers' defense was that it's much worse in public schools, where the children spend a lot more time being tested and a lot more time preparing for the tests. Iris drew herself up. "So I said, 'We're not in public school; we're paying for private school so we don't have to put up with that.'" She denounced the you're-better-off-than-the-public-school-students defense as lame and hypocritical. "And then it was cutting in to time for science, so I had to shut up."

We all reflected upon this. Then Iris said musingly, "Some day I would like the be the first dictator of the whole world. I would control everyone's lives!"

good question

Seven year-old Lola asked me seriously yesterday, "When you were thinking of names for me, how come 'Islecat' wasn't on the list?"

a depressed person & a distracted genius go to the Maker Faire

Everyone loves the Maker Faire; so much that the traffic jams are unbearable. Two years ago we set out to go to the Maker Faire and gave up after spending the morning broiling in the car in a hideous traffic jam rendering 101 impassable. Since then, we've treated ourselves to staying at a hotel with a pool near the faire, a mere twenty minutes away from our home when the Maker Faire isn't bringing every sentient adult in the area onto the freeways. Last year I made all the arrangements, and we stayed in a "junior suite" which the children thought was heaven on earth. We divided our days between charging around the Maker Faire's giant crowds and swimming at the hotel.

This year the Sober Husband was highly critical of my decision to order us all cutrate weekend passes. "I can't imagine going to the Maker Faire more than one day. Why did you pay for two days?"

"That's how we did it last year," I said defensively. "Lola gets tired and wants to go back to the hotel. You can't see it all in one day anyway." He didn't buy it.

Feeling attacked, I let him make the hotel reservations. "Get a junior suite," I instructed, and he gave me an eyeroll. "I can't understand why you would pay for a suite when you're only twenty minutes from home. That's just crazy. Save that for when you go on a real vacation." Shamed, I said nothing when he superiorly informed me that he had gotten us a regular room.

When the day came, I got home with the children (Iris had a daylong field trip to Sacramento which ran a bit late getting back) to find the Sober Husband already packed. He took his usual superior attitude, smirking at me for packing a large bag when he took only his laptop case along.

Then we got to the hotel. I was appalled at checkout to learn that we had a room with only one bed. The hotel clerk had no pity or empathy. "The hotel is booked up," she said briskly. "But we made these reservations for four, a long time ago..." I said weakly.

"We'll get a roll-out bed," the Sober Husband said. But the room turned out to be so small that the roll-out bed couldn't fit in. I was livid.

I'd been in a terrible, depressed mood for days over having to euthanize my beloved little cat, and I was looking forward to relaxing over the weekend to lift my spirits. But being crammed into a tiny room was no escape, particularly with children who live in a home without cable and who consider any moment spent in a hotel room without the TV blaring Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network to be a criminally wasted moment. I gave the Sober Husband a tongue-lashing over his acting superior to me when he was incompetent at the simple task of booking a hotel room. The children murmured, "I love Mama" and hugged me to cheer me up. I settled down in the one chair in the room to finish up my solidly depressing Swedish crime novel while the TV blared, not wanting to even look at my husband.

The Sober Husband volunteered to sleep on the floor, Lola made herself a little nest, and Iris and I took the bed. This was no treat for me, as Iris kicks violently and talks in her sleep. No friend of Iris has ever gotten any decent amount of sleep on a sleepover, and in the morning I felt like I'd only slept two or three hours. Even so I'd missed the drama of the night: the Sober Husband reported that he woke up at 3 AM and realized he'd left the Maker Faire tickets at home. "I ASKED YOU IF YOU HAD THE TICKETS," I said crabbily, "when you said so superiorly, 'I am ready to go,' and YOU SAID YES."

"I meant 'yes, I'm getting them.' But then I went down to the garage to get them, and I got distracted. So at three a.m., I drove home, got the tickets, and drove back." He paused and beamed around, clearly expecting praise, but he had misjudged his audience.

"Did you let Henry out?" I asked concernedly.

"What was Henry doing? Did you see Henry?" added Iris.

"Did the cats have enough to eat? Was Henry hungry?" inquired Lola worriedly.

The barrage of questions about Henry went on until the Sober Husband said crankily, "I just wanted to get the tickets, not follow Henry around."

We got over the Maker Faire before it opened, waiting in a long line of cars to get into the lot and then waiting in a ticketholders' line which snaked around so long I wished we'd driven to the end of the line. Once we got past the security gate, Iris and I overruled the Sober Husband's objections to insist we wait in line to climb the longest ladder we'd ever seen into this year's gem of a structure, the "Raygun Gothic Rocket", a massive rocket on tall fins which were themselves over two stories high. Once our waiting was over we, one at a time with a safety line attached, climbed carefully up the long, long ladder. All the squabbling and problems were forgotten as we gazed around in wonder at the see through floor showing a moving engine below, the cases with little twitching or floating aliens, the mounted safety instructions for crew who wished to have sex with friendly aliens and more marvels. "It's so beautiful," I sighed to the jumpsuit-clad crew. Even the Sober Husband had to agree that the Gothic Rocket was a thing of wonder. "It's more stable than I expected," he observed. "With all these people in it, it's not even moving." We leaned into each other affectionately.

captive audience

Today I sat in on a life drawing class again (a perk of my introductory drawing class). Our model was a Haitian woman, who chose an extremely difficult set of poses for us to draw. "Oh, this is so hard," mourned my introductory drawing comrade, gamely drawing next to me. "It's harder for me, to hold it," the model informed him.

In my brief experience of life drawing, the models have been silent during the poses other than to give time warnings ("One minute!"), but quite chatty during the breaks. Today, during the last scheduled pose, a twenty minute long pose, the model gave us, all of whom were silent as we concentrated on our drawing, an impromptu lecture on Haiti's relationship with the U.S., using the word "fucking" quite a few times, ending with a rousing assertion that the U.S., along with France and Canada, has stripped Haiti of all its gold.

I found this a fascinating twist on the usual artists-staring-at-naked-person power dynamic.

depressed, but with the comfort of art and a good parrot

Yesterday I went back to bed after the children were packed off to school. I felt supremely depressed over the untimely death of my poor cat, Ray Charles. A lot of friends have told me that they know how I feel because they had to put down their aged cat, and I appreciate their good intentions, but it makes me feel worse because their cats got to live out a normal lifespan, while my Ray Charles wasn't even two years old.

Ray was an unusually affectionate little cat, who was very close to me, the children, our other cat, Henry, and all foster kittens who passed through the home. He was a very small black cat with a crooked tail and a raucous voice which was evidence of some Siamese heritage (you would be surprised at how many feral kittens in San Francisco are clearly half Siamese. I think there are a lot of owners of Siamese cats who don't neuter). Until he became very ill, he was a huge presence in our home, a very small black cat with a big voice and a big personality.

I didn't want to get up and face the world. Eventually it got to be near one o'clock, when I had said I would help the lower school art teacher set up the annual art fair. I considered not going. After all, I'd helped out the day before, and also I might not even be missed. There would be other volunteers. But I do love the art teacher and the art festival, and I hate to be a flake, so I dragged myself into the shower just before 1:00. I was twenty minutes late and profoundly depressed when I showed up, but I made up for it by staying late, fetching Lola and Iris at dismissal time and getting them to help as well, until the art teacher assured me there was absolutely nothing left to be done.

The sun shone (although a strong, chilly wind blew, detaching the "Welcome to the Art Festival" banners twice). The children's art was magnificent. I particularly fell in love with the third grade's series of "Beckoning Cats": they'd taken a field trip to Japantown and then each made a smiling, waving cat sculpture. These cats had so much personality and verve and color.

Last night my parrot sneaked into bed with me and slept on my pillow. I didn't get up and put her back on her parrot tree. I miss sleeping with Ray Charles (there was a lot of rivalry, bragging rights attached, over who Ray chose to stay with for the night, whereas no one ever wants poor old drooling Al, the cat who is allergic to his own teeth, and the other cats aren't particularly snuggly). Parrots aren't snuggly at night either, and they don't purr or have fur, but it was somehow comforting to have Pigwidgeon dozing on the pillow.

Lola is a native San Franciscan

Every week Lola brings home a sampling of her work in the first grade, usually a set of worksheets she filled out in the classroom. This can be a monotonous thing to review, pages of 2 + 2 = 4 and "underline the long vowel sound", etc.., etc.., but it is well worth a careful examination, given that the unique genius of Lola somehow leaks through at times, even on the most boring of worksheets.

Today I found a sheet where Lola was instructed to "Make a picture of four squares. Put a squirrel to the left of the first square. Put a squirrel to the right of the second square. Put a squirrel over the third square. Put a squirrel under the fourth square." Lola obeyed these commands, and then went on to squeeze into the margin a picture of a fruit tree, a peace sign, two cats beaming at each other, and three stick figures hugging each other and smiling. Where Lola was supposed to practice writing the word "square," she wrote (continuing this onto the back of the page) the following ode to the square:

A square, each of its sides with equal rights, loving nature. building a tree. The square is a Happy Hippie like me. Be nice to Squares. Raise them in your mind. When 18, let them free.

RIP Ray Charles

My little cat, Ray Charles, who was less than two years old, died today due to feline infectious peritonitis. Poor Ray had a really rough life: found feral in a junkyard, blinded in one eye due to a feline herpetic infection (this was cured with intensive treatment from a feline opthalmologist), and not adopted after spending two months at the city shelter (please, people; consider the BLACK kittens and BLACK cats. Don't pat yourself on the back for your originality in seeking out an orange cat or another exotic color. It's the black cats who need you). Ray went up for adoption with his silver tabby sister, who was snapped up within two days despite the fact that her vision was severely limited in both eyes, but the people who adopted her weren't interested in taking Ray as her companion. The Sober Husband kindly gave me Ray for my birthday, as I felt horrible that no one had adopted him, and Ray turned out, for the short time we had him, to be everyone's favorite cat. Always snuggling with us and seeking human contact, he was nicknamed "Baby" and beloved by all.

Ray especially loved kittens and interacted nonstop with all the litters we fostered last year. He groomed them, slept with them, and roughhoused with them, making up for their own too early separations from their own mothers. It won't be the same fostering without him.

Lola's best friend from kindergarten was hugely attached to Ray Charles and told everyone, "When Ray Charles dies, I will die!" At the time, I assured her Ray would live a long, long time. Hopefully the untimely deaths will stop with this one. RIP Ray. You were really ripped off in life in so many ways, and I will miss you always.

a seemingly innocent thing

Today I got a message that Iris had injured her head at school and that I needed to pick her up. I was worried as I drove over, thinking it must be a concussion or something needing stitches. I'd barely parked when our unflappable office manager led a softly crying Iris out to my car, with an icepack on her head.

"What happened, Iris?" Between sobs, Iris said she'd been struck in the head with a recorder by accident. I asked who hit her, and it was a friend, a very warmhearted girl I knew would never physically attack Iris. "It must have been an accident," I said. "But. I just can't visualize it." I couldn't imagine a recorder doing that much damage unless it had been forcibly whipped onto Iris's head with both hands, and I knew the girl in question wouldn't do that. Iris couldn't understand it fully, either. I went ahead and claimed little sister Lola early and took them home, where I gave Iris ibuprofen, put her to bed, and later fed her comfort foods: soup, edamame, and ice cream.

The music teacher called to check on Iris and explained. She hadn't seen the incident but had reconstructed it after the fact. Iris's friend was walking across the classroom on her way to sit next to Iris. As she swung her recorder in the air as she walked, the bottom piece of her recorder flew off, and the rough, somewhat jagged metal inside piece, exposed only when the instrument was taken apart, struck Iris's scalp. "There was a lot of blood," said the teacher sadly.

It made a little more sense when it was explained. The music teacher started to explain how terrible Iris's friend felt, but I cut her off. "We know it was an accident. I knew as soon as I heard who it was that it was an accident."

Having been afflicted by a loathsome clarinet for many years of my childhood (I got stuck having to take the clarinet because my parents had bought one for my older sister, who quickly gave up on it, and already having one musical instrument, they had no interest in buying another), I always instinctively mistrusted the recorder, the clarinet's cousin. "It's the devil's own instrument," I said to Iris, who sobbingly agreed.

the attention of the media

Over the life of this blog, I've been interviewed by the "Wall St. Journal" and by "Time." However, the real incisive questions came from the iInterview blog. Enjoy!

everyone can draw -- and glue things on paper

I've been busy lately on an Art Spree: I'm taking two art classes (a mixed media class and "Everyone Can Draw") and sitting in on a third (a life drawing class, with live nude models). This has been taking up most of my time and energy, aside from the children, and it's been fabulous.

Moving from discipline to discipline at the arts studio, I've been surprised to see how different the people are who gravitate to different kinds of art. Last year I devoted myself to sculpting in clay, and my ceramics classes were a mixed bag. Before I even started my first class, the instructor called me to try to talk me out of my spot in the class, as I'd accidentally taken a slot that she'd rather give to one of her long-term students. I declined to give up my class slot, and it shouldn't have been a surprise to me that I was, as I put it, the red-headed stepchild of that class, since I was clearly a brash interloper who seized someone else's rightful place.

The instructor wasn't particularly interested in instructing me; she spent considerable time each class bragging about developments in her own career. She was interested in functional art, while I was drawn to making little statues of animals. It's clear (if I immodestly say so myself) I have a certain gift for making charming little clay figures which have personality, but I didn't learn a damn thing about how to glaze them. Even my classmates were moved to compliment some of my pieces a lot. "You nailed that, you really nailed it," they said about a little rabbit. "Look at how his neck turns!" Sadly my best sculpture, a little wildcat, was shattered by a heavy crystal frame falling on it.

The typical person in my ceramics class was a wealthy, retiree from Marin. They had a clique which had strengthened over the years spent making pots together, and many of them weren't eager to welcome anyone in. When I was working with porcelain clay on the work surface reserved for white clay only, several classmates came up to mistakenly scold me that I shouldn't be there.... all of them having witlessly failed to notice that I was working with pure, white porcelain just like I was supposed to. I snapped and said to one of them, "I've been doing this for nine months; when are you going to stop treating me like a newcomer?" This prompted another senior citizen ceramicist to apologize to me, in private, for the rudeness of the rest of the class.

The ceramicists' rudeness wasn't limited to newcomers. One of the core members of the class regularly committed one of etiquette's greatest faux pases: discussing a social event in front of others who are not invited. She held an annual Oscar party, to which only one of the classmates was invited, but she spent months discussing her menu in front of the rest of us. (This woman also nearly ran me over with her minivan, which she illegally drove through Golden Gate Park at a high speed when she was dropping off alcoholic drinks at our last class. She was also fond of discussing in class how she maintained a legal residence in Texas so she could avoid the California income tax).

While the aging ceramicists can be a rough group to breach, collage enthusiasts tend to be warm, friendly, and admiring of each other's work. My current collage class is composed entirely of women, who are all lookers, of various ages. (I would strongly recommend any single heterosexual man or lesbian woman who likes artsy women to take a mixed media class. The pickings are excellent, my friends). Two are French women, who are as thin and chic and emotionally complicated looking as all the cliches we hold of Frenchwomen. Their accents are as sexy as their intricate, form-fitting clothes. The Americans are beautiful and sweet and earnest, and everyone has the loveliest manners you could wish for, all finding something to admire in everyone's work. And my God, these women do good work. When we were assigned the homework of making an autobiographical collage, I thought the pieces a couple of my classmates brought in were worthy of hanging in a gallery. We passed our pieces around and discussed each one, and pretty much everyone was glowing with a love of art and each other's work.

I've taken several classes with my collage teacher, whom I like very much, and it's paying off. I am a slow learner at collage, and the techniques she taught me last year are now (at least some of them) something I can deploy on my own. My classmates often admire my work, but I tell them it's only because this is my third class. "But you have an eye for this," one kindly persisted.

And then there's the introductory drawing class. This class brought out a big split in generations, with a sizable number of retirees but also quite a few twenty-somethings, with your redoubtable correspondent representing the middle-aged. As predicted by our instructor, quite a few students dropped out, but those who remain are delightfully humorous and charming, as well as hard-working. By this point in the class, there's a feeling of industry -- industry which pays off. Each week our drawings are better, clearly better. And four of us have been sitting in on the life drawing class, and together we have developed the ability to calmly watch a naked lady contort herself and get a reasonably accurate rendition of her down on paper. Sitting together in a group on one side of the class, we don't really stand out too much from the highly accomplished artists we are joining. One of those artists made friendly conversation with me one day, inquiring, "What medium are you working in today?"

"Oh, I thought just pencil," I said breezily. At least I had an artists' pencils package, twelve pencils sorted by hardness, all sans eraser, rather than a regular old yellow #2 pencil, but I didn't feel much more sophisticated than a child.

The drawing instructor can find something praiseworthy in every one's drawings, and she takes such happiness in seeing us progress. She remarked to me after a life drawing class, when we were aahing over a fellow beginner's beautifully proportioned nude, that at this point in her career, she's never going to make a giant leap of progress, and it's such a joy to see it in us, the beginning students. If you were to look at the pictures some of us drew at the first class and what we are drawing now, you would never think it was the same person's work, done only a few weeks apart.

It's been fun, fun, fun, people, and my art has been improving steadily. On the other hand, there's plenty of work to do. Lola continually gawks, saying, "Why would you take a CLASS with HOMEWORK?" Both children can be sucked into my homework at times. They made lovely color wheels when I was doing a lesson on color theory. Lola even wrote on a class assignment that she loved her Mommy because her mommy is "loving and spoiling" and that her favorite things to do with Mommy were "foster kittens, play with cats, and make collages."

Happy Mother's day

me and lucy wish you a happy mothers day with these photos of us.

a cutting remark

First grader Lola was pretending to tell someone off. Putting her hands on her little hips, she sneered, "You wanna organize a sock drawer, SUCKAH?"

how did these two crazy kids end up married to each other?

For a week I didn't have a single alcoholic drink, as I had a sore throat, which led to a head cold, which in its turn segued smoothly into a sinus infection. I never drink when I'm ill; my body craves fresh vegetables and ginger ale at those times (I did feel better enough to enjoy a fine margarita on Cinco de Mayo, made with tequila infused with strawberries. I infused the tequila aeons ago and hadn't gotten around to trying it, and it's magic, folks, magic. An amazing, amazing flavor. I strongly recommend to all of you who drink that you pick up a pint of strawberries, rinse them and trim them and chop them up a bit, put them into a Mason jar, and then fill it with a decent tequila. Let it stand for several days).

Meanwhile the Sober Husband has been busy with a lot of pseudo-work, pseudo-social engagements involving drinking: I've been sober, and he's been imbibing. Last night he complained bitterly. "I had to drink beer three days this week. I don't want to drink beer three days a week!"

the rationale

At our house we have rules about food, rules which were forged in days of conflict and negotiation after a final, fateful tantrum thrown by the Drunken Housewife over ungrateful children whining over their nice meals. In the years since the Food Rules were created -- in a convocation practically rivaling that of the Original Founders --, peace has largely reigned, and everyone lives by the system.

That doesn't mean that there isn't scope for the lively young mind of seven year-old Lola, though. Tonight the children were eager to be deemed "dessert qualified", as, wonder of wonders, for once we had an actual dessert on hand, a lemon cake. To be "dessert qualified", a child must have eaten a reasonable portion of dinner (and there are all sorts of rules about how a child cannot be required to eat something she genuinely dislikes, but she must try a new food in good faith, assuming Mommy has left out all ingredients acknowledged by all as loathed by the child in question, etc.., etc...).

Iris was clearly dessert qualified, having mowed through a large amount of roasted asparagus, but Lola was not. I suggested that if she finished the piece of asparagus she had in her hand, we'd call it a day and let the cake be served. Lola moved her eyebrows up and down quizzically, and then explained, "Since we are vegetarians... and since we eat so many vegetables.... we are pretty much made out of vegetables! So this is like meat! It's like me eating meat!"

She looked at me to gauge the effect this had had, and then carried on, slightly adjusting her tack. "And since we're pretty much made out of vegetables, what's the point? Why should I have to eat this? I mean, come on? I'm made out of vegetables!" She brandished the piece of asparagus with disgust. "Now, what should I do with this?"

is it the Christians or is it "The Man Show" to blame?

As a feminist who is raising two girls in a screwed-up culture (albeit one I'd pick quickly over any country which forbids women to drive, vote, or go about unveiled), I am a sucker for a good feminist screed. This week I read two attempts to pin down What Is Wrong With How The U.S. Treats Women to a single, predominant cause: "Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work Is Done" by Susan J. Douglas (Henry Holt 2010) and "The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession With Virginity Is Harming Young Women" by Jessica Valenti (Seal Press 2009).

Ms. Douglas says what is wrong with our culture is a snarky, backlashy attitude that feminism is no longer needed. Pop culture tells us that women have already won the war and now it's time for them to relish their own special power, the power of their sexuality. A way for a powerful woman to assert herself is for her to wear skanky clothes and revel in how men are reduced to mush in her presence. "Lad mags" like Maxim and shows, like "The Man Show", all present beautiful young women in as little clothing as possible as holding the ultimate in power, and they do it all tongue-in-cheek. If a layer of irony, a little knowing nudge-to-the-ribs that we all know something is playing with sexual stereotypes, is pastiched over some ridiculously sexist looking display, then it's okay by modern standards and only a ridiculous, hairy-legged, humorless old feminist would object. A modern woman knows she should exploit her special powers and rejoice that she is sexy as well as smart.

As Douglas points out, one of the problems with this is that it only works for young, white women who are a size two or smaller. I would go even further and say that it doesn't even work as it is posited to work. I experimented in my early twenties (as a dear old friend reminisced once, "I remember when you were a sexbomb") with running around in rather extreme clothes, bustiers and miniskirts and latex, and it didn't, as Maxim claims, reduce everyone around me to my drooling slave. It didn't empower me at all. It empowered the louts around me to leer, make disgusting remarks, and try to reach up my skirt (although perhaps I should note that there was a fellow of my acquaintance who made the serious offer to be my house slave and to live as the unpaid servant of my first husband and me. I rejected this instantly without thought, although my ex would have relished the set-up). Similarly the drunken college girls who climb aboard the Bang Bus don't seem to be given any power in that situation by their youthful good looks or sexuality.

Meanwhile Ms. Valenti also whipped up a brew of pissed-off erudite feminism over the same state of affairs, but she's blaming it all on the charismatic Christian virginity movement. As someone who feels forever scarred by her extreme born-again Christian adolescence, I like to keep an eye on what the Pentecostals are up to, and I found it odd that Ms. Valenti missed a lot of it. Like her, I'm pretty disturbed by the purity balls, where born again Christian girls go to oddly sexualized formal dances with their fathers, where they pledge their virginity as their father's personal property. The girls are often given necklaces with little locks on them, and the father keeps the key, which is intended for him to give the girl's husband eventually. I think this bothers me even more than it does Ms. Valenti; by making a girl's purity a physical possession of her father, which gives him pride and esteem, I feel like this branch of Christianity is teetering dangerously towards the honor killings of Muslim societies. Also, Ms. Valenti somehow missed the whole "I gave up dating for Jesus" movement, where teens and singles are pressured into giving up dating entirely and a kiss, a simple kiss, mind you, is viewed as something which must be saved for marriage. I fear for the poor girls in a subculture where just a kiss is viewed as a permanent cause of impurity.

Ms. Valenti discusses the ugliest side of lad culture, "The Bang Bus", but somehow she doesn't see or ignores the message sent by lad culture which is the entire subject of Ms. Douglas's book: the pretense that glorifying women's sexuality and beauty gives them power and that if we are ironic in our use of sexist cliches, it's only the humorless who are upset at them. Instead Ms. Valenti thinks it's all down to the glorification of virgins and that once a woman is no longer a virginal child, all this sexual slamming comes out. If we didn't honor and obsess about virgins, perhaps we wouldn't obsess about women's sexuality.

Both Valenti and Douglas note that the idealized woman in our American pop culture is physically a child. Models are starved into a childish form (indeed they often lose their periods, making them seem literally like prepubescent children). Valenti thinks this is linked to our obsession with virginity, while Douglas seems to think it's the logical result of glorifying youthful good looks.

While I'm just as disturbed as Ms. Valenti by the purity balls and abstinence teaching, I think it's a reach on her part to try to make the religious right's obsession with girls' virginity the cause of so many woes, such as a pregnant woman attempting a vaginal birth at home being arrested and taken to the hospital in shackles for a c-section. Out of these two books, I'm more inclined to believe that "enlightened sexism", as Ms. Douglas dubs the ironic use of sexual stereotypes, is a bigger and more pervasive problem than an obsession with virginity.

I wish both writers were less narrow in their scope. Both books treat the U.S. as though it were in a vacuum. I also wish Ms. Douglas watched a little less television and looked at other areas of life for inspiration. Although these books made for depressing, albeit thought-provoking and edifying, reading, I did find some room for hope. Ms. Douglas longs for the nineties, when American women made huge gains. Fueled by our rage over the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, stoked up by reading Susan Faludi's "Backlash", and encouraged by the Riot Grrls, women went into politics and mass media in huge ways. What seemed so obvious to me, but unspoken by Ms. Douglas, was that perhaps it is a natural cycle: the 70s saw huge feminist progress, followed by the 80s backlash, which itself was followed by the radical 90s, to get slapped down by the enlightened sexism Ms. Douglas so pervasively documented in the 00s. Maybe the 2010s are going to bring us great things again.

the homecoming

The fourth grade went up to the Gold Country for three days, culminating their study of the Gold Rush. Here at home Lola celebrated "National No Iris Day" each day, but eventually the time came to go meet Iris.

As I stood in the parking lot by the side of the massive rented tour bus, Iris's favorite teacher popped off the bus first. He looked like he'd aged ten years. "You look so tired," I said, and he gave me a mournful look. "I have a graduate school presentation tonight, too," he said sadly.

Fourth graders streamed off the bus, all screaming, "Mom!" or "Daddy!" and rushing to their waiting parent, throwing their arms around them vigorously. It was all so touching. One girl's little sister pushed her way right up to the bus steps (Lola had chosen to sulk in the car), and her big sister folded her up in her arms and kissed her softly on the top of her head. They stood there, hugging tightly with their eyes closed, for a long time, while the other girls pushed and mobbed around them. It was like something from a story book.

Eventually Iris emerged, one of the last girls off the bus. She walked past me without acknowledging me in any way, swinging her hair about and shouting, "Bye, guys! Bye!" to her classmates. Turning back to me she said brusquely, "I need to get my stuff."

like a grownup

My drawing instructor urged us all at our last class to drop in to the life drawing class, where there are real, live, nude models posing. We had come to enough classes that she felt comfortable inviting us, as we should be able to comport ourselves with dignity as non-perverts who truly enjoy the art of sketching. I'd known for years about the life drawing classes; the hallway always displays pictures from the latest class. The girls and I normally take a moment to check that art out when we're at the art studio (Lola always enjoys a good butt picture in particular).

Yesterday I did drop in. I decided to slip in and perch at the far back for the end of the class, which overlapped with Lola's art class (which is devoted to drawing cute things, such as mermaids and kittens. Lola tends to work on the same idea each week, a princess riding a unicorn near a castle, a frustratingly difficult subject which drives her to tears but yet a compelling one which cannot be abandoned).

As I tried to settle myself quietly at the back, the instructor pointed out a bench closer by I could use. This bench had bags of every type around it, on either side, and it was difficult to settle myself in, but I did. I was directly behind the model, so I worked with the view I had. "Lola will be so pleased that I've drawn a naked stranger's butt," I reflected.

The model ended her pose and took a brief break. The owner of all the bags came back; she'd moved to get a more pleasing view. I took the spot she'd been squatting in, which turned out to be directly behind the model for the next pose, and then the class was over.

My two pictures were better than I had expected. I can't draw from my mind; I can't imagine something and draw it at all well, but if I can see something, I can put a recognizable (and often pleasing) rendition of it down on paper. The instructor was very encouraging and urged me to come back next week. She suggested that I could come by for an hour, leave my drawing things there, go pick up the children, and then return for the last two poses. A man from my class had also tried the life drawing course.

I felt oddly grown-up as I left. As a homeowner, parent, and former attorney, I should feel adult all the time, but it felt exceptionally grown-up to have moved into the realm of sketching a naked stranger without snickering. Maturity points should be deducted, however, for my getting a laugh out of Lola by informing her that while she made an orange kitten out of foam, I was drawing a stranger's naked old butt.

another unmarketable skill discovered

I'm taking a drawing class, and it's not easy. The catalogue makes the class sound simple: "Everyone can draw! Get in touch with your natural ability!", but at the first class, the instructor solemnly instructed us to look around, because a lot of us were going to drop out and few would struggle through the whole course. (I've heard that is often said to first year law students, but not at my alma mater. There was an epidemic of suicides during my time there, but no one just dropped out. If you didn't kill yourself, you graduated).

Last Friday at drawing class, first we had to draw a mangy old trumpet for an hour (I drew it twice, and then took out a New Yorker and silently read. The woman next to me gamely sketched that trumpet for a solid hour, and even then she wasn't done). Then we had a difficult exercise that we were told would drive us all crazy: we had to turn our bodies away from our paper, angling our arm behind us to touch the paper, and we had to stare at our left hands and draw it, with a Sharpie, without looking once at our paper. We were supposed to do this slowly, but most people ripped through it in a minute or less. I took a bit over two minutes. Then we looked at our pictures. Most were unrecognizable, a cacophony of lines which resembled nothing. Mine was a hand. A big, jerky hand, but a hand nevertheless, with fingernails, rings and scars.

We did something we often do: we had to display our drawing and walk around the room, looking at everyone's picture. Mine was freakishly better, hugely better, than all the rest. "Carole must have done this exercise before," our instructor said. "Many times before."

"She looked!" accused another student. "She was looking!"

"I did not, and I've never done this before," I said firmly.

We went back to our seats and did the exercise again. This time the instructor took up a new position, straight across the room from me, and I think she was trying to see if I were cheating. Once again my hand was a hand, with proportionate fingers and fingernails and thumb and knuckles, even better than the first hand, and once again everyone else's was jumbled and crazy.

However, we went on to draw kitchen utensils this way, and I lost my mojo altogether. My spatula was a mangled mess, unrecognizable. But for a shining five minutes there, I was an art prodigy, envied by some and attacked by others who could not imagine my gift was real. The hand drawings have gone into the recycling, and the glory has passed.

on Haight Street

Today I got the call to pick up Lola, who was complaining of a sore throat, early. I sped off to get her, and as she didn't look too bad, I asked if she'd be willing to run an errand on Haight Street on our way home. I needed to get a pad of drawing paper, and I wanted to browse the magazines at the bookstore for possible collage pictures (my homework for my art classes this week is to draw every day, which I cheated on by doing five drawings this morning rather than one a day for the past five days, and to make a collage about a current event).

When I got out of the car, a raspy-voiced, rough-haired guy sitting on the street called out to me. "Lady friend!" As I fed the meter and got little Lola out, he asked me if I live in San Francisco, no doubt pegging me for a tourist. "Yes, I do," I informed him. (I talk to any street people who are polite, although I'm not as friendly as my old landlord, who made it a point of pride to have warm conversations with anyone who ever asked him for change).

"Have you lived here long?" he rasped.

"Since the eighties. Is that long?"

For some reason, he loved that. "She asks if it's long since the eighties!" he said delightedly to his companions, all sprawling about. (I thought about Police Chief Gascon's Haight Street-inspired crusade to get sitting and lying on the sidewalks outlawed).

We exchanged a few more pleasantries about the city and my raising a child here as I led slow-moving Lola away. When we got back to the car, poor Lola dragging, I found that the little crowd of street people were gone. There were two pages on my windshield; nothing on any of the cars in front or behind ours. Under the driver's side wiper, there was a full page picture of a beautiful woman with a caption, "Divine Domesticity." Under the passenger side wiper, there was a full page shot of a beautiful baby wild cat, a jaguar or ocelot kitten, wearing a collar.

4/20

Today Lola had a drawing class in Golden Gate Park, and I could not find a parking spot. Driving around crankily, I eventually remembered that it is April 20th... i.e., 4/20. "Ah," I thought to myself. "It's the day all the potheads celebrate by taking up all the parking spaces in Golden Gate Park!" I eventually pulled up and instructed Iris to walk Lola to her art lesson and then wait for me in the kitchen, while I parked. After driving around and around, I got decisive and parked illegally, figuring that the many police on hand should be preoccupied with the potheads, rather than my car.

I met up with Iris and instructed her firmly: "Next year, do NOT let Mommy drive to Golden Gate Park on Four Twenty! I don't care what classes you guys have; we're skipping them." We left the citadel of the arts studio to take in the sights of that special day, which consisted of a very dense crowd of people under thirty and one reggae band which everyone was ignoring. "Iris, be careful!" I nagged. "Don't knock over anyone's glass pipe!" Indeed it appeared that everyone had brought their finest hookahs, bongs, and pipes for the occasion; there were a lot of showy art glass smoking apparatuses on display. "These people are breaking the law," marveled Iris as the fumes of marijuana filled the air.

"Did you learn anything, Iris?" I asked her as we walked back to the arts studio. "Not really," she said.

Back at the studio, Iris did her homework, and the sounds of the potsmokers could be heard within the walls. The art parents and instructors were slightly crabby. "All those people are driving high as a kite," one artist and instructor complained. "And the bongo playing, they're playing the bongos in the daylight." She gestured tiredly. "I just want to tell them to give it up, just stop."

failing as a fourth grade mother

I'm not doing so great in my role as mother of a fourth grader. At the girls' school, the fourth grade is considered an unusual grade, a special time in a child's life, as it's the last year in the lower school. The fourth graders are supposed to take a leadership role in the life of the lower school, before they transition (in a ceremony enigmatically called "Pansy Day") to the upper school.

The other mothers are all taking this very seriously. Meanwhile I've been lost in my own world all year. First I had meningitis in October, losing the whole month in a haze of headaches and Vicodin. November and December I spent freaking out about my next health crisis and doctor-shopping, trying to get a diagnosis and a surgeon. January was spent clearing the decks (a morbid person by nature, I was secretly convinced I wasn't coming home from surgery). February was all about my surgery and days in the hospital, and March was spent convalescing. Now it's April, and I'm fine (although sadly out of shape; six months of health crises have left me with the strength and aerobic capacity of a snail).

Now that I've crawled out of my little personal health bubble, I'm not fitting in so well. First one of the fourth grade mothers got the idea, a perfectly fine idea, that the fourth grade should bid on an auction item, a slumber party at the school with the head of school. It would, she thought, be a perfect celebration to mark the end of fourth grade, the end of lower school. That's well and fine, but rather than just ask everyone to contribute as they saw fit, she figured out that we should bid $150 a family.

This made me feel like a jerk. There's no way I was going to pay $150 for a slumber party. It's true that the bills from all my medical expenses are still trickling in, and it's true that we have been over budget and trying to get things under control. It's also true, though, that I could pay $150 if I put my mind to it. I could find that money somewhere. I could have not taken the children to the Beach Chalet for a decadent lunch during their spring break. I could stop buying arborio rice and cave aged gruyere (I've just started cooking again). We could eat more peanut butter sandwiches, and I could stop taking Lola for hot chocolate and a rugelach sometimes while we wait for her sister (I myself sip a relatively abstemious low fat latte). We hired a babysitter for three and a half hours this month and went to a play, our only date night of the past three months, and we could have stayed home and put that money towards the sleepover. But the truth is I wasn't willing to pay $150 for a fourth grade party, and I had to write to the very nice mother organizing this and whine that I can't join in, and everyone knows now I'm a cheapskate because the fourth grade mothers sent around emails listing every family who paid.

The sleepover-organizing mother wasn't the only one combining commemorating the importance of the fourth grade with fundraising. Another mother spearheaded a project of interviewing all the fourth graders, putting it all on DVDs, and slipping the DVD's into custom totebags designed by local artist Thora Rose. These were $75 a piece, and she got upset that not everyone was buying them. She sent out email telling us that she'd put a lot of work into this and wouldn't have done it if she hadn't thought we were all going to buy this. At pickup time, she showed me the bag and told me there was a lot of footage of Iris, and I felt guilt-tripped, but again, I don't have $75 for a bag and a DVD right now. I actually like this particular mother a lot, and I even like Thora Rose; I bought the graphic novel Rose wrote about her divorce a few years ago. But on the other hand, there are a lot of bags lying around this house and not so many piles of seventy-five dollars.

Pickup time has become humiliating for me at school, as the DVD totebag mother uses that time to hand out the bags, while I shamefacedly avoid her gaze.

And then there's the mother who asked me a few weeks back, "Are you going to the event this weekend?" I looked blank, like an idiot, and she clarified. "The school auction." The auction itself cost, if I remember right, $75 a person to attend, on top of a $10 an hour babysitter, and needless to say I wasn't going. This mother was handing out the guilt freely, pointing out how important it was to support the school, and I felt pushed into playing the health card. Shamelessly I said, "I just had major surgery last month, and we're going to be paying bills from that all year. No, I'm not buying things at the auction." The auction itself sold out; it was a capacity house, so I think that the school did just fine without me.

What do the parents say who can't afford to drop hundreds of dollars at the end of the year on this stuff who don't have the surgery card to play? Thankfully Lola's grade isn't going insane like this. I have not been guilt tripped or emailed or accosted by a single first grade mother who has an idea requiring me to hand over $75 or $150, thankfully.

snippets

- The geek torch has been passed from one generation to the next. Young Iris uber Alles subjected her classmates to an extra credit report on "Dr. Who" and has managed to become the official expert in the household on the 22nd century doctors. She called her father urgently the other day to alert him that "today you can download the new "Dr. Who!"

- I've started some art classes after a long hiatus. I'm painting or drawing every day, and Lola is incredulous. "Why would you take a CLASS? A CLASS with HOMEWORK?" Even when Lola joins me in doing my art homework, she shakes her head in sorrowful pity from time to time at my idiocy.

- Speaking of my art homework, I need ten words which describe me. There will be prizes if someone leaves words in the comments which I use!

- Lola's been sidelined with a urinary tract infection this week, missing a few days of school. I was treating this with baths (no bubble paths or scented soaps, of course) and cranberry juice, but it got worse, and the Sober Husband was highly critical that I hadn't taken her to the pediatrician. Today we saw a pediatrician, who advised that we treat Lola with baths and cranberry juice.

- I haven't logged into the World of Warcraft for nearly a week. This is mostly due to the fact that I've been busy with my art classes, but also due to a mania for Clue. I picked up a "Vintage Clue" edition last week when the children were on spring break, and we all play Clue together for hours every night. Lola insists upon being "Rachel Francesca Scarlett", the name "Miss Scarlett" being insufficiently grand for her.

- I was determined to watch some grown-up movies for once, and I rather randomly picked "Donnie Darko" and "Secretary" to see. I didn't realize until over halfway through "Donnie Darko" that I had accidentally programmed us a Gyllenhaal Sibling Film Festival. The Sober Husband liked "Donnie Darko" so much that he yammered on for days about its theories of physics and time travel, but remarked of "Secretary," "I don't know what that movie was about. I watched it, but don't ask me what it was about."

ten is the new thirteen

As someone who dyed her hair nearly every color you can think of, shaved her head, and wore a latex miniskirt in public, I felt pretty confident about dealing with whatever extreme fashion statements the children might get up to in their teen years. After all, I was one of the earlier Modern Primitives back in the eighties, getting pierced covertly in the basement of a fetish store before piercing shops were invented and moving to California because tattoos were illegal where I lived. How could I be shocked?

I was stupidly wrong, of course. Iris uber Alles is only ten years old, and I'm already shocked and unsettled by what one of her friends wears.

Even being forewarned didn't help. The Sober Husband came home one night from a Girl Scouts meeting and told me how the mother of one of Iris's friends had complained bitterly to him that her daughter had gotten in trouble at school on a free dress day by wearing a skirt that was deemed inappropriate by the school. The mother was angry and defensive. "I didn't think the skirt was that bad." She didn't think it was too short and wanted support from the Sober Husband, support that wasn't coming. He just changed the subject, but brought it up with me later because we'd never heard of a fourth grader getting into trouble over something worn on a rare free dress day. We mused over it together. How on earth could an innocent ten year-old get into trouble over a skirt?

Then this ten year-old girl stopped by our house in a miniskirt which barely, barely skimmed her crotch, and I instantly shared the school's point of view. I brought up the skirt to Iris and was relieved to find that she didn't covet one like it.

This week I learned that there was more than one gynoskirt (a phrase invented by the "Project Rungay" wits to describe the alarmingly short, tight, and shiny skirts favored by Heidi Klum) in this girl's wardrobe. On a spring break outing, this young girl showed up in an excessively elaborate ruffled, pleated, and ornamented miniskirt barely covering her underwear.

I cannot exaggerate how short these skirts are. Back when I went to Burning Man, I had a lot of friends who favored "look at me! look at me!" clothes, but none of them ever left the house in something as extreme as these skirts unless they were at Burning Man itself (where it's perfectly accepted to walk around naked, which I never did, although one of my legal clients couldn't quite believe that. "I always wanted to go to Burning Man," he said, "but now I can't. It's just not appropriate for me to see my lawyer naked." I reassured him that he was quite safe on that count, but the risk still loomed large in his mind).

Iris is only ten years old, and I'm already freaked out by the clothes one of her friends wears. I'm also disturbed by the parents, who are presumably funding these extreme clothing buys. I don't want to ask them what they're thinking, because I don't want to discuss it. I just want to cover my eyes, make a wish, and reopen my eyes to find all the children dressed in adorable, modest Hanna Andersson clothes.

chinchillas

chinchillas are cool. does anybody out there own a chinchilla???

iris

our tin foil hat saga, continued

Fourth grader Iris uber Alles has been ranting continuously about the moon landing being faked ever since "I had an ephiphany, Momdude: the moon landing was faked!"

Iris idolizes those noted skeptics, the Mythbusters, two wisecracking San Franciso stuntmen who attempt to systematically disprove urban myths, and last night we all watched the episode where the Mythbusters take on conspiracy theorists who claim that the moon landing was a hoax. Iris watched very attentively, screaming at little sister Lola when Lola talked loudly, but in the end was unconvinced. "All they proved was that they can use film equipment to duplicate the effects of the moon landing! So all they proved was that the moon landing could have been faked on film equipment!"

And as for the kind offer of an Australian blog reader to send us a cup from the remote communications station which handled the signals sent from the moon, an ungrateful child snarked, "I want a cup that says, 'The Moon Landing Was Faked!'" (I, however, would enjoy a commemorative Australian moon landing cup).

I even raised a part of my own history rarely spoken of these days, my first marriage, and informed Iris that my first father-in-law spent his life working at NASA. His life's achievement was creating the lunar rover used on the moon missions. Iris shrugged this off easily. The lunar rover he made could have been used in the film studios used for the hoax, she seemed to feel.

"Why do you believe in the moon landing?" Iris asked me. I told her that I remembered it. I was only a very small child at the time, and I have no memory of seeing the actual moon landing, but I do remember everyone hovering by the television all day long and how somber and important that day was.

Iris jeered. "You believe it because you saw it on TV! You're always telling me to doubt what I see on TV! You think the TV is an authority figure!"

the moon landing is fake (continued)

this is a guest post by Iris to prove that her theory is correct.

I am also supposed to say that I am ten. but everybody knows that.

in an episode of 30 Rock Jack Donaghy admits that some of the Olympic events like Tetherball were staged so that they could show the U.S. winning and improve citizen moral. I realize that that was just an episode of 30 Rock, but it is obviously based on the moon landing. That is exactly what they did. They took all their money, (there was lots of it,) and in a time when people did not have much faith in the US government, they took an expensive filming studio and filmed a guy walking out of a cylinder in a fancy costume. Then they aired it on tv. Problem solved!

It really is kind of simple when you think about it.

When I get proved right, you peeps will all bow down in respect, and say "Oh Iris, I'm so sorry I ever doubted you. You were right all along."

And then will owe me.

summary: the moon landing is fake.

Lola's existential crisis continues

Last night at bedtime, first grader Lola asked, "Why is life suffering?" and repeatedly stated, "Life is suffering. I have suffered!"

Lola was still thinking about something which happened last week, which seemed to her the perfect illustration of how all life is suffering. Lola had to stay late at school so I could get a post-op checkup, and she was playing with two other first graders. They were pretending to be princesses, when suddenly the other two girls changed the game without consulting Lola or explaining what was going on to her. "I suffered," said Lola gravely.

tinfoil hats and grassy knolls in the future?

Ten year-old Iris uber Alles announced importantly, "I had an ephiphany! The moon landing was obviously a fake!"

"Oh, Iris," I said.

"Hey! It is soooo obviously a fake! There is no way they could have filmed it!" After years of being told by her parents that when they were young, there were no personal computers, internet, DVDs, or video cameras; Iris was under the belief that there couldn't have been a way to film those portentous first steps on the moon.

Iris pulled up some footage of the moon landing online. "Where was the camera?" she jeered. "This is so obviously a fake! Was the camera just waiting on the moon?"

"Iris, you think they could have made a spaceship, made spacesuits that circulated air, and managed to get them up to the moon and back in one piece but they weren't capable of making a camera? They made movies back then, you know!"

She refused to buy this line of reasoning. "It's so clearly a fake, Momdude. Only an idiot would believe in the moon landing."

Frowst takes one for the team

First grader Lola had been praying every week since Labor Day to be chosen to be the "Superstar", who gets to sit in front of the class at the end of each day and talk about herself and share off some of her prized possessions. Finally it was Lola's turn.

The culmination of this week of "Superstardom" is the "Live Share", where the Superstar may bring in a pet or a relative to present to the class. Obviously Lola had quite a decision to make, who to bring in for sharing. Her first thought was Ray Charles, our little black cat, but I vetoed that on the grounds that Ray's health was too shaky for all that excitement. Even if Ray were in top form, I wouldn't want to subject him to that. He's a shy animal who has taken to squashing himself flat and scuttling crablike under the dishwasher when Lola has playdates. Al, who of all our pets nominally belongs to Lola, was never in the running. "Too gross" said Lola critically (Al, being unfortunately allergic to plaque, tends to drool and is chronically underweight, although I contend that his unusually bright orange coloring and his extremely long whiskers and fluffy tail compensate for his other aesthetic drawbacks). Similarly the green Amazon parrot was not considered (too bitey). Henry, an attractive animal whose vet refused to believe was feral ("A cat this pretty has to be a purebred", the vet said repeatedly), was cute enough for the job but temperamentally unsound, as Henry hates to be picked up, held, or restrained in any way. "She might scratch them," said Lola.

In the end, it came down to either Pigwidgeon, the African grey parrot, or Frowst, the big, fluffy black cat. Which would be the most impressive and popular? Lola chose Frowst, and she authorized me to bring Pigwidgeon in his stead if I were unable to capture Frowst on the day itself.

Iris was critical of this decision. "Pigwidgeon is cooler." Iris recalled her own days as a First Grade Superstar, when she had brought in her pet rats, Goosebye and Cutebone, instead of the adorable foster kittens we had at that time. Iris had done that to educate her fellow students. One little girl had heard that Iris had pet rats and sneered "That's gross" at her, and Iris became hellbent on proving to the first grade that rats are sweet and cute. Even as a first grader, Iris preferred making a moral point to being popular.

On Live Share Day, I lured Frowst in from the backyard with a fresh can of cat food and promptly crammed him into a carrier. He went into the carrier peaceably enough, and for almost the whole ride he laid quietly in his box, nuzzling my fingers when I put them up to the carrier door. Then suddenly as I was driving past Washington High School, which always requires the utmost in driving concentration as heedless teenagers are so often darting out into the street, Frowst freaked and started screaming his head off. We got to the school, and I had great difficulty in extricating him from his box, which he had decided was preferable as a known evil over the unknown evils of the classroom.

When I got him out finally, I learned that his screaming fit was not the only symptom of his distress. Poor Frowst had lost control of his bladder as well, and his glamorous long fur was soaked. I toweled him off the best I could and held him in a way which concealed his shame.

The first graders were exuberant and noisy at the sight of a Genuinely Fluffy Kitty. Many of these children live in petless homes (many lamented of parents who are allegedly allergic to animals) or homes populated only by the ghosts of dead pets (child after child told the gory details of how their pets had passed away). Lola was in heaven, sitting up in front of everyone and getting to call on them and to talk about her cat. Frowst hunkered down in my lap like he was digging in at Iwo Jima.

Half an hour went by quickly, and on their way out of the classroom, each girl was allowed to pet Frowst, who truly proved his merit by submitting to this. His only sign of resistance was his lowered ears.

Then we had to wait for Iris's class to be dismissed, and the fourth graders fell upon Frowst in a throbbing, shouting throng. "Can we touch him?" "Why is he here?"

In the car Frowst started screaming immediately, and I told Iris to take him out of his box. He cowered down on the floor of the backseat, hiding his head under the seat, and occasionally letting out a mournful moan. Lola was floating still, enjoying the aftermath of having been the subject of so much attention and admiration, but Iris was profoundly worried about Frowst escaping from the car. "He's not going to jump out of the window, Iris", I reassured her, but she couldn't relax. "Keep the windows up!" she instructed her little sister.

"He's going to explode out of here when I open the door," predicted Iris direly. But in the end, he refused to budge when we got home. I had to rip him up off the floormat forcibly, poor Frowst having decided that the car was a safe alternative to the first grade and having dug his claws in with all his might into the floormats. It took the poor animal some time to realize that he had been restored to his natural habitat. When he did, he took off for the backyard as though his tail were on fire.

In the evening, Frowst came back inside and was unusually loving. Purring and rubbing up against us, he avowed his love in a way which was heartbreaking. "Poor thing, he doesn't know enough to hold a grudge," I pointed out to the Sober Husband.

the before and the after, both so unappetizing

So the cat, Ray Charles, and I are both in the tag end of our respective convalescences. We're both lounging around in this hellhole we call home, both appearing somewhat normal, but it took us a lot to get this far. This week's accomplishment for me was going off painkillers: I don't think I've had one since Monday. Ray's biggest achievement was feeling so much more energetic that he woke me up one day, standing on the bed and screaming for canned food.

Ray's convalescence is more spoiled than mine at this point. He wasted away to a skeleton covered with rough black fur, and we've been tempting his appetite with canned food to the point that now all household cats refuse to eat dry food. I foresee a rough adjustment when he is adjudicated healthy enough to return to dry food. But for me, there is nothing in this house I can stand to eat. If I see one more Amy's frozen "Cheddar Bowl", I may commit an act of violence. Yesterday I ate the stale crackers left in the bottoms of a couple of boxes, a few Triscuits and some saltines, for lunch. Today's lunch options are basically toast (made with stale bread) or an egregiously scorned can of low fat split pea soup which the children regard as beneath contempt.

Calling for takeout is not an option when we are over budget for the month, in large part due to a $947 vet bill for Ray Charles and in smaller part because I had a housecleaner coming in once a week for the month after my surgery, not to mention the medical bills trickling in. To look at this place, though, you'd have no idea a housekeeper had ever set food in it.

Everywhere I look, I see something that needs to be cleaned or put away or mended or thrown out. Every surface in this house is covered with used drinking glasses, stacks of books, weird plastic objects the children seem to effortlessly spawn, dust, and dirty laundry. There are stacks of dirty pans everywhere in the kitchen, despite the fact that there hasn't been a lot of cooking. In the garden, my calla lilies are blooming magnificently, but you'd have to make your way through a heap of moldering magnolia detritus and keep your gaze off the weeds and the plants that need re-staking.

I can't imagine having the energy to get even one room of this house bearable. It's reached the point now where it would be supremely embarrassing for anyone to come in the house. It's just overwhelming.

The bright side of this is that the cat and I are perky. During our worst times, I was in pain and miserable, and the cat was considered to be on his deathbed. The one thing I managed to do, with the able assistance of Iris, was to give the cat antibiotics and to hydrate him daily with subcutaneous fluids. This was not a pleasant job, stabbing the poor cat with needles and pushing endless syringes of fluids into him and soaking his syringes in bleach. The Sober Husband was freaked out when I accidentally stabbed myself with one of his needles, which I dismissed. "Diseases don't pass from cats to people like that, and I got needle pricks all the time when I worked at the bird hospital." We got from that state, moribund patients, to our current fussy, messy state, the cat and I. Perhaps in a few weeks we'll be perky enough to pick up the house a bit.

banal updates

Yesterday I saw my doctor/surgeon for a post-surgical follow-up, and she praised me for a textbook recovery. We both agreed that the surgery had accomplished what it was intended to, and the only remaining issue is fatigue, which is typical after a major surgery like this.

It's a big problem, fatigue. My energy level is barely detectable. My arms feel like pieces of pasta, limp and muscle-less. My legs swing along slowly when I walk. I feel so tired, so very tired.

Nowadays I pick up Lola, hang out with her until it's time to get Iris, bring them both home, and sometimes I manage to make them a mediocre dinner. (Other times they live off snacks until their father comes home to make them an even more mediocre dinner). I nag Iris to do her homework, take Lola to her dance class, and I clean up after the parrot, and that's all I can manage to do. The house is a cluttered hellhole, embarrassingly cluttered and messy, and sometimes I pick up something and put it away, but not often. I've taken back the job of feeding the cats and parrots. Once I went to the grocery store without an adult assistant, and that turned out to be overdoing it. If there's company over and I spend a couple of hours talking, I'm totally wiped out just by that.

So it's a quiet life, but with some consolations. First, the proclaimed-to-be-on-his-deathbed cat, Ray Charles, made a remarkable recovery. Evidently he was misdiagnosed. I would have been more skeptical of his diagnosis, feline infectious peritonitis, if I hadn't felt so profoundly crappy myself (that diagnosis was only three weeks after my own surgery, when I was still on heavy painkillers and feeling awful). In the vet's defense, Ray did test positive for coronavirus, the cause of FIP, but his abdomen was never as swollen as a normal FIP patient, and coronavirus is omnipresent (all cats get coronavirus, but it takes a mutated and deadly form in a few).

Currently Ray is still profoundly underweight, a skeleton in black fur, but one which runs about in a sprightly manner and screams for cans to be opened. He has recovered enough to be actually annoying.

The other consolation has, not surprisingly, been fiction. I hit upon a streak of amazing books, books which are profoundly transporting and absorbing. A good book is like a drug, and I am so hooked.

"Await Your Reply" by Dan Chaon: At last someone has written a great book about identity theft on the internet, managing to be profound and gripping and scary and philosophical all at once. An unbelievably skillful writer, that Dan Chaon. There's an amazingly tricky plot that somehow all falls together, but yet at the same time, it's an easy read.

"The Heights" by Peter Hedges: Seeing this book reminded me that my first husband kept our copy of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" in our divorce, and I want it back. Peter Hedges doesn't write a book very often, and you should read it whenever he does. This is a witty novel about a Brooklyn couple who get in over their heads when the wife makes friends with a profoundly wealthy and bored trophy wife.

"Arcadia Falls" by Carol Goodman: Ms. Goodman writes books which aren't filed as chick lit, but they are, in my opinion, the platonic ideal of chick lit. She always has a protagonist with confused and awkward relationships with men and work, protagonists who manage to live a more rewarding life of the mind than life of the flesh. There's always mythology and strange ritual in these books, her characters always being influenced by the past as much as the present. Reading a Carol Goodman book feels improving, like you've just sat through a college lecture by Camille Paglia. To this day our family has adapted a version of the Pythagorean cult's evening questioning as a result of my reading one of Carol Goodman's novels. It always sounds so highbrow when we explain to a guest that we are following Pythagoras's ways, but that's what happens when you read a lot of Carol Goodman. I wish she published a book a day and I never had to be without a Goodman.

"Blacklands" by Belinda Bauer: it's hard to believe something this amazing is a first novel. It pulls off "The Lovely Bones" trick of being about a child killed by a serial killer but yet being an amusing feel-good of a book overall. Ms. Bauer's protagonist is a poor boy in rural England whose clothes smell like mildew, who lives with a cranky mother who dotes on his little brother and an angry grandmother who never recovered from her son's murder. The hero decides that he can fix his horrible family's problems if only he can find the corpse of his long-dead uncle.

Lola's existential crisis

Lately we've rolled up our rugs and moved our furniture aside, so that first grader Lola can ride "Scooty", her pink scooter, around the downstairs over and over again. Today, however, Lola is in a foul mood, and whenever her circuit takes her past me, she issues a depressed statement on life worthy of Camus.

"Life is overrated," Lola says darkly as she goes past on the bright pink, flowered scooter.

On her next pass, she says, glowering, "Life is a big circle filled with nothing."

how could that be?

Today the children had no school due to parent-teacher conferences, and it was a rare hot day. I took them to the beach in the Presidio, and we had a picnic and played and hung out. It felt like we'd been there forever as we trudged back to the car. I asked the girls to guess how long they thought we'd been there.

"Five hours! At least five hours!"

I thought it was more like four, but when I turned on the car, we were all shocked to see that it was only three thirty and we'd been there no more than three hours. We couldn't understand why only three hours had exhausted us so much.

Puzzled, Lola said, "Was it me that made it so tiring?"

an overlooked danger

At a St. Patrick's Day themed dinner featuring colcannon, Irish cheese, and Irish beer, the Sober Husband was telling us about his day when suddenly Lola interrupted him.

"I am scared because you fired that dwarf! I am scared he is going to come back and hurt Doggyo!"

"I didn't know you fired a dwarf," I said conversationally.

Passionately Lola pressed on. "All dwarfs have hatchets! And he will come back with his hatchet if you are bad to him!"

Her father tried to calm her down. "We didn't exactly fire him." He explained that this fellow's contract had run out and not been renewed. A worried Lola was not soothed.

"All dwarfs in existence, including human dwarfs, have powers!"

money madness

So the other day in the car, one of the children excitedly shared with me that Daddy had said that his half brother had suggested we all get a house together on Martha's Vineyard this summer. My blood pressure instantly soared. I wondered when my husband intended to raise this prospect with me.

A week or so later, the Sober Husband was going through our bills, and he came upstairs to convene a focus group to discuss issues and problems relating to our second mortgage. He shared that the first bill from my surgery had come in ("hundreds of dollars") and that we are still paying off the bills from my meningitis last fall ("thousands, thousands, it's hard to sort it all out, so many bills"). In this context I decided to raise the Martha's Vineyard topic, and he actually seemed to blush. Yes, he was trying to figure out a way to go on vacation once again to Martha's Vineyard (one of the most costly destinations in the U.S.) with his family. "I was trying to make it work," he said defensively, "so it would make sense for us."

Meanwhile the man rakes me over the coals if I suggest calling for a take-out pizza. As he's been doing the bulk of the cooking during my convalescence, he has taken to serving plain rice for meals. Sometimes he adds scrambled eggs to the white rice; other times, it's just plain white rice with soy sauce. If I raise a suggestion that this is not nutritionally optimal, he jumps down my throat about how cheap it is and how much money we're saving. So, we should live on a Third World diet here in San Francisco, and yet we can pay thousands and thousands of dollars for airfare alone and more thousands and thousands to rent a house in one of the most expensive destinations in North America?

I said that his half-brother was out of his mind to think we could afford this and suggested that he counteroffer that we all rent a house in Santa Cruz or Bolinas instead. This fell over flat, as we all know that the Sober Husband's half-brother inflexibly refuses to leave the East Coast (he acted insulted that we'd invited him to our wedding, as we should have realized the mere act of inviting him to go to San Francisco was an imposition).

Firmly I said I wasn't willing to go further into debt for another Martha's Vineyard trip (the prior Martha's Vineyard trip with his family was exorbitantly, outrageously expensive), but the Sober Husband still seemed to think it should happen. "I thought it would make you feel good."

"It makes me feel like I'm being hit with a sledgehammer!" I said. "It makes me feel that for the rest of my life, I'll never be able to go anywhere I want! The only vacation I'll get to take ever will be going to fucking Martha's Vineyard with my inlaws!"

At this point the Sober Husband put up his hands in a position of surrender and literally backed out of the room slowly, picking up his pace as he rounded the corner and rushed down to his lair in the garage.

two little circles

Some time ago first grader Lola went off by herself to the study and emerged quite some time later, after composing an ode to buttocks.

(chorus) Two little circles may seem like nothing
but they are everything
they are everything
they are everything
oh yeah

(first verse)Butts always start just like little grapes
Just like grapes
just like GRAPES.
BUTTSEED!
(repeat chorus)

(second verse) Now the buttcrack is made by METEOR
that's right
METEOR
in your mommy's tummy
(repeat chorus)

(third verse) From humans to whales
All of God's creatures
they have this:
this one little thing:
a....
BUTT
(repeat chorus)

Now I've told you
Everything
you need to know
So there you go!

Lola sang this so sweetly, in a folk style, and we were all charmed. The Sober Husband and I went about the house singing, "Two little circles..." from time to time.

I asked Lola to record the song for the blog, and of course, the act of recording caused a very different outcome. Lola chose a more dramatic, pop styling and a rather questionable prop. Enjoy!

meet Ə

Meet Schwa, or Ə.


what are these odd human creatures I see???

Ə says hello.

- iris of mustard

I regret to inform you

Of late our family has been facing a lot of stress, with my surgery and hospitalization and the poor cat's illness. We've also been weathering another loss, a rather cataclysmic one I've been avoiding writing about. I realize this blog has been rather depressing of late, but yet I feel the readers would want to know:

I regret to inform you of the passing of Cupy and his entire family, which had grown to number six or seven, save for one, rather indistinct Cupy offspring, which was enigmatically spared from the holocaust. When I came home from the hospital, on one of my first outings to the dining room I happened to look over at the built-in cabinet and noticed that Cupy and nearly all his family were missing. With everything else going on, Lola did not realize her loss until days after I saw it, and by that time, it was too late to search the garbage for the Cupys.

The suspects in this mass murder are two: my mother-in-law, who very kindly flew to San Francisco and stayed with the children while I was in the hospital, and our very nice housecleaner, who's been coming once a week while I'm recovering. The Sober Husband feels strongly that his mother would never, ever harm a beloved slurpee cup with a post-it note on it reading "Cupy", but on the other hand, why would our housecleaner, who has cleaned around the Cupy family for over a year, suddenly decide that all Cupys must die?

The survivor remains nameless, but a companion for him was purchased at the 7-11 yesterday.

Ray Charles was diagnosed with a fatal disease

It's not a happy time here, as Ray Charles has been diagnosed with the incurable disease of feline infectious peritonitis. Feline infectious peritonitis is caused by a mutation of the ubiquitous coronavirus, causing a cat's abdomen to swell and the liver and kidneys to fail. "I thought he was too old to get that," I said to the vet. "I've had kittens come through who had that, but I thought he wasn't at risk."

The vet explained that the mutant, deadly form of coronavirus can lie dormant in a cat and then be released under great stress. Ray Charles, a shy cat who is greatly attached to me, underwent huge stress when I was hospitalized and Anton stayed with me, leaving my mother-in-law, a person Ray had never interacted with, in charge and Iris, another favorite of Ray's, hiding out in the master bedroom, endlessly video-Skyping to her mother's hospital room. When I returned, I was not acting normally, lying about calling for drinks and pain pills and not getting dressed, and I would have carried the harsh smells of the hospital. All of this stress probably triggered Ray's dormant coronavirus.

So basically it's my fault. Ugh. Ray is the most satisfactory of our pets, the sweetest and friendliest to family members. He's also not even two yet and had a very rough start to life, being found in a dump as a little feral kitten.

The children are devasted. "Why is God mad at RayRay?" sobbed Lola endlessly. Iris has renewed her faith in atheism. "If Ray dies, that proves there is no God."

not going so well here

On Tuesday I geared myself up to drive for the first time since my surgery, successfully cutting back my meds so I'd be safe to drive. On my first attempt to reenter the world, I spent six hours out and about doing things. None of this was too strenuous -- drive Iris down to her appointment, find somewhere in Millbrae to kill time with a good book, meet Iris, drive her to Golden Gate Park, watch Iris at the playground, walk over to Lola's art class and meet my friend Joyce, who'd kindly picked up Lola at school and watched her until her art class, chat in the art studio with my collage teacher and another artist/teacher during the girls' class -- but the end result was huge. By the time I got home, I was in a lot of pain.

Throughout the night the pain kept waking me up, and I was back on pain meds. To make the night even more special, Lola threw up. The Sober Husband cleaned her up, stripped her bed, and installed her in our bed, and I, unable to sleep due to feeling so awful, moved to a chair for the night.

Yesterday was a truly awful day. I felt weak and terrible and in pain, and Lola was watching non-stop "iCarly" videos [in our household, children are not allowed to watch videos before six at night, but a sick child is allowed the special privilege of daytime videos]. At one point I insisted we have silence for a nap. I did manage to microwave some frozen food for us around two o'clock, for our only meal. Across town the Sober Husband, despite pathetic emails from me telling him how bad I felt and to make it a short day, forgot to leave work and to pick up Iris at school. About two hours after she'd expected to get picked up, Iris managed to use a school computer to send him a text message, and he raced across town to get her before the school's extended care closed.

To make it up to Iris that he'd forgotten her, for dinner the Sober Husband gave her a big bowl of fudge cookies. As far as cooking goes, he's over it.

On top of this, my favorite cat, Ray Charles, had been keeping a low profile for days. I thought it was because he was shy around my friend, Kim I, who came to town for a few days to save us all from our post-surgical sloth, but yesterday we discovered that one of his eyes is hugely dilated and won't undilate. He has also lost weight as well. "Don't make a vet appointment before the weekend," begged the Sober Husband. "I can't do it before the weekend."

temporarily passing through the world of the gifted

Today I got behind the wheel for the first time since my surgery (watch out, Bay Area pedestrians, the Drunken Housewife is back on the road!) in order to take Iris uber Alles down the peninsula to do "fifth grade applicant activities" at the school for gifted children to which we are applying. I managed yesterday to cut my medications waaaay back, so I felt ready to drive (and indeed today I haven't had anything stronger than ibuprofen yet). The Sober Husband had made it clear he wasn't available for this driving, crystal clear, so it was up to me to get us across that last hurdle in our application process.

I'm not feeling very optimistic about this whole solving-the-children's-problems-by-getting-them-into-a-harder-school project of mine. At Lola's activity session, there were eighteen children present vying for a spot in the second grade, all proud possessors of IQ scores qualifying them as little geniuses... and there may or may not be one or two spots available. Sigh. Lola herself is not enthusiastic about this school, but Iris is madly in love with it. I tried to caution her today. "Iris, try not to get too attached. There's a lot of kids trying to get in and not many spaces. We can apply again next year if we don't get in."

At the school, I made the mistake of saying "after you're done with your testing." Iris interrupted me. "They're testing me? Testing? Two hours of testing? I thought it was problem solving."

"Problem solving, that's a euphemism for testing," I said. "It means testing." Iris was appalled.

"Maybe I should tell you what I told Lola. I told Lola, 'You're just going down to play some games.'" I laughed heartily, but Iris wasn't laughing.

While I was cynically trying to manage my gifted child's expectations, a British man, who drove a car which costs well over $100,000, was coaching his child up to the last minute. He had a manila folder in his hand, which seemed to contain strategies and tips for excelling at a gifted child's activities session. His son said gravely that in the past, he'd "only used five or six words in his answers" and that this time he would endeavor to use more words. I cheered myself up by noticing that this British man's extraordinarily expensive tie was soaked through at the bottom while the rest of his obviously extravagant clothes were bone-dry, as though he'd sloppily let it fall into a bowl of soup.

I noticed another boy had a name tag reading "Galileo." I pointed this out to Iris. "Oh my god, Iris, his parents are so hellbent on having a gifted child, they gave him the name of a genius. Imagine having to live up to that." Iris and I both found this highly amusing. This was really pretty rich hypocrisy on my part, given that I named my own child after Iris Murdoch, but still, the name "Galileo" strikes me as an unfair burden to impose upon a child.

There was a tea for the hopeful applicant parents while the gifted children were off doing their problems, but I skipped it, taking the advice I'd given Iris. I am so in love with this school and need to manage my own expectations, and I don't want to get any more attached.

Iris was fairly bubbly when I picked her up. She'd enjoyed the activities, which had been comprised of a group discussion, a game of figuring out a mystery object in a bag, and building things, as well as doing math problems. I was a bit dismayed that there hadn't been a creative writing section, as on Lola's visit she'd written a little booklet about herself (and Lola had been spitting mad that the school kept her booklet, since she'd wanted to keep it for herself). This set of activities did not give Iris a chance to display her sharp wit and strong writing skills, I fear.

In the parking lot another prospective parent rear-ended my car as he backed out of his parking space (my car was motionless throughout, as I was parked in a line of cars waiting our turn to get out of the little parking lot). This was particularly astounding, because he was driving a Prius, a car with an amazing little screen showing you a big, wide view of exactly what is behind you when you go into reverse. "Look at that, Iris," I said. "That man is a moron. Even here at the gifted school, there are morons."

"He's not gifted, though," observed Iris. "Just his kid is gifted." I supposed I could have said a lot of things in return to that, but I just drove back to the city.

the day off

The Sober Husband took off a week and a half from work, so he could be with me while I was in the hospital and then for my first week at home afterward. We should have planned for him to take off longer, because the combination of working, doing the driving for the children, and doing whatever the hell it is I do around this place is overloading him with stress... even though my friend from high school (sometimes referred to on this blog as "Kim I") flew down for a few days to help out. At first the Sober Husband prided himself on keeping the house looking fabulous, but eventually he gave up on that.

On Saturday morning the Sober Husband announced his intention to take Sunday off. I gave him a look (I'd had another setback in my recovery on Thurs., and on Friday I had a lot of pain and no energy), and he amended it to "of course I'll do whatever I need to take care of you. I just don't want to do anything for them", gesturing towards the children's lifeless bodies, sprawled on our bed watching cartoons.

On Sunday he announced this again, with significant looks at each child. But as the morning went on, Iris had computer troubles requiring opening a ticket for technical support [the children shout "Tech support!" when they need help with any computer-related issue, and I've taught Lola, when her father doesn't respond quickly, to go to him and say firmly, "I'm opening a ticket"), Lola needed to be driven to and from a playdate, Iris wanted help with her math homework, and they both needed meals, etc.. After ransacking the upstairs for a misplaced stuffed animal, the Sober Husband came to me and said, "I give up. I don't get a day off."

Greetings from Earth

ALWAYS WATCHING... ALWAYS WATCHING...

iriszilla