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."