driving with Baby

My love affair with my Mini Cooper, a.k.a. "Baby", continues.  Yesterday I admonished the children to speak respectfully of her.  "Her?  'Baby' is a girl?" asked Iris as she got into the car.  Buckling her seatbelt, Iris turned to me, obviously making a great effort to keep a straight face.  "Where are Baby's genitals?" she asked with great faux seriousness.

the wisdom of Lola's mother

Lola has been taking quotations from her idols, such as Einstein and da Vinci, and making inspirational posters at school.  I suggested immodestly that she make one with some quote from me.

"What do you say?  I don't remember anything you say," said Lola dismissively.

festive expectations

Our stalwart eleven year-old Lola is getting braces in the New Year, as soon as her last baby tooth falls out.  We were discussing what life with braces will be like, including what she won't be able to eat, and Lola pointed a finger at me and said sternly, "I WILL be expecting at least two pounds of taffy for Christmas.  It IS required..."

I cut her off mid-sentence.  "Expecting?  Required?  You can't talk about Christmas that way!"

Lola backtracked immediately.  "I am so sorry!"

Still, the expectation lingers...

why we rarely go out of an evening

The Sober Husband's new company held its Christmas party last night, and we dragged ourselves there.  I felt like staying in, as it was very cold out and we have four very cute foster kittens and two reasonably cute children in the home.  "There'll be free alcohol," said the Sober Husband winningly.  "I can drink at home," I said loftily.  But guilt over my relative loseriness as a spouse caused me to wriggle into a glamorous outfit, exhibiting lots of lace-lined cleavage,  and strap on glamorous shoes.

Next there was a bit of conflict over transit.  I started calling for a car, but the Sober Husband looked at me as though I were an idiot.  "You do know where this is, right? Walking distance from the train?"

I pointed out my footwear and the fact that we were having a cold snap.  "You want me to go out in that cold and walk down a cliff in heels?"

Winning that little disagreement, I summoned a Lyft.  However, I then noticed my cellphone thought my location was downtown.  I called the driver and told him our true location.  He called me back and pressured me into canceling.  "I don't want to cancel because it's a five dollar fee, and I don't feel I should have to pay that," I whined, but the driver had no intention of coming out to get us, and I finally caved.

I regretted that when I then tried to call a new Lyft and learned that no drivers were available.  I started taking off my shoes and determined to stay home.  The Sober Husband balked.  "I thought we were going out; I thought we had a date."

Eventually we obtained an UberX car, one with a driver who had no idea how to reach our destination and no GPS.  The Sober Husband suggested to the driver that he could just let us out roughly half a mile away, and I snorted.  In the end the Sober Husband got directions on his iPhone and struggled to impart them to the driver.

At the large, cavernous party location, we saw a lot of lines.  Lines for the coat checks.  Lines for sushi.  Lines for alcohol.  It was cold.  We forged on, not checking our coats, and found a bar with no line in a remote, outdoor zone.  The drinks were small and mostly composed of ice.  Then we discovered a candy bar, with limitless amounts of candy and convenient paper bags.  We each filled a bag with candy with the intention of bringing it home to the children.  The Sober Husband kept protesting that we couldn't take so much, but I pshawed.  "You think they don't have more?"

We roamed about, running into only three people the Sober Husband knew.  The place was gorgeously decorated but cold, so cold.  I found a spot by a snaky duct which blew blistering hot air on my ankles, and I stood there a long time.  After about an hour total, we left.  A famous band was scheduled to play, but I wasn't interested.  "Their music is whiny," I said.  "I have nothing against them, but it's wasted on me."

We went outside to summon a Lyft home and discovered one of the three people the Sober Husband had recognized, doing the same.  "You're leaving already?" the Sober Husband asked.  We bonded, and I explained to this coworker how to use app-based car services.

At home I summoned the young people.  "Assemble!  Assemble!"  They ignored me.  "I have candy!" This brought results.  "Why, hello there," breathed the same Lola who had ignored me upon my arrival.  We dumped out all the candy on the dining room table, and our offspring were in ecstasy.  I took off my shoes and changed out of my sultry, tight clothes into a bathrobe, to the disappointment of the Sober Husband, who'd made a few admiring remarks about the view.  He soon wandered off to become immersed in a coding project, and I opened my literary horror novel.  Normalcy was restored.

strange as it may seem

I have started working.  I have, at least for the nonce, gotten up off the couch, turned off the internet, and re-entered the world of the working for pay.

What will become of this?  Where will it all end?  How long will it last?

sarcasm where sarcasm is not due

Over dinner the family was discussing budget cuts we could make ('tis the season to cut back on discretionary spending; we are attempting to figure out whether we can afford to send Iris to private high school).  The Sober Husband noted that he rarely drives his car nowadays, since he normally takes a luxurious company bus to work (the bus in question has hardwood floors, a very friendly driver, and a WiFi connection faster and more reliable than any home internet we've ever had).  

"I wasn't asking you to sell your car because I know you love it so much," I said.  The Sober Husband and his Prius (nicknamed by me "the Science Coffin") seem like a perfect match.

The Sober Husband scoffed. "I don't care if that car lives or dies."

I looked at him in horror.  "Don't talk that way!"

Iris intervened.  "It's not like it's the Baby," she said, referring to my beloved MINI Cooper.  "The Baby is a beloved member of the family.  His car is just a car."

"I'm so glad you understand," I said.

Iris rolled her eyes. "I was being sarcastic."

sojourning in Ojai

Iris über Alles and I roadtripped down to Ojai, to visit a boarding school.  This school is famous for its horses (each freshman is assigned a horse to care for), but no one had told us it could also be famous for its dogs.  Delightful dogs roamed the campus freely.  The campus itself was breathtaking:  gorgeous views at every turn, contented teenagers going about their responsible ways amongst bucolic spectacular beauty, devoted faculty members gazing with admiration at the students.

Private schools always talk about their diversity, but this one seems to have achieved it.  At a school-wide assembly, teenagers of every color and size all appeared engaged and happy, not a single one rolling their eyes or acting above it all.  Iris was taken about the school by a miniskirted girl from Japan; I was given a tour by a rangy Christian from Texas.  I remarked to my guide, "Everyone tells you about the horses, but no one mentions the dogs."  Her delightful reply was, "There's lots of cats, too!"

Later Iris and I reconvened.  "Thacher is the happiest place on earth," I said wonderingly.  "I have never seen such happy teenagers."  Iris agreed, but darkly noted that she might be too sarcastic and unhappy by nature to attend.

ugh, another year stuck being me

It's my birthday, a day of great depression and unhappiness always for me. Two "friends" have severed contact with me this week, kind of icing on the cake. Usually I feel on this day that the world would have been a much happier place if I had not been born (certainly my family of origin would have been), but I have to reconsider because that would mean Iris and Lola wouldn't exist. They are so wonderful and really all I have in the world, with the Sober Husband. I guess I have good luck with making a little family, although very little luck with friends.

the kindergarten promotion

The Sober Husband took a new job, at a new company.  The job is a huge promotion, a much loftier and important job than he's held before, with huge new challenges and responsibilities.  However, to us, he's like a kindergartener.

This grew out of a joke I made, when I regretted not being there to send him off on his first day (I was at Burning Man).  "That's silly, you don't need to be here," said the Sober Husband.

"But it's like your first day going off to school," I said.  "I should take a picture of you."

While I was just being silly, the parallels began to mount.  The Sober Husband now takes a bus to work, like a school child.  After the children started school, he tried a different bus route so that he could spend more time with us in the morning, but the new route didn't suit him so well.  "I had people I talked to in the morning on the other bus," he said fretfully.  He changed back to his old routine.

I explained this to the children.  "Daddy has bus friends, and he didn't make new friends on the other bus, so he wants to ride the old bus with his old friends.  He's like a kindergartener."

Also, the kids at the new school dress differently than the ones at the last place.  I ordered the Sober Husband a new sort of shirt so he would feel that he fit in better.

And, as the icing on the cake, at work, when the Sober Husband needs to clear his head, he goes into a special nap room.   The children seized upon this.  "He really is a kindergartener.  He naps!"

The poor man is beset with stress and responsibility, but to us, he is a tall kindergartener.

contracting, contracted

It's not a big secret that I am prone to depression and that I have had a couple of spectacularly bad, life-threatening spells.  Since the last one, in November, 2012, I've done really well working with my psychiatrist.

One of our strategies has been for me to avoid stressful situations.  This sounds so bland, like a nothing piece of advice, but the reality has been some rather ruthless pruning.  Last night I skipped a meeting of my book club because the last time I went, I had a bad time.  I'm not going to quit the book club just yet, but it felt safer to spend the evening curled up with my coned, post-operative cat, with Lola across the room with our foster kitten.

This stress-avoiding social pruning has been very good for me, and it feels empowering to cut some things out of my life.  But on the other hand, in the interests of health, I've contracted my life right down to the bare minimum.  At some point I'm going to have to expand it again.

not the MUNI

Today I took a friend who is temporarily on disability out for lunch.  She's been staying with another friend, and I invited him to come along.  He was planning to take mass transit from San Francisco to Watsonville, and I suggested he come for Mexican food first.

The disabled friend suggested, as a lure, that we could drop him off at BART after lunch, his plan being to travel to BART, take BART to Caltrain, and then take a bus for the last hour of his trip.  "BART is in the wrong direction from where we'll be going," I said, mindful of needing to pick up Lola after lunch.  "But we'll be right at MUNI.  You can take MUNI."

My friend recoiled and looked at me as if I were suggesting he eat larvae or crawl through the bowels of hell.  "MUNI!"

I explained how MUNI runs right to Caltrain, much like BART.  "You want me to go to Fourth and King?" he said, again regarding me as though I were suggesting he lick the floor of a gas station restroom.

"If you need to take BART, you could just take MUNI down to Civic Center and transfer to BART."  This drew another long, incredulous stare.  Soon my temporarily-disabled friend and I set out for lunch, without our MUNI-hating pal.

After lunch a MUNI train passed by us.  "I see what you meant; it's right here," she said.

I drew her attention to how trains were coming from two different directions to merge at the relatively palatial West Portal station.  "See, it would have only taken him four minutes."  We pondered his resistance to MUNI, given that BART itself resembles the waiting rooms at the cutrate HMO I used to belong to, with truly horrifying stains on the upholstery (who puts cloth upholstery on mass transit trains???  Who??)

Later as I drove her home, we were in traffic behind a MUNI bus with a big cheerful poster with a "Take MUNI!" headline.  "You should steal that, give it to F.," my friend said.  "Take MUNI!"

not enough shame

Our post-operative cat is sporting a Cone of Shame, to prevent him from gnawing on his Fentanyl patch.  My children adore a friend's cat who often is put into a Cone of Shame due to a persistent skin condition which the cat grooms to a state of bleeding.  They were so taken by that cone that they dubbed the cat "Coney" and our friend's other cat "Notconey" and, when the cone is off, call Coney "Coney-Now-Unconed."  I thought they'd be excited to have their very own Coney.  "My little Coney, friendship is magic," crooned Iris as she carried our own cone-owning cat's carrier.

Inside the house the cat, who had been silent and motionless since we acquired him at the vet, began thrashing violently to the point where it was difficult to hold the carrier.  We had planned to sequester the convalescent in the master bedroom, with his own private litter box and food and catbed, and the box jittered and crashed about as Iris carried it upstairs.  The entire box was shaking and at risk of falling of the bed, while we were trying to figure out how to adjust the cone to put it on him.  "We'd better let him out," I said.  "We'll keep an eye on him while we figure out the cone."  I opened the carrier, and the thrashing animal slid out... upside down.  Clearly he'd lost track of which side was up in his struggles.  His eyes were hugely dilated, and the only thing on his mind was escaping from the bedroom.  But neither Iris nor I could figure out how to adjust the cone (not as easy a cone to attach to a cat's head as Coney's, which we had put on our friend's cat before).  We called to the Sober Husband, our resident mechanical genius.  "Come quickly!" shouted Iris.

I held the violent convalescent with difficulty while the Sober Husband attached the cone.  The cat was off, weaving around.  "We may as well let him out of the room," I said, bowing to reality.  He made his uneven way downstairs and immediately gorged on dry food, although we had been instructed to feed him only canned food.  Iris opened cans and showed him the canned food, but he kept gnawing at the dried.  We put away the dried food and left him with canned food, which he smeared his cone in and then abandoned.

His next order of business was to piss on our shoes in the hallway.  The operation he'd endured had come about as a result of his peeing on the shoes:  I wanted to see if there was an underlying physical cause for this annoying change of behavior.  We'd just paid over two thousand dollars in hopes of getting the cat to a point where he wouldn't pee on the shoes.  I cleaned up the piss and the shoes, and we removed all shoes from the scene.  Later the cat pissed where the shoes had been (only a short distance from a lovely, clean litterbox).

The cat has been trying to get out of the house, howling, peeing on the shoes and floor,  knocking things over, and generally acting the fool.  I would like to appropriate his Fentanyl patch, thinking that I myself would wear it with more dignity.

history repeats itself

Years ago my poor little cat Al, who was allergic to plaque, needed to have his teeth pulled, an expensive operation requiring anesthesia and a day-long hospitalization.  Endless squabbling over the cost of pulling Al's teeth ensued, and I even took some odd jobs and sold some belongings to raise the necessaries.

Now this year our most glamorous cat, Frowst, needed several teeth pulled.  He's had some behavioral changes (and none of them for the better -- he's taken to peeing on our shoes and is now referred to as "the Mad Pee-er, he has been bothering the next-door neighbor), and I took him to the vet to see if there were underlying physical issues.  Right off the bat the vet found a mouth of decaying teeth, at least one with an abscess.  Guilt overwhelmed me.

We have an image in our minds of crazy cat ladies as being poor and living in shabby apartments.  Is it because they spend all their money on oral surgeries for their cats?  Thank God the Sober Husband took a new job and is receiving a timely signing bonus.

the street of suffering

This morning I called (handsfree, of course) the Sober Husband as I drove home from driving the children to school, and I completely lost my train of thought as I passed the most eye-riveting wreck.  A mid-sized sedan had somehow become one with a large garbage truck, and it was mesmerizing.  I wished aloud that I could have had a red light so I could have gotten a better look at this really breathtaking wreck.  The Sober Husband, speaking from afar, was not able to appreciate the strange beauty of this, probably thinking his cold-blooded wife was ignoring the human cost, but I reassured him that the body of the car, where any people had been, was unscathed.  The car itself was clearly never going to be driven again, but whoever drove it would live to ride again (although probably never to see a Recology truck without shuddering).

In the afternoon Lola and I were talking as we walked to the car after school, and I distracted her.  She turned her head to speak to me and hit her temple hard on a large metal box projecting from a pole exactly at the level of her head.  I could hear the audible thwack of her skull hitting the box.  Lola was speechless with pain, and I felt sure I was to blame for this by not seeing the box and warning her in time.  The pain was horrific, and it was such a random accident.  We have parked in that same spot and walked past that pole innumerable times over the last five years.

As Lola uncomplainingly cried from the pain in the backseat, I started the car and turned the corner, trying to console her.  Around that corner, on the same block where Lola had hurt her head, a police car was double parked with its lights flashing.  I slowed way down, and in a flash I saw what the police car was protecting:  a coroner's van, and then a body -- an actual corpse, covered with a white sheet but unmistakable -- being loaded into that van, and I heard the horrible sound of someone crying in true hysteria, screaming and crying.  Lola and I were both shocked into silence.

This  set of three random awful things all happened on the same city block during one particular day.  I could find the car accident fascinating in the absence of anyone being hurt, but the horror of the body and the awful crying had no beauty.   It felt like it could have been our tragedy, but it wasn't.  We were only passing through.

suddenly

The children refuse to accept that our cats' given genders.  "All cats are gender-ambiguous," opined one.  They always disagree with me about what gender any given cat is.

We were discussing this and squabbling over what gender our little cat Zorro is when Lola expounded upon her perceptions of our big cat, Coconut. "I always thought he was a girl and then one day I looked, and suddenly he was a boy!"

Iris and I found this amusing to no end.  We spent the following couple of hours "suddenly" looking at things.  "Suddenly I looked, and you were children," I said.  "Suddenly you looked, and your mother was middle-aged."

what we have learned

Recently I asked the children what they had learned from me.  They drew a complete blank for some time.  Then Iris had an inspiration.  "The difference between champagne and sparkling wine!  Champagne is from Champagne, and everything else is sparkling wine."

I felt a bit taken aback.  Surely I had given them so much more.  Even if we were to limit ourselves to this bit of knowledge, where were cava and prosecco?  I decided to make the best of it and asked cautiously, "And how do you tell how good it is?"

"By the size of the bubbles," answered my non-drinking minor child triumphantly.  At least I have imparted something useful, I consoled myself.  They won't be drinking André on my watch, I thought.

the stereotypes are so wrong

In our culture, the crazy cat lady is viewed as living frugally. She and her many cats live off a shared diet of cat food in a small apartment quite cozily (but undoubtedly with the heat on a low setting).

It's all wrong.  Today I took our most majestic animal, Frowst, to a vet, where I paid $666 (not kidding) and took home an estimate for an additional fee of $1,800.  Being a crazy cat lady is a luxury lifestyle.

the queen of TMI on Facebook

At Burning Man this year I fell into conversation with a stranger as we had morning cocktails in the deep desert, where you can ride your bike far out to see some large installations.  The conversation somehow drifted to the point where I confided, "I'm the queen of TMI on Facebook."

My new acquaintance did a double take and said, "You're the Drunken Housewife!"

I was so surprised by this that it was a wonder I didn't spill my drink.

therapy moments

I'm not proud of some of my parenting. I can be lazy; I'm not a tiger mother who pushes the children to excel (Iris would have a lot more awards and honors to put on her high school applications if I'd tiger mothered her. "I am my own tiger mother," she remarked primly last year). The worst part of being my child is that I struggle with depression, and I know there is a toll this takes on Iris and Lolz. There's also the embarrassment (poor Lolz had to cringe when I picked her up at school this month sporting crazy-beautiful green and blue extensions and braids I'd acquired for Burning Man). 

The Sober Husband and I often remark upon things which happen in our home which could make good discussion topics for future therapy. But while I am far from perfect and am creating plenty of Therapy Topics, I am also amaze me no end, given my new insights as a parent myself, at how so many of my own Therapy Topics come from my parents attacking me for things a normal parent would have been proud of:

Having a gym membership and working out: my parents thought that was the stupidest idea possible and harangued me endlessly about it. Evidently I should have just found chores to do around the house for exercise; anything else was immoral. My sister kept saying that she and my mother knew the only reason I did it was to try to pick up guys. Even though I said, "If that was the case, I'd have quit a long time ago. I haven't had a single date from it", I had to keep hearing that.

 Having a reasonable number of sequential relationships in college: my parents were high school sweethearts and married young. Evidently doing anything else means you're a damned skank. "You're like a butterfly! You need to stop it. You're going to get AIDS."

 Being proud of having won a National Merit Scholarship: my father said, "You think you're so special. Well, there's someone like this in every town. You'll find out when you go to college that you are just ordinary."

Settling down with a special boyfriend (my first husband): my father told me, "He's too tall." (He was 6'4"). My father told my ex, "You know, you can do better than her."

Going to a movie with a friend: "You left your sister at home all alone! You should be ashamed! Your poor sister!" My sister was older than me, a 20 year-old college student.

 My sister got into a traffic accident: "It was all your fault. I hope you learned that the passenger has a responsibility to the driver." This is worse because I'd gotten out of the hospital the day before with meningitis, was still in a lot of pain and on heavy narcotics. That leads nicely to ...

being so sick with meningitis that I needed to go to a hospital.  "Obviously you have no faith, or you'd be healed by now."

 My mother had a weird way of running me down to other people and being proud of it. I worked at a jewelry store as a teen, and she ostentatiously thanked my boss in front of me for helping me pick up accessories to wear to my graduation from high school: "Thanks for finding her what to get. You know she would have gotten something awful on her own (theatrical shudder). You know her taste." 

My first fiance told me once he said to her, "Wow, she made me the most amazing lasagna last night," and he was freaked out when she laughed mockingly and said, "You're going to get sick of that. It's the only thing she knows how to cook."

 As a parent myself, I can't understand this at all.  Most parents like it if their child excels at something and want their child to be fabulous. Mine seemed hell-bent on proving that I was inferior and squashing whatever confidence I'd managed to cobble together. Is it a wonder as an adult I finally limped into therapy?

Halloween!

It's almost October, which means we're almost into Halloween season. I love Halloween dearly. It's a big holiday in San Francisco, and my love for it seems almost tame here, compared to the people who go over the top creating haunted houses, laser cut jack-o'lanterns, and so on. But my enthusiasm doesn't get a big enough buy in. Today Lola and I were seduced by the upscale Halloween decorations at our neighborhood Pottery Barn. Lola loved the "antique mercury pumpkin objects" but overall was a bit of a damper on her mother's enthusiasms. "I think we only need one of those claw hands," she said as I gathered up two metal skeleton arms. "Arms come in pairs, Lola!" She said the same about the metal lanterns with cunning vampire bats worked into the front. "I think just one." Up at the cash register Lola looked disapprovingly at our spoils (aside from the "antique mercury pumpkin object" she'd chosen, which she caressed protectively). "Lolz, Halloween comes every year, so you can reuse the things for it and get more every year. And just think! By the time I die, you'll inherit such a collection of Halloween décor!" The gay man waiting next to us for more martini glasses to be brought to him broke out in a snorting laugh, which he then quelled as he gazed, embarrassed to be caught eavesdropping, into the middle distance.