No filter

(You'll have to forgive the vagueness of this rant, but it's something I'd like to get off my chest without disclosing too many details...)

Did you ever know somebody with no filter? Someone who will just say anything--particularly if it's boastful and self-aggrandizing--regardless of the inappropriateness of the setting in which he or she is shooting off his or her mouth?

I have to spend a good chunk of my life in close contact with a person like this. As an added bonus, it is hard to have a relatively normal conversation of any kind with my No Filter person, which, for reasons I can't go into here, I need to at least TRY to do several times each week. He/she occasionally exhibits all the social skills of a small child suffering from autism--except this ain't a kid. And he/she doesn't have any kind of mental disability as far I'm aware.

So I end up sitting mutely through this person's commentary to third parties standing three feet away from me about, for example, his/her ex-flame which his/her spouse is still SO jealous of (as if I give a shit). And this person's odd criticisms of his/her own children. And his/her really unfunny jokes about current events (that situation in Austria where the father imprisoned his own daughter in the basement and forced her to bear 7 of his children--THAT was a real knee-slapper...)

They ought to give classes in social skills for adults. Except the people who need them the most, like this person, probably wouldn't go.

May Day 1990

Eighteen years ago today I was in Oxford for my college junior term abroad. Every May 1 there is a huge celebration in Oxford for May Day. The night before we said, we are definitely getting up at daybreak tomorrow to head into town for this. We have to see the bridge jumpers! Hear the singing! Have a beer at 6 a.m.!

The next morning, we didn't get up. And every May 1 since, and probably every May 1 for the rest of my life, I'm going to regret that I didn't get to see it when I had the chance.

(Photo credit MSNBC)

"Testicular fortitude"

This makes me kind of sick: the whole idea that in 2008 we are still equating "toughness" exclusively with being male. The nitwit in this video thinks he's giving Hillary Clinton the ULTIMATE compliment by saying she's so tough, she's almost like a man! Give me a break. Show me one man on this planet who wouldn't break down into hysterics if he had to go through pregnancy (especially a rough one) and childbirth (particularly unmedicated, the way most of the women in the world have done for centuries).

However you feel about Hillary--and I'm not liking her much at the moment--you have to admit that you need a special brand of boldness to put yourself out there in the public sphere the way she's done, especially post-Monica Lewinsky. Hillary has been very popular as a U.S. senator. Whether she ought to be running for the Presidency is debatable, but she's obviously tough.

She's got ovarian fortitude, if you will.

A cavalcade of cool mom stories

Antique Mommy has a giveaway going, and the comments thread is fascinating as well as hilarious. She's asked people to share factoids about their moms in honor of Mother's Day coming up. Go take a look! You'll be glad you did.

Peanut and Daddy

Out in our friends' back yard a couple of weeks ago.

Do some good

I have a friend who was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (at a young age and with two young kids, no less). I met her and her now-husband at Trinity Church in Boston many years ago, before I met Mr. Fraulein. Later we discovered that her aunt is married to Mr. Fraulein's uncle! Which was more than bizarre, and which made us realize that technically we are related. Through marriage at any rate.

Now this friend is soliciting donations for her local MS Walk event in Pennsylvania. You can donate to her team here, and help the National MS Society fund research into a cure for this devastating disease. My friend and her husband and little boys thank you!

Meanwhile another friend and former co-worker is now training for the New York City Triathlon, which will raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, which funds research into cures for blood cancers. As he points out, getting his 43-year-old self in shape for this event will be no small feat. But I have to give him props for trying to get into shape, which is certainly more than I'm doing. I applaud your efforts from my seat on the couch, Uncle Squid! You can donate to his team here.

If you're wondering why in God's name his nickname appears to be "Uncle Squid," let me enlighten you. Technically his nickname is "The Squid." Because when you are an Italian guy from New Jersey with a name like Tony Borelli (our degenerate group of reporter friends decided back in the day) you obviously need a mob name. Something with a nice ring to it, such as "Tony 'The Squid' Borelli."

The birds and the bees

Lately the Peanut has been wondering about babies, since every third person we know seems to either be pregnant or to have just given birth. "How do the babies get into the belly?" she wants to know.

I haven't been able to figure out much of a response beyond saying, "God puts the babies in there."

So last night, as she was settling down to sleep, we had, I swear to Jesus, the following conversation (which I should preface by adding that she has absorbed enough political commentary around here to know that the names "George Bush" and "Dick Cheney" are associated with all things bad and wrong):

Peanut: Will I have a baby?

Me: Someday you might, sure.

Peanut: What is God again?

Me: Well, it's kind of hard to explain, but God is everything that's good in the whole world.

Peanut: Don't George Bush and Dick Cheney know about God?

The Red Sox are killing me, Part XXVIIIX

Last night there was a 7:05 p.m. game at Fenway. In the past I've found that the best strategy for avoiding Red Sox Nation-Related Traffic Hell has been to leave work insanely early, so I get home before it (RSNRTH, that is) breaks out in earnest. However, sometimes I can't do it.

So yesterday, I had the delusion that maybe if I didn't leave the suburban hinterlands where my office is until 6 p.m., maybe everybody would be at the game by the time the Peanut and I arrived in the vicinity of Storrow Drive, which is where the prime traffic lunacy usually erupts.

Well, it turns out that everybody is decidedly NOT already at Fenway by 6:45 p.m. on 7:05 p.m. game nights. No, at that point they are still engaged in cutting one another off and driving up on the sidwalks and speeding dangerously through tight openings between the double-parked cars, as per usual.

"Are we going to have to stay here FOREVER?" the Peanut moaned from the back seat. No, I responded. It only feels like forever.

Thanks a bunch, Red Sox Nation!

The Peanut joins the band

So on Friday night we went out for sandwiches at Panera Bread, which we haven't done in a while. The Peanut loves their grilled cheese kids' sandwiches. Afterwards we stopped at our local Best Cellars wine place so Mr. Fraulein and I could enjoy the nightly tasting. As they sometimes do, they had a small band playing live music during the wine tasting--just two guys, a vocalist/guitarist and a percussionist. The Peanut is always mesmerized by any live music, so she stood for a while watching them play. Then the percussion guy offered her a little egg-shaker maraca-type thing. She was a bit shy about it at first, but then agreed to try it, and even sat in with the band for a song, playing her shaky-maraca thing along with the beat.

Once she had enough of that she came back to where we were standing. As the little band continued to play, the Peanut started dancing, jumping up and down with glee. She closed her eyes and shook her head, making her hair fly in front of her eyes, which made her look like a 3-year-old version of the people in those iPod ads.

This is why I don't watch TV news anymore

Because during the last Democratic primary debate, the ABC right-wing circus clown moderators apparently spent an hour shouting questions about flag lapel pins and '60s radicals before they got around to, you know, any mention of Iraq.

As the awesome Bob Cesca put it:

It confounds logic that, on one hand, Senator Obama is repeatedly asked to explain why rural America is bitter, while, on the other hand, his qualifications for the presidency are being evaluated based on his goddamn bowling skills. Seriously, what the hell is going on here? The Bush Republicans are responsible for perhaps the worst economic crisis since World War II. They're responsible for a $3 trillion occupation and decades of future blowback. They're responsible for selling our sovereignty to foreign governments. They're responsible for trampling our liberty and national character. And there was Senator McCain on Hardball the other night talking about war in Iran, while pledging to make permanent the Bush tax cuts for the super rich. Both of which would make matters far, far worse.

Seriously--I can't do it. Can't watch it. Reading about it on the Web after the fact is painful enough. I have accepted the fact that if I watch these atrocities directly as they unfold, I will suffer a fatal aneurysm, and my husband will have to explain to the police how I came to expire at the age of 39, falling in our living room with an expression of rage on my face and both middle fingers still extended in the direction of our flat-screen TV.

This will give you the chills

Best anti-Iraq-war, anti-fear-and manipulation song ever:

Then we needed a leader and you’re all we had
So we told ourselves you were not that bad
You took the opportunity to have your way
While our wounds still bled we were led astray
All the the fears that came descending on us then
Falling just the same
Falling like the towers in a cloud that hung
So it blocked our view and it hid the sun
When our eyes were down, in all that pain
With your slight of hand, you cast the blame

The artist is named David Wilcox, and he is phenomenal. I had never heard of him before a couple of days ago and now I have his new CD on constant rotation. Every song is amazing. See if you can listen to this without crying (I can't so far!) It's the perfect wedding song. Clearly I have to renew my vows so I can get to use it, since it wasn't around when I got married in 2002.

(Photo credit www.davidwilcox.com)

Why, I didn't have time to prepare an acceptance speech...

Many thanks to Misty at Rainy Day in May for this. Who doesn't love getting an award? I'm all choked up over here...

Speaking of awards, am I the only one out there who has spent an inordinate amount of time fantasizing about what would constitute the perfect dress to wear to the Oscars? Like, as if I was ever going to be nominated for an Oscar. Which I won't. Not being in the entertainment business or anything. But if in some alternative universe I ever get to go to the Oscars ceremony, I have a pretty good idea what I would wear. Something that evokes classic Hollywood, while flattering my skin tone, making me look 15 years younger, and disguising the size of my ass. (I told you this was an alternative universe.)

The Peanut's not-evil twin

This is not my kid. The eyes are slightly wider-set, and more obviously Asian, than the Peanut's. Also she is a couple of years older. But other than that, she's the Peanut's double. I found her modeling hand-made hats in a store on Etsy.

Things I will never get tired of watching

This weekend Mr. Fraulein and I were talking about movies and old TV shows that hold up well on repeated viewings. Some movies you see in the theater and think, well, that was OK but I don't need to ever see it again. Others, you know you just have to have for your own collection. There's something so comforting about relaxing in front of a movie or show you already know will make you howl with laughter, think about Important Issues, or both!

So here is my list of movies and a TV episode I can happily watch a million times:

1. Office Space. Have you ever had a job that, as somebody in a Dilbert cartoon once said, made you "long for the sweet release of death"? The kind of job where, if you were offered the choice between working for those people again or being waterboarded by Dick Cheney, you'd take your chances with the waterboarding? If so, like me, you will never get tired of this movie.

2. Galaxy Quest. If there is anything funnier than Alan Rickman's pained facial expression pretty much every moment he's on screen, I'd like to see it. An absolute classic.

3. Monsters Inc. When Sully thinks he'll never see Boo again, it makes me cry every time. Cute, funny, and creative.

4. His Girl Friday. I first saw this movie in Journalism 101 my freshman year at Boston University, and thus a newspaper career was born. The scene where Hildy chases down her interview subject (across a couple of lanes of traffic) and then tackles him (while wearing 1940s-era heels) still gives me the chills. Just awesome.

5. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. If you were in high school in the 80s, you have to love this one. It perfectly captures the joy of skipping out of school.

6. Stranger than Fiction. Turns out Will Ferrell can act. I completely adore the idea behind the plot of this one: a guy hearing a disembodied voice narrating his every move. This movie is underappreciated and sheer genius.

7. Orlando. My favorite Virginia Woolf novel can't have been a picnic to adapt for the big screen. With this one they did what I assumed was impossible: bringing the humor and humanity of one of literature's most fascinating characters vividly to life on screen. Tilda Swinton comes close to my exact vision of this character, with the exception of her red hair (Orlando is very explicitly a brunette in the novel).

8. Ratatouille. We rented this for the Peanut without realizing it's really a Big People Movie, although little people can appreciate it too. Not just one of my favorite animated movies -- one of my favorite movies period. Hilarious and moving at the same time.

9. Cars. How do the animators get the cars to look like they have emotions? Just brilliant.

10. The Office, Season Two: the "Office Olympics"episode: Can't find a link to this particular one. It's the episode where Michael buys his condo and while he and Dwight are out at the closing, Jim and Pam organize the Dunder Mifflin Olympics, featuring such events as races around the building with full cups of coffee. Oh, and "Flonkerton." I have seen this over and over on DVD and it still makes me laugh almost to the point of losing bladder control. Rainn Wilson outdoes himself in this one, which is saying something since he's always hilarious.

Nicknames, and the second cutest kid on earth

We don't just call the Peanut "the Peanut" on this blog. It's actually a nickname Mr. Fraulein and I use with her quite a bit, because it suits her so well. Yesterday as I dropped her off at preschool, her best buddy C. was hanging around as I helped her get her coat off and put her lunch in the fridge. "Why do you call her Peanut?" C. asked. This kid is referred to around our house as The Second Cutest Kid in the World, and if you could see him, you'd know why. He SO belongs in a Baby Gap ad or something. He's just a week older than the Peanut, but much larger -- taller, with bigger hands and feet. He has a smile that outshines the sun. And, God love him, I suspect his mommy has to buy him "husky" sized clothing.

So when I responded, well, we call her that because it's her nickname, his face lit up with his usual incandescent smile. "I have a nickname too!" he said. "Really, what is it?" I asked.

"MEATBALL!" C. shouted.

And that made me giggle for the rest of the day.

Springtime

I am looking forward to spring finally coming to New England (as is the Peanut). This morning I had to scrape frost off my car windows. The Peanut really wants to start getting outside more. It's dawned on me that this year we are going to need a bigger tricycle, because she long ago got too big for this one.

I'm it

I feel honored to have been tagged by the awesome and not-at-all-antique-looking Antique Mommy to do a "meme" post about Six Unimportant Things About Me. It's tough to narrow it down to just six! But here they are:

1. I cannot (and never could) ice skate.

2. Someone once told me I would make a more-than-adequate race car driver.

3. I love to bake but hate to cook.

4. I haven't gone downhill skiing since high school, but I still remember how exhilarating it was to feel the wind on my face and the satisfaction of hitting a mogul and not falling down.

5. I started going gray at 27. I've been dyeing my hair for so long I can't even remember my real hair color now.

6. I look terrible in navy blue.

Conversations on a Sunday morning

Me: Good morning, Peanut, how did you sleep?

Peanut: Fine. I want to still wear my pink pajamas. And I want to wear my pink shoes. And I want two pink underpants.

Me: Why two pairs of underpants?

Peanut: Because one pair is for my butt and one is to wear on my head.

Me: OK. Right. On your head.

Peanut: Right -- the dark pink ones with the roses on them.

Me: Well, I think those are in the hamper because you wore them yesterday.

Peanut: I still want them! (Goes to bathroom to get dirty underpants out of hamper.)

Me: You know what, you really don't want to wear dirty underwear on your head.

Peanut: Yes I do! WAAAHHHH!!!

Me: Oh God. I didn't even have coffee yet. How about this -- let's get your pink tutu from your Halloween costume and you can wear that instead of dirty underpants on your head. OK?

Peanut (tearfully): OK.

Putting myself out there

Up until recently I haven't done much to promote this blog, but I feel like that needs to change.

I'm in the mood for more conversation. It's good to feel connected, don't you think? So thanks to my old friends and new friends for pitching in and commenting. I appreciate it more than you know.

Red Sox finding new and innovative ways to ruin my commute

This is all I need:

Fenway Ready for Home Opener

Apr 3rd, 2008 BOSTON -- The Boston Red Sox are getting Fenway Park ready for next week's home opener, when almost 1,000 more fans will be able to squeeze through the gates of baseball's oldest and smallest park.

The defending World Series champions play their first home game of the season Tuesday against the Detroit Tigers.

The seventh year of renovations are almost complete. New this year is a section of upper deck seats in left field, a kitchen for the Red Sox clubhouse and a stairway down the third base line to help fans get in and out of the park.

Red Sox president Larry Lucchino says with the new Yankees Stadium set to open in 2009, Boston needs to work even harder to keep up with "the bullet train in the Bronx."

A thousand more seats. This will mean hundreds more cars driven by clueless suburbanites in endless circles around the greater Fenway area, searching fruitlessly for parking, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF RUSH HOUR. When those of us who are unfortunate enough to have to drive through this area to get home, are trying to commute back from work. Fun times.

Why is this clown still on the teevee...?

Every time I read anything this asshat says, it makes me want to stab myself in the eye with an ice pick to distract from the pain of the realization that he has, and has had for ages and will likely continue to have, an elevated television perch from which to ask questions like this, which he asked about Barack Obama:

"Let me ask you about how he -- how's he connect with regular people? Does he? Or does he only appeal to people who come from the African-American community and from the people who have college or advanced degrees?"

The Peanut is 3 and a half today

I don't know where that time went. I cannot believe that 3 years, six months, and one day ago, I had never met her. She was still just an abstract concept to me before she was born. I never had that sense of "Even in the womb, I knew you..." that a lot of mothers say they have.

I literally had no idea at that point how my life would change. Which is of course a giant cliche, but one that is true of every parent I know. Luckily for most people it's a change for the better. I can't imagine how much smaller and poorer my life would be without the incredible gift of getting to watch her experience the world.

Happy half birthday Peanut!

Thoughts on my grandparents

My parents came to visit us this weekend for Easter, and as he often does, my dad got to telling stories about his family. It's a long, convoluted history, with many twists and turns, just like any good story of immigrants making good in America. My father is 75 years old, and he was the next to the last of 11 children born to his parents, who came to New York City from the dusty privations of their former lives in Sicily around the turn of the century. My grandmother, Theresa, had met my grandfather, Philip, in Sicily but they got married in America. She was a teenager then, trying to adjust to the change from farming life (she carried water jugs on her head in Sicily!) to the tenement jungle of New York. My grandfather toiled with untold numbers of other Italian immigrants to lay bricks and mix cement, building Manhattan from the ground up. My grandmother? Well, she gave birth.

And she had miscarriages, too -- nobody knows how many. But she bore 11 live babies, 10 of whom made it to adulthood. (See them all in my parents' wedding picture above!) In the photos of her as a young woman, what is most striking is the look of determination on her face. It's as if she's thinking: I dare you to throw something at me that I can't handle.

My dad tells the story of the local midwife, a German woman who attended Theresa through her 11 births. My grandmother was apparently legendary for her ability to give birth effortlessly. I like to picture her throwing her elegant, black, wavy hair (for which she was also famous) out of her eyes, clambering up onto the kitchen table, and settling down calmly to the task of pushing out another baby. No epidurals for her! When I delivered the Peanut I pictured her spirit hovering over one of my shoulders and that of my mother's mother (who gave birth eight times) over the other. Those imperturbable, hard-as-nails Italian women, whose lives were studies in hardships and misery, yet they kept going forward. Always forward.

Someday I want to tell the Peanut their stories. How her Italian ancestors helped build New York, and how the Chinese immigrants, ancestors of her daddy's family, who worked their way from China all the way to Ohio and then back to California, built the train tracks that expanded across the whole country. How, without the rest of the world, there wouldn't be an America.

"Conservatarded whackadoodle"

I am totally stealing this phrase from the very talented TRex. Practically spit coffee on my screen laughing when I read that.

Also, I wish more people were aware of this very obvious hole in the "pro-life" argument:

The other thing that’s just appalling to me about people who call themselves “pro-life” is the fact that they support the Republican party’s Endless War agenda without any thought whatsoever. How can you be against the “slaughter of babies” here in America and yet joyously advocate the slaughter of real-live, already-born babies and children on the other side of the world? That’s what I don’t get. You would think that anyone with even a modicum of thinking skills would see the inherent contradiction there.

Not-so-happy feet

We recently got the DVD of "Happy Feet" from Netflix. I've learned by now that we need to check these movies out before we show them to the Peanut, and this one proves why.

Memo to filmmakers: if you're going to promote a movie by showing lots of pictures of cute dancing animals, it is maybe not the best idea to devote a good chunk of the actual movie to depictions of menacing monster animals trying to eat the main, fuzzy characters. Was the scene with the yellow-toothed seal thing necessary? Or the one with the carnivorous birds? The one with the scary whales? How about the delightful part when the main character, poor Mumble, goes insane from being in a zoo? If I wanted to be depressed I'd rent a Michael Moore documentary, not a fuzzy-animated-animal movie, goddamn it!

So we had to do our usual trick of watching the movie with remote in hand, zipping past the scary parts so the Peanut could see the singing baby penguins, which she just adored. (She is also obsessed with Mort from Madagascar, and keeps asking for a stuffed-animal Mort.)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Insert your own Fox News joke here.

Ouch

The Peanut's occasional potty training setbacks have nothing on this. This type of thing is one reason why, even if I had the strength to carry her on my shoulders, I wouldn't go there.

Various items

It's been a weird couple of weeks -- stressful and aggravating but cathartic. I wasn't feeling like I had much to say but I suppose I should jump back into the saddle again ...which I will do with some random observations/rants:

• If I hear one more word in the media, mainstream or otherwise (I'm looking at you, Air America Radio) about Eliot Freaking Spitzer I am going to stick my head out the window and start hollering like Howard Beale. Did the guy pay for his "seven diamond prostitute" with tax dollars supplied by the citizens of New York? No? Then Shut. The. Hell. Up. about it already! Why should anyone who is not married to, or otherwise related to, this guy care whether he frequents even, say, a "two diamond prostitute"? Yeah, he's a hypocrite. So are, unfortunately, many Democrats, and pretty much every Republican elected official, in one way or another. Until "Diaper Dave" Vitter and Larry "Wide Stance" Craig resign, I don't want to hear another goddamn thing about Spitzer.

• By all means, the Democratic candidates for president should have another debate. If they want us all to shoot ourselves in the head, that is.

• Speaking of which: Hilary, you need to go away now. It's all over but the screaming and crying about how it was Your Turn and you've been unfairly cheated out of your rightful legacy, or some damn thing. Just step aside and let Obama have his day. I wasn't sure at first if he'd earned it but now it seems he's got the chops. It's time for the country to unite behind Obama so we can start the hard work of taking our country back from the clowns who have done this to it. And to us.

• My husband, who has a Chinese last name equivalent to "Smith," and a not-so-common Chinese first name, was delayed in getting on a plane this week because there's apparently someone on the "No Fly List" with the same name. Once they verified his age, he was declared Not A Terrorist and allowed to go on his way. We'll see if we're as lucky the next time we try to fly somewhere...

• The Peanut seems to be slowly coming out of the spiral of really bad behavior we've been seeing, on and off, ever since she turned 3. What's interesting is she intersperses her nightmare tantrums with periods of incredible sweetness--she'll tell us she loves us 10 times a day. Mr. Fraulein and I keep thinking that it just must be really hard, sometimes, to be 3. "My hips hurt, Mommy," she'll say, as the growing pains come and go. She still has this unfortunate tendency towards car sickness, so we (and by "we" I mean my husband) are hauling the 9,000-pound car seat up to our third-floor condo way more often than we'd like. Luckily all the covers come off for easy washing. So we're trying to be understanding of the craziness that must be going on in that little head of hers as she tries to make sense of the world.

• It's been fascinating to watch the Peanut developing a sense of her own beauty. (On a side note, this whole topic has many complicated implications for me, since I spent much of my life being so convinced of my own ugliness.) But it turns out I must have some good genes in there somewhere, because in many ways she looks like me. Her cheeks and mouth are much like mine. But then she has those unimaginably lovely, sort of Asian eyes. When strangers see her, they sometimes do a double-take, and I imagine they're trying to figure out what her background is. In any event, though I hope it doesn't sound too obnoxious of me as the mom to say so, she is quite striking. And she's heard people say it enough times that she's starting to realize it for herself. Last night we played "fashion show," which is my ruse for making her try on things to see if they fit. I had been hoping to re-use last year's summer dresses, but at the rate she's growing, they're going to fall at her hips by this summer! She paraded in front of the mirror in outfit after outfit, a smile broadening on her face. It does my heart good to see her reveling in her own loveliness.

Someone's gone off his meds again

Bush tap dances for the press. I'm sure they loved it.

Four years

Today marks four years without my friend Bevin in the world.

Rest in peace my friend. I hope I will see you again someday.

Another burning question

Why must 9 out of every 10 movies Will Ferrell makes show him in 1970s-era shortie shorts and goofy hair? The guy has built his whole career on how funny he looks in these getups. I guess there's worse things to base a career on.

Burning questions

So at least according to one poll, George W. Bush's approval rating has dropped to 19 percent. Even if this number is off somewhat (most polls I've seen put his approval somewhere in the 20s) he still is undoubtedly one of the most reviled presidents of the modern age, certainly the most hated since Nixon. When will the mainstream media begin referring to Bush as "unpopular"? When will we see editorial page mea culpas from the major journalistic cheerleaders of the Iraq war?

And when will most of the average people who voted for this guy not once, but twice, finally admit they were wrong? Among the handful of Republicans I know, most just refuse to discuss politics anymore. It's hard to find former die-hard Bush supporters who will now publicly acknowledge they screwed up.

Also, what will the Republican party do with Bush at its next convention? Are they going to let him speak? How can they not have a speech from a sitting president in their own party? Only problem is everybody hates the guy. Will they put him on at 3 a.m. so nobody sees? That's going to be fascinating to watch.

Somebody help me

My previously sweet, adorable toddler is going through some hellacious Terrible 3s at the moment. Yesterday at school she got annoyed at another kid and poked him in the eye with a felt tip marker. Fortunately the little boy wasn't injured, but holy crap, this is coming out of nowhere. She never used to be like this! Now she keeps getting sent to the office for causing trouble.

She's not even three and a half yet! And Mr. Fraulein and I, having no previous experience with this kind of thing, can't figure out if we're dealing with it the right way. Our main approach so far has been the Counting to Three tactic ("I'm going to count to three, and if you don't stop jumping on the couch, we start taking away toys...") combined with revoking of TV privileges and "special treats" (chocolate, etc.) We'll see how it goes...

Compare and contrast...

Thousands upon thousands of energized Obama supporters of every age and color yesterday in Madison, WI, vs. McCain's few dozen bored looking white folks. I hate to even say this for fear of jinxing it but I think maybe, just maybe, the good guys are going to WIN this time. Only question is how big a rout it will be.

I'm beginning to suspect the Republicans won't even be able to try to steal it this time. Voter fraud is a lot easier in close elections, like 2000 and 2004, than it is when three quarters of the country are chomping at the bit for dramatic change.

I desperately wanted my boy Al Gore to jump in there this time, but given that Obama is starting to look more and more like (Bill) Clinton and JFK and RFK rolled into one, I'll take it. Especially when the opposition is (or appears to be, which is what's important) 1,000 years old and wants to continue every Bush policy that's been soundly repudiated by most of the country.

Change is good. Yes we can!

Blogs you should read

If there isn't some kind of Bloggers All-Time Creative Writing Achievement Award, then there damn well should be. And Laid Off Dad should win it.

Things you notice when watching high-def DVDs on a high-def TV...

The main thing you notice is: people on TV have the same skin problems as the rest of us. I'm having serious "Office" withdrawal, so I've been re-watching Season 2 on DVD. Apparently NBC films its shows in high definition now, and it's amazing how much detail you can see. Steve Carell has some serious wrinkles going on. None of this was visible on our prehistoric TV. It seems the science of makeup artistry hasn't quite caught up with the HD revolution.

Big questions

The Peanut, this morning in the car: "Mommy, when is the world over?"

Me: "Um, what do you mean?"

Peanut: "When is the world over?"

Me: "Well, hopefully not for a while."

Public showers, tights, and big sparkly rings

I decided to tune in to a teeny bit of the Super Bowl coverage so I'd have some idea what my co-workers were talking about today. (And oh, the wailing and the gnashing of the teeth here in metro-Boston after the Patriots loss -- you have no idea...) So here's what the Super Bowl looks like to someone who knows absolutely zero about professional sports:

6:20 p.m.: Didn't there used to be big, splashy Pre-Game shows with lots of has-been musicians performing? Apparently they don't do those anymore, or if they do it was over by this time. All I see is a panel discussion among a group of fat neckless guys wearing suits. Each and every one of them looks supremely uncomfortable in his suit. You get the sense they'd all be much happier in polyester jogging outfits.

6:21 p.m.: Commercials.

6:26 p.m.: A brief break in the commercials so they can come back and breathlessly anticipate the "coin toss." A million people come out on the field to view the outcome. Will it be heads or tails?? Riveting. I can totally see why people get so into this...

6:28 p.m.: Commercials, including one wherein a former Super Bowl star delivers a rambling oration dedicated to the specialness of winning the contest and getting to wear the Super Bowl ring. The Super Bowl ring is shown on this man's finger in a lingering shot that looks like it's lit exclusively by candles, to maximize the sparkle of the ring's many, many diamonds. This is a ring that would look perfectly appropriate on the finger of a wealthy woman north of 70. THIS is what they give as a prize to these 20-year-old guys when they win? Why not a tweedy St. John suit and a Cartier brooch shaped like a bumblebee?

(Yes, I know the above photo shows a Patriots ring -- it was all I could find! No pictures of one with a Giants logo available online, apparently.)

6:35 p.m.: The commercials finally end and they start singing the national anthem. For some reason we're seeing soldiers in Iraq. Also occasionally we see a Fox News logo in the corner featuring some kind of animated football playing robot with enormous shoulders. Because, as we can see from the jewelry and the post-game communal showers and the tights, this is a game that is all about macho.

6:36 p.m.: I can't take it anymore and I turn it off.

Somebody needs to clean up this mess

Being in kind of a self-flagellating mood last night, I tuned in to the Chimp's final State of the Union address. Normally I like to spare myself the agony of listening to him speak but I was curious about how he would try to position his "legacy."

The thing that jumped out at me was the overall tone of, "We need somebody new to take charge and clean up this mess." Regardless of the topic, he implied that things have been screwed up long enough, and now, by God, somebody better do something about it.

Um, who the hell has been in charge for the last seven years? This is an inconsistency that will NEVER be pointed out by our broken, pathetic media.

Also, I loved that there was exactly one reference to the Hurricane Katrina aftermath -- that some conference or other is going to be held soon in New Orleans. I guess that means things are all hunky-dory down there now.

I knew I loved Brattleboro

This weekend we visited our awesome friends in Brattleboro, Vermont. There was a birthday party for my friend's husband, attended by about 20 adults and 10 kids, so the Peanut was beside herself with glee. As always happens when we get together with these people, the Peanut and our friends' two little girls ran amok for the entire weekend, scattering stuffed animals and crayons and approximately 50 million My Little Pony figurines in their wake. There were many wardrobe changes ("Look what I found in my summer clothes drawer! I'm putting on my Easter dress!") and dramatic performances ("Look at us -- we're ballerina fairies!")

When, at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday night, the Peanut and the other 3-year-old announced that they were tired and wanted to go to bed, we grown-ups were actually naive enough to believe they meant it. "They've worn themselves out. They'll crash now because the sugar's worn off," we said.

Finally at midnight, after each of us had made about 50 trips upstairs to bellow, "That's it! NOW you girls have to get to sleep!!" there was silence, when our friends' little girls both crashed in the older girl's room, and the Peanut declared that after all that she wanted to sleep with me and Mr. Fraulein. At which point she got in bed between us, kicked us in the head for 20 minutes, and then went to sleep.

Ten minutes later it was 7 a.m., and the Peanut's presence was requested: the Moose Parade that all the girls had been planning the night before was about to get underway. (When you live in Vermont, apparently you end up with a lot of stuffed animal, uh, mooses.) So she bounded out of bed like she'd been sleeping for 12 hours, and they all started thundering around the house once again.

So all in all it was another excellent Brattleboro weekend, complete with a pictureque light snowfall, which we watched from our friends' dining room as we ate breakfast yesterday morning.

And then this morning I read Bob Cesca's blog and saw this, which only confirms the general fabulousness of Brattleboro.

How's your 401K doing now?

So it's official: they broke the economy. Just like Reagan. Just like Bush the first.

Compare and contrast: in the 90s, we weren't at war with anybody, and our 401Ks were booming. Today we're stuck in a pointless war that will probably go on for years if not decades in some form, and the stock market is tanking.

Back then, every quarter I'd get my 401K statement in the mail and marvel at how much money I had made. Clinton screwed an intern. Bush II has screwed the entire country, and we'll continue to be screwed for years to come because of eight years of this nightmare. Heck of a job!

A grave threat to public health

Weapons-grade snark from TRex today:

Indeed. It is a public health hazard that should be stopped at once! No more! No more shall the health and safety of our children be jeopardized by a bunch of men who want to dress up in their funny outfits and violently slam into and clutch at each other, crawl all over each other out in a big field, then slap each other on the ass and go shower together.

Imagination kicks in

The Peanut has been telling a lot of stories lately. For people like me (a professional writer/book nerd/amateur Virginia Woolf scholar/former journalist) and her daddy (an engineer with a novel in progress) this is a pretty exciting development.

First there were the bananas. Specifically, the Silly Talking Bananas who live in our house and one of our neighbors' houses. There are 10 of them, five boys and five girls, and they apparently come and visit the Peanut and her stuffed animals during the night. "Me and Main Ted and Pink Ted and Day Care Bear laughed and laughed," she says, using the names her daddy and I have for some of her teddy bears. Sometimes we have to hurry home from school because the bananas are waiting to play with us.

Then today there was a monster, which the Peanut vanquished with the help of her purple origami crane. There for a while she was very afraid of the dark, and Mr. Fraulein made a bunch of cranes to sit on her dresser and watch over her as she sleeps, just as his mother had done for him when he was little. She decided to bring the purple crane to school, and she cradled it in her lap as she sat in her car seat.

"My crane can shoot fire from its nose like a dragon," she said. "The monster is coming very close to my school, and he wants to get my friends, but they're hiding. So the crane is shooting fire at him but the fire won't get my friends. And then the monster goes up in the air."

"I see," I respond. "So is the monster gone now?"

"He went up in the air. But my crane will chase him away if he comes back."

Terrible and random

My friend said she woke up one morning and half her body was numb. A month and a half of medical examinations followed. Then the doctors told her she has MS, although it's unclear yet how severe the disease will be. It might end up having relatively little impact, if she's lucky. Meanwhile they wait--she and her husband and her 4- and one-year-old boys--to find out the prognosis.

So terrible and so random. Multiple sclerosis is apparently extremely rare. She was just unlucky. What she needs now is a cosmic reversal, for the luck to flow back her way again so that she will have many many more years of chasing down those two little boys.

Such a thing is clarifying in so many ways. I've been considering my great good fortune anyway, lately, but hearing this kind of news from a good friend makes you so sad and, at the same time, so grateful for your own blessings.

Dear God, I think, I have had this and this and this. I got to study here and live here. I watched "His Girl Friday" in a freshman journalism class in college and said, holy Jesus, I want to do that! And I did it, at least for a while. It wasn't the New York Times, but still. I wanted to do it and I did it. I went on my honeymoon here (and here). My luck is overflowing--I'm hoping I can send some my friend's way.

Go read Laid Off Dad

Freeeeking hilarious. This guy needs a job writing for the networks or something. He is way funnier than most of the people they've got writing TV dialogue.

Our pathetic media

Is Hillary "weak" or "calculating" for crying on the campaign trail? And how freaking RIGHT am I that this woman will never be elected president? In this country? In this media environment? Not a chance in hell.

Speaking of our lousy media, am I the only person who noticed how lame it was that this past Sunday's "Parade" magazine, which is a cavalcade of crap under the best of circumstances, appeared with its outdated cover interview with the now late Benazir Bhutto completely unedited? Bhutto was killed a week and a half before the publication date, and still no mention of this was made by the Boston Globe. Now, I know they print these crummy inserts like "Parade" weeks in advance, but still, the least the Globe could have done was add a note to the front page, or another insert, to explain that fact. Totally lame and unworthy of a 1,000-circulation local weekly, let alone a major national daily.


UPDATE:

Turns out the Globe did include a note about the Bhutto Parade article, but I missed it the first time around, so that's my bad. Still, my sense of what used to be the rules for good journalism tells me they should have pulled the whole issue rather than distribute totally inaccurate content.

Headline that made me giggle

"Crowd of Irate Ron Paul Fans Chase Hannity Out of Restaurant." Methinks the Ron Paul people and Sean Hannity's fans (his mom? maybe a few of his cousins?) deserve each other...

Holiday highlights

Dec. 23: The family Fraulein makes its annual Christmas trip to the wilds of north Jersey, where we rendezvous with my high school crowd and assorted kids, relatives and friends at my friend Meaghan's Festivus party. Here, we each consume our own weight in hors d'oeuvres and homemade Christmas cookies. The Peanut spends much of the evening giving another toddler the stink-eye until said toddler relinquishes a certain toy shopping cart. Then the Peanut spends the rest of the party pushing the shopping cart around. Fun is had by all!

Dec. 24: My mother makes three of the seven fishes, as she has done on Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember. I eat my own weight in stuffed squid. The Peanut asks if we can look outside for Santa, so we go out to the porch and spy a plane moving overhead. "Look, there's the reindeer!" I announce. The Peanut is very excited. We leave out milk and cookies for the big guy before putting the Peanut to bed.

Dec. 25: Nearly all of the Peanut's presents appear under the tree wrapped in purple wrapping paper. She is nearly as thrilled by the bows--all of which she insists on keeping--as she is by the presents, especially her new double doll stroller. We exchange lots of Etsy presents. We attend Mass at the Catholic church where I went as a kid, and agree that Episcopal church is more lively. Later we go to dinner at the awesome Berta's and eat our own weight in everything. Then we come back and the Peanut enlists my dad to help her play with all her new toys.

Dec. 26: We return to Massachusetts and say bye-bye to the horrific fire hazard otherwise known as the live Christmas tree we bought the first weekend in December. I begin the several-months-long process of vacuuming up needles.

Dec. 29: At long last, we head to Best Buy to pick out a replacement for our (literally) 20-year-old TV. We buy a flat screen--the big gift Mr. Fraulein and I decide to give to each other this year--and the contrast between it and the old clunker television makes me feel as though we have spent the last several years sitting in our living room watching a cave man etch rough drawings on stone. We proceed to spend the next few days watching old DVDs to see what we've been missing. Turns out, it's a lot. Did you know that you can see little shimmering force fields emerging from the aurors' wands in the Department of Mysteries fight scene in "Order of the Phoenix"? Presumably you did if you have a relatively new TV.

Dec. 31: We don't have a babysitter and neither do any of our neighbors, so we invite people to come to us. Thanks to Trader Joe's and its awesome frozen party treats, we are able to make it look like we put some effort into the whole thing, which of course we didn't. The Peanut spends the evening bossing around a two-year-old boy and making crayon drawings with a 9-year-old boy. The grown-ups debate whether anyone's family is truly "functional." "My entire family is cripplingly dysfunctional!" announces one friend, waving a lemongrass chicken roll in the air for emphasis. "That's just how it is." I ask: "So are you saying that in 30 years, the Peanut is going to stand around saying what a pain in the ass I am?" "Sure she will," he responds. "Everyone at some point thinks their mother is a pain in the ass."

The children eat their own weight in cupcakes from Party Favors. (Before serving the two-year-old, I had asked his parents whether it was OK for him to have one. They said sure, as long as he asked politely. Like I was going to say no to a toddler with curly ringlets, pointing at the cupcakes and saying "Pweese?")

Jan. 1: I turn 39 and we head out into the freezing rain ("Daddy, turn off the weather!" the Peanut said) to check out the ice sculptures on the Boston Common, and to have lunch at Skipjack's. Then it was back to normal life after that.

Things I love about my office

For the first time in my life, it's just the office, not The Office.

Every year around this time, holiday festiveness breaks out to the extent that it seems no corner of our floor is left un-festooned with blinking lights and garland and tiny fake Christmas trees and assorted other glittery junk you can buy at Walgreen's.

The assortment of leftover homemade cookies, cake and not one, but TWO crock pots filled with Swedish meatballs--the remnants of yesterday's Yankee Swap--is seemingly undiminished even though dozens of people have been picking at it all day.

This year I actually scored a cool and useful Yankee Swap gift--a new crock pot! (You can sense a trend here.) Maybe I'll use it to make Swedish meatballs for next year.

Things I'm going to try to do, and not do, in 2008

1. Savor every moment with my Peanut before she outgrows wanting to hang out with me. She says "I love you" to me and Mr. Fraulein all the time now. There is nothing like being loved by a 3-year-old!

2. Cut down my news consumption even more. If you had told me, back in the mid-90s when I was an actual member of the news media, that I would eventually stop reading newspapers and watching TV news altogether, I would have said you were insane. I still read a few blogs and lefty-leaning news sites but I think even that, I'm going to cut down on. This is because I now truly believe the thing I said for years I would never believe--that no politician of either party will ever truly effect positive change.

3. Try to do good, concretely. While can't do a goddamn thing about Iraq or Darfur, for example, I can do little things in my own community. I live in a fairly wealthy area where there are an increasing number of homeless, along with people with homes who can't afford both heating oil and food. So I can bring food to our local food pantry. I can volunteer when they serve meals. I can gather up clothes and coats and shoes we no longer use, and I can bring them there so they can give them out to people who have much less than we do. And I can try to reduce our family's energy footprint by bringing my own bags to the supermarket, replacing our old lightbulbs with the newer, more efficient ones, and simply trying not to buy more plastic crap than we truly need. Oh, and not driving too much, which we already do a pretty good job at.

4. Read more, eat healthier, drink red wine, see friends, get outside. Enjoy life. Enough said.

I have no idea how this happened

but in less than three weeks I'm going to be 39 years old. It's unnerving how you turn around one day and go, holy crap, somewhere along the line I managed to get old. I can't look at myself in the mirror anymore when I am holding the Peanut, because the contrast of her glowing, gorgeous, pore-free golden skin (thanks to her mix of Asian/Mediterranean skin tones) with my, well, almost-39-year-old skin, makes me look like the Crypt Keeper.

The test of time

Once you've been friends with someone for 10 or 15 or 20 years, the friendship develops concentric circles, like a tree. You share a common history from many distinct stages of your life, and if you're very lucky, new histories emerge and you retain the richness of the connection you've shared over the years, while layering new memories over the old.

I think of this often when I get to spend time with some old friends who I don't see all that often, as Mr. Fraulein and I were able to do this weekend. The couple who came to see us, bringing their 3- and almost-7-year-old girls in tow, have been part of my life since before they were even a couple. Their relationship began and strengthened during pool parties in my parents' backyard in the 90s. We shared college connections and friend-of-co-worker connections. Other friends came into and out of the group over the years. People broke up; others got married and had kids. The circles broke apart, then re-formed.

And here we were all these many years and crises and joys later, three kids giggling and singing and refusing to go to sleep in the back bedroom, howling with laughter over things that happened a million lifetimes ago.

Writing new histories. Adding new circles.

Eventually, Christmas catalogs will show up in June

The Christmas shopping gods have not been smiling on me this year. Of course, since I don't have a huge family, it's not like I'm buying for 40 people, but still...I started my online shopping, catalog-calling, and mall-visiting right after Thanksgiving, as I always do. I should have figured something would go wrong this year, though, when the catalogs started arriving before Halloween. (Every year it gets earlier.)

And that's when the denials and qualifications started coming in. Want a hat and gloves for a little boy? In red? Whoever heard of such a thing! You would have thought I was searching for, I don't know, a life size statue of a penguin or something. The little red hat and gloves took several stores' worth of searching to unearth. Want a tie for another little boy? That's backordered until February. Here's your Christmas present, kid -- oh, and happy Valentine's Day!

Don't even get me started on the kids' fancy holiday outfits. These, you must buy in August, if you expect to find your child's size in stock. It's the same phenomenon I've noticed with kids' bathing suits -- if you shop for those much later than May, you're shit out of luck.

Now I need to find a whistling tea kettle for my mom, which I'm expecting to find at Kohl's, but still, you never know. I'll probably go in there this week and find nothing but tumbleweeds and a couple of broken ornaments on the floor, like in Cindy Lou Who's house after the Grinch stole everything.

Photo credit: "Christmas Shopping" by Lisa Kibble (This woman's artwork is really cool -- check it out!)

Your Republican party

Can we expect to see a Willie Horton-style commercial skewering Mike Huckabee for this atrocity?

My guess is no, because the Democratic party never, ever fights back. Here's an issue handed to them on a silver platter -- the Republicans are supposed to be the tough-on-crime party, right? -- and I'd bet my whole bank account that they won't touch it. They wouldn't want to seem impolite.

Wrong on about six levels

The asshats at the "Weekly Standard" have done a cover story on England's Conservative party titled "Not Your Father's Tories." According to Blogging Woolf, the cover illustration that goes with this story is a picture of Virginia Woolf wearing, for some incomprehensible reason, an ice hockey uniform.

Where to begin with how wrong this is? How about the fact that she and the rest of the Bloomsbury circle were so far to the left that they'd be considered Communists today? If I had to guess, I'd say the magazine chose to make the Woolf reference because her famous father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was marginally more conservative, but even this I'd say is a stretch. A prime example of journalists not bothering to do any research and not caring that they look stupid as a result.

UPDATE: Blogging Woolf has run a correction -- it turns out the Virginia-in-an-ice-hockey-uniform graphic is not supposed to be linked to the story about the Tories, but to a review of a book called "The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm." This makes sense, because of Woolf's famous remark that "human character changed" in 1910.

The ice hockey outfit is still a mystery, however.

Cool Christmas shopping ideas

In my quest for fun, engaging, and lead-free toys for the Peanut and all the other kids on my Christmas list this year, I've found some great options online. For a mind-boggling array of craft items, toys, artwork, jewelry, and tons of other stuff made by individual artists all over the world, check out Etsy.

More ideas for toys (many of them made by moms) are at CoolMomPicks.

And yet more amazing toys, kids' furniture, and more, can be found at Oompa. Happy shopping!

Thanksgiving long weekend by the numbers

Pounds of turkey consumed chez Fraulein: 10

Home improvement projects completed with help from the Peanut's very industrious Pop-Pop: 1 (Waxing our hardwood floors!)

Pumpkin dessert items demolished: 2 (Nana's pumpkin pie and my cream cheese frosted pumpkin cake)

Hours of Caillou DVDs watched by the Peanut: Countless

Christmas decorating tasks completed: Zero, because I ran out of energy

Babies visited: 2: my friend Christine's charming four-month-old twins, who the Peanut loved hanging out with, along with the twins' big brother, who is almost 3 and likes to pretend to be a Power Ranger. Or Buzz Lightyear, or something. All those superheroes that the little boys like seem the same to me.

But did he survive?

Actual AP headline from today:

Student Slain to Death Near U of Chicago

Secrets of the toddler brain

If somebody could figure out a magic formula for unlocking the secrets of the toddler brain, they'd undoubtedly make a fortune. We are slogging through some Terrible Threes lately, with the Peanut suddenly careening from a (relatively) reasonable mood to a screeching horror show in 10 seconds or less. She becomes enraged over minor things, throws fits if we don't understand her cryptic requests ("I want the white thing with the yellow things on it!! I WANT IT! I WANT IT!") and, perhaps most frustrating of all, changes her mind every two to three minutes. She wants pancakes. Then she wants a bagel. Then the bagel is the most disgusting thing she's ever seen.

There was a cartoon in the paper yesterday that showed a man and a woman heading out their front door with several suitcases, while a small boy stood nearby. The father was holding a bag full of cash out to a young woman and saying, "Jenny, at your normal babysitting rate, this should cover us for two years."

This weekend was that kind of weekend. The kind of Toddler Terror Experience that makes you wonder whether there are any boarding schools for 3-year-olds, perhaps in France.

I just wish I knew what was going on in that little head. Thankfully this morning, after a solid night's sleep, relative calm was restored. And on the ride in to school she even said, I swear, this:

"Mommy, when I'm big, I'm gonna feel different. That happens."

Yes indeedy, you will feel different. You and your parents too.

The nosebleed

You could pretty much have gone your whole life without being roused from a dead sleep in the early morning hours by hearing your 3-year-old screaming: "MOMMY! BLOOD! BLOOD! MOMMY, COME HELP!"

But she is screaming exactly this, so you leap out of the bed like it's on fire, race down the hall. There she is, sitting up in bed, blood pouring out of her nose and down the front of her pajamas, soaking her pillow and sheets. You help her to get out of bed and stagger to the bathroom, where you somehow simultaneously hold a wad of tissues to her nose, strip off her clothes, and wash her bloody hands, face and arms. Vaguely in the midst of your toddler's sustained screaming and crying, you wonder why this happened. (Just the dry winter air? Who knows?) But it's impossible to spare much time to think about causes when she is still yelling, terrified, because she has no idea why she's bleeding. It must seem to her as though she is dying, although it's just a simple nosebleed, and it's already slowing down quite a bit.

"I'm cold," she keeps saying, because she has no pajamas on now, but she's shaking too hard at the moment for you to get new ones on her. Finally after many hugs, she calms down enough for you to get her dressed again. It is not helping that Daddy is off on a work trip, because most of the time, the cure for all ills is a healthy dose of Daddy.

Finally it is determined that she should sleep in the big bed with Mommy until it's time to get up, and this helps enormously. Solemnly she collects various stuffed animals and her favorite pink blankie from her room. You follow her back down the hall, carrying her butterfly night light and her sound machine, which plays the sounds of the ocean and the rain and a babbling brook.

She settles in on Daddy's side of the bed with a wad of tissue stuffed up one nostril. Her eyes remain open for a long time.

And it occurs to you that this is what you signed up for, when you decided to trash all the birth control and plow bravely ahead, having not the slightest clue what this entailed. You consider what you used to sometimes do at this hour of the morning back when you were single. You think about the late-night post-party diner gabfests, back in the wilds of New Jersey. There you would sit, slumped in a booth with three or six or 12 other people, mountains of omelets and bagels, gallons of coffee, a non-trivial hangover, and laughter that stretched on for hours.

At that time you could never have imagined this moment happening. It would have seemed as likely a future fate as walking on the moon. Now you cannot imagine a present without such moments. Because this little sniffling person lying next to you will sometimes need to have her tears or even blood mopped up, and you realize that you would shed your blood to stop those tears from flowing.

All I have to say about Dennis Kucinich

...is that if he somehow, against all odds, succeeds in his mission to rid us of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, I will vote for him for President even if his campaign platform states that he intends to dance naked under the full moon every month on the White House front lawn while scarfing down barbecued tofu with Shirley McLaine and E.T.

Go Dennis!

'My country is the whole world'

In "Three Guineas," Virginia Woolf's primal scream about gender, war and terrorism, she proposes that women try to completely divorce themselves from the societal structures that perpetuate endless wars. She voices the fear that as women moved tentatively into the professional workforce (this was in 1938) we would become inextricably linked to those very societal structures. This was because women were so desperate to have opportunities for advancement outside the home that we would embrace even war-making industries, as long as they allowed us to escape the home by earning our own money.

So she proposes the idea that women should, essentially, opt out. That we should become what she calls "outsiders." Woolf's illustrations and analogies don't entirely hold true in 2007, and not simply because there were women among the brutes giving the thumbs-up over the bodies of dead Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. But they do point to something that I find intriguing. And that is the idea that if ordinary citizens--men as well as women--were to demand that our talents and treasure be devoted to building up our own country (fixing our schools and bridges, just for starters) rather than to carrying out extended bombing campaigns to demonstrate our might over the rest of the world, we might actually have a civilization here, instead of the '1984'/'Lord of the Flies' horror show we're living through right now. I think she's saying that maybe if we turn our backs on what is patently wrong, we might just have the energy to start making things right:

But the outsider will make it her duty not merely to base her indifference upon instinct, but upon reason. When he says, as history proves that he has said, and may say again, ‘I am fighting to protect our country’ and thus seeks to rouse her patriotic emotion, she will ask herself, ‘What does “our country” mean to me an outsider?’ To decide this she will analyse the meaning of patriotism in her own case. She will inform herself of the position of her sex and her class in the past. She will inform herself of the amount of land, wealth and property in the possession of her own sex and class in the present—how much of ‘England’ in fact belongs to her. From the same sources she will inform herself of the legal protection which the law has given her in the past and now gives her. And if he adds that he is fighting to protect her body, she will reflect upon the degree of physical protection that she now enjoys when the words ‘Air Raid Precaution’ are written on blank walls. And if he says that he is fighting to protect England from foreign rule, she will reflect that for her there are no ‘foreigners’, since by law she becomes a foreigner if she marries a foreigner. And she will do her best to make this a fact, not by forced fraternity, but by human sympathy. All these facts will convince her reason (to put it in a nutshell) that her sex and class has very little to thank England for in the past; not much to thank England for in the present; while the security of her person in the future is highly dubious. But probably she will have imbibed, even from the governess, some romantic notion that Englishmen, those fathers and grandfathers whom she sees marching in the picture of history, are ‘superior’ to the men of other countries. This she will consider it her duty to check by comparing French historians with English; German with French; the testimony of the ruled—the Indians or the Irish, say—with the claims made by their rulers. Still some ‘patriotic’ emotion, some ingrained belief in the intellectual superiority of her own country over other countries may remain. Then she will compare English painting with French painting; English music with German music; English literature with Greek literature, for translations abound. When all these comparisons have been faithfully made by the use of reason, the outsider will find herself in possession of very good reasons for her indifference. She will find that she has no good reason to ask her brother to fight on her behalf to protect ‘our’ country. ‘“Our country,”’ she will say, ‘throughout the greater part of its history has treated me as a slave; it has denied me education or any share in its possessions. “Our” country still ceases to be mine if I marry a foreigner. “Our” country denies me the means of protecting myself, forces me to pay others a very large sum annually to protect me, and is so little able, even so, to protect me that Air Raid precautions are written on the wall. Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or “our” country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or to protect either myself or my country. For,’ the outsider will say, ‘in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.’ And if, when reason has said its say, still some obstinate emotion remains, some love of England dropped into a child’s ears by the cawing of rooks in an elm tree, by the splash of waves on a beach, or by English voices murmuring nursery rhymes, this drop of pure, if irrational, emotion she will make serve her to give to England first what she desires of peace and freedom for the whole world.

Such then will be the nature of her ‘indifference’ and from this indifference certain actions must follow. She will bind herself to take no share in patriotic demonstrations; to assent to no form of national self-praise; to make no part of any claque or audience that encourages war; to absent herself from military displays, tournaments, tattoos, prize-givings and all such ceremonies as encourage the desire to impose ‘our’ civilization or ‘our’ dominion upon other people. The psychology of private life, moreover, warrants the belief that this use of indifference by the daughters of educated men would help materially to prevent war. For psychology would seem to show that it is far harder for human beings to take action when other people are indifferent and allow them complete freedom of action, than when their actions are made the centre of excited emotion. The small boy struts and trumpets outside the window: implore him to stop; he goes on; say nothing; he stops. That the daughters of educated men then should give their brothers neither the white feather of cowardice nor the red feather of courage, but no feather at all; that they should shut the bright eyes that rain influence, or let those eyes look elsewhere when war is discussed.

Halloween 2007: Fly, little butterfly

Appliance delivery shenanigans

So we recently bought a new front-loading washing machine, which we are loving. Delivery and installation went off without a hitch. We also bought a new dryer from the same store, and assumed this would be an equally uncomplicated process.

The first delivery date came and went, with the delivery people allegedly unable to find anywhere to park. So we rescheduled. Today they were supposed to try again, but their excuse was, and I quote, "We couldn't find the dryer to put it onto the truck."

One is tempted to ask whether these people can find their own ass with both hands, but I suppose that would be impolite. Meanwhile the old dryer takes an hour and a half to finish a full load of laundry. Environmentally unfriendly much? We are singlehandedly killing off the polar bears with all this excess energy use here at the House of Fraulein.

UPDATE: So once they finally showed up with the new dryer, we were told that the venting system we have in place (rigged up by God knows which inept previous resident of our house) is completely ass-backwards and as a result, every time we use the old dryer, we are in danger of burning the house down. (Good to know, since we've been using it for the last four years...) As a result they refused to set up the dryer until we can get competent professionals in to re-assemble the venting system. The fun continues...

Archer blows out the fire

This is completely awesome.

Ghosts

These are some of the people I've been:

A teenage kid with Jersey hair and 80s clothes, part of a gang of Jersey kids driving far too recklessly than anyone ever should, laughing our asses off at everything and nothing

A college student, transplanted from Boston to the U.K., studying Woolf at Oxford and thinking every moment I was there: I cannot ever leave this place

A Gen X college grad cut adrift in the middle of a lousy economy, begging every mediocre newspaper on the East Coast to give me a job

An extremely poorly paid reporter for some of North Jersey's most craptactular newspapers

A somewhat less poorly paid reporter for a reasonably-not-crappy newspaper, where I dashed off to fires and car crash scenes and, one memorable time, a gunpowder plant explosion (Headline: "KABOOM!")

A person who thought: I will never have children. I cannot abide the idea of giving birth. I can't imagine being a mother

A person who thought: Holy shit, I'm pregnant

Is there anybody alive out there?

More Bruce-y goodness from the new album lyrics:

(From Radio Nowhere)

I was spinnin' 'round a dead dial
Just another lost number in a file
Dancin' down a dark hole
Just searchin' for a world with some soul

This is radio nowhere,
is there anybody alive out there?

(From Livin' In the Future)

Woke up Election Day, skies gunpowder and shades of gray
Beneath a dirty sun, I whistled my time away
Then just about sundown
You come walkin' through town
Your boot heels clickin'
Like the barrel of a pistol spinnin' 'round

Bruuuuuce!

Activist, poet, bard of New Jersey. Still a genius (and still hot!) after all these years. I'm loving the whole new album, especially the opening track, 'Radio Nowhere.'

Art imitates life

Over the past couple of years I've noticed that Halloween (which when I was a kid was essentially an excuse to dress up in silly outfits and eat dozens upon dozens of Reese's peanut butter cups, while hurling wads of wet toilet paper into the neighbors' trees) has morphed into something highly unsettling. Witness the fact that you can't enter any CVS-type store this month without being visually assaulted by all manner of gruesome displays, such as green-skinned zombie masks with eyeballs hanging out of them. Another delightful item I saw for sale this weekend: clear plastic posters with what are supposed to look like bloody handprints and other "blood-splatter" marks on them, which you're supposed to put up on your windows to give your house the air of having been the site of a mass chainsaw execution. Festive!

What the hell has happened to Halloween? Wasn't it originally supposed to be a kid's holiday? One kid who is having none of it is my Peanut, who had such a total freakout meltdown in the Walgreen's the other day that I literally had to carry her out as she screamed and screamed. For some perverse reason they had stocked many of their Halloween displays on shelves about three feet from the floor, meaning she was face-to-face with endless rows of gigantic rubber rats, Freddy Kreuger masks, fake rubber hands holding bloody knives, leering skeletons, etc. Now on top of everything else I have to worry about her being scarred for life by Halloween displays?

I've been thinking about this in light of this horrible torture porn horror movie trend of the past few years, which also unsettles me a great deal. I remember having a conversation about this with the manager of our local Hollywood Video, and trying to explain to the guy that there was no way I could bring my toddler into that store when every third DVD on the shelves was festooned with graphic photos of people being tortured. I was not sorry to see that, between Netflix and On-Demand cable movies, the Hollywood Video is about to close its doors, but the gross-out movie trend continues. And I've realized that maybe all this gruesomeness is about art imitating life.

You read enough stuff like this, and you start to think that when the Earth eventually gets its revenge on us, quite a few of us are going to deserve it.

The best present I ever got

Dear Peanut:

Happy third birthday! I cannot believe how big you've gotten, and how utterly beautiful you are. I can't believe the way you talk, like a self-assured mini-adult in 3T clothing. How could I ever sum up in a letter or a blog post what your arrival meant--and continues to mean--to your daddy and me?

In every moment since I got my first glimpse of you (your tiny feet) I have been so blown away by the intensity of parenthood. I never imagined that I could feel the things I've felt since you came into the world. I can't put into words what I felt when I tried and tried, in those early days, to get you to latch on to my breast. The utter joy when we succeeded, the bleak sense of frustration when we failed. The look on your little angel face when you woke up in the middle of the night, anticipating a feeding. I will never forget that look! It was so hopeful.

How can I explain how much we've loved every minute of your life? How scrumptious you were as a chubby little baby? How astonished everyone was when you stood up and walked at 10 months? How funny it was when you danced and danced? How proud we were as you started doing more things on your own, from feeding yourself to climbing the jungle gym to even, most of the time now (praise Jesus!) using the potty.

Every day I'm so excited about what you'll do next. In every stage so far you've been a different person, and each one has been amazing to behold. You'll never know how happy you've made us by coming into our lives.

Three years ago today I got my best present ever, my amazing fabulous Peanut baby. Happy birthday, my sweet girl.

Love,

Mommy

Out of the mouths of smart-alecky toddlers

The other day when I picked the Peanut up from day care, she came running up to me, flung her arms around my legs, and announced to all present, "I want to keep my mommy forever!" And birds sang and rainbows sparkled in the sunny skies, and I basked in the glories of motherhood.

This morning I went into her room to snuggle with her a little bit before we started our day. She took this opportunity to look deeply into my eyes and say, "I have a little butt and you have a big butt."

Naturally

The bridges are falling down and the public schools have to beg for money to provide luxuries like paper and books and we should maybe think about doing something about this whole global warming thing before, you know, Manhattan disappears into the sea, and New Orleans and vicinity remain a moldy debris-covered hellhole because we never bothered to clean up after that little weather problem they had down there a couple of years ago, but hey, we still need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars shooting and bombing people (mostly civilians) who never harmed us.

Osama bin Laden must be laughing his ass off.

Sprinting to safety

It was late in the afternoon, yesterday, and the Peanut and I were on our way back from one of our local playgrounds. She was in her stroller, where she doesn't always want to be, lately. She is getting so big -- she'll be 3 in a week! And now she wants to walk everywhere. But thank God yesterday she was in her stroller.

We were crossing a side street not far from our house. I glanced both ways before stepping into the intersection. I took a few steps and then I saw it: a tank of a gray Mercedes sedan, barreling down this suburban street at an unimaginable speed. (50, 60 mph?) I clutched the stroller handles and sprinted out of the way, reaching the sidewalk again a minute or two before the car came to a screeching halt, the smell of burnt rubber heavy in the air.

The driver and his passenger were talking, gesturing, not really paying attention. They turned right and sped off.

I pulled the stroller to the far end of the sidewalk, leaned against a building, tore my cell phone from my purse, called 911. The dispatcher told me a couple of times to slow down, because I was shaking with rage and she couldn't understand me. I was transferred to the local police department, and I gave them the license number, which I got a good look at before the car took off. The police told me they would look for the guy.

I called the police station back later in the evening and was told they were not able to find him.

What a metaphor, I thought. This is what it is to be alive now, and especially what it is to be a parent--always to be running for cover from some damn thing. Praying like hell that we're going to make it.

Best writing seminar ever

I just came back from beautiful Washington, D.C., where I attended this workshop, which offered the best discussion on writing and editing in the corporate environment I've ever been lucky enough to take part in. Plus lots of jokes involving assless chaps.

As a special bonus, I got to hang out in the hotel bar on Monday night with the presenters, Steve Crescenzo and Jim Ylisela. If you ever get to go to one of these events, be sure to have a drink or two with them. You won't be disappointed.

America the Beautiful

Trinity Church was packed that day, six years ago. The swaying crowd sang many songs, among them "America the Beautiful." When we arrived at this stanza:

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

it was impossible to keep from sobbing. A stranger, an elderly man, sat next to me. We looked at each other and embraced as we sang and tried to wipe the tears from our eyes.

My hope for this Sept. 11 is that we all live long enough to one day see the "patriot dream" of America restored.

There is such a thing as a tesseract

Long before Harry, there were Meg and Charles Wallace, kid lit heroes for the ages. I've just read that Madeleine L'Engle, the author of the indescribably brilliant "Wrinkle in Time" series, has passed away at 88. I must have read those books a hundred times as a kid. God, they were amazing. In many ways "A Wind in the Door" is my favorite. I loved the cherubim, Proginoskes.

I still have my original editions, as a matter of fact. I cannot wait for the Peanut to read them.

My feelings exactly

This is brilliant -- both the diary and the many very insightful comments. I see I'm not the only one staying up nights.

Stay, Larry, stay!!!!

This is completely fabulous, for a number of reasons:

A: The longer Wide Stance Larry hangs around, clinging desperately to his Senate seat, the longer the cable teevee goofiness will continue, which means way less attention paid to the official lying about how awesomely the "surge" is going in Iraq, and

2: Should he somehow remain in office long enough to make it to the next election, it will give us the opportunity to pick up a Senate seat in freaking Idaho. Somewhere, Karl Rove is weeping.

Also, Larry gets bonus sheer-unadulterated-wackiness points for hiring Michael Vick's lawyer. (Because nothing says class like an association with a guy who electrocutes animals for fun.) At moments like this, I desperately regret leaving the newspaper business. Think of the snarky headline-writing opportunities!