Go Go Gadget Zen

We're pretty famous around here, I think

2012-02-18T15:19:00.000-05:00

We met friends at the art museum today. Ruby and Henry spent the morning running around, touching things they weren't supposed to, and making all of the guards Generally Uneasy. I love our art museum. It's peaceful and quiet and beautiful. They change exhibits around a lot and everyone is nice and mostly leaves us alone.

Ruby was in her element because she had Alice to ~~boss around~~ play with and take care of. Alice didn't seem to mind. Henry spent most of the visit on my hip, asking when it was time to leave.

I had to sneak this when the guard wasn't looking, because I'm not allowed to photograph any work in the "modern" exhibits. They just looked so tiny and so grown at the same time; I love this picture.

They were so good, and big, and thoughtful. They asked questions and were sweet and we all had a really good time.

Until. UNTIL. We ate lunch in the IMA's cafe, which went over without incident, and then we slowly started ushering the kids outside, towards the car. The museum has a giant fountain, which the kids were transfixed by, so we let them walk over there.

Oh, look! There it is! The girls immediately started playing. Chasing each other and giggling, jumping into the bushes, two little girls having a reasonably good time on a warm-ish February day at the Indianapolis Art Museum.

But where was Henry? I got worried all of the sudden, but when I turned around, he was right behind me.

And! I thought, Oh! That poor baby. He feels left out. Look at him being shy. Standoffish. I'll make the girls pla--oh no. I know that face. I have seen that face before.

Henry is mostly potty trained. MOSTLY. He is potty trained enough to insist on wearing actual Big Boy Underwear wherever we go, but NOT enough--apparently--to refrain from pooping his pants at the art museum. I told my friend (who was watching the girls), and walked Henry out to the car to clean him up. I stood him up in the parking lot and started taking off his shoes, pants, and socks as carefully as I could. It was everywhere; it was terrible. I started to pull his pants off (SO CAREFULLY) when the Offending Material just--fell out of his jeans and landed on the pavement at my feet. I froze. I didn't have any bags. All I had was a pack of wipes and a second pair of pants. I thought, what if I just fucking leave it? What do I do? And I was frozen there, staring at that piece of poop laying in the middle of the art museum parking lot. Why is this such a big deal? Why can't I decide? Why don't I know what to do? Right as I shook myself out of it, right as I decided to rummage around my car for something that could double as a trash bag, I heard Ruby.

Crying.

I looked up, and, from the top of her head to the bottom of her boots, she was completely soaking wet. I had left her with a friend for three minutes and she had fallen into the goddamn fountain. The giant fountain. My friend had told her it was time to go and she had laughed and turned and fled; the last thing he saw was a blur and then her little fingers hanging on to the inside edge of the fountain wall. So for the second time in three minutes, I stripped a different child down in the parking lot, wrung out her clothes, and shed my top layer to wrap her in (this is where being a Never Nude comes in handy; I have at least 3 layers on at ALL TIMES.)

Ruby is okay. Henry is okay. I found a bag in the trunk of my car and was able to throw out the Offending Material, the ruined underwear, the socks and the shoes (BECAUSE IT WAS IN. THE. SHOES.) They are both clean, on the couch, drifting in and out of consciousness under fuzzy blankets. Kipper is on teevee and we are all about to go to dinner, because I will be goddamned if I have to lift so much as a pinky until tomorrow morning.

But at least I got my Worst Ten minutes As a Parent over with today. I don't have to worry about that anymore. Huge load off my shoulders. Thanks, world.

In which the shy girl becomes the bully

2012-02-03T23:16:00.001-05:00

Did you know that I am shy? I am. I'm not so good at mouth words. I don't know what to do with my hands when I talk. And I don't know how to make eye contact. How long do I look? Which eye do I look at? I wind up rapidly switching between the other person's two eyes until I get so agitated I have to look away. I always look to the side when I talk; even to my kids. I've posted videos before and I've been told that my eye-rolling and side-glances are "not that bad" and "endearing" or whatever, let's call it what it is: A goddamn nervous tick. I am not good at talking to faces. Even my own on video.

I have some friends? A few. I like them, I'm comfortable around them. I can talk to them. Usually. I've always felt like it's easy to for me to be friendly with people, but I don't make friends very easily. As a kid, I always had a couple of super close friends, and I tended to ignore the fact that everyone else existed. I've known a few mean girls, and I've always felt like girls are the hardest to get to know. In fifth grade, a girl put a dog bone in my lunch bag. In eighth grade, a girl punched me in the Smithsonian for no reason (oh, we are friends now! Hi Andrea. Do you read this stuff?). When I was in my early twenties, I was dumped overnight by one of the people I considered my very best friends with no explanation; she just stopped talking to me, looking at me, acknowledging my existence. I don't know how to deal with conflict like this. Besides. Cry? For a while? And then pretend it didn't happen? I don't stick up for myself a lot. My first instinct is to RETREAT and my instincts are strong.

But my babies? Oh. My poor babies. They have personalities. They are smart, and funny. We are friends. I let them think. I let them wear what they want, say what they want (within reason), do whatever interests them (also. within reason). Henry wants to wear a crown that says Princess Girl on it for a week? I'm down with that. Ruby wants to wear her mouse costume to the library? Let's fucking go. And sometimes I see people smile behind their hands. I see people look at each other occasionally when we walk past. And I don't care. It doesn't bother me and it shoots right over my kids' heads.

Except sometimes it doesn't.

Last week, picking Ruby up from school, she tried to help a friend that had left something behind in the classroom. The girl (who was very tired and in a bad mood and five, for chrissakes; I am not judging behavior) started yelling for Ruby to put her things down. She grabbed them from Ruby, ran back into the classroom and proceeded to put them back down on the floor, pick them up herself, and run back up to join the group. She said, 'NO, RUBY. Don't help me. I'll do it MYSELF.' Her mom smiled and rolled her eyes a bit. She shrugged and said, 'Okay, I guess I'll just tell everyone not to help you from now on, then.' I chuckled and hugged Ruby's shoulders when the girl said, 'No. People can help me. JUST NOT RUBY.'

NOW. I know it isn't a big deal. And I didn't make a big deal out of it then. I was a little stuck; I didn't know how to react. My first reaction was to call out rude behavior, but I didn't want to offend the girl's mom, who I like. And I love the little girl; she's sweet and adorable and was just in a bad mood. But still! My poor Ruby. I felt like every way I could possibly react was wrong, and I felt like I'd let her down. I brought her home and explained to her that she deserves the respect of everyone in the world, and that she should always speak up if her feelings have been hurt. She smiled and shrugged; it wasn't even a big deal to her. But it bothered me.

Today, at the grocery store, I was pushing Henry in the cart and Ruby was trailing behind us wearing her baby. We'd made a baby sling out of an old receiving blanket and she was strolling behind me down the aisles, one hand under her baby's butt, singing songs to her dolly. It was incredibly sweet. We were about to pass two little girls, sisters, probably 12 and 8, when I heard the big one say under her breath, 'Oh. My. God. Look at HER.' Both girls craned their necks to gawk at my kid. Ruby was oblivious, still looking down and singing quietly to her baby. So I did what any normal shy-girl mother would do.

I bitch-faced those little shits until I pulled a fucking muscle.

And then they turned and fled.

And I feel better.

A Series of Chipotle Customer Service Missteps

2012-02-02T15:19:00.000-05:00

We had a sales rep bring us lunch today. From Chipotle! I'd never eaten there, but fuck-yeah-free-burritos, right? So. I took everyone's order, sat down, and called. I tried to place our order over the phone, but he told me they don't take phone orders; I have to FAX it. To their Commodore, or something. So. I am an easy person. Whatever. I downloaded the form, filled it out, asked for it to be ready at 11:45 (it was 11:00 when I faxed the order), and faxed that motherfucker. That's right. I also called and confirmed the order like the fax form told me to, because I am a good girl and I follow instructions. The same man picked up the phone and informed (in the most short-tempered of ways) me that there was "no way" our order would be ready by 11:45. It would be 12:00. Maybe 12:15! He was in the middle of a lunch rush, did I not understand that there was a LUNCH RUSH happening? We had already committed, I had already told the sales rep, so whatever. Fifteen minutes is not that big of a deal.

Then. 12:00. Nothing. 12:15, our sales rep calls. After making it to the front of the line (THE LUNCH RUSH LINE), the man behind the counter had said to her, "I TOLD the girl on the phone it would be at LEAST 12:15." And then he made her wait. While he made other people's burritos. Ones in line. That had been in line after my sales rep. She finally made it to our office at 12:40. We ate the burritos. They were good. We all decided that the man we had all dealt with was rude and off-putting, and that none of us would ever go back to that Chipotle again because of it, but that we wouldn't make a big deal out of it, because, hey. The dude makes burritos for 8 hours a day. I'd be pissed off, too.

But then? Just now? My phone rang. It was Chipotle. It was THE DUDE FROM EARLIER. Him:Hi, it's Chipotle Guy! I just wanted to check on your order and make sure you were satisfied!

Me:I. Ah. Seriously? Is...this the guy I spoke to on the phone earlier?

Him:Yes! Was everything okay?

Me:The FOOD was great, but.

Him:[silence]

Me:Your service was terrible. You are REALLY short on the phone. And mean.

Him:You don't understand! It was our LUNCH RUSH. We had people lined up out the door for an hour! If you came in right now, everything would be great! There's nobody here. But at lunch sometimes we can't even ANSWER the phone. I mean. It's a LUNCH RUSH.

Me:Yes. Everyone gets busy. Maybe you should be nice on the phone.

Him:LUUUUUNNNCHHH RUUUUSHHHHH

So the moral of the story is Qdoba.

Adventures in convalescence

2012-01-29T10:43:00.000-05:00

When my dad was five, he had polio. He was in a coma for several days. He shared a hospital room with two other little boys and, as he laid unconscious in his own bed, those other two little boys died. And then? Suddenly, out of nowhere, he sat straight up and yelled, 'HOT DOG! I WANT A HOT DOG!' He was given said hot dog, recovered fully, and then went home to later that year get appendicitis, fall from a 2nd story window and be struck blind for several hours, and jump out of a moving car. 1954 was a busy year for my dad. His strange illnesses have popped up several times over the course of the last couple weeks, and I emailed him asking for details.

Holy crap dad, you are such a DELIGHT! Well, haha, the joke's on you because this isn't a book.

Henry turned three this week. In his three years he has broken his arm, had 9 ear infections, three thousand high fevers, and now, he has had pneumonia twice. We spent four hours at a prompt-care office yesterday. He was coughing, feverish, grumpy. He beat my Fruit Ninja high score. He somehow managed to splash pee on my face in the bathroom. After we'd waited for two hours, my mom wound up bringing Ruby in, too, because she developed some sort of crazy, rapid-onset ear infection. By the time we made it back to the exam room, she was actually crying from the pain. All Henry wanted was to be spooned and petted and sung "Jolene," all services that I was more than happy to provide.

Finally we were seen, measured, prodded, and X-rayed. We left with a girl who has a double ear infection and a very sleepy, hungry boy with pneumonia and a 103-degree fever. Also! One hundred prescriptions! This morning he's coughing a little less and his fever is gone, but he's grumpy and sassy enough to make me think that the steroids he's taking are already kicking in. Ruby, however, is completely, utterly, 7,000% back to her regular old self.

So! Let's all hope that 2012 is not the year Henry tries to learn how to fly or exit moving vehicles. Because he is sure as hell my dad's grandson.

Let us also hope that Ruby goes and plays in her room for a while. Let us hope for that very, very hard.

My body as The House Of Leaves

2012-01-26T22:29:00.000-05:00

When I was eight we lived in this great big old house in Brown County, Indiana. It was huge; it sat on almost 50 acres, had two stories, two lofts, and six or seven bedrooms. I would change bedrooms a lot. For the longest time, I slept in one of the lofts, but after a while I moved to a room on the far West side of the house because it had its own bathroom. My room had a giant window that overlooked what used to be a pig pasture (there were no pigs left by the time we moved in.) It was still and peaceful and in the very distant horizon you could see the trees. I loved the view out of that window.

Some nights I would go to bed wrong. I would lie there in my quiet room and wait for sleep, but it wouldn't come. And my entire body would feel itchy but not itchy, and I could flop around and try to get comfortable, but it would never happen. And then my eight-year-old brain would shout, 'The SHEETS! Wrinkles in the sheets!' and I would jump out of bed and stretch all the sheets down tight. I would crawl back underneath my blankets, painfully slow and carefully so as not to re-wrinkle the sheets. I would close my eyes and hold still and wait for relaxation, but it wouldn't come. This bizarre feeling of itching/not itching would stay. I almost felt like the inside of my body was bigger than the inside, somehow. And nothing would make it go away. There wasn't anything I could do to make it right. No matter how many times I would leap out of bed to straighten the wrinkles out of my sheets, I still couldn't sleep.

So tonight, online. Social media. I changed my avatar fifty times. Sometimes, before work, I put on ten different identical-looking black shirts, all the while my brain telling me, 'not right, not right, not right.' The whole time I am trying on shirts and changing my picture and squeezing my eyes shut and waiting for that moment of relaxation; the moment when the itching/not itching, inside-bigger-than-the-outside feeling goes away. And it always does, eventually. And it's never because I made my bed fifty times, or found the perfect avi or the right black shirt. But that never stops me from trying.

I just hope my sheets are okay tonight.

Hello there, I am still alive.

2012-01-25T15:13:00.000-05:00

HAA OH SHIT, REMEMBER HOW SOMETIMES I WRITE BRAINWORDS ON THIS THING?

Hello there.

Look! I own a three year old now. He's kinda handsome and serious and insane. Also, this past week he seems to have potty trained himself? Or some shit? I don't know; it just seems like I haven't bought any diapers in a while. And maybe he's wearing Spiderman underwears to the grocery store and eating a lot more M&Ms than usual. I have always been a firm believer in the theory that if I just nod and smile encouragingly at them enough, they will basically raise themselves. So nice to see that it's working.

We had his birthday at Chuck E. Cheese's House Of Hepatitis last night, where Henry broke at least two machines (it was a good night), and ate cake (it was the only thing he asked for). After a while, I took him up front to exchange his tickets for prizes, and he picked out a rainbow slinky for his sister, with which she promptly gave the entire restaurant a demonstration regarding The Proper Use And Handling:

This particular moment led to complete and total disaster. After that fancy move pictured above, Ruby realized that her slinky was caught on something underneath that machine and made a quick and necessary decision to lose her shit entirely. Kicking and screeching and flopping around like she'd just accidentally leaped out of her aquarium, she laid on that filthy carpet and hyperventilated and twitched and sobbed until I promised that I would climb under there and unhook her twisted and mangled Slinky remnants. (Which I did without hesitation because Chuck E. Cheese employees and also a group of moms in stilettos were staring.) My mom and I had been waiting and prepared for this moment since Ruby's birth (even in the beginning her personality type was evident), or maybe even since 1989, when Ruby's Movie Spirit Animal had a very similar experience:

So, anyway, Her name is Kevin now.

We're pretty popular wherever we go. It's a gift.

Dear Jupiter

2012-01-03T12:31:00.000-05:00

This year puts you back in your wonderful watery element, Pisces. First off, Neptune, your ruling planet, will be moving back into your constellation in February for its full cyclic residency. You got a taste of this mystical infusion in 2011; now you can fully immerse yourself in the oceanic bliss of inspiration, oneness and compassion for the duration of 2012.

Hi, who the fuck is writing this, Cortney Stodden? Thanks, boo. I'll make sure to immerse my body in the bodacious bliss of oh, whatever the fuck, I can't even fake it. (PS Neptune, you are not the boss of me. How about you rule my ass?)

You'll feel like you've come home to your true self. Whether you're an artist, healer or closet mystic, you'll have no choice but to move toward fulfilling the deeper longings of your soul.

Hello, I am a closet mystic. We are all sometimes fuzzy sweaters in the wardrobe of life; we long to be taken out, dusted off, and be able to lift our faces to the sun. Our sleeves will dance in the breeze; we will feel free and happy.

You'll be doing quite a bit of digging into your past (and even your ancestral roots) for answers this year as Venus, Jupiter and May's new Moon solar eclipse make significant contact with the core of your horoscope. This is the perfect opportunity to finally sever old fears, guilt or regrets. Consider 2012 your year to move forward into the present! You've been haunted by the ghosts of your past long enough.

YOU HEAR THAT GHOSTS? BACK THE FUCK OFF ME. 2012 is my year. Stop stacking my chairs and slamming my doors. Shit's getting old.

Your career continues to evolve nicely under the auspices of 2012. You may experience some kind of radical peak around the full Moon eclipse in June impacting your career house - watch for significant meetings and messages around this time. The events and results of an eclipse usually take about six months to fully develop, so be patient and watch. Jupiter will offer his generous luck and assistance in your communication sector for the first half of the year until he moves on to your domestic sector.

I've got an idea, Jupiter. Why don't you get your ass in my domestic sector immediately? There's laundry to be folded. Also, I seem to have run out of cake.

Get all your writing and other important correspondence finished before June, because the second half of 2012 could have you consumed in a hunt for a new home. Fortunately, things look quite lucky for you in real estate during the second half of the year, when Jupiter enters your domestic sector.

Jupiter, am I looking for a house because my current one is so haunted? Did you burn my house down when you were making my cake? Why are you so worried about my domesticity? Why are you trying to do my housekeeping? Are you trying to marry me? And if so, does all this mean I am to be the boy? Is this whole horoscope a complicated attempt to make fun of my haircut? I hate you, Jupiter.

2012's totally gonna be my year guys, I can feel it. Everything's coming up Kelly.

Wilderness Times, V.2

2012-01-02T15:25:00.000-05:00

Hello! Oh hey, I'm not good. Probably post-holiday, Winter-vacation, My-kids-are-crying-because-they-both-like-the-color-green related, but. Things feel pretty terrible. Like my little light's been blown out. My heart hurts. Today I read something on Facebook that upset me so much I cried. I got so mad and I couldn't do anything about it and I was so frustrated I actually cried. Tears. Salty, wet ones. The post had literally nothing to do with me, it wasn't anything terrible, but it filled me with so much rage and disgust I couldn't believe it. So, naturally I did the sensible thing and deleted my whole fucking account.

Do any of you need some help making rational decisions? Because I'm available. Under this blanket. I'll be wallowing. Bring cake.

Old things

2011-12-28T15:17:00.000-05:00

The kids and I went to the fancy downtown library today. It's Winter break and cold and there's only so much Spongebob to watch and board games to play to battle against the boredom. The kids have been butting heads since Christmas; arguing over who's turn with the toys/ who made the mess/ who gets the blue chair/ who gets to play the Mommy. So I packed them up, drove them to the middle of the city, and let them loose upon the Central Library.

I want to go all "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" on this shit and run away to live here forever in quiet, surrounded by old books, and sighed at by old librarians.

The kids don't ever seem to quite get that there is only one of me when we go places. So, usually the best I can do is find some unobtrusive spot an equal distance from each of them and just. Stand. And wait. For catastrophe or one of them to finish what they're doing, whichever comes first.

Ruby made a big deal out of picking our her own "chapter books" today. She 's memorized some basic words, but she can't really read yet. She mostly likes to carry them around the house, open to some random page near the middle, and read us "stories" which are usually incredibly morbid little mini-tales she makes up off the top of her head. I emptied out her book bag this afternoon to find this, A Francesca Lia Block book that I haven't read. I want it to myself! I want to read it, but I can't manage to persuade her to put it down.

After the library, we drove home the long way, through the old neighborhood where I lived in my first apartment. It's my favorite part of the city. It's really run down, but the trees are huge and the houses are enormous and beautiful. When I was 17, I moved into a tiny little apartment in a medium-sized building that a couple of my bookstore coworkers lived in. It was two rooms and a closet-sized kitchen and I loved it. Driving past today, with the snow on the grass, I suddenly remembered a night a million years ago. Right after a huge snowstorm had hit us and passed, some friends and I went outside. The streetlights were on, and everything was white. It was still cloudy so there was no moon and the sky was completely dark. We spent hours running up and down our street, which was usually busy, sliding on the slush and yelling into the quiet. It's one of my happiest memories ever.

And! And then! The best part of my entire day--maybe my WEEK--happened. I used to go for walks when I lived in that neighborhood and a couple of blocks south, there was an old, dark house with a fenced in yard. Always dark inside, curtains always drawn, never any cars in the driveway. But you could tell it was inhabited because the yards (front, sides, and back) were full of THINGS. Rusted metal things, made out of old typewriters and umbrellas and tricycles. Leaning columns of twisted metal, just behind old, creaky, untrimmed trees. It's looked exactly the same (for the most part; some of the sculptures have grown) since I lived in the neighborhood 13 years ago, and today we drove past and it was such a perfect, bright, and sunny day that everything was perfectly clear and illuminated.

I've always called it Boo Radley's house, because that's exactly what it is. He lives there. I hope I get lucky enough to see him outside one day.

The Godfather wants a hippopotamus for Christmas

2011-12-24T12:07:00.002-05:00

Happy Christmas Eve! Ruby and I can't stop singing this.

The Godfather Wants a Hippopotamus For Christmas from Kelly Quirino on Vimeo.

I'm sorry.

Tiny Hoarders

2011-12-12T09:17:00.000-05:00

I love my children! I do! Except they are insane. Yours are too, probably. What's with them? Why are they crazy? It's probably best that I don't really understand it, because that would make me CRAZY. Like THEM. And that would be terrible. My children are hoarders. But a special sort of hoarder; they fall in love with random junk. And then they decide to carry it with them for the rest of their lives. Okay, they get this from me (as evidenced here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/mmesurly, where I pay actual currency for said junk and spend lots of time anthropomorphizing them and writing their stories so they can sit on that website and also in the back of my bedroom closet. Okay, so I just answered my own question. They are crazy because I am crazy. Except, shut up) But. My kids. Ruby carries a backpack. And inside that backpack is a blue purse. And inside that blue purse is a while purse. And inside that white purse is a pink, sequinned coin-purse with an "R" embroidered on it. And inside THAT is:

1. Dog tag our Vet made for her three years ago. Says RUBY
2. Empty locket that belonged to my great-grandmother
3. Christmas ornament she made two years ago
4. $2.01
5. Bits of broken, paperless, crayons
6. ULTA brand pink-tinted chapstick
7. Clear chapstick we received as a reward for our 79,000th MedCheck visit.
8. Blank Power Puff Girls Valentine

Then there's Henry. Oh, poor Henry. With his big, beautiful, sad eyes and little smile and warm, tight hugs. Henry has five thousand hundred pre-bedtime routines. Pajamas must be put on SHIRT-FIRST (which is wrong, wrong, WRONG). He spends forever picking out his bed time story with all the intense concentration of a SWAT-team member diffusing a bomb. And then to bed, with me on his left and my right arm wrapped around his little shoulders. He snuggles his chubby little face into my side and THEN I am allowed to begin the story. Every night, when we are done, I get up and turn on his nightlight and noise machine. I lean over him and kiss his forehead. I say, 'Sweet dreams,' and he smiles up at me and says, 'I have ice-cold-waterrrrrr?' I sigh and hand him the sippy cup that I keep on top of his headboard. He shakes it to make sure that it actually contains ice. He drinks, he lies down. He arranges his...erm, implements of slumber.

1. Special blue pillow. In Hen's defense, I'm pretty sure squeezing this is what a hug from Drake feels like
2. Over-sized pink rubber spoon
3. Cars-themed faux cellphone
4. Plastic basket of indeterminate origin
5. Henry's baby (Bown Baybee), who is never more than two inches from his arms
6. Ice-cold-water, waiting on its perch on Henry's headboard

Well. If you'll excuse me, I have to get ready for work, and I'm running out of time to spin in counter-clockwise circles seven times before spitting in my left hand and putting my 8-piece rock collection into my purse in their perfect order.

Choosing To Keep You Around

2011-12-07T13:15:00.001-05:00

A good friend died six years ago, in a car accident. It was late Summer, and I was seven months pregnant with Ruby. I'd lost friends before, and braced myself as well as I could for the viewing and funeral, but I had no idea. We drove four hours, to a tiny little town in Ohio where she'd grown up. I'd been very close with her--she'd spent Thanksgiving with us that year--but I'd never met any of her family. We walked into the funeral home for her viewing, and were immediately ushered into the line that had formed, ending at Jolene's coffin. A woman walked up to me, smiled, took my hands, and introduced herself: Marla. She knew who I was; she could tell I was me because of the belly. I was Jolene's "pregnant friend." She hugged me and told me that she could understand why Jolene and I were friends; she said that she could tell by my eyes that I was a sweet person and had been good for Jolene. It was a wonderful and dear thing to say, but at first I was taken aback by how open this woman was being with me right away. She'd just lost her sister-in-law and was going out of her way to make me feel welcome, to make me feel better. And then, suddenly, I was at the front of the line, looking down at Jolene. And the gravity and finality and truth of everything made me woozy. I put my arms around my belly and cried. I'd lost a lot of friends in high school; accidents, and drugs, a suicide--but my grief had always been all about me. I was sad. I had lost this person. They had left me. But standing there, next to Jolene's amazingly sweet, honest, open family, it occurred to me that she'd been a daughter and a sister and an aunt. Her parents had lost their child, and that was something that I couldn't even begin to comprehend. For the first time in my life, I looked down at my dead friend and tried to put myself in her parent's place. I couldn't do it. I had no idea how it was even possible. I got dizzy and had to go sit down.

We met at the cemetery the next morning for the burial. It was bright and sunny, the service was short. Jolene was buried in the family plot; next to two of her little cousins. They were Marla's babies, the woman who had come up to me at the viewing and had been so sweet. She came up to me again after the services and gave me a big hug. She handed me a package. 'I didn't make this,' she said, 'But I wanted you to have it.' I opened it, and inside was a bright yellow, soft, crocheted baby blanket. I don't remember much about our subsequent trip home that day, but I do remember sitting in the car, clutching that blanket, and crying. Wondering how a woman who has already suffered so much loss could still be so kind, and sweet, and good.

Tony and I got new cell phones this week, and we switched providers. My old phone wasn't a smart phone, so I wound up having to enter all of my contacts into my new phone manually, one-by-one. Half-way through, I came to Jolene's name. I looked at my phone for a long time, wondering what to do. I didn't want to delete her name or information, but making a conscious decision to keep the non-working number of someone who isn't alive anymore stored in my phone struck me as being something a not-quite-sane person would do. In the end, I decided to keep it. Manually, I entered her name, her old phone number, and her old email address into my new phone. Because I want to carry it with me. Like the fluffy yellow blanket that Ruby still uses, I just want as many reminders of her and her family around as I can get.

A Christmas Message

2011-12-01T08:22:00.000-05:00

And To All A Good Night from Kelly Quirino on Vimeo.

Bedtime For Max

2011-11-30T09:55:00.003-05:00

The air buzzed. The electric doors, the fluorescent lights, the hum of the PA combined to create a wave of near-deafening white noise. It was nighttime on Max's floor of the hospital, but it was anything but quiet and peaceful to Max. The old, round, sweet nurse everybody in the ward called "Grandma" had brought him his pills earlier that evening, but Max had hidden them in his cheek and then later ground them into powder which he scattered around the floor. The pills made him sleepy and fuzzy, and Max didn't want to sleep. He wanted to stay up and remember.

"Oh Max, where is your red rubber elephant?"

He remembered that night years before; when he woke up feeling wrong, somehow. He felt like his skin was shrinking; like the inside of his body was trying to escape. He felt itchy, and panicked, and hungry for something. He laid in his bed in the quiet darkness that night, looking through his window at the moon. The moon was peaceful, still. The moon told him to kick off his covers; to get up; to do something. He heard dogs barking restlessly in the distance and suddenly everything was so clear. He knew what he had to do.

Max crept down the stairs to the family room. On the hearth was a basket holding logs, newspapers, and the long lighter his parents used to start the fires. He paused, nodded to himself, then bent down to pick it up. Slowly, methodically, with the quiet concentration and holy purpose of an altar boy, Max went from room to room of his home, lighting each of his mother's beloved polyester curtains on fire. Flushed with the heat of the spreading flames, calmed by the fire, and no longer experiencing the terrible soul-stretching itch that had led to this moment, Max went outside. He sat on the curb. Eventually, the fire trucks arrived, followed by the ambulances. There was nothing to be done. The house burned too fast. Everything inside--Max's toys, his life, his family--they were all gone, burned to ash. The last thing Max remembered before waking up in this dark, sterile hospital room was being strapped to a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance.

"This is almost as bad as that time I KILLED MY ENTIRE FAMILY."

Max was awoken from his memories by a rustling in the corner. He looked up, startled.

'You should be sleeping, Max,' hissed the ghost of his big sister, Ruby. She approached him slowly, a malicious gleam in her eye. 'Maybe you would sleep better if you had your red,, rubber elephant. Where is your red, rubber elephant, Max? Did you lose it in the fire, Max? Did you lose your elephant in the fire when you killed us all, Max? WHERE IS YOUR RED RUBBER ELEPHANT, MAX?'

Max screamed. He fell to the floor, shaking and covering his ears. He squeezed his eyes shut, crying out for help, trying to drown out his ghostly sister's accusations. He pulled himself into a corner of his hospital room and lied there, shaking and terrified, until the orderlies and the nurse everyone called Grandma came running into his room and turned the lights on. Ruby was gone. 'She was never really here,' Grandma promised him, 'It was just a bad dream, Max.' The nurse led him to bed, injected him with something warm, and slowly and quietly, Max fell into a black, dreamless sleep.

Alternatives to the madness of Black Friday

2011-11-25T13:11:00.002-05:00

Shoppers! As I write this, there is one hour, 26 minutes, and 15 seconds left until Black Friday. Toys R Us opened at 9:00PM onThanksgiving day. WalMart opened at 10:00PM. Target, Best Buy, Macy's, and Kohl's are all opening at midnight. I don't understand this. I don't get the pull. I appreciate sales and low prices and all that, but. I am full of food! I am full of food, wearing sweatpants, snuggled up under this warm laptop and I am not moving until it's time to go to bed. And then? And then these things will happen:

Sleep will happen. While some of you are standing in line in parking lots, shivering, your hands clasped around the $4 cup of coffee that you bought to keep you alert while you try to get the newest Wii-Game-Elmo-Doll-Thing for $3 less than normal, I will be sleeping. Just like this: Peacefully, with a little smile, a full face of makeup on and perfectly fanned, glossy hair strewn about my thin, lovely shoulders.

When I make my way out of my soft, fluffy warm bed, then THIS will happen:

Yes, waffles. Hot, fluffy, fresh, beautiful waffles. I will stumble out of my bed and into the kitchen where I will find this beautiful breakfast waiting for me on the table. What's that you're eating in the parking lot of Best Buy at 5AM on Black Friday? Oh, is that a McDonald's breakfast burrito? Looks. Erm. Yummy.

And then? And then what could possibly make my Black Friday Morning even better, you ask?

I think I will sit in a quiet spot and read ALL THE BOOKS. Alone, in glorious silence. No elbows, no grannies, no grumpy dads that I have to wrestle for that last remaining Blu-Ray player. Just me. Me and my books!

The grim reality of all this is that it is all lies. When you shoppers are freezing in the Target parking lot tomorrow morning at 7:00AM, I will be sitting at my desk at work, gazing forlornly out the window at the empty parking lot in front of my office, dreaming of my bed and hating the woman up there in that first picture with the intensity of one billion white-hot suns. Instead of hot waffles, I will maybe have an extra cup of Keurig coffee, or a week-old banana I'm pretty sure I have sitting in the corner of the break room. I will get to read, but it will be insurance claims, and diagnosis codes, and emails from patients and customers. And it will not be silent. There will be muzak and phone calls and people stopping by to ask questions. I would still rather do all of this than brave a Black Friday sale, though. And there are a few other things that I would rather do, as well.

I would rather fold every fitted sheet in the world. Every single one. Don't believe me? Mail them to me. I'll fold 'em. I'll take pictures. Just please don't make me go to Toys R Us between now and February.

I would rather spend the day back in Middle School; the day I broke my retainer when I fell down the stairs, the day a cute boy asked me out in the student commons in front of his friends and I said yes and then it TURNED OUT TO BE A JOKE, the day I accidentally asked the cafeteria lady for TEN cheese sticks instead of TWO and didn't have enough money to pay for it, and she just stared me down until the girl behind me offered to pay for the remaining eight.

All this said, I hope y'all had a good Black Friday. I hope right now you're staying warm and cozy, waiting for those Best Buy doors to open, and I'm gonna go ahead and wrap myself in deliciously warm blankets and go to bed.

My NO BONER Manifesto

2011-11-20T21:16:00.000-05:00

Hello, Men.

How are you today? I hope you're doing well. Are you somewhere in public? Is there a woman near you? Were you thinking about opening your big-ol'-man-mouth and speaking to her?

Okay. Let's think about this. Picture the mouth words you were planning on offering this woman. Visualise them floating in the air, in a little bubble over the woman's head. Just hanging out, waiting to be spoken and given life.

Now, wait. Don't speak. Take a deep breath and ask yourself, Would you say these words to a man?

Here is something that happened to me this past week: All the men took ALL the liberties while speaking to me, and this turned me into a raging, fist-shaking, horrible, no-good, angry girl. This week I have been addressed endlessly as "Young Lady" and "The Female" and "Honey" and 'Doll' and at one point, I was told that I am doing an excellent job of "Maintaining my weight."

What. The fuck. People. Men. Boys. Listen. That thing you are thinking about saying? To a woman? The little twee term of endearment or comment about her weight or appearance? Think for a second. Would you say whatever it is to a man?

If the answer is "NO" then for chrissakes KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT. Because I am done smiling politely through these things and pretending that they don't bother me. Next time I'm gonna let you have it.

I have an idea, though. I want a place; a safe place. A place where I can relax. Drink tea. Wear whatever I want. Talk to nice ladies. Spend a quiet afternoon not being trivialized and patronized. Which is why I am pretty sure that we should all band together and build some shit. Like this:

NO BONER: A Tampon Store & Tea House. Drawn by @nothatkendall from www.thisisnotthatblog.com

I have presented my idea to the Twitters. And it has been met with a warm--if not enthusiastic--reception.

I think that this has the possibility of becoming something real and beautiful. Who's with me? And more importantly, who among you is a grant-writing architect who knows their way around Kickstarter? Because free tea for life. And. You know. No boner.

In Which I Declare War on Vegetables

2011-11-16T11:10:00.001-05:00

I love email! Isn't email great? It means someone was thinking of you enough to sit down, write words, (hopefully) double-check those words, and then click send. Email makes me feel important. Well. Email from humans makes me feel important. Emails from bots, and newsletters, and the preschool listserv make me feel like I am drowning. Because I am. Drowning in those emails. Struggling to keep my head above water, inundated with newsletters from the stupidest places. Kroger. Benihana. Proctor & Gamble. My grandma. I always unsubscribe, and then if they continue I mark them as spam, and then they stop! Like magic!

Except...one.

I am looking at YOU Vegetarian Times. Why the fuck am I even on your list on the first place? As of right now, 11:14am on a Wednesday morning, I have already eaten three different kinds of meat (that's a lie; I've eaten two goldfish crackers and a ginger snap; don't tell VT). Why won't you listen to me when I unsubscribe? How do you continue to thwart my spam filter? Well, today I took a different tactic.

I got this today. Are you KIDDING me? Thanksgiving? You think I want to make a spinach-stuffed thing? No. No, I do not. I want all the meat. All of it. So today? Today, I replied.

I hope they like it.

P.S. I am all over the internet today. I have post up on MamaPop here and ANOTHER post up on MoxieBird HERE.

Snitches Get Stitches

2011-11-12T19:24:00.001-05:00

The Holidays are barreling down on me like an angry, territorial hippo trying to protect his favorite watering hole. I'm ready for some parts and infuriated by others. My cousin (Nikileaks! Best blog name EVER!) will be in town for Thanksgiving, and we're already emailing back and forth, making a list of all the different foods we can put bourbon into (SPOILER: it will probably wind up being all of the foods). Thanksgiving is my favorite part of the year due to the abundance of pie and wine, and also I guess maybe being around my family a little bit.

Annnd Christmas. I haven't given it a lot of thought yet, but today at the grocery store, Ruby pointed out that they were playing Christmas Carols (She was outraged. 'It's NOT EVEN WINTER.' she yelled. Because she is mine and I love her). So. It's creeping. Stealthily, up on the horizon. This year Tony suggested we have a "Consumable Christmas." Everyone gets one gift that they will definitely use. Something to drink, read, eat, or wear. Something special, but still useful. I'm really excited about it. We don't have a whole lot of Christmas traditions. We always sleep at my mom's house on Christmas Eve, we always have Baked Brownies Alaska, and the boys always go out and smoke cigars in the afternoon. It's simple, easy, laid back.

In one of her emails today, my cousin Niki sent me a link to this website, asking what I think of it. I'd never heard of it before.

Okay. So, I guess the idea is you BUY this book, and it comes with the creepy, dead-eyed little elf doll. You name your elf, register it online, and then you get some sort of "Special message from Santa." The elf then is supposed to sit on a shelf all day, every day, watching your children's behavior, and then at night it magically flies to the North Pole to give Santa reports of their behavior that day. Were they bad? Were they good? And then! And THEN, every single night before you (as the parent) go to bed, you get to move the little elf snitch to a new place in the house so when your kids wake up it is obvious that the elf has traveled somewhere and come back.

Let me say this: Fuck that shit. Here is why this whole thing makes me angry and uncomfortable, in a handy list format:

Santa: I am not pleased about lying to my children, re: Santa Claus. I mean, I won't ruin anything for them, I will allow them to believe in him, but I am sure as shit not going to do anything to strengthen or perpetuate that lie.

The concept of gifts as rewards: No. No, no, no. For Christmas, we give gifts because we love. The kids get presents because they are loved. They GIVE presents because they love others. They behave themselves (mostly) 365 days a year because we are consistent with them, we punish them when they need it, and we praise them when they are good. I don't want them to behave because some little shark-eyed, elf-narc is sitting on a shelf watching their behavior and waiting to report it to a magical fat man while they're sleeping. I want them to behave because they are good kids. And they are good kids because I have made them good kids.

The idea of purchasing traditions: Again! No! Buy quality time for your family in the form of this book/doll box set! Purchase warm fuzzy holiday memories that can be shipped 2nd Day for free from Amazon.com! I love tradition. Tradition is wonderful. But you shouldn't have to buy a product to create memories. "Beware all enterprises that require new clothes [or dolls. or books. or ANYTHING]"

This year we will stick with our own traditions, which are mostly free. We'll have our sleepover at Nanas, we'll eat walnuts and Panettone in front of the fire, we'll get drunk after the kids go to bed and play Monopoly, which I will angrily quit after 15 minutes. And I don't give a shit what that stupid little tattle tale elf tells Santa about me. Fuck that guy.

Sweet Magic

2011-11-10T07:52:00.001-05:00

We're mostly having one of those weeks were the kids are amazingly good. They're being sweet, and thoughtful, and snuggly. They're playing well together, they're telling jokes, they're sleeping through the night. I think a lot of our new-found harmony has to do with Henry slowly finding his words. He's been such a slow starter with talking; but now that he's trying harder to communicate and it's actually working, he's throwing fewer fits. And also, his words are ridiculously adorable. We pulled into a gas station a couple of days ago. I shut off the music, turned the car off. 'Mama?' comes a tiny voice from the back, 'Mama, your car out of ink?'

Yesterday, Henry and I were driving home from the doctor's office (It is the 9th of November; Ruby has pneumonia and Henry is on his second double ear infection of the month). It was a cold, grey, blustery day. The clouds were moving so fast across the sky that trying to focus on the road with them in my periphery was making me dizzy. Again, Henry from the back: 'Clouds move fast? Clouds go over there.' I asked him where he thought they were going. 'Clouds go that way. Clouds go home.' I melted a little. I asked him if clouds live in houses. 'Yes! Clouds live in cloud houses!' I was thinking about how wonderful it must be to exist in this magical world where clouds live in houses, and cars run on ink, and everything seems sweet and lovely, when he sighed in the back and said, 'MAMA. I just kidding.'

In the mornings, Henry wakes up early and crawls into bed with me. I close my eyes and pretend to sleep while he sighs, and wiggles, and rolls over, and spills my water all over my book, and hums to himself, and coughs in my face. This morning he snuggled up next to me. I squeezed my eyes shut so he would think I was asleep. He rolled over to face me, put his arms around my neck, and just gave me the softest kiss on the cheek and then laid his head down on my shoulder. Oh, this boy.

Hero Instict

2011-11-06T08:06:00.001-05:00

CHAPTER 1

Once, years ago, I driving towards my husband's bookstore. On the side of the road, in that buffer zone between the road and the sidewalk, I saw a man laying face-down on the ground. Alone. The first thought that popped into my head was, 'Huh. That's a funny place to take a nap.' I kept driving. By the time I'd made it to Tony's work, though, I was starting to worry. What if the man had had a heart attack? What if he had been mugged or beat up? What if he was lying there on the ground, his life slowly leaving him, while we all drove past and laughed to ourselves because seriously, who the fuck takes a nap by the road? I decided that I had to do something to help.

I walked into his store and called the local police. I explained that it was probably nothing, but that I was worried that the man was hurt, and could they please check it out? The police asked me to call 911. I hung up, dialed the emergency number, and told my story all over again to a testy operator. I explained where the man was (On 86th St, in front of a business park), and she told me, 'NO. I need a cross-street. I can't do anything without a cross-street.' I didn't know it! While I was frantically gesturing to Tony's coworkers, asking if anyone knew the cross-street up by that particular business park, the operator hung up on me. I was furious.

When Tony's shift was over, I asked him to drive up by where I'd seen the man so I could see if anything had happened. As we got closer, I saw lots of lights: An ambulance, a firetruck, a police car. Tony said, 'Wow, Kel. Looks like there really was something wrong.' He patted me on the knee. I was a hero! I had saved someone's life! I HAD SAVED SOMEONE'S LIFE WITH MY CARING. We got a little closer. 'Uh. Kel?' Tony asked me, 'Was your Heart Attack Guy wearing a blue jacket?' Why YES, I informed him in a smug, hero-y voice. Yes, he WAS wearing a blue jacket when I spotted him dying on the side of the road and decided to save his life. All by myself. Tony chuckled. 'I wonder why he's handcuffed and being stuffed into the back of that police car?' I shrank down in my seat a little and we drove home.

PS: Sorry, Dude-That-I-Sent-To-Jail. I really thought you were dying.

CHAPTER 2

Tony had a friend in school who always bragged about his Hero Instinct. Some people are just better equipped to handle intense and dangerous situations, and he was sure that he was one of those people. He knew that if the opportunity should ever arise, he would be quick-on-his-feet, thinking clearly, doing whatever it was that needed to be done. He would be a hero.

He was standing at a busy intersection one day when he saw an accident. A van rolled over on its side. He knew what he had to do. He had to remain calm, think clearly, act fast. That van was undoubtedly full of women and babies in distress. It would probably explode any moment. He had to help; he had to get them out of there.

Without hesitating for a moment, he ran towards the van. As he got closer, he could make out the figures in the seats, unbuckling seat belts, moving a bit. Sure, they looked like they might be okay, but appearances can be deceiving. Maybe they were all in shock! Maybe they didn't understand yet the severity of what had just happened to them. He ran faster.

And then he went down. Laying on his back, in the road, searing pain in his face, he stayed still.

The people got out of their van and came over to him. They realized that, while trying to get to them as quickly as possible, he had run right into their car's antennae. It had stabbed him in the eye. They were all unharmed, but they called 911 because he was in a lot of pain and clearly injured.

They waited with him until the ambulance arrived.

A goddamn internet mystery

2011-10-26T22:24:00.000-04:00

Hello, Interneters!

Maybe some of you are new around here. I have this problem where I cannot be photographed. Well. I can, technically. But the photos never look like me. I am always a cross-eyed, double-chinned, hunch-backed, quasimoto of a girl in photographs, and my mom promises me that I do not look like that in real life. She's impartial, right?

FOR INSTANCE. Last year, we went to the zoo. And this lovely photograph of me was taken:

I was on a train! At the zoo! I posted it to the Twitter, where it was retweeted by @theBloggess (who I adore), and wound up being the reason I became friends with a whole army of amazing and hilarious women. All because of this terrible picture, which was dubbed Trainface, and had a small but intensely loyal fan-base for a short amount of time.

Tonight, Tony was playing around on the internet and he was typing in random things into Google Image Search. He tried our names. He tried our kids' names. And then he typed, "Trainface." And. Found. This.

This, my friends, is someone on Deviant Art named Kingboo7, and am I allowed to be best friends with this person? What is the next step? Do I adopt them? Because clearly we are linked by fate. Here is the description under the photo:

So, me, ~kingboo7, and *tobi-likes-cookies78 went to the zoo today. We got on the train that gives tours of the zoo, and gives information about the animals that live there. We managed to take this picture of ~kingboo7

HIS TRAINFACE ALSO HAPPENED ON THE ZOO TRAIN. Kingboo7, I guess we do not have to be best friends if you don't want, but please know this: I understand your pain.

Things I've been doing that aren't this

2011-10-24T08:46:00.001-04:00

I have been writing lots of words! This week I start writing for Mamapop.com. Two posts a week, pop-culture/parenting themed. I have started ahead of time (big for me, I know), and have only tried to fake my own death and run away to Iceland twice. It's funny how I can sit down in front of my computer and basically throw up all over the keyboard to post here, but it's taken me three days to write three paragraphs for over there. Weshallsee. Maybe it won't end in disaster/humiliation/shunning. Maybe.

I started an Etsy shop dedicated to the abandoned, terrifying things I find when I'm out. Somehow things have actually been purchased from this shop, a fact that I do not understand but am eternally grateful for. My ugly, abandoned things live here.

Oh hey, look, this is all I have. Why did I even write this? I have no idea (Yes, I know why. PROCRASTINATION). Here is the best moment from this past week, an accidental shot I took at the park with the kids. The leaves are changing, the water was sparkling, the world was enormous and beautiful, and down there in the shadows stands Tiny Henry holding his baby and looking like he stepped out of a Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie.

Happy Monday, y'all.

In which the forest becomes sentient

2011-10-17T20:41:00.000-04:00

Or, I Suppose We All Turn Into Our Mothers Eventually

Maybe tonight was my last bike ride of the season. It's getting cold, the leaves are almost all gone, it gets dark so early that I barely even made it out of the park before they closed the gates for the night. The trees are bare; the woods look haunted.

Tonight was hard. It was cold and drizzling. My lungs felt frozen, but I was so happy to be back in my park after an almost two-week hiatus. And then I found some little gifts.

In my euphoric, near-death, onset-of-hypothermia state of madness, I finished my bike ride telling myself stories about how these little structures happened. Students on a field trip. Arty teenagers with delusions of Andy Goldsworthy-esque grandeur. Eventually it became a story of the barren trees worrying about the warmth of their tree-babies (the walnuts), and building them little nests and houses to keep them warm at night. I shivered through the rest of my bike ride, smiling to myself, imagining the boughs of the trees bending to the ground at night to create these little structures; these little walnut homes.

Also did I mention the 500-degree bath and the super-strong Hot Toddy I had when I got home? Because that, too.

Happy Fall.

My superpowers kind of suck.

2011-09-27T12:44:00.000-04:00

In list form:

Earnestness. Imagine me two nights ago, chatting on G+ with three friends, screeching and jumping up and down because something someone said reminded me of dioramas. I am suddenly so beyond excited to make a diorama (of ANYTHING) that I am about to cry and I feel like my heart might burst. Or me, baking cookies for people I have never met because words they write to me on the Internet make me so incredibly happy that I have to show it somehow or I feel like I might pop.

Empathy. I want to give everything I own to homeless people so much it causes a literal pain in my heart. I want to give crying kids in the mall whatever it is they're begging for. I don't want to punish Henry for hitting his sister because I can so vividly remember the feelings that he is feeling; being so angry and frustrated and powerless that the only way you can release that horrible, blinding rage-y energy is to lash out at something. He doesn't want to hurt his sister; he just doesn't know what else to do with the terrible force of the emotion he's feeling. (I do punish him, with time outs, but I feel like a hypocrite about it.)

I suppose that people can pick up on these pieces of my personality. I get taken advantage of at times. I'm easily manipulated and led. I generally believe everything, because it's just in my nature. I find that people with sad stories tend to seek me out and spill themselves to me without reason or warning.

A few years ago, I was walking my dog in the park. I passed an older woman who was also walking her dog, and our dogs stopped to sniff each other and play. We sort of stood there for a moment, a little awkwardly, when she looked up at me and said, 'This dog is all I have left now. My house burned down and my entire family died.' I stared at her for a second, a little dizzy and wide-eyed, before stammering something like 'That's terrible,' or, 'I'm so sorry.' She started crying and I gave her an awkward hug and we both just stood there for a couple of minutes until she just pulled at her dog's leash and walked away.

These past two weeks I've been interviewing people for a position in my office. Last week, I had a nice one. She was sweet and funny and easy to talk to. I liked her, but she wasn't a good fit for the position we were filling. I told her that I would be reviewing resumes and making calls later this week. She left. Today, she came back in dressed casually, and asked if she could talk to me for a minute. We came to the back room and she apologized to me for her interview. She told me that she felt like she didn't put her best foot forward; that her dad had been dying and she had left his bedside at the hospice to come to the interview. She told me that she had gone back afterwards, and that she had talked to him about me and the interview and the job in what turned out to be his last lucid moment. She started crying and said, 'My interview with you was the last thing we talked about.' My heart is broken. I can't even imagine what it is like to lose a parent, and I am sort of reeling and dizzy with the thought that I (and my office) might forever be entwined with her story of her father's death. And again, all I could do is hug her awkwardly and tell her I was sorry. Again, we stood there in silence for a couple of minutes until she turned to leave. I held the door open for her.

I hope she finds what she needs.

Just trust me

2011-09-24T19:49:00.000-04:00

Hey, does your kid have a lovey? A stuffed animal, a beloved blanket? I met a kid once who carried his copy of the Polar Express DVD everywhere. If you own one of these children, I am going to give you a little tip.

Go get their lovey. Take it outside. And set it on fire. Be done with it.

Because listen: If you allow that lovey to share a house with you? If you sleep under the same roof as that lovey? One day you will find yourself tearing the house apart, 40 minutes after bedtime, searching desperately while your child sobs uncontrollably behind you, following your every step (of course they will not help you look!). And then when you do not find it inside the house, you will have to look outside. In the yard. In the dark. Under the trees, in the garden, behind the toys. And when you don't find it in the yard? You will have to bundle your children up to circle the block in the rain, to retrace the steps of the walk you took this afternoon, hoping against hope that you will find your child's special dolly face up in some puddle somewhere. And when you don't find it on your walk? You're fucked, my friend. That lovey is nowhere. That lovey is gone. And you get to spend your night trying to watch The City of Lost Children over the sounds of your sobbing child who refuses to be comforted.

At least it has subtitles.

The one where I complain about gender stereotypes

2011-09-22T08:08:00.000-04:00

Ruby is a girl. A girl girl. She wears dresses every day, she wants pink everything, she only wants to read books and watch shows that are about other girls. She spends most of her day playing dollies; dressing them, bathing them, feeding them, singing them songs. She has a wonderful imagination and I often walk in on her recreating her favorite scenes from Alice in Wonderland or Pippi Longstocking with her Polly Pockets.

I watch this girliness with a fair amount of horror. I try so hard to keep our toys and opinions gender-neutral. I am not a "girly" girl and I never thought I would wind up with an almost-five-year-old who talks about weddings and asks to put on makeup in the morning (The answer is always no, if you're wondering). I let her be who she is always, but I do try to steer her away from the Disney Princesses and towards the Harriet the Spys. For every time someone calls her "pretty" or "cute" I make sure to tell her that she is smart, and funny, and strong.

I don't really read many parenting blogs, but one that I really like is The Achillies Effect. A few months ago, she posted some word clouds of the language that is used to advertise "Girl" vs. "Boy" toys. While the "Boy" toys used aggressive (frighteningly so, in my opinion), strong, and active words, the "Girl" word cloud was made up of twee, appearance-based, gooey-shallow sweetness. The post Crystal Smith wrote is here, and it is excellent.

Boy!

Girl!

Ruby turns 5 next week. While she was in school yesterday, Henry and I found ourselves wandering the Target toy aisle. I asked him to pick out a small toy to give to Ruby for her birthday. He took this very seriously, and immediately started walking up and down the aisles, repeating to himself, 'Pink.' 'Toy.' 'Boobie.' 'Present.' I guess we don't buy a lot of toys, and I guess that I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to the toy aisles before, because I was horrified at what I saw yesterday while trapped in the "GIRL toy section" of Target (Thanks for the segregation, Target!). I found myself ranting to my two year old, saying things like 'The HELL does a five-year-old need a stupid, sexy pony?!' and getting confused looks from Henry and borderline-horrified looks from the other parents and the Target employees.

This is a "special" reboot of My Little Pony, only available at Target. Those long, lithe legs! Those coy, come-hither eyes! That long, sensually flowing hair! Oh, I would TOTALLY take that to prom. Am I right, guys?

This. This? A pig. A WINKING PIG. And it's tiny, y'all! It fits in a teacup! And fashionable! Because the only way a girl would ever be interested in a pig was if it was slightly coquettish and also interested in fashion.

This is the display that reminded me of the word clouds on Achilles Effect. Sweetie, Cutie, and Glam! The three personality traits of the Perfect Girl, right? There was one boy Barbie doll in this display. His box said, "Sporty." There was also a "Sporty" girl doll, who looked like this:

So. hey, guys? Barbie? Target? What sport is she going to go play? Soccer? Rugby? Because given the fact that she's wearing boots, a miniskirt, and a shirt that says, "Love Pink" (oh my dear fucking god, is that a Victoria Secret reference?), I am not sure that there are many sports she could play. That purse might get in the way of, you know, most things. Oh, wait y'all! Is talking to boys under the bleachers a sport?

The whole thing left me pissed off and feeling gross. And now a certain almost-five-year-old that I know of will be receiving dresses and books for her birthday this year.

Oh, Henry.

2011-09-21T00:24:00.000-04:00

GENDER: Masculine

USAGE: English

PRONOUNCED: HEN-ree

Henry is an English male given name and a surname, from the Old French Henry (modern Henri), derived itself from the Germanic name Haimric (German Heinrich), which was derived from the word elements haim, meaning "home" and ric, meaning "power, ruler".

Henry is special. He is willful and opinionated and strong. He is smart, deviously so.

Henry is an anarchist.

Henry has been a bit of a bully as of late.

He's been drawing on the walls and taking his sister's toys. He's been pinching strangers in restaurants and kicking kids on the playground. Once, in the cafeteria of the Children's Museum, he looked up at the girl across the table. She was drinking a juice box. He smiled, got out of his chair, walked over to where she was sitting. He picked it up from the table when she put it down, held it over her lap, and BAM--he smashed it. Juice exploded everywhere. And as much as I wanted to laugh (more than a little), I was genuinely worried about the thought that I had seen flicker behind his huge and beautiful eyes: 'I feel like fucking some shit UP.'

Aside from this, he is the sweetest, cuddliest, warmest, softest, most wonderful boy. He still wants to spend mornings on my lap, his chubby little cheek resting against my chest, one warm little hand playing with my hair. When he does these bad things, his eyes immediately well up with tears, his lip sticks out, he whimpers 'Sossee, mommy.' and I melt (I know, I know. A lot of this is probably an act. But might I remind you of Henry's eyelashes and also his giant, warm cheeks?)

I do not know what to do with this boy at the moment. One friend has suggested that he's going to have to learn about playground behavior from other kids. On the playground. When they kick his sassy little butt. Tony thinks it's just a phase; that it's a good thing and he's "testing his boundaries." I am horrified; I have never hit them or been aggressive with them and the behavior is so alien to me that it literally stops me in my tracks. I feel like I have no real defense against it.

So basically, I guess I am just going to stick to 3,000 time outs a day and snuggling him as much as humanly possible. And maybe I'm going to limit his exposure to punk music until he turns three. But. If you are one of the people Henry decides to pinch or push or purposefully spill a drink on, know that is is also a sweet boy who is an excellent snuggler. Also, feel free to push the little shit back.

I am almost the mother of a goddamn five-year-old.

2011-09-18T18:55:00.000-04:00

My girl, my baby girl turns five in. What. Like. A week? What day is it? Where am I? We went to see Yo Gabba Gabba Live tonight (the tickets were a birthday gift from Nana). It was bright! And loud! And dancey! And loud! And bright! It was fun. The kids were unsure at first; Henry kept his ears covered and would shout the occasional, "TURN DOWN!" at the stage. Ruby sort of wrapped herself around Nana's arm and stared wide-eyed at the stage for the first half hour, but they were both dancing and waving by the end.

And then this happened:

Which is probably why THIS happened:

And. You know. THIS:

Oh, and, HEY! She's still singing it so I'm going to go have a glass of wine or seven.

Terrible things

2011-09-11T18:54:00.000-04:00

I'm rereading The Master and Margarita. I've always loved it; part fantasy, part satire, part history; sharp and brilliant re-tellings of the stories of Pontius Pilate and Faust. This time around, when I opened my book, I was greeted by this quote from Faust, which I had forgotten about:

I am part of that power

That always wishes evil

and always performs the good

Reading that knocked the breath out of me. I love it. I actually more than love it, because tomorrow I'm going to go have those three lines tattooed somewhere on me, probably over my ribs. The language is a little dramatic (I guess because it's Faust, for chrissakes), and I worried about showing other people. When I let my mom read it, I saw her eyebrows go up slightly. She looked up at me, frowned a bit and said, '...that always wishes the evil? I hope the Universe understands what you mean by that.' She asked me why I liked it and at first, I couldn't even explain. I hadn't tried to define to myself why the lines were so beautiful to me; I had just fallen in love with them immediately.

This is has been a difficult week: Tony had surgery (he's fine), Ruby started school (she's okay), I was forced out of my ostrichism by preschool moms and temporarily kicked off my freelance project (Ha! Surprise!). Also, someone very close to me made a big mistake and got into a lot of trouble (that I can't and won't discuss specifically). I found myself in the position of the middleman; trying to make peace between the one who had wronged and the people who felt let down and offended by that wrong. I was so upset at first; I couldn't understand why immediate forgiveness and acceptance was not their very first reaction.

I have a hard time not forgiving people. I feel like I understand how terrible things just happen. I understand how horrible decisions are made. I get that we are selfish beings, that sometimes we act without thinking, that things can spiral beyond our control. In my past, I have done terrible things. And I will do terrible things in the future. Because they happen. Because we're flawed. And when these things happen, when the people around us make mistakes, they don't need our judgement; they need our help. I can only hope that, whenever I mess up in the future, the people around me will realize it is their job to love and not judge.

On my bike ride tonight, I realized how closely these two things are related, my tattoo and my friend getting in trouble. Because the way I interpret that phrase is this: We are faced with so many terrible things. We have so many urges to overcome; selfishness, violence, anger, judgement. And in spite of this, I feel like as a whole, we have managed to remain so good. And those words are a reminder to me that no matter what I do or no matter what is done to me, deep down at the core of things, I will always be good.

Dreaming of Brainpunching Dov Charney

2011-09-08T21:40:00.000-04:00

I hate American Apparel. I hate their porny ads, their skeezy CEO, their shoddy product. Every American Apparel t-shirt I've ever owned has shrunk to doll-sized proportions after the first wash. Just as importantly, every interview I have seen or heard with Dov Charney has made me dissolve into a puddle of indignant rage.

Recently, American Apparel has launched a new campaign, called The Next Big Thing. They need Big Girls, y'all! Big girls to stuff into their lamé bodysuits and sell pantyhose with exposed nipples! And the public gets to VOTE!

This afternoon I read this article on Jezebel about Nancy Upton, My New Goddamn Internet Hero. She and her friend took amazing, tongue-in-cheek photos (which are hilarious and actually exceptionally good), and they do a perfect job of balancing out the sexism of Dov Charney's epic search for the Next "Big Booty-ful" Model.

Today is the last day you can vote! GO VOTE FOR MY NEW INTERNET HERO. And if anyone runs into Dov Charney any time soon, kick him in the nuts for me, please.

I don't ask for much, you guys.

2011-09-08T07:58:00.000-04:00

A few months ago I set up a splash page on about.me and promptly forgot about it. Yesterday, I got ~~some spam~~ an email from them. Apparently they're having a contest, and want one person to be "The face of About.me." The person who receives the most votes will have their about.me picture put up on a billboard in Times Square. (Reading through the rules, I notice the words "New York City" are suspiciously absent. Is there a Times Square in Idaho, by any chance?)

Here's the deal. Y'all need to vote for me. Because. The picture on my about.me profile? It's this one:

This. This picture belongs on an enormous billboard. People will stop in their tracks; hypnotized by the terrible power of my magnified, seemingly crossed eyes. They will look up in terror at my crooked smile and think to themselves, 'MY GOD, WHAT DOES THIS LIFE MEAN.' Maybe they will flee. Maybe they will pray. Maybe the world will fall into chaos, only to rise from the ashes glistening, clean and pure. Okay, this is getting away from me a little bit. But! The only way we can find out what will happen is if you vote for my picture!

Go here: http://about.me/kellyquirino

And vote! Did you know that you can vote once a day? Because you can! Vote early! Vote often! (Is there a Times Square in Chicago?)

Full Ostrich

2011-08-30T08:51:00.000-04:00

OH HI HELLO THERE.

I have been so busy avoiding everything! It's hard work. It makes me tired. Ruby is supposed to start school (apparently) soon? I don't know the date, but it's somewhere in between tomorrow and three months from now. I have tried to go to school playdates, to open houses and parent coffees, but something in my brain clicks off when I am preparing to leave the house for these events. My brain says, Why don't you just sit in that chair over there for a minute. And, when I obey, it follows with: Know what sounds nice? Go ahead and stare into the middle distance for the next couple of hours. And then! Boom! I've missed the playdate/open house/parent coffee. Just like that. I have a job for Ruby's class; I am supposed to order the teachers' supplies. I was given a catalog and a list at the beginning of the Summer. Yesterday, I got an email from Ruby's teacher asking if I had the needed supplies yet. And! If course my answer was NO, because I haven't even opened the catalog. I do not know where the list is. Also? I just this very second realized that my answer was NOT no, exactly, because I forgot to email her back. Part of me feels so stressed and guilty about this, and the other part is simmering in a pool of indignant rage. I mean, have they met me? Shouldn't they know better than to give me a job that's even a little bit important? The final orientation for school is tonight. It is at 7. I am planning on standing up around 5, and just refusing to move or sit back down until it's time to leave. Because, GOOD LUCK OSTRICH BRAIN, I AM ON TO YOU.

On top of this, I finally have some freelance work. It's the first work I've gotten all year and I'm so happy to have it. Except! I just went full time at my human job, and on top of working with the humans and being a full-time flake for Ruby's coop preschool, the getting right to work that I promised has been more like watching Jon Benjamin has a Van over and over again and feeling sick to my stomach every time I hear an email notification noise. Every day I wake up and promise myself that I will sort through the work emails and figure out what it is, exactly, that I am supposed to be doing (Because! Ha! I have no idea!), and every night my brain is like, Hey! Have some wine! Have a seat! Hey, I wonder what Jon Benjamin is up to tonight? And! Then it's bedtime. Tonight! Tonight I will work. Right after I force myself to go to that damn preschool open house.

I hate you, Ostrich Brain.

Signs from the stupid universe

2011-08-08T21:09:00.000-04:00

[So. How does this work, exactly? Trigger Alert? I don't talk about specifics, but. An Abuser is mentioned.]

Doomy times! My brain is sad. My friend Bruce died, and my children have been difficult and I just barely survived a five-day-straight Solo Parenting Stint. On Saturday, I looked up at the store and was confronted by the physical presence of THE Villain from my teenage years. Someone who was very close to me and took so much advantage, but I was young and naive and didn't understand what was happening until all of my confidence had been undermined. And then I was stuck. And powerless. Eventually, I got older, I moved, I slowly extracted him from my life. Before Saturday, the last time I had seen him was ten years ago, when I had decided to "forgive" him and put everything behind us because he was having a baby with a mutual friend. Tony and I talked about it, decided that we would go together to visit the Villain and my friend. We picked them up one morning and took them out to breakfast.

It was a long, silent drive. Nobody spoke. We got out, walked to the restaurant, sat, looked at the menu. All in silence. And then the Villain looks at me, with a half smile on his face. He was sitting next to my friend, then 7 months pregnant. 'Hey Kelly,' he said, 'What do you tell a woman with two black eyes?' Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tony's fist clench and the veins start to pop out of his forearm. I put my hand on his to keep him still, and said nothing. For the rest of our time together, I focused on my friend. I tried to shut the Villain out completely. We made it through, drove them back to their apartment, and went home. (The Villain and my friend, coincidentally, were not together long. My friend now has a beautiful, amazing and brilliant daughter who I love like my own.) I shoved everything about him to the back of my mind. I decided that he was a narcissistic sociopath and not worth my thought. I decided to forget he existed. Until this weekend, when I looked up and saw him, fifteen feet away. He didn't see me, and I ran straight out to my car, but I felt sick and shaken and terrible. All weekend, my head has been full of him.

Tonight on my bike ride, it had just finished raining and the woods were misty and the creeks were loud and overflowing. Everything smelled so good. The park was almost empty. I had my headphones on, and I could feel my head starting to clear. And then I saw him:

He let me get off my bike and walk right up to him and take pictures. He walked around in circles in the water and just looked at me, totally okay with my presence. I just stood and watched and let him make me feel better. Herons always make me happy, every time I see one fly overhead I feel like a little piece of my heart lifts. I watched him and thought to myself, 'Everything can't be all bad.' I felt better when I got back on my bike to finish my ride.

About a mile later, I had to stop because of these guys? There were eight of them, total.

Two of them were tiny babies, still covered in little white spots. They completely ignored me, running around the woods and playing. They were close enough to make me nervous (I did not get gored!), and I was completely entranced. They were beautiful and happy and bouncing around the trees together and I just froze. I don't know how long I stood there, completely transfixed. I would like to offer an official apology to the two middle-aged joggers who seemed to be a little perturbed by my sobbing as they ran by, though. They were tears of relief, somehow. Because, as dark and cloudy as it is inside my brain right now, as long as I am capable of recognizing the peace and order and happiness in moments like these, I think that maybe I will be okay.

A short inventory of loss

2011-08-03T11:30:00.001-04:00

First of all, Happy Mercury Retrograde, everyone! Last time it rolled around I made this, which is more sad than anything because I got to cross off every. single. square.

This has always been a hard time of year for me. When I was 15, I lost one of my best friends to a car accident in July. My friend Nick wrote about it better than I ever could here. We were so young and in a huge argument at the time of his death and I still think about him almost daily. Brandon was the first real loss I had ever experienced; I remember so clearly how shocked I was at my reaction at the news. I was sitting in our sun room when my stepdad came in and crouched at my feet. He picked up my hands in his and told me that there had been an accident and Brandon hadn't made it. I was stunned and silent. I waited for the wailing and the fainting and the sobbing, but nothing came. I just sat and stared at the floor, confused. I felt guilty about that lack of reaction for years. That was a long and terrible Summer, but I was lucky to have amazing, and emotionally honest friends to help me through.

When I was pregnant with Ruby, another good friend died in the Summer. A car accident. She had been turning left and was hit by another car. She died upon impact, on the lawn of a house next door to my church. The cross is still in the front yard and I see it every Sunday when I go to meeting. Jolene had worked with Tony for years, and also at one of our favorite places to eat. We'd go eat dinner with her at her restaurant almost every Sunday. We loved her dearly. I had already been to so many funerals by this time, I was totally unprepared for the impact hers would have on me. Moving through line at her viewing, 7 months pregnant, I saw her laying so still and she was herself but not herself and I lost it. I had always moved through the deaths and funerals in my life so selfishly; concerned with only my own sadness; but now I was looking at everything as a mother. It was a terrifying moment, and I realized how cripplingly deep loss can be. I had lost one of my best friends, but her parents had lost their daughter. I have absolutely no idea how such a thing could ever possibly be lived through. To this day, my kids' favorite song is Mindy Smith's version of Jolene and we sing it almost every night at bedtime.

Today I found out that one of my best friends from Borders passed away. I don't really know any details yet. He was wonderful and funny and so crabby. I was afraid of Bruce when I first started working there; he was huge, bearded, tall and imposing. He had a temper. I remember one night, when we were trying to close, he couldn't get the alarm to set because of display signs that were swinging from the ceiling. 16-year-old me watched him, terrified and wide-eyed, while he ran around the store, shouting expletives and ripping the signs furiously out of the ceiling. Once I got used to him, I loved him totally. He took good care of me; he was bossy. He was a father figure that was severely lacking during that phase of my life. More than once I tried to come up with a way to get him to marry my mom. The kids and I visited him regularly and he was such a vibrant and strong figure, I'm still trying to figure out how he is gone, exactly. I love Bruce so much and I will always, always remember him.

And. Friends and family. Loved ones. Guys? Maybe stay inside until October. Or wear a helmet. I love you.

Dear Kelly

2011-08-02T09:14:00.000-04:00

One of my very favorite places on the internet is The Inernet K-Hole. It's hypnotic. Something about the old snapshots of these people I don't know doing normal, every day things is so wonderful and fascinating. I could look at them forever. I love little glimpses into other people's lives, mostly because I am super nosy. I'm so curious about other people's details; what they buy at the grocery store, the books they're reading, the shit they let pile up in their cars, their missent emails. I can't help it.

My email address is pretty generic. No numbers, no underscores, nothing fancy. Just kellyq@gmail.com. I get a lot of messages that aren't meant for me. (For example, my adventures with Grandma Janet are chronicled here.) The other day, I got an email from T. Its tone was sweet and hopeful; it read like maybe T. had recently met Other Kelly and was wondering how to take the next step. Maybe they have a business relationship and he wants to ask her out for coffee. Maybe they've connected on an internet dating site and he's not sure if she's interested in him yet. His email follows,

Kelly,

Got your email. I am glad that you enjoyed the process. Me too! I got a feeling that we would have fun together. How long are you in Random City? I'm working today in Other Random City. Taking a customer to play golf in a few minutes up at A University. It is sooo hot here. How about up there? Looked like the heatwave may have eased up a bit for you. Looking forward to more dialogue.

Take care!

T*

I showed it to my friend THE PANDA, who supplied me with this reply:

Dear T,

You seem like a really great guy! I had hoped you'd say that! I'm in Random City through the end of the week and then it's off to home! These Random City heat waves are really nothing to speak of compared to how hot it must be in The State You Are In! Thank you for being so kind, T. It takes a strong man to overlook something as serious as my completely mangled left leg. I get very self-conscious about it and I'm so glad we got it out in the open.

Yours,
Kelly

Full disclosure: Not only did I not send T that email, I actually wrote him back to let him know he had the wrong Kelly, because even though I try so hard not to, somewhere down deep I still have some nice left. This morning I woke up to more gifts, from a different T.

Seller will accept the $62K. Paperwork (in the form of a new seller's addendum) is on the way and reflects the change in buyer names.

Other T

And I want so hard to send this:

Hi, Other T!

The more I think about the property in question, I am having some reservations about this deal. Is there a copy of the Homeowner's Association Handbook I can read through? I can't live anywhere that my ostriches are not welcome. Is that the plural of ostrich? I can never remember. Also, do I need city approval to install a commercial-grade incinerator in the basement? And! Do you know someone who could give me an estimate on soundproofing the place? Because no reason.

Onward,
K

But. Because I am a wimp, this is what I sent instead:

Hello,

You have the wrong Kelly! Unless I bought a house in Tampa in my sleep, which I sincerely hope I didn't.

Sorry!
K

* I just noticed that First T double spaces after periods, which means that he is probably a serial killer. So, Oops! Sorry to throw you under the bus like that, Other Kelly! Good luck with that one.

Louis CK is My Spirit Animal

2011-07-27T08:02:00.000-04:00

First:

Ruby was a baby the first time I watched this. She was two and just starting to talk. Every adorable little word that came out of her chubby, beautiful mouth was like a wonderful gift from the Universe. At the dinner table she would spend half an hour babbling total nonsense and Tony and I would sit there, perfectly still, enraptured, basking in the amazing glory of her words. 'Did she just say "green cookie"? OH MY GOD I LOVE HER SO MUCH!'

When I watched this stand up routine, I thought it was hilarious and brilliant. But I also pitied Louis CK. I felt sorry for him, because, how could he not enjoy the gift of his daughter's adorable words? How could he not think that every tiny thing out of her mouth is pure magic and the most important thing in the world?

And now. Now, I am the proud owner of a four year old. And I watched the video again. And I just want to say: I understand now, Louis CK*. I see it. I am sorry for judging you. It's 7am and I am trying to wake up and psychically prepare myself for the next 18 hours of talking about flowers and dead bugs and what different colors taste like and what do unicorns eat and why is it bad to lick everything and also at least an hour of her performing that one Bikini Kill song into her echo microphone for me.

But first, I'm going to go wake up my two-year-old and giggle and swoon as he tells me over and over again about how his "Boo car go up." What a huge and terrible difference 24 months makes.

*Hi mom! Hi grandmas! Hi to you other sensitive people! I just want to remind you that I love Ruby dearly and think that she is wonderful. Remember that one time she was talking about green cookies? HILARIOUS!

On Borders

2011-07-18T22:16:00.000-04:00

Borders was my first full-time Big Girl Job. I was hired by mistake; the full time position was only supposed to be open to people 18 years or older and I was only 16 when I applied. My application was put in the wrong pile and I was called in for an interview by mistake. And I probably don't have to tell you that once I made it in for the interview, the job was in the bag. Because I AM CHARMING AS ALL SHIT, PEOPLE. The pay was ridiculous and the benefits were terrible, but I loved that job. I was the store baby and was treated as such. I would roll my eyes and huff when the old grandfatherly men would boss me around and be too concerned with my safety, but secretly I loved it. I know some of my favorite people in the world thanks to Borders.

Reed, who lived with his parents after a psychedelic music career in St. Louis. Who once stayed in the parking lot with me until 1am in December on a night that I locked my keys in my running car and had to wait for a locksmith. He made me put bags inside my shoes to keep my feet dry.

Kevin, who played fucking Dolly Parton in the backroom 90 goddamn hours a day and also could recite every word of Babe and Babe: Pig in the City by heart, even though his childhood puppy had been eaten by a pig and he could hardly talk about it 40 years later without tearing up.

Marlys, who was hilarious and smart and wonderful. She took notes in hieroglyphics and writes gay historical fiction now! Look! Here!

Aaron, who I still consider to be one of my Very Best Friends In The Whole World (Hello, Aaron), even though he left me to toil in the cornfields of Indiana when he ran off to Hawaii with

Jim, the excommunicated priest. I once had a terrible, angry argument with him about the nature of faith (I was an atheist, he was not; I was upset and felt that he was trying to "convert" me; he was offended and stormed off). The next day, he came up to apologize and handed me a wrapped package. A gift, he told me, to say he was sorry. It was, OF COURSE, a Bible. THANKS, JIM. I still have it somewhere. It's probably propping something up, like the Necronomicon.

AND Matt, the dude who ate his dog. Just trust me on this. He totally did.

I read that Borders is laying off 11,000 people. I still know a lot of people who work for them, and I hope so much that they all find good work somewhere. Especially Matt, who seriously needs the grocery money.

A message to my fellow Meijer patrons:

2011-07-16T15:38:00.000-04:00

Hi, guys.

We didn't exactly meet, but I was wearing a purple shirt? And my son spent a lot of time crying because I had the nerve to choose the chocolate Frosted Mini Wheats over the boo ones? Also, my daughter was slowly trailing behind us, carrying her baby doll inside an upside down bike helmet and complimenting all the old ladies?

'THAT is a nice shirt!' and,
'I LOVE those crackers that you picked out! Good job.'

Here's the thing. When we were done checking out and I was forcing both of my kids to share the $.01 pony ride because I only had one stupid penny? When my children noticed your children waiting in line and then leaped at their faces; arms extended, eyes shining, grinning ear-to-ear? When my kids ran to yours, yelling 'WHAT IS YOUR NAME,' and 'HEY TELL ME YOUR NAAAME,' and trying to kiss them and shit, they didn't mean any harm. And, while I returned your uncomfortable smiles and half-shrugs, as I dragged my kids off of yours--Ruby yelling, 'HEY! HEY! COME OVER ANY TIME!' and Henry pounding himself in the chest and informing everyone, 'ME! ME! ME BOY! ME BOY!'--I just wanted to tell you that we don't get out much.

Sorry.

I hope y'all enjoyed that pony ride.

There's always University of Pheonix

2011-07-10T12:08:00.000-04:00

I'm just going to blame the happenings of last night on one of the most delicious beers I have ever consumed:

Yep. This guy, right here. It's like a super-dark, creamy BEER SHAKE and I am in love. Coincidentally, it is also a bit...strong.

Remember Ozzie? Ozzie the dog, who has been a part of out family since we adopted him right before Christmas? Poor Ozzie: the toothless, mangy, half-dead dog that lets my children jump on him and poke him in the eye and roll all over him and he just sits there, with the equivalent of a dumb-dog smile on his face and wagging his tail?

I have begun to suspect that maybe Our Beloved Ozzie is not quite so bright. He bites the air for no reason. When we go on walks, every twenty steps or so he just...falls to the ground, wiggling and clawing at his gentle leader like it's made of bees (it fits him correctly and it's not too tight; I checked). Sometimes he'll just sit by the couch and stare at something invisible on the wall for hours.

Did you know there are Dog IQ Tests on the internet? Oh, because there are.

I don't think I need to say out loud that my dog is incredibly stupid (although he does know his name!) I didn't really need the test to tell me this, either, but at least it provided me a wonderful and exciting way to spend my Saturday night.

Also I maybe need some hobbies.

Good, old-fashioned interventions.

2011-07-06T08:03:00.000-04:00

I started this book a year or so ago. Hothouse Kids, by Alissa Quart. I didn't actually, you know, finish it, since it isn't a mystery or written by George R. R. Martin. But I totally got the gist of it. Sort of. I read through some of the reviews on Amazon and they were pretty bad; angry parents and people accusing her of being mean-spirited and judgey.

I identified with what I read, because I'd fall into the Hothouse Kid category. I was tested at 4 years old, and it was recommended to my parents that I start school immediately. So they did! I started kindergarten at 4 and was in first grade at 5. At first, it wasn't a big deal; I could read and write, I was big for my age, I fit in. In second grade, they started moving me into the "gifted" class for a couple of hours a day. I would start with the second graders, and then I would move into another classroom with kids of different ages for, you know, "gifted" shit. A couple hours before the end of the day, I would return back to my regular 2nd grade room. This is where the Trouble started. I was the youngest kid in the gifted class. While it was amazing; I loved my teacher, the classroom was full of animals, we learned and talked about things that were actually interesting, I just couldn't adjust. The kids were a lot older than me, and I felt out of place. There was a lot of difficult homework involved and I was six years old. In our classroom, our teacher hung a yellow duck cut from construction paper on the wall behind her desk. We each had one with our names written on it in sharpie. Every time an assignment was late or missing, our teacher wrote it down on a post-it note and stuck it to our duck. Everyone had one or two post-its on their duck. Except for me! You could never even see my duck. It was always drowning in a fluttering sea of post-it notes. Even now, 24 years later, I think about that goddamn duck and my heart speeds up a little. Eventually, after not fitting in with the "gifted" kids, I started not fitting in with my "regular" 2nd grade classmates, either. They were aware of the fact that I went somewhere else for half of the day and they treated me differently for it.

I started getting sick before school. Every morning I would wake up, sweaty and nervous, and throw up right before I was supposed to leave. I was stressed out all the time. I had panic attacks and bad dreams At 6. My mom saw what was happening and spoke to my counselors at school and asked that I be removed from the gifted program. They were appalled and told her that they thought she was doing me a great disservice; why would she ever willingly take an opportunity away from me? I belonged in that class. My test scores proved it. My mom ignored this and pulled me out anyway. I'm glad she did, but I feel like some sort of precedent was already set. I still got letters from the Midwest "Gifted & Talented Program" after each year's standardized testing. I took the SATs in 5th grade, the only kid in a giant room full of enormous, glamorous-looking teenagers. I never felt comfortable at school again. I threw up every single morning before school until the middle of 11th grade, when I left to be a missionary in Alaska, which is a whole other blog post for another time. I was always afraid of my classmates, afraid to speak out loud, afraid to be wrong, afraid to be laughed at.

And now I am an adult. An adult who was once a "gifted" child, who works part time as a receptionist and drives a BrontoTaurus. I didn't even get my Actual High School Diploma; I started working at a bookstore full time when I was 16 and didn't get around to getting my GED until I was 20. I have a home and a husband and children that I love, but there is always the nagging voice in the back of my mind that insists I should be a rocket scientist or a forensic accountant, or whatever.

Here's the thing: I wrote this post (up until this point) last week. It's been floating around in my drafts, waiting to be finished or deleted. It was drifting closer to deletion because it sounds a little whiny and self-indulgent.

Except! Except yesterday, my dad came and took me out to lunch. We were sitting at a cafe table in the middle of an open air mall. Everything was pretty standard: He'd made me listen to live blues music in the car, spent much of the drive bitching about cul de sacs, made some angry hand gestures at some waspy mom in a red minivan. And then, after we'd sat and had both started eating our lunches, he leaned forward and:

Dad: I need you to do me a favor.
Me: Sure! What is it?
Dad: You need to figure out what you're going to do with your life.
Me: [startled silence]
Dad: You're too smart to be working at that office. You need to make a list of all the things you'd like to be. Write them down. Write down what you need to do to BE those things. And. Do them.
Me: You mean like UNICORN SCIENTIST or INTERNET SUPERSTAR?
Dad: I mean it. You need to go to school. You need to do something.

And then he leaned forward and handed me a miniature flashlight. To use if you're ever lost at night, he told me.

I've had so much time (so much!) to stew about this and I honestly don't really know how I feel. I don't want to do anything. I mean. I want to watch my kids grow and I want to go to work in a place where I like everyone and I'm appreciated and I can leave every night and not think about work at all until I clock back in the next morning.

I don't want to be a forensic accountant or a rocket scientist.

I will, however, accept the position of Internet Superstar if it falls into my lap. I'm not about to go to school for that shit, though.

This is the sort of conversation

2011-07-03T12:03:00.001-04:00

you find yourself having with your spouse of 9 and a half years, on the way to Meijer to buy groceries with both of your kids in the backseat:

Tony: [pulling over to the side of the road to let a firetruck pass] What's with cats in trees?
Me: What do you mean? What about them?
Tony: I'd be willing to bet that there has never actually been a cat stuck in a tree. Ever.
Me: Of course they get stuck! They climb up there and then they don't know how to get down!
Tony: [scoffs] And the firemen? They actually drive over and get their ladders out and save these cats who supposedly can't climb down the trees?
Me: I am absolutely positive that at some point in history, that has happened.
Tony: But firemen can't rescue them all. If cats could really get stuck in trees, why aren't trees full of tiny skeletons?

Touché, Tony. Touché.

********** Update as of July 3rd, 4:09pm **********

My cousin Niki just emailed me this. I won't sully its beauty with a snarky caption. Just enjoy.

This week has been some kind of crazy parade of bullshit

2011-06-30T19:02:00.000-04:00

I will begin this at the end of a very long story that involves housing, working, the economy, food that has to be purchased for my family to consume, money that must be spent to fill the gas tanks of the cars that we still make monthly payments on. The dog must be fed, our hair must be cut, my children (despite my pleading) continue to grow and demand new things: shoes, clothes, toys, books with all the original pages.

This long, boring, and very frustrating story ends with me going back to work full time as of next week. I am not excited about this, but I am grateful that it is an option. And I'm looking forward to maybe someday not losing sleep over our money situation. And maybe even buying a box of KRAFT Macaroni & Cheese, just like the fancy folks do.

Today was my last Thursday off with the kids, and we spent the morning at 100 Acres on the grounds of the art museum, one of the kids' favorite places in the world.

We brought friends.

Adorable friends.

We were there all morning, but it was 400 degrees and the very best part of my whole morning was just lying here in the grass and looking up in the trees.

And! No Fun Time would be complete without a gratuitous shot of Henry crying for No Apparent Reason.

The girls were so unbelievably unimpressed by this.

There's a singing boat there?

And a Giant Skeleton For Climbing, which is one thousand badass.

And! I was able to sneak up on this heron (sort of, I took this right before he heard me and flew off), which is my personal sign from the Universe that Maybe Everything Will Come Out Okay in the End. Here's hoping.

So! My Thursday is almost over. I have a bike ride tonight, and then afterward I've set aside some time for wine, a SciFi movie and some wallowing. Soon enough, though, when I regain my ability to Purchase Things With American Currency, I'm sure that I'll feel better about my decision. BUT UNTIL THAT DAY I WILL WALLOW.

About the last 72 hours, or whatever

2011-06-27T21:39:00.000-04:00

Maybe it's been more than 72 hours. Honestly, I have no idea.

It started with my grandmother. She tripped on some steps in her house and fell. She hit her head; she was bleeding; she was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. They did a scan and found some blood on her brain and sent her to a larger hospital downtown, where there are surgeons present 24 hours a day. They found out that the blood was on a part of her brain that made it inoperable, so she's been kept there for the last few days for observation. I've been fighting a cold, so I haven't been able to visit her myself, but Ruby has gone over with my mom a couple of times and has come back with glowing reviews. 'Grandma is feeling much better!' and, 'Grandma played ponies with me!' According to my mom, she floats back and forth a lot between resigned acceptance and downright crabbiness, but she's getting a little stronger every day. The bleeding has not gotten any worse, and today they moved her to a smaller hospital and hopefully, she'll get to go home soon.

The morning after my grandma was admitted to the hospital, my grandpa fell. He gashed his head open and hurt his arm. He went to the hospital and got nine stitches in his head. His arm and one side of his face swelled to a ridiculous size. He called my mom to tell her while she was in the hospital room with my grandma. Before she could say anything he told her, 'Do not ask how I am. Do not act like anything is wrong.' My mom had to pretend to smile and laugh as my grandpa told her what had happened. 'Tell her I can't come this morning because I'm sick to my stomach. I don't want her to worry about me.' Later, when my grandpa was feeling better, he went in to visit, bandaged and bruised, and explained everything and apologized for making my mom lie.

This morning my little brother went to get a sore spot on his back checked out and wound up having a Mysterious Cyst removed. They had to cut a chunk out of his back and how he's laid up on meds and painkillers and maybe they sent it for a biopsy, but I'm not sure because when my mom was telling her about it, I could barely hear a word she said,

because today at lunch time, out of nowhere, shooting pains started in both of my ears. I've been a little achy and sinusy lately, and figured it would go away, but it continued to get worse as the day went on. The pain got worse, the pressure got worse, and by the time I was able to leave work to go to the doctor I had lost all of the hearing in my right hear and half of the hearing in my left. The pressure was unbearable and I was so dizzy it was hard to walk. By the time I made it back to the doctor's office I was so stressed out that my blood pressure was 170/90. An alarm went off when they hooked me up to the machine. I was pretty sure that both of my eardrums had ruptured and that I would somehow die from this and that also my heart would explode.

None of those things happened. I do, however, have strep and two very nasty ear infections, totally out of nowhere.

So, seriously. Guys? Go take some vitamins. Stay inside your houses. Hug your grandparents. Eat some vegetables or something. DRINK A BOOST, GODDAMNIT.

I probably shouldn't have paid for this for so long.

2011-06-23T22:23:00.001-04:00

I've seen a lot of therapists, but I have a favorite. Honestly, there was only one that I liked. She was a tiny lady who worked out of a church basement. Her name was Laverne and she had the softest, sweetest voice. She was quiet. She smiled a lot. Pretty much immediately after I began seeing her, she started EMDR therapy with me. I listened to special music playing quietly through headphones as we talked. It's the only thing I have ever done in therapy that has ever helped me. It was really alarming, at first, the details I would remember while I was telling her about my childhood and my worries. I can't say why this helped me with my panic attacks, but it did. After a couple of months, I was able to talk myself down out of basically everything. You know, for a while.

I listen to music on my bike ride. When the music is something that alternates left to right in my earbuds, I feel like I'm in therapy again. Riding through the woods, the music playing, alone with my thoughts, random things pop into my head in bizarre, crazy detail. So tonight I decided that I will write a book*, entirely in bullet list form, comprised of all the fucked up stuff I remember about the people I have known. An excerpt:

When I was 4, one of my neighbors was named Virgil. He lived about four houses down. Every time I saw him in person he was wearing a bathrobe and there was a three-legged raccoon that lived on his roof.
We rented a house when I was little and our creepy, old landlord lived behind us. One afternoon, he was coming over to visit and my mom came outside to find me drawing with crayons on our front porch. 'IT'S MICHAEL JACKSON'S HOUSE!' I told her, proud. It was three stories, full of stick figures. My mom spent the rest of the afternoon crying and trying to scrape it off with a razor blade.
In high school I had a cow named Dexter. he wasn't mine, exactly, but we had some extra land that a nearby farmer kept his cows on. He had a place for his animals, and we didn't have to mow the grass, so it was win-win. I had to walk about a quarter of a mile down the road from the bus stop to my house every afternoon, and Dexter would follow along the whole way, each one of us on our side of the fence. He would let me scratch his nose and he'd eat Skittles out of my hand. Eventually, the farmer packed up his animals and carted them off. Over the Summer, we went to a cookout at his house. He walked up to me right as I had taken a huge bite of a cheeseburger, smiled and said, 'Is that good? You knew that cow!' I was really sad, but I ate the burger anyway because it was delicious.
At one point, we lived in a huge, old house in the middle of the woods. It was on 48 acres of land and was almost half a mile away from the road. Sometimes when he had time, my dad would drive me to the end of the driveway in the morning to wait for the bus. When I walked, owls would swoop over my head and scare me. One morning, we were rolling down the driveway and he slammed on the brakes. He got out of the car and told me to, too. 'Kelly! Look! A turtle! Oh no, it's TWO turtles!' Surly and seven years old, I grumbled my way out of the car to look at his stupid turtles. They were to the side of the driveway, one on top of the other. 'Oh,' my dad stumbled, 'Oh. I. I don't want to embarrass you, but. Those turtles are making love.' I distinctly remember turning on my heel and getting back into the car immediately. It was never again spoken of.

So. There's the beginning. I'm going to be pretty busy for the next few weeks shopping around for book deals and also remembering random shit in bizarre and minute detail.

* I am not actually writing a book. I can barely even finish an episode of South Park.

Fourrible

2011-06-18T09:28:00.000-04:00

I have the journal my mom started when she was pregnant with me. She wrote in it for years, so it chronicles my entire early childhood. I haven't read the whole thing, partly because it makes me feel guilty about my sub-par record-keeping skills (between my two children I have filled in one third of a baby book; this blog will be all they get.), but there is one entry made when I was a bout five regarding selling me to gypsies.

And. I wholeheartedly understand that passage.

Ruby. Ruby. Ruby. She is now four-and-a-half. She is a beautiful, brilliant, well-spoken, loud, cranky, pushy, whiny thing all of the sudden. She will not eat. She will not sleep. She cries at everything. She rolls her eyes. She hits her brother. She takes his toys. She asks me why she can't do or have or give something. I give her my reason. She stamps her little foot at me and wrinkles up her pretty face. She aggressivly maintains eye contact and huffs out air. 'YOU,' she tells me, 'are wrong.'

And, I'm sorry? But I don't really understand what to do at this point? Is punching what I do? Or crying? I try to keep my face calm as I march her into her room for a time-out. Sometimes she stays in there quietly and plays. Sometimes she runs around like a crazy person and kicks the door and shrieks. Either way, I don't react. The other day, after one of her quiet time outs, she came skipping out of her room after the timer rang. She walked up to me and smiled. 'Mommy?' She said, 'I don't like you.' My heart broke and I panicked. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. 'I don't LIKE you,' she repeated, 'I LOVE you,' and ran off to play with her toys.

Although I totally understand her sentiment, I am at a loss. I have no idea what to do with this sassy, know-it-all, bulldozer of a child-beast at the moment. I have always prided myself in being an intuitive parent; I can read my kids so well. I always have a good sense of what they need, or what they're really trying to say. We understand each other, we get along, we live in harmony. Except for the past month, which has been spent with Henry trying to crawl back into the womb, Ruby ruling the house with tiny iron fist, and me hovering above it all, feeling utterly hopeless and unable to restore sanity and goodwill to my household. This feeling of disconnect from them is physically painful for me. Mostly, and I know that this seems to be my go-to solution for every problem in my life, I am just trying to wait it out. I am trying to stay as calm and consistent as possible and maybe once day, Ruby will wake up and instead of being THIS girl,

She will be this girl again. At least some of the time.

Until that day, I will be over here, sitting in my chair with my eyes glazed over, replaying my favorite episodes of Party Down in my head to numb the pain.

Some reasons why I wouldn't mind staying

2011-06-07T17:03:00.000-04:00

There's a bike trail about a mile away from my in-law's house. To get there I only have to cross one busy street and three of the times I have done so, a crossing guard stopped traffic for me. The last time I saw her, on my way back this morning, I thanked her and she called out after me, 'My pleasure! Let me know if you ever need anything!' Why are Canadians so nice? Tomorrow, I'm going to ask her for a popsicle and I bet that she'll have an assortment of my favorite flavors waiting for me.

This is the sort of thing I can see from the trail:

And this is the sort of thing I found early this morning when I ditched my bike and went up into the woods:

And also, I really, really, really need to hop across these rocks.

Like. Once a day, at least. For the rest of my life.

So. I think I need to live here.

I found a tree house in the woods this morning that we can squat in.

Who's with me?

Operational with 7% of our original sanity levels

2011-06-06T10:06:00.001-04:00

A list, because I am sleep deprived.

I have been in Canada for 18 hours and have caught myself saying 'Eh' once and 'Hoose' two times.
Yesterday? We were in our car for 12 hours? And Tony let Ruby bring a kazoo.
Also, he let her listen to Weird Al.

I was going to write this big, long list of all the terrible and annoying things that happened during yesterday's trip, but something wonderful just happened. JUST NOW. Two seconds ago, Tony found my signed, first edition copy of Suzanne Somer's deep and excellent poetry, Touch Me. Have I mentioned before how much I love terrible things? So let me share an excerpt:

I really felt close to you last weekend,

It was nothing spectacular

Or easily explainable.

Outsiders wouldn't understand.

But the meals we cooked

And the love we made

Seemed to grow

And flow like silent songs.

I have known times

When Acapulco was a humid bore

And Hawaii the monotonous lapping of waves

Keeping pace with the pointless talk

Of pointless people,

Times when the glowing ads were calculated lies.

Maybe it's timing--or maybe it's love

I'm hard pressed to know what or why--

But last weekend--a very ordinary weekend--

I felt really close to you.

Close To You, Suzanne Somers, Touch Me 1973

Who knew there was such soul and angst behind those boyshorts and knee socks?

For a girl that I love.

2011-05-29T15:06:00.001-04:00

Kendall is a Twitter Friend who has over time turned into an actual, human friend. She writes and illustrates this wonderful and hilarious blog, and drew this picture of me because she is wonderful and thinks I remind her of Louise from Bob's Burgers:

She also mailed me this hat, and I have been very busy live-tweeting my new and improved life in my Louise hat.

Like when I first got my new hat in the mail:

And the time I tried to stay up all night making cupcakes, but accidentally roofied myself with a new drink I call "The Betty Draper" [Make yourself an Old Fashioned. Drink it. Ten minutes after finishing drink, forget you consumed drink and take a Klonopin. Sleep for 16 hours.]

And the time I took the hat to work and it greatly improved my Customer Service!

[Note to Dr. Smith, if you ever see this: Please do not fire me.]

I've been thinking about Kendall a lot over the last few days, because she has a Very Sick Dog. And yesterday, when she was updating me on the dog's condition, I suddenly remembered my own experience with a Very Sick Dog, and I decided that the story needed to be re-shared [People who have been with me since 2001, which is, well. Only Erin from Out of Character, I think [I LOVE YOU]...Sorry. This one is a repeat.] SO HERE GOES:

Before we had kids, Tony and I had a dog. She was a basset hound and her name was Anna Banana Brown Brown Burrito Q., and I am not kidding. She was beyond special. We rescued her from the woman who rescued her. When we adopted her she was underweight, ignored, and terrified of everything. She had been living in a house with an ultra-dominant, ultra-ginormous basset hound who did not let her near the food or water bowls. For the first several weeks that she lived with us, we would have to dole out her food and water sip-by-sip and bite-by-bite, because she literally did not know how to stop. She would sit there in front of her bowls and eat and drink until she puked and then start all over again. We were ridiculous with this dog. I dressed her up. She slept in our bed every night, under the covers, with us. She needed so much special care: She had severe allergies, Crohn's Disease and pattern fucking baldness, which means she was pretty much bald from the middle of her back down.

One night, around 3am, we woke up to the sound of her throwing up. It was all stringy and black. We realized that she had been eating the gauzy liner underneath our box-spring mattress to make herself sick. She puked every 30 minutes, all night. First thing in the morning I woke up and called the vet and they wanted to see her right away. I dropped her off on my way to work, and the vet's office promised that they would call me with periodic updates.

I had no idea what could be wrong with her, and I was a mess. After a couple of hours, they called me to tell me that her white blood cell count was up and that they'd done an X-ray and she had a giant, strange mass in her stomach. I was crushed. I was 7,000% sure it was cancer. They told me that they couldn't be sure, that they had to do more tests and that they would call me in a couple of hours. I was beside myself with grief. I cried all day. I was a tech in a doctor's office at the time, and I cried through pretesting all my patients. All I could think about was that we could not afford doggy chemo, and that if it was bad enough, Anna Banana Brown Brown Burrito Q. would have to be put to sleep. I sat in the back office, sobbing, imagining myself holding her little paw as she drifted off into her forever sleep. I imagined myself an old woman, broken and despondent, sleeping with one of her chew toys at night.

Work ended and I rushed to the vet, ready to demand answers. They didn't have any for me; they couldn't identify the mass in her stomach. We wouldn't be able to know what it was without surgery and we couldn't afford that. They wanted to keep her for a couple of days to observe her, but we couldn't afford that, either. In the end, they gave me her X-rays and gave me an explicit list of things to watch out for. If she did any of about 75 different things, I was to take her to the Emergency Vet immediately. Tony and I brought her home and watched her like a hawk.

Later that night, Tony took her outside to go to the bathroom. When he came back in, he was white; stricken; visibly shaken. He looked at me. 'I've...I've never seen anything like that,' he said to me. He took my hand and led me outside, to an area in the lawn behind our apartment complex. He pointed down. And. In several large, easily recognizable pieces I saw this:

A pair of fucking crab goggles.

Ours looked just like this, except they were red and sparkly. Later that night, the vet called me at home to check on Anna. I told her about the goggles. She had been 100% herself after...voiding them. 'Yep,' the vet told me, 'That'll do it.'

My sanity restored in pictures and sound

2011-05-28T22:10:00.000-04:00

There's a park about two miles from my house that I ride in three or four times a week. In the midst of the Existential Crisis I am having, these bike rides are what have kept my brain from collapsing in on itself. Last week I made myself a Bike Ride Playlist, but I made it a little too morose and wound up crying for half my ride, yelling lyrics in the presence of complete strangers. So, I tweaked it a bit tonight. And somehow, even though it was on shuffle, the songs that played while I was riding tonight were so perfect for what I was seeing, it was almost a little creepy.

There's a swampy patch near the back of the park. It's one of my favorite places, and right before I rode past it, Tom Waits's Chocolate Jesus came on, which is quite possibly one of the swampiest songs ever recorded:

About halfway through my ride, there's a huge hill. It's my favorite part; it's so fast and scary and the air smells so good. I wish that I could put into words the relief and the joy and the peace and the right-ness I felt as, while nearing the bottom of the hill and going around the bend, I saw the mist on the duck pond and the light in the trees as January Wedding was playing:

And then! At the end of my ride, there's a walnut grove that is flat and beautiful and amazing. The trees are covered in vines and lined up in these neat, wonderful rows. As I rode into it today, the sun was setting and I was listening to Fresh Feeling.

I sort of want to live in the park now. And because I have no idea how to close this, here is a picture of some teenage geese:

I can't remember what song was playing when I saw them. I did, however, drop my camera into goose poop right after taking this picture. So. There's that.

To Ruby

2011-05-27T07:18:00.000-04:00

I'm doing the May Mom Blog Hop this month, and today is my day. I'm allowed to write anything I want, as long as it's about the (often questionable) art of motherhood. There's a list of every participant here. So. Here is mine.

Dear Ruby,

You made me a mommy. You were longed for, dreamed of, and celebrated. You were an easy baby: All smiles and chubby wrists. We brought you home and we had no idea what we were doing. We were afraid to put you down, but you didn't mind. You lived with your heart against mine and your head on my shoulder for the first 12 weeks of your life. You were beautiful. You would look at us with your big, round, clear eyes and we knew that you would be intelligent and wise. We knew that you would notice things.

You have not always been so easy. You are four-and-a-half now; a strong-willed, precocious and often completely insane little girl. For every time you snuggle up to me and whisper that you love me, you turn around and inform me (with eyebrow raised): 'I am old enough to do whatever I want. Except for killing.' You, child, have some serious opinions. You know the way the world ought to work, and you let your displeasure be known when things do not go exactly according to plan. This is not a trait you have inherited from me, unfortunately. I am responsible for your:

Habit of noticing everything, always
Morbid sense of humor
That thing you do when you put your hand on your sassy little hip and scrunch up your face at people
Imagination
Ears (I am sorry, sweetie.)

Your dad, on the other hand is responsible for your:

1,000% confidence, ALWAYS
Pacman prowess
Fearlessness
Ability to pronounce Italian words perfectly
Affinity for the Ghostbusters

And YOU, my dear, have provided me with the following:

An excuse to try to be a better person
Right now, a stress headache over my left eyebrow
Franks&Beans for dinner on a regular basis
A reason for everything

I never feel like a stronger and more capable person than when I look at the world through your eyes. I love you so much, and I could never have possibly imagined that my daughter would turn out to be as strong and as funny and as smart as you are. You make my life better every single day. And also louder. But I love you, anyways.

Love,

Mama

Tomorrow's post will be from Susan, from Memoirs of a Writer. :)

A short list of depressing things I've seen today

2011-05-26T15:08:00.001-04:00

Let's start with Henry's feet. They are huge. They're BRICKS. His feet are four inches wide and three inches thick. To paraphrase the Ladies' Man (Oh yes, I am definitely doing that), Henry has has feet like two fine hams. I have been squeezing his poor ham-feet into Birkenstocks for the last three weeks because they are the widest shoes I can find. Unfortunately, he seems to be allergic to something in the lining, because the arches of his feet are covered with a swollen, purple, angry rash that he is currently taking THREE MEDICATIONS to get rid of. Because those are the only shoes he owns that actually fit him, he has been rendered completely shoeless. We dropped Ruby off at preschool this morning and set off to find some shoes for this boy's ham-feet. Here, in list form, are all the terribly depressing things we saw:

Two teenagers, on separate occasions, using canes. For fashion purposes.
One of my old bookstore managers. In drag.
A grown-ass man, standing next to his car outside the Speedway Gas Station at 10am, eating a taquito.
On the way into the mall, we saw a little girl (probably...4ish?) walking into Von Maur with her mom. She was wearing a purple tiara. 'MOMMY. MOMMY!' Henry squeaked at me, 'Look! Princess (pihn-sess)!' He was grinning and excited and pointing. The entire time we were in the mall, in and out of stores, looking for a pair of shoes wide enough for Henry's ham-feet (They do not exist), Henry was craning his neck, looking behind us, raising his arms, asking me, 'Princess? PRINCESS?!' I kept hoping that we would run into her so Henry could say hello, but we never did. And then? And then it was time to leave, and as I was buckling him into his car seat, Henry's little face collapsed into a pout and he started sobbing for his princess. Three hours later, he is still crying for her. He'll be playing happily or looking at a book and he will raise his little eyes to mine and they fill up with tears as he sticks his fat little lip out and asks, 'Princess?'

Puberty is gonna suck with this kid.

Scenes from a train

2011-05-25T14:43:00.000-04:00

Ruby had a class trip today. A half-hour ride on an old, antique train, a picnic in the park, and a half-hour ride back to the station. I was alone with both kids and only know a couple of other parents from school, but the trip went a lot better than I expected. The kids loved it, I pretended not to care when they threw their lunch down after two bites and took off for the playground. I only yelled, 'WHOSE FREAKING IDEA WAS THIS.' two times. I am 65% sure that I smiled at other moms. I'm going to go ahead and declare it: HUGE SUCCESS.

Train! LOOK A TRAIN.

While we were waiting for everyone to arrive, Henry was All About our train ride. He had his paci and his pony and his Doritos and he was PSYCHED.

And then the train started? And it was a little (a lot) noisy and jerky and bumpy? And Henry was no longer so quite so sure of himself. 30 seconds after I took this picture of him he climbed on my lap and wrapped his arms around my neck so tight that I got a little dizzy. For the entire trip.

The trip back was a little more low-key. Ruby guarded him and kept him safe.

And also guarded my shoes. These shoes. Because I am secretly a 12 year old. A 12 year old who SMILED AT SOME MOMS TODAY. That's right.

Your sweet little gherkin.

2011-05-24T21:15:00.000-04:00

In the past three months, I have met approximately one million wonderful people on Twitter. I love them all! I love the Twitter!

Today at work, my boss became very worried about the Twitter and my relationships with the people there. My boss is convinced that all of my followers on Twitter are actually one homicidal maniac of a person, trying to lure me into a false sense of security and then swoop down, killing me and preserving pieces of my body in pickle jars for all eternity. He talked about it almost all day today.

So, I immediately told Twitter that my boss and I were onto it. And then later, I made a joke ON TWITTER about going on a bike ride JUST IN CASE ANYONE WANTED TO TURN ME INTO A PICKLE.

I rode about six or seven miles through the woods. It's beautiful there. I don't often get to be completely, 100% alone and I was just coasting along, smelling the honeysuckle, listening to my ipod on shuffle. I had a great time. I was happy. I felt rebooted.

AND THEN. And then, as I was pulling up to my car I noticed two scruffy, almost-middle-aged dudes with skateboards and ponytails hanging halfway down their backs. They weren't looking at me, but they were standing near my car. And at that moment, I knew.

These were my Twitter followers. These men were here to kill me and turn me into a pickle. I was surprisingly resigned to my fate. I rode in closer to my car.

And then Tony Bennett came on shuffle. All of the sudden, I was in full survival mode. 'TONY BENNETT WILL NOT BE THE LAST FUCKING MUSICAL ARTIST I HEAR.' My brain screamed at me. 'FUCKING TONY BENNETT.'

Then suddenly, as I was preparing to fight, the men climbed into their 90-something Mustang and drove away. I was safe. Not a pickle.

But, you know. Lesson learned, Twitter. And I'm onto you now.

A new approach

2011-05-22T08:12:00.001-04:00

Last night was bad. Really, really bad. As in: Bad, very. Lying in bed in the middle of the night, I made myself some tearful promises and this morning, in the light of day, they still seem like a good idea. So. I am going to step back from the Internet for a little bit. Not completely, but just a lot. I'm going to give up my beloved Old Fashioneds for a while. I am going to give the things that are literally and physically in front of me my full attention. I am going to spend more time here:

And here:

I'm going to spend my free time doing this:

And watching this:

I will focus on my children and my garden and my books and the other things that I love and are wonderful and I will wait for my meds to catch up with my brain. Hopefully, it'll be soon.

I can't take much more of this existential bullshit

2011-05-21T19:43:00.000-04:00

In the interest of dealing with this current bout of Depression and Over-Metaphorisation with total open honesty, I thought about doing a video blog of myself crying and listening to old Leonard Cohen songs? But I figured that most of you have already seen that, so I decided against it. So, INSTEAD:

I took the kids to a cookout at my boss's house today. They have two kids and some of their neighborhood friends came over, too. We had a good time; The kids played and ran around. I mostly chased them, but I was fine with it. I thought to myself while we were out, I'm doing better. This time it didn't last so long. This is okay. And then we left. I piled the kids into the car and we took off towards dinner. I'd promised them Steak & Shake. And then. Half-way there, I was hit by this astounding, horrible, emptiness. The kids were quiet in the back, my music was playing, the world had not ended (6:05 on the clock), and. My stupid brain said to me, 'I wish I was more.'

And I thought about what my life means and what I do and why I do it. And I love my children and my husband and my home and my life. I love my family. But I wish I was more. And? I don't really know what it means? Except I know that every time my brain says it to me I start crying. Like at Steak & Shake. And also right now!

SO, if you will excuse me, I am going to fix myself a drink and put Bird On a Wire on repeat until I pass out.

A Chronic Case of the Metaphors

2011-05-19T10:35:00.000-04:00

Image borrowed from Natalie Dee

Every so often my brain breaks. The part of it that is responsible for ensuring that I remain a sane, non-weeping, productive member of society just ups and turns itself off. Goes on vacation. Takes a Long Winter's Nap. I've had panic attacks and bouts of depression (hysteria? bad humours?) for the last 26 years, but I've never been officially diagnosed with anything besides, "Needs Medication to be Normal." At first, this really bothered me; I didn't want people to know. I felt like a lesser person because my brain would not allow me to be happy and not-crying all by myself. I felt broken. These days, I'm more open about things. I think that maybe one of the side effects of my 4,000 daily mgs of Lexapro and occasional Klonopin chaser is that I share too much of myself. I start talking and I can't stop. I tell everyone everything! I tell patients at work long, windy stories about my best friend from down the street when I was five. I apologize to my coworkers when I've forgotten my medication for a couple of days in a row and offer this information as an explanation of why I will probably spend the afternoon organizing the rubber bands by circumference, or obsessively clicking all the pens. Ususally, with the medication, I don't worry so much. I don't have panic attacks. I sleep and eat. I love my family and feel worthy of the love that they return.

Sometimes, like today, the part of me is responsible for feeling adjusted and okay and worthy goes away. In my mind, I call it the Wilderness Times (because I am just like Jesus!) and just try to brace myself. Everything seems dark and looming. I look at my children and want to cry because they are so beautiful and amazing and I feel like I can never, ever, be deserving of the love that they unconditionally give me. I walk around all day with the hot feeling of tears behind my eyes, with my jaw clenched, feeling tired and sick and muddled. Everything seems like a dark and dramatic metaphor for something else. The weirdness of the weather means the End of the World. My husband's extra hug means I'm secretly terminally ill and going to die soon. On our walk, this morning, Henry was grasping on to my hand so tightly that his fingers would slide down mine until my fingers slipped out of his and this was a metaphor for how something terrible is going to happen and I will not be able to keep him safe from harm. Because how could I? I can't even make myself feel sane. (And then, ten minutes later, Henry found the broken bubble machine that has NEVER worked, pushed the button and it miraculously turned on and filled the air with tiny, iridescent bubbles right at the same moment that the sun came out from behind a cloud? And part of me was like, 'Oh! Look! This is a sign of something good! This means I will be okay.' and my brain promptly told me, 'Shut up. Stop being corny! This doesn't mean a damn thing. They're just some stupid bubbles.' So I guess only DARK metaphors apply to me right now? I hate you, Brain.)

Here is what I have done in the past when this has happened: Tell nobody, avoid everyone, cry, sleep, stop eating, stop sleeping, become too weak or sick to go to work, spend extended periods of time at my doctor's office, wind up on tranquilizers, wait until the switch of the new medication flips something in my brain and then slowly Boost-and-Chicken-Nugget-and-Drugged-Sleep my way back to health.

Here is what I am doing this time: I am going to be honest. With myself and with everyone. I am going to save the energy I usually spend on hiding myself from everyone for doing the things that make me feel better and whole and human. I just have to figure out what those things are. So if you see me crying, you'll know why.

Shower thoughts

2011-05-14T20:19:00.000-04:00

I take long showers. I don't mean to; I always aim for five minutes or so. I try to budget my time and hurry. I have a specific order of operations that I follow every morning; it's what I've come up with to "save time." Invariably, every single morning I step into the shower, start my routine, and then by the time I get out fifteen or twenty minutes has passed. It's like there's a wormhole in my shower that I fall into every single morning, and every single morning I'm toweling off, squinting through the steam at my alarm clock and realizing that, once again, I have been standing under the hot water for the last twenty freaking minutes. Every morning I am shocked. Shocked! How could that much time have possibly passed?

I've been to a few therapists. Maybe even a lot of therapists. There was one that I will always remember, mostly because she was terrible. The one who made me try biofeedback. The one who made me read Dinosaurs Divorce out loud to her when I was thirteen years old. I remember very clearly sitting in her dark, dingy office and telling her about my anxiety attacks; about the horrifying thoughts that I could not force out of my brain. I described it as being like that tunnel scene in Willy Wonka; a sampling of vile and scary images that my stupid brain had tailored to my specific fears and used to torture me. 'Well, listen to this!' she said to me, sure she was about to blow my mind, 'You can only think about one thing at a time! When those scary thoughts start? Just push them out of your mind with something happy!' I tried to explain that my "scary thoughts" were simultaneously a mixture of seven-to-ten different nightmare scenarios (My mom dying, an asteroid hitting me, dinosaurs coming back to life, ebola, poisonous spiders, middle school humiliation, the rapture) slamming into my brain repeatedly and all together, but I wasn't a strong enough person at 13 to speak my truth and she wouldn't have been a good enough doctor to deal with it, anyway.

[I have however found a few things that, for some reason, drive all the "scary thoughts" out of my brain: Veronica Mars, Martha Grimes mysteries, yelling the lyrics to old Ben Folds songs (ohmygosh, I am such an angsty eighth grader).]

Even though I am medicated, My Stupid Brain still tries to scare me sometimes. Yesterday in the shower (See that? This is where I bring it all together), I started thinking about church. I started thinking about the church that's predicting the End of the World on May 21st. I started thinking about Hell. I don't believe in Hell, and I'm not sure if I believe in Anything, I started to feel that old hot, heart-racy feeling. The light went a little green. My ears started ringing and I couldn't get enough air. Half of me immediately slipped into Full Rational Mode.

Rational Self: This isn't a good thing to think about. BUNNIES.

Scary Self: Think about it, though. What if you're wrong? Loads of people believe in Hell.

Rational Self: Shut up. This is stupid. Finish your shower. Go have some coffee.

Scary Self: Don't worry. I think kids automatically go to Heaven, so you don't have to worry about your kids. Too bad you'll never see them. In Hell. I can't believe how little time you've spent thinking about the concept of FOREVER.

Rational Self: I--Oh my--This is stupid.

Scary Self: FOR-EV-ER.

So! Half an hour spent in the shower, trying to talk myself down out of a panic attack because the asshole half of my brain was trying to convince me that I will be going to hell on May 21st FOREVER. I got so dizzy I had to sit down.

For the next couple of days I will be taking BATHS while simultaneously reading Martha Grimes and watching Veronica Mars.

My kids vs. ALL THE BUGS

2011-05-13T17:21:00.000-04:00

My kids and I are...indoorsy. We're readers, puzzlers, watchers of television. We like to cook. I mean. We like outside okay--We just don't like it like it. There's a little end table underneath one of our living room windows that Henry likes to sit on and just stare outside at the trees and birds. I also enjoy looking at Outside through the windows. We'll spend time Out There, sure; flopping around in the baby pool or chasing the dog around in circles. Just not more than an hour or two, thanks.

This year we had a wetter spring than usual which made the ants come early and hard. For a few weeks, they were everywhere: the kitchen, the bathrooms, the kids' rooms. They were on the bookshelves and in the kids' toy bins. We'd clean and spray our fingers to nubs, but ten minutes later they'd be back, single file, marching around our house. My kids are terrified of them, and I mean a crazy person level of terrified. Shrieking and shaking and hands thrown up over their heads. Flopping around and jerking and crying just like Helen Hunt did in that After School Special where they made crank in her school's chemistry lab and she threw herself out of a window.

(Yes, Helen Hunt, crank is exactly like chocolate cake batter.)

The ants have retreated. In their place, we now have bees and mosquitoes. I killed a mosquito in my room a couple of days ago and forgot to properly dispose of it. I left it hanging there on my bedroom curtain and Ruby found it later, and asked Tony what it was. I would like to tell you that Tony played it cool; that he played it down and distracted her. Instead, he decided to be completely honest and truthfully detailed about mosquitoes, which is why Ruby won't stop asking me questions like, How much blood do I have? and Is there blood inside my eyeball? and Is there blood in my ear and CAN A MOSQUITO GET STUCK IN MY EAR? and Will the mosquitoes suck out all my blood when I am sleeping? and Can we please stay inside forever?

Also, both of my kids were born with X-Ray night vision. Ruby and Henry can see an ant on their wall after dark from an average distance of 12 feet away. How is that possible? I am on constant Bug Alert; At the first shrieks of ANT! AAAANT! AAAAAAANT! I have to dash into the room and immediately kill it; if the situation is left to fester for more than one second, both of my children will become raving, Helen Hunt-style crazy people.

Yesterday we spent all morning in the woods. It really was incredible. We didn't make a huge deal of the bugs. My kids didn't cry, they weren't afraid. They played in a creek. It was amazing!

Not one word was spoken about ants, bloodsucking or spiders. The kids were having too much fun being all Huck-Finnish to worry about it. Not only did they not worry about the bugs, they even made friends with one: a slightly blurry, black, fuzzy caterpillar.

The kids were fascinated.

They watched it crawl for a minute. And then, well. Do you see Henry's right hand? The one holding his sister's pink hi-top Chuck Taylor? That's what he used to squish that little bastard, right before screaming 'SMASH' and doing a weird little jerky victory dance.

Y'all best watch the fuck out, bugs.

Go forth, my birdies. GO FORTH.

2011-05-10T08:45:00.000-04:00

My birdies! My birdies grew up and flew away. Their nest was located in a hanging basket about three feet from my front door. I checked on them and photographed them obsessively. I was a little worried that I would become imprinted on them; that they would decide that I was their mother and stay forever. Because, while I loved my birdies and I was excited that they were born so close to my door, where I could check on them obsessively and photograph them and also force my children to do it with me, they were very loud. They pooped a lot (as evidenced along the borders of the last photograph) and I did not want them living on my front porch forever. So, I took careful care when I checked on them. I did not get too close. And if any of them made eye contact with me, I made sure to shout at the very top of my lungs,

'DO NOT IMPRINT !'

I guess it worked.

Tips and tricks: Bowling

2011-05-09T08:17:00.000-04:00

Take a minute to admire how freaking adorable your two year old looks in those bowling shoes.

If all the balls in your preferred weight/ finger hole size are taken, it is okay to improvise.

If you're having trouble with Good Bowling Posture, sometimes a counterweight is helpful.

Try not to cause a scene when your 4-year-old legitimately beats you at bowling.

And if all else fails, try Ruby's method. She somehow found a way to make bowling an even lazier sport than it already is.

It's a pretty stupid story

2011-05-04T19:26:00.001-04:00

I have lots of hobbies! I knit and I cook and I read and I wrassle my children! Clearly, that is not enough hobbies, because both of my children (by some grace of Our Divine Lord in Heaven) fell asleep at naptime today. And I wandered around the house this afternoon; lonely, confused by the quiet, wondering what the hell to do with myself. So I made cookies! And also wasted time on Twitter!

And ate a lot of cookie dough! Which let to this discovery:

Yes. Yes, that. Some of you said, 'There is no way!' to which I provided this proof:

And here it is! Here is the proof. Why is my head so small?

But, you know, I am sort of medium-famous* and I have received hundreds** of requests for additional head-size-to-mixing-bowl comparisons. And who am I to decline your requests***?

This is literally the farthest down we could cram the bowl down on Tony's head. He--well--his head is enormous. I think his great-grandfather was part watermelon.

Ruby actually has curlers in her hair (because she makes us put them in every single night after bath), so you can see that she has a perfectly reasonably-sized head for a four year old.

Henry wanted no part of this. You might notice that he is wearing Big Boy Pants? This photo might have been taken at the exact moment that he peed all over the couch tonight. Maybe because I was rushing at him wielding a giant, metal mixing bowl.

Ozzie is planning on killing me the second I fall asleep tonight.

* I am not famous, medium or otherwise

** One request: My sister-in-law.

*** YES, I KNOW, THERE WAS ONLY ONE REQUEST SHUT UP

********** UPDATE 05/04/11 9:36 PM EST ************

I want you to know that I love you all. Especially when you email me pictures of yourselves trying to cram your own heads into mixing bowls.

You are a TRUE GANGSTA, Rob.

Sabri, I love you more than words can say.

Some stupid things that I have done, Volume 1

2011-05-03T21:42:00.001-04:00

When I was a kid, we lived one block away from my elementary school. The neighborhood was full of kids and it was long enough ago that we could all run outside and play unsupervised as long as we were home by dinnertime. When I was 4 or 5, I was allowed to ride around the neighborhood on my bike with the group. We spent a lot of time at the elementary school playground. One day, alone on the swings and watching my friends play on the monkey bars, I decided to jump off the swings. This was something we had just discovered and considered ourselves to be great daredevils; trying to see who could jump the highest and the farthest. And then? Genius struck in my 4-year-old-brain. I would jump off these swings? And I would pull a Supergirl Pose. It would be beyond awesome. So, I waited until the highest point of my arc, and hurled myself out of the swing. Somehow, I maneuvered myself into (what I could only assume was) a Supergirl Pose: Belly down, arms and legs outstretched. The ground came up very fast. So fast, in fact, that I did not have time to maneuver myself out of my Supergirl Pose. I landed on the gravel, flat on my stomach. Every tiny bit of air was knocked out of my body and I lied there, airless, stunned, in horrible pain, and waiting to die. I didn't die, clearly, but I also don't remember how I got home.

In 6th grade, my best friend A and I were "going with" two boys who were also best friends. One night, in the middle of a sleepover, we decided that they weren't "paying enough attention" to us and wrote them each a letter. MY letter took up an entire page of wide-ruled notebook paper, even though it only contained four words. It read, DEAR M, BITE ME. Even then I believed in the power of short sentences and ALL CAPS. A's letter to her boyfriend was a joint effort. We bent our heads together over the notebook, and filled the page with every single profanity we could muster. It was appalling. There were only about ten words on that page that weren't curse words. We were immensely proud of ourselves. Of course, from the strain of all that dirty thinking, we both passed out with our letters in plain view. And of course, they were found the next morning by A's mother. A conference was held. Our mothers and us. The Mothers lectured us, shook their heads in disbelief. They told us how disappointed they were that we thought this was appropriate behavior. That day, my mom gave me the best piece of advice I've ever gotten, which was, 'Never write anything you wouldn't want to see published in tomorrow's newspaper.' It is an amazing piece of wisdom and it's one that I still disobey pretty much on a daily basis (sorry, Mom).

In 8th grade, we used to walk to the library after school a couple times a week. We'd hang out inside until the librarians kicked us out for being too goddamn punk rock, and then we'd loiter outside. Specifically, on this 5ish-foot ledge:

We'd stand around and talk and wait for our punk rock parents to come and pick us up in their punk rock minivans and drive us home. Well, ONE DAY, I was on that ledge with a friend and a boy that I had a particularly strong crush on. The friend and Crush Boy were deep in conversation and I was despairing. WHY were they not paying attention to me? WHY was Crush Boy not noticing the sunlight in my hair or my amazing Babes in Toyland shirt and complimenting me on it/them? I had an idea. I looked behind me and slowly backed up to the very edge of the ledge. I would step off the back quietly and just...disappear. And then in a minute, they would both notice I was gone and freak out! 'WHERE IS KELLY?' they would yell to each other, 'Is she some kind of WIZARD?' I grinned to myself. I stepped back. Again, the ground came up very fast. I landed on my heels and then collapsed in a groaning, crying pile on the brick five feet below. I couldn't move my legs. I couldn't open my eyes because I didn't want my friend and Crush Boy to see me cry. They came running around to me, worried, asking me what the hell had happened. 'A...a...a spider,' I grunted, 'A spider dropped down in front of me and I jumped back and...there was nothing there.' Luckily, if either of them realized that I had been at LEAST four feet from the edge when we were all standing around talking, they never said anything. At least, not to me.

And I am never buying you anything again, ever.

2011-05-01T11:14:00.001-04:00

Tony works at a used bookstore. They sell everything: books, music, magazines, toys. He comes home from work every day with little treasures that couldn't be put on the shelves for whatever reason. He brings old books, puzzles, boardgames. Sometimes he finds action figures. The kids are so used to the treasures that Daddy brings home in his backpack that now, every time one of us walks in the door, Ruby runs up and yells, 'Did you bring a surprise for me?!' with Henry toddling behind her, repeating, 'Prize? PRIZE? ME?' I am always empty handed when they ask me, because I work for an optometrist and my supply of contact lens trials and the occasional bottle of allergy drops doesn't excite them much.

When we're out, I try really hard not to buy them things. It's difficult because there are so many things to possibly buy them and I love them very much and want them to be happy. So far, they're good at hearing the word no. We don't usually have tears or fits or begging when they spot a toy they want and are denied. Every once in a while, though, I'll see something that I know that they will love and I won't be able to help myself. A week ago, Henry and I were out running errands and these simple, $1 butterfly cups caught my eye. Henry saw them too, and pointed. 'Fly-Fly! Momeee! Fly-Fly!' And I thought, why not? It's just a little present, but I thought maybe they would get a kick out of these matching butterfly cups. I put them in the cart. Henry immediately grabbed his, cradling it in his arms and informing me that it was his, 'Fly-fly-babee.' When we got home I got to say, 'YES!' when Ruby asked if I had a surprise for her. I gave her the butterfly cup.

She was not impressed.

She held it in her hand for a minute, turned it around, frowned at it. She squinted her eyes a bit and looked up at me. 'This is my surprise?' she asked me. I nodded. 'This...this isn't a very good surprise.' I looked over at Henry, who was practically making out with his goddamn butterfly cup because he loved it so much. I was irritated and my feelings were a little hurt. I told her why what she said is rude and that it made her seem ungrateful. I told her that if she didn't want the cup then she should give it to me, that I would be happy to have it. She was still for a minute and then told me that she would keep the cup. She thanked me. I decided not to make a big deal of it. I decided to let it go. Except! Except Ruby won't let it go. So many times this past week, she's said out of nowhere, 'Remember when you got me that butterfly cup as a surprise? HA! That was a weird surprise.' Last night while we were eating dinner, she brought it up again. 'OH MAN,' Ruby giggled, 'What kind of surprise is a butterfly cup?' I fought back the urge to yell, 'Oh, you know what surprise YOU gave me that I didn't like? OH! WAIT! YOU HAVE NEVER BOUGHT ME ANYTHING.' (I didn't say it! Read: ADULTHOOD) I gave her a dirty look, told her to change the subject and continued to eat my dinner.

The thing with this kid is, she seems to be going through a terrible Veruca Salt phase. Nothing is ever good enough. I don't pay enough attention to her. I "give all my love to Henry." When we play "bolley-ball" she's sad because we didn't play hockey instead. We went to the playground yesterday and on the way back to the car she almost cried because she didn't have a balloon. This morning, she asked me to roll the ball back and forth in the living room (what exciting lives we lead!) and cried real tears because she wanted to sit on my side of the room, where I was already sitting. This afternoon the two of us have a movie date (Gnomeo & Juliet in 3D at the dollar theater), and she was just sulking because, 'What if I get there and I miss Daddy too much?' I have to say, I'm a little stumped. I am not sure how to proceed. As it is, I just point out the things she DOES have to be grateful for and walk away. I am fighting the melodramatic and passive aggressive urge to throw away the 12,000 toys she does have when she cries about the ONE toy that she doesn't. I'm just trying to ride it out.

But, I'll tell you something. I'm pretty sure I know what's going to happen this afternoon. Ruby and I will be sitting in the movie theater, snuggled into our seats, munching on popcorn and slurping our drinks. Ruby will look up at me, her face dwarfed by giant 3-D glasses. My heart will warm, I'll be so happy for this time together with her. I'll smile. She'll scrunch up her little face, open her mouth and say, 'Oh, mommy. I wish I had some Milk Duds.' And then. Then, I will lose my shit.

A Craigslist Missed Connection ad to myself

2011-04-28T12:15:00.002-04:00

I saw you pushing your two year old up and down the aisles in that wobbly, red cart. You looked a little lost. I overheard a little bit of the conversation between you and your son. 'Boo?' he asked you. 'Yes, boo.' you answered him. 'HOOOOOOOME.' he shrieked like a banshee, startling everyone within a twenty feet radius. I passed you again amidst the clearance racks of the women's section. Have you ever noticed how, unless you weigh 87 lbs or 300 lbs, nothing is ever quite right? Anyway, I don't think you noticed me because your son had just finished shotgunning his $2 Horizon Very Vanilla Milk-box and you were holding up a ruffly blue dress in front of yourself and asking him, 'What do you think, Henry? Can I pull it off? Or too many ruffles?' Henry stopped shaking the last drops of milk onto his pants and answered with, 'Ball? CUPCAKE! DOOOOCE!' I thought it was probably good judgement on your part when you traded in the ruffly dress for a pair of pre-stained boyfriend jeans. In the grocery section, when you asked your son what the family should have for dinner tonight and he shouted 'CHEESE,' I was glad that you went ahead and put that bag of frozen chicken breasts in the cart, anyway. I saw you once more before leaving; pushing your son towards the door, but having to stop and chase the two plastic butterfly cups he had thrown with all his might after screaming like a baby raptor. You move pretty quickly. I saw the look on your face as you continued to the door, realizing that at least four other moms were looking at you with half-smiles on their faces and a knowing look in their eyes. It was like I could read the questions racing through your mind just as easily if they were written on the page of a book: 'Have I been asking Henry stupid questions the entire time I've been shopping here? How loudly have I been asking these questions? Where did all these coffee stains on my shirt come from? Can they tell I haven't showered yet today?'

I just wanted to give you a little advice. Deep breath. Fuck it, whatever. Go home and play.

I'll call this one, "The Wilford"

2011-04-27T15:13:00.000-04:00

It's already been established that since I am terrible with money, Tony is in charge of our "savings". He has his own ways of going about this, and so far it's worked out okay for everybody because we have dinner every night and we are not currently sleeping in our car. One thing Tony focuses on (when he is not burying coffee cans full of pennies in the backyard) is SALES. The boy loves a sale. Hey, remember Easter? Did you know that after Easter, all the CANDY goes on sale? Specifically, the Cadbury Eggs?

I wish that this photo represented ALL of the Cadbury eggs he has bought since Monday, but it doesn't. One hour after this picture was taken, Tony went to the grocery store to buy some bread and came back with eight more boxes of Cadbury Eggs and two packs of MINI Cadbury Eggs.

Today I made cupcakes for my boss's son's third birthday party. I made more batter than I needed and decided to play a little bit. Which is why this happened:

They baked up nicely with the mini creme eggs nestled in the middle. And since I only made SIX Wilford Cupcakes, I needed a way to distinguish them from the rest? So I did this:

They are. Ridiculous. I mean, they're good, but. I shared one with Ruby? And now I just want to curl up in a fetal position and wait for tomorrow to start because I have super-human strength now and I can smell feelings.

The creme egg melted and pooled around the bottom. It carmelized a little and made the cupcake a little hard to unwrap, but totally worth the extra effort. Around the carmelized creme egg edges, it has a sort-of chewy, brownie-edge consistency that I have to stop thinking about right now and go lie down.

Wilford Brimley, I can smell your anger and disbelief and I want to tell you that I am sorry.

Some heartwarming Easter images from my family to yours

2011-04-24T18:28:00.001-04:00

I got so many great pictures of the kids today! Hunting for eggs, trying roller skates for the first time, sitting at the table for Easter dinner. This afternoon, my mom and I took Ruby on a long walk and we saw a chipmunk, two turtles and a mama duck PLUS ducklings. It was amazing and I got pictures of all of it! And then, while I was scrolling through the images on my camera from today, I found this:

And

And

And

Happy Easter! SWEET DREAMS.

Hopefully I'll save on therapy costs

2011-04-22T17:50:00.002-04:00

Up until a couple of years ago, I was the self-appointed Protector of My Mom's Happiness.I have somehow cured myself of this since my kids were born, but it took a really, really long time for me to not feel that I was the person who had to make sure my mom was safe, healthy and happy. I was her first child, her best friend, her reason for living--I was sure of it. I've had panic attacks since I was four years old, but what I remember the most about being a Panicky Child is that it was mostly about protecting my mom.

I remember laying in bed in the middle of the night, staring at my ceiling, waiting for dinosaurs to come back to life. I would try to calm myself by planning. I would make sure my shoes were next to my bed, for easy access. I would make sure my sheets were perfectly straight, so as not to become tangled around my legs when it was time to leap into my shoes and run. I would pause--when I hear the boom - boom - boom of the impending dinosaur footsteps; when I hear the panes of my window begin to rattle with each approaching stride--Do I wake up my mom? Is it possible to wake her up and not my step-dad? Should I just run for it? No, I could never leave her.

I remember sitting at a table near the window in my Montessori classroom. It was on the second floor of an old house near an artsy part of town. My teacher actually lived in this room; there was a curtain that she would pull around her sleeping area to keep us out of her things while we were in class. I was sitting at the window, looking down at the street below, watching the traffic light. I heard the phone ring in the Principal's office down the hall, and all of the air rushed out of my lungs. I was dizzy. I could hear the blood in my ears. My mom was dead, I was sure of it. That was the police on the phone, alerting everyone of the terrible accident she'd been in. I was alone now. I had let her out of my sight and she had died.

My parents divorced when I was eight years old and my mom remarried when I was ten. They would get married in Hawaii, I was told. They would be married there and they would have their honeymoon. They would be gone for an entire month, and I was not invited. The moment I was informed of this, I began to freak the fuck out and I just...didn't stop. I hyperventilated, cried, vomited and blacked-out my way through the months leading up to my mom's departure. She took me to therapy. She pleaded with me. She reasoned with me. Nothing helped. I was 100% sure that she would get on that plane, that plane would crash, and then she would die. There were only two ways for her life to be preserved: She could STAY HOME, or she could TAKE ME WITH HER. Neither was possible. No compromise was reached. She went to Hawaii, but before she left she put together a notebook. She wrote a letter to me for every single day she would be gone, so I could read them while we were apart. She promised to write me a postcard every day, and she gave me a worry stone. She had one herself, too. It was a green, flat, polished rock that she told me to keep in my pocket. Every day while she was gone, we would each take out our stones at 11:00 and take a moment to breathe and be calm and think about one another. Needless to say, none of that stuff really helped. I was a mess the whole time she was gone. But, she didn't die, and she actually came home, and everything went back to normal eventually. And I kept that worry stone for years.

I was at work today when a woman came in to pick up her glasses. She had her two daughters with her, who were four and two. The four year old sat down at one of our tables, and dumped out a bag of multi-colored, flat, polished stones. I shrieked when I saw them. I LOVE THOSE! I said to the little girl, I USED TO HAVE ONE WHEN I WAS LITTLE! and then before I could stop it, my whole anxiety-attack, Mother-missing, Hawaii-hating story just fell out of my mouth. The mom, who happens to be a therapist, was really sweet and understanding about it all. She smiled and nodded through the whole thing. And then, right before they left, her four year old walked up to my desk and silently put down two of her green stones about four inches away from my hand and smiled at me. I started thanking her over and over, and when I looked up at her mom I realized that we were both crying.

Later, I thought about my own four year old; the one I compare to a bulldozer in so many situations. She's sensitive, but she is a little bull about her feelings and the things that she wants and needs. Did you hurt her feelings? Well, you're gonna fucking hear about it. Is that bug in the corner scaring her? Well, she's gonna squish that little bastard. Earlier this week, my friend Carla and I were eating lunch with our four kids. I had bought a giant cookie that I split into six equal parts. Both of Carla's kids each offered her a bite of their cookie, which she accepted and cooed over. Henry, noting the good reaction they were getting, grinned at me and shyly offered me a bite of his cookie. Ruby, oblivious to all around her, shoved her entire cookie into her mouth and shouted, 'IS THERE ANY MORE?' I was comparing Ruby's behavior with that cookie to the 4 year old who gave me the stones today, and I decided something. I am so grateful for my hilarious, smart, bulldozer of a daughter. Put in that little girl's place, I don't think she would have shared her stones. Because she wouldn't feel responsible for a stranger's happiness. And I hope beyond hope that she never feels responsible for mine.

So, I'm in a gang now

2011-04-20T08:12:00.000-04:00

I joined Twitter a couple of months ago, and I have learned some things about myself. I have learned that when I have an extra glass of wine in me, I have absolutely no qualms about harassing my favorite bloggers (Sorry, Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Finslippy!), because I am SURE that they are 100% interested in the inside jokes I have with myself. I have also learned that it might be a good idea to cut back on my wine consumption for a little while. Also, and this is probably related, I am in a gang now. It's called the Murder Party Street Crew. We have a LIST, so everything is official.

A couple of important things have happened. The first that I am now Best Friends Forever with Jeremy London (from Mallrats), and he is actively trying to get me a part in a Major Hollywood Production. He's been passing my headshot around:

I have also found out that there is something every blogger (mommy or otherwise) does a lot that I never do, and that is GUEST POSTING. So! Internet! I have written my first guest post on you. It is about something very important and exciting and this evening I think I might sit down, have a glass of wine and send it to Gwynnie's people, because I am pretty sure it is good enough to be featured on Goop. She's on the Twitter, right?

So! Here it is, Internet. HERE IS MY GUEST POST.

BOOK REPORT: Sisters Red

2011-04-16T21:55:00.000-04:00

I love YA fiction. I'm not usually into the supernatural stuff, but I picked up Sisters Red because Bitch Magazine started a YA Book Club this spring. I was really excited to start this one, though, because it appeared to have a very strong Little Red Riding Hood theme and I love re-tellings of myths and fairy tales. It started out beautifully and strong and it captured my attention right away. It was well written and I loved the idea of the girls as the fighting and incredibly strong heroines (as opposed to certain simpering, waifish, wallflower-girls who have been quite popular in recent novels). Their bond as sisters was interesting and deep. The girls each tell their own story in alternating chapters, the author did a wonderful job in giving each girl a unique voice. And then! And then they move (with their BFF Silas, a boy) to the city to hunt Werewolves. And then it loses me. In the big city, the three kids try to track, bait and kill the Fenris, their name for Werewolves. The Fenris only kill young women and are excited by and drawn to beauty, youth and fear. Walking down a city street one night, Scarlett (the Alpha Sister; the True Fighter) sighs as she watches a group of girls standing outside a club, glittering in makeup, heels and trashy clothes.

The Dragonflies laugh, sweet and bubbly, and I groan in exasperation. They toss their hair, stretch their legs, sway their hips, bat their eyelashes at the club's bouncer, everything about them luring the Fenris. Inviting danger like some baby animal bleating its fool head off. Look at me, see how I dance, did you notice my hair, look again, desire me, I am perfect. Stupid, stupid Dragonflies. Here I am, saving your lives, bitten and scarred and wounded for you, and you don't even know it. i should let the Fenris have one of you.

I think the above is the exact point where the book totally lost me. Maybe because the furor over that recent article in the New York Times covering the gang rape of that poor child in Texas is still so fresh in my mind. I don't know, but this struck a major negative chord with me. What's with the slut shaming? I understand that this could be part of Scarlett's character; her rejection of "normal life" in favor of a life devoted to killing monsters, but it is never addressed beyond her judgement of the "Dragonflies." This, paired with the "abstinence porn" disguised as the relationship budding between two of the main characters made the second half of this story really hard for me to choke down. Every time it was time to read one of Scarlett's chapters my inner voice would just yell, 'SHUT UP, you judjy slut-shaming jerk' over and over again and it pretty much ruined the whole experience for me.

I'm going to go read Till We Have Faces or The Westing Game to get the taste of this book out of my brain.

This is my Friday gift to you

2011-04-15T14:17:00.000-04:00

You can download and print here, if you'd like. I'm not going to because I've already gotten like 37 goddamn Bingos.

Adventures in Henry's new vocabulary

2011-04-14T10:28:00.000-04:00

Me: Henry, do you want to take Ozzie-the-dog on a walk?
Henry: RUBY! (boo-beeee!)
Me: Ruby's not here! She's at school. Do you want to go on a walk? Go outside?
Henry: CHICKEN! (thi-hen!)
Me: I--what?
HenryI PLEASE? (peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeb?)

So! Time to go; I've got a chicken to walk.

Sometimes I think my pediatrician can suck it.

2011-04-13T14:16:00.001-04:00

I really love her. I do! I love her. She's hilarious, she's a great dresser and my kids love her. She gave me the gift of drinking! Henry was my second, and on his six-month well-baby checkup, I was still nursing him and she asked me if I knew how long to wait after having a glass of wine to nurse. I told her that I hadn't had anything to drink in over a year, since months before I got pregnant with Henry. Her eyes got wide. She leaned forward and put her hand on my knee. Oh, honey, she told me, It's time. You stop at the store and buy a bottle of wine on your way home.

Henry did great at his 2-year checkup. He's moving well, clear-eyed, intelligent, gorgeous. He is healthy and happy. He is perfect. And then she asks me: And how many words is he saying? I stumbled. I could name four or five, max. Mommy, Daddy, blue, cupcake (pronounced Mom-eeee, Dad-eeee, boo, cuh-haay) Oh! Her eyebrows shot up, just those words? He isn't using three-word sentences yet? I was dumbfounded. He's only TWO, I told her. He's two and he has a four year old sister who never stops talking, ever. She laughed and nodded and glanced over at Ruby talking to herself in the corner of the exam room. The rest of the exam went smoothly and then, right before our pediatrician walked out of the room she turned to me and said, 'Well, let me know if he isn't using three word sentences in the next eight weeks or so. You call me and we'll set you up with a speech therapist!' And then she left. She just left! Just like that! And! Speech therapy? He's fucking two!

Here is the thing about Henry: He is a big baby. He is a baby. A big one! He is still a wobbly walker. Sometimes he still takes two naps a day. He still uses a paci to sleep and wants to be rocked and sung to at night. He is an excellent pointer and grunter. He can wave and nod and nudge and grin like no other kid I've ever met. He knows exactly how to let you know what he wants, he would just rather not do it with words at the moment. He's 26 months old now, and talking a little more, but he's still hard to understand. He has picked up some new words and commands: Mo dink, peeb (more drink please), us go, toopid ogg (stupid dog). He knows his colors. He knows some of his letters and numbers. He just refuses to say them.

Here's the thing about me: I don't give a shit. He's happy, he's eating, he's healthy. So what if his speech still sounds like Klingon? I can understand him most of the time; if I can't then he shows me what he wants. I'm so tired of all the pressure to make my kids the smartest/politest/sportyest. Who cares? I get so upset thinking about this stuff. Next door to where I work, a tutoring center just opened and they're going to offer a curriculum-based preschool for kids 18 months and up. They're going to teach them two different languages. They're going to teach them to read. Languages and reading are both wonderful things, but why can't we just let babies be babies? Why should I feel guilty about not hiring a speech therapist for my two-year-old or not forcing four-year-old Ruby to work harder at sounds and reading? WELL, I shouldn't and I don't. I am fine with letting Ruby choose play dough over worksheets and, while it's been 8 weeks since our appointment and he has learned a lot of new words, I am really okay with Henry staying a baby for as long as he damn well pleases.

Born creepers

2011-04-08T13:59:00.000-04:00

P.S. The first one to make fun of my Hill Witch hair gets stabbed. I GOT THREE HOURS OF SLEEP LAST NIGHT

Bad cop

2011-04-07T10:59:00.002-04:00

Ruby is rarely Ruby. I love her name. I knew that my daughter would be named Ruby before I was ever pregnant. There was never any question in my mind; I never doubted her name for a second. Of course, she barely uses it. It's not that she dislikes her name, exactly, she is just so wrapped up in being other people. She wants to be the characters in the books she reads. She wants to be the girls in the cartoons we watch. She is always pretending to be someone else. Today, she is Penny from Inspector Gadget. She's got her jeans cuffed, her short-sleeved shirt, her tennis shoes. She carries around her "computer book" and pretends to push buttons and solve the day's mysteries. 'Oh, you can't find your sunglasses? [poke, poke, poke] BEEP-BEEP-BEEP...My computer book says they are...ON TOP OF THE PIANO!' This morning on the way to preschool she was assigning characters. Ruby was, of course, Penny. Henry was Brain. Tony was Inspector Gadget. My dad (Papa Bob), who we are meeting for lunch this afternoon, is Chief Quimby. And then? Quiet.

Me: Ruby? Who am I? The only person left is...Dr. Claw.
Ruby: Yes! You are Dr. Claw.
Me: WHY DO I ALWAYS HAVE TO BE THE BAD GUY?
Ruby: It's okay, Mommy! Dr. Claw can be nice, too! He does nice things sometimes.
Me: Oh? Like what? When did he do something nice?
Ruby: Um. I don't know. I made that up just now.

I'm just like Nessie

2011-04-05T17:44:00.000-04:00

Fun Fact: I don't photograph well. At all, ever. If I KNOW I am being photographed, I tense up and my shoulders shoot up to my earlobes and the right side of my mouth starts to twitch upward into this weird, lopsided quarter-smile. I get crazy eyes. I can't help it; I see a camera pointed at me and I lose all control of my facial muscles. I get so stressed out and self conscious if someone is in the room taking pictures. How should I hold my hands? Am I sitting up straight? Am I doing that face-tic thing? Maybe I should just sort of tilt myself 17 degrees to the right... After every family holiday, my mom immediately posts our pictures on Facebook. I sit in front of my computer and wait for the notifications so I can immediately untag myself from every single one. Because in all of them, I look like a hunchbacked, 400 lb., crazy-eyed, slanty-faced insane person who happens to be dislocating her jaw to eat that cupcake a little faster. A friend once told me, after noticing all these terrible pictures that my mom posts, 'It's like she's doing it on purpose! How are they all so bad?' I know she's not doing it on purpose. It's because almost every single picture she has of me is equally bad. She has no choice. Consider the following:

Here is our Control. Do you know how many pictures Tony had to take of me until one looked like me? 7,000. This one was like #5,559. He kept looking at me over the camera saying, 'Just STOP that. That...that THING with your EYES. You're DOING it again.'

Now! Here is what happens when my picture is casually taken. Today, we went to the zoo. Here's me and Henry watching the sting rays:

AAH, GAH. I WILL EAT YOUR SOULS, STING RAYS.

And then! And then we went on a train ride!

WHAT THE HELL, PHOTOGRAPHY? What did I ever do to YOU? Why? I just. There are no words. I really don't know what to say or do. Photography, is there some sort of sacrifice I can offer you? Is there something I can give you so that you won't hate me so much? So that you'll stop doing this to me?

I'm sorry about that last picture. I know that it will haunt you for weeks, maybe months. I'm going to post a couple of Visual Palate Cleansers:

Tony took this picture of the little girl in front of us on the train. She was. Licking it.

This is a giraffe's ass.

The End.

My Grandma vs. George R. R. Martin

2011-04-03T18:14:00.003-04:00

My friend Erin and I started a Tumbler blog called Space Koi, because she went to China and was tricked into buying this silk duvet cover. (The full story is here, if you are curious. It is wonderful.)

See those koi-shaped blobs on top of the other, slightly darker blobs? Don't they look like koi floating in space? Of course they do.

I also forced Erin to start reading the George R. R. Martin series, A Song of Ice and Fire. Because it is amazing. And she's been live-texting me her reactions to the books, which is basically the best thing that's ever happened to me. So today, I decided to do a George R. R. Martin Space Koi tumblr entry. First, because I thought it would be hilarious; second, because I have no friends or hobbies.

I had this idea of finding a picture of George R. R. Martin sitting in front of a window, and I would photoshop Space Koi outside, staring in, looking impatient for book five. I found a great picture on this website.

Perfect! Then, all I needed was a goldfish to insert into the...wait...the...window?

I. I didn't put that there. That was ALREADY THERE. I looked through the website, too, and the fact that my Grandma is lurking outside a Finnish window brandishing a scimitar and glaring at George R. R. Martin is definitely not addressed.

For reference, here is a picture of my Grandma holding Newborn Henry. Now, I know that I seem to be saying this a lot lately (why? what is wrong with me?), but I AM SORRY, GRANDMA. I really am going to need to know why your ghostly image is stalking one of my favorite authors, though. And could you tell it to tell him to hurry the hell up?

An open letter to that one bearded hipster at Starbucks

2011-04-02T19:46:00.001-04:00

I get it, man. Your hiking boots indicate to me that you feel at one with nature. Your $200 ensemble; painstakingly distressed almost-army pants, brand-new sweater that looks exactly like the one in the back of your grandpa's musty closet. Your long, lustrous, well-conditioned hair. Your epic beard, looking like Gandalf's did when he was a thirty-something-year-old independent filmmaker. I get it. You're not part of our system. You don't bend to our rules and conventions. You live your art. Your art is who you are. You don't need commercialism or brand awareness or the Media to tell you what to do and what to like. You've got your own fucking ideas, am I right?

Here's the thing: Next time you're hanging out at your local suburban Starbucks editing footage while you listen to the new Mountain Goats album through your little white earbuds...Next time? Maybe bring a laptop. Maybe leave your 27-inch iMac at home. Maybe don't load everything into a giant, Mac-Brand (EVEN THE BAG HAD AN APPLE ON IT) sack and carry it all in your Subaru to the local Starbucks and then plug it into their wall and take up two entire tables and pretend to work.

I know you were just surfing pinterest and pitchfork, anyway.

Love,
KQ

Goodbye, K❤K.

2011-04-01T18:45:00.002-04:00

You know how sometimes the dog pees on the carpet even though you took him out ten minutes ago and he lifted his leg on that tree (OH, I DON'T KNOW) for at least twenty solid seconds? And you're out of paper towels so you have to clean up the huge puddle of pee with half a roll of bargain-brand toilet paper and also an old tee shirt that you bought at Goodwill that says K♥K on it that it turned out you were too prudish to wear in public so you sacrificed it to this cause? And then you stand up, walk over to wash your pee-soaked hands in the kitchen sink and notice the brand new roll of paper towels on the windowsill? WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO GET THIS DOG?

So.

2011-03-31T20:14:00.001-04:00

Wow, today! Today was something. I worked today, which is usually my day off, because a girl at work is on vacation. Apparently, the change in my schedule has knocked the entire Known Universe off-kilter.

My kids are insane; Ruby has been turning into a screaming, writhing hysterical pile of pink tulle and tears every time one of her demands is not met. Out of kleenex? Scream. No more jellybeans? Hysterical shrieking. Can't remove the "inside" of her eggplant parmesan? Gozor-esque teeth-baring. Writhing. Hissing.
Today, a middle aged man came into my Place of Business, bent over in front of me, shoved his ass in my face and asked me if his pants were dirty. I have nothing to add to this.
I came home from work to find that Ozzie-The-Dog (for the third time in a month) had left me piles of at least three different kinds of waste all over the kitchen floor. Also, giant clumps of hair. Also, a claw or two. Seeing as he only does this when we leave the house and is otherwise extremely healthy, I think we can all agree that there is only one explanation. My dog is a fucking Animorph. I don't know how it happened, I don't know how long it will continue to happen, but I guess I'm just going to have to learn to live with it. And also buy him a crate.
Do you see on my blog, up there at the top, where it says, "Next Blog"? I like to push that button, mostly because I'm a masochist. I'll hit that button over and over and over again and I'll find one mommy blog after another. They all have giant pictures of babies at the top and perky names like, THE WILSON CHRONICLES!! and SUPER-DUPER BLESSED MOMMY OF SEVEN. They're mostly Mormon, which is totally fine, but. I'm not? And I feel like I am...a little...different...than the people Blogger has decided to lump me in with? I was talking about this earlier with Mr. Smonk You (who has a lovely non-Mormon blog with abosultely zero clip-art shabby chic backgrounds [official blurb]), and to prove a point, I just looked at my own blog and hit the button. Which took me...here. Really, Blogger? This is who I am now? I think I might have been happier as a Mormon.

BEST SALE EVER

2011-03-30T11:06:00.001-04:00

I bought seven.

April Fools

2011-03-29T08:24:00.000-04:00

I met my husband in an Internet chat room 13 years ago. We knew each other online for 4 years before we decided to meet each other face to face. Three months after our first meeting (at the Borders in Ann Arbor, the exact halfway point), we got married. We were married by the Justice of the Peace on March 13th here in Indianapolis and Tony moved in with me and my roommate. Two months later, my mom surprised us with plane tickets to Toronto because it was Tony's mom's birthday and I had never met his family. We planned a three day weekend. We spent weeks taking pictures of our house, our friends, our jobs, our pets to take back and show Tony's family. We packed three days worth of clothes, the pictures, some gifts and we were off. We had a great visit and I immediately fell in love with Tony's family. And then it was time to come back home.

We got held up at customs in the airport. There was a problem with Tony's paperwork. They sent us to the tiny, hot immigration office where we waited for three hours for someone to speak to us. There was a screen on the wall displaying all the flights. I kept focusing on the flights out to Chicago (our connection point) and watching as we missed every single one because we were stuck in that room. Finally, they took Tony back. An hour later, he burst out of the interview room with a stack of papers in his hand. Mandatory six week vacation, he told me. Let's go. Tony didn't have the right kind of visa to reenter the States, it turned out. They wouldn't let him back in until he had his Green card.

It did not take six weeks. It took 14 months. I did freelance work to help pay our rent and bills in Indiana. Tony got a job at a Blockbuster so we could have spending money. For 14 months, we lived in my in-law's basement in Ontario and tried to file our papers over and over again. We kept doing everything wrong and having to start over. Finally, my uncle put us in touch with Senator Lugar's office (the only Republican I will ever vote for, probably) and his secretary started helping us. She was amazing; she knew the rules, she knew who to call when we had a question, she was able to check on the status for us. Meanwhile, we spent every single day hunched over in my In-law's basement, playing video games, chain smoking DeMauriers and feeling sorry for ourselves. I view this as a testament to our compatibility: Had I been locked up with anyone else in the universe for such a long time, I probably would have stabbed them in the face. But Tony and I had a lovely time, all things considered.

And then it happened! All of our paperwork was done! We had an interview scheduled! We had to drive to Montreal for our interview. I had all these terrifying images of being barked at, gestapo style, under a single lamp. They would question every detail of my relationship with Tony, looking for cracks and lies. I was sick about it. I didn't sleep for two days. Finally, it was time. We were ushered into a tiny room with a woman behind a Plexiglas wall. She looked at us. She asked us to describe what happened at the airport. We did. Oh? That's it? No biggie, she said. NO FUCKING BIGGIE! That was it. That was our interview. At the consulate we were each given an 8x10 envelope. Each one was stuffed with papers, about an inch thick. They were sealed. Do not open these envelopes, she told us, or bad things will happen. I figured they were full of all the medical records, police reports, CIA secret files and official documents we'd had to file throughout all this. It drove me crazy not to look inside.

So finally, the time came to try to come home to the States. We stopped at the immigration office at the Port Huron border and went inside. We handed our envelopes to an immigration agent, just like we were told to. He opened our envelopes. We gasped. He went through the entire contents, page by page. He frowned. He finally looked up at is. Your passport? he said to Tony. Tony handed it to him, wordlessly. I stood there, watching him frowning; sick to my stomach, sweating, dizzy, mostly-insane. The immigration officer look up. Is this some kind of joke, he said? I immediately screeched and started crying hysterically. I knew it! I knew these assholes would never let me go home! I knew this would never, ever happen. We were going to live in my in-law's basement forever. Tony put his arms around me and he was shaking, I could feel it. The immigration officer, obviously surprised and mystified by our reaction said, Ha! Your passport...your passport was issued on April 1st. April Fool's Day. Tony and I stopped and stared at him. Wide-eyed. Open-mouthed. Incredulous. The officer stamped a temporary Green card for Tony. You guys are done, he said. Go home.

I hate April Fool's Day.

Maybe don't read this?

2011-03-27T13:25:00.000-04:00

Here's something: If I know you in real life, you might recognize yourself in this post. And if you do, I want to establish a couple of things. I don't want sympathy, I don't want apologies. I don't want to upset you, but I guess I understand if I do. I know that this is self-serving and whiny, but I'm just going to go ahead and write what I want. Because I can. And because it makes me feel better.

I make a lot of plans and I get stood up a lot. At the last minute. Someone will cancel dinner because they're sick and I won't say anything even though I saw their 300 Facebook status updates about Jager bombs at the bar the night before. They break plans with me to do things with other people, and I grin and say it's fine, even though I rearranged my day's schedule and I know my daughter is going to cry when I break the news to her. It's happening a lot more lately, and this morning I declared, ENOUGH!. I work in a doctor's office and we have this rule where if a patient doesn't show up for three appointments in a row, they are downgraded to official "Walk-In Only Status." They are welcome to pop in when they have time. If we have time for them, then the doctor will see them. If we're busy, then they just have to leave. A month or so ago, there were a couple of people I half-jokingly downgraded to Walk-In Only status and (of course) have not seen or spoken to them since.

We went to meeting this morning and the reading was Luke 10:38-42, which is this:

At the Home of Martha and Mary ³⁸ As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. ³⁹ She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” ⁴¹ “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Our Associate Pastor talked about Martha being the oldest sibling and resentful of Mary because she didn't feel like Mary made enough of an effort. Gail talked about how she herself is an older sibling and can identify the feeling of overburdening that comes along with that, to which I can absolutely relate. With two younger brothers, I sometimes feel like a herd dog; trying to shove and bark them into line; trying to force them to do the things that I feel they ought to. I have a very clear sense of what ought to be and I feel obligated to make that happen; whether it's my 24 year old brother paying for his own breakfast, my 18 year old brother doing the goddamn dishes, or the people around me respecting obligations they've made to me and my family. But then, Gail pointed out that the whole point of this passage was that Martha needed to learn how to get the hell over herself. She might have taken on all the work, and she might feel unfair, but the bottom line was that it doesn't matter. It wasn't a big deal. Our pastor started talking about Spiritual Gifts; Martha's was Hospitality and Mary's was Apolstleship. Gail told us hers were Shepherding and Teaching. And while I sat there, four-fifths of the way to feeling better about everything, I dejectedly wondered what mine are. Ostrichship? Dumped-on-ed-ness? And then we sat in silence and my clouds cleared and I realized that, honestly, it doesn't matter. I love these people regardless and I just need to suck it up and get on with it. In the scheme of things, this is not at all a big deal.

And then?

And then we drove home from church and Ruby made us listen to this goddamn Weird Al (who she swears is a "lady") song that she calls "Everything is Wrong" four fucking times:

So. Even though I had achieved peace about all this not even an hour ago, now I want you guys to know one thing: The next time you stand me up I am going to run you over with my car.

Toddler logic

2011-03-24T08:22:00.001-04:00

Ruby is so particular about what she wears. DRESSES is what she wears. Pink ones. Anything else involves bargaining, begging and threatening on my part. This week so far has spoiled us; 70-degree days, sunshine, cool breezes. There was absolutely no question that Ruby could wear whatever she wanted. But today it's cold again! It's barely-above-freezing and a school day, at that. I've been arguing with her for an hour about why she is not going to wear the ruffly little sun dress she picked out for herself. She was crying and waving the dress around in my face and yelling WHY! WHHYYYY! So, I told her why.

Me: Sweetheart. I know you want to wear that. And I'm sorry that you can't. But it is cold outside. You have to pick something warmer.
Ruby: WHHHHHHYYYYY!
Me: That's it! Go put on pants! It's too cold. I DO NOT CONTROL THE WEATHER.
Ruby: [Stops for a second. Thinks. Starts sobbing again.] But! I want you to! Why can't you control the weather??

A long time ago, my mom was giving me unsolicited parenting advice and she told me, One thing you'll learn, Kelly, is that you do everything you can for your children. You give them everything. But, you'll never feel like it's enough. At the moment I thought it was a pretty shitty sentiment; what, she's telling me I'm ungrateful now? But! Faced this morning with my four-year-old daughter's indignant fury over the fact that I can't change the fucking weather, I think that now I understand. Also, I quit.