The YouTube Video

I want to make would be of me hunched in front of a YouTube video of the hands of a lady crocheting. And I'd be casting on my first stitches--got it--pausing and restarting the video just a couple of times while I catch up. And then there would be the moment where the crocheting lady turns the needle back towards the stitches, does a kind of lickety-split ally-oop abracadabra "Slip it back through the humunuh zumunuh like so!" And then the moment of me, with my cheerful pink yarn and crochet hook, saying "Fuck." And clicking the play arrow again. And again. And then this would be spliced together with all the other videos of me watching all the other crocheting ladies on YouTube you can see if you type in the words "learn to crochet"--all the other ladies who speak slowly and clearly, this is the way we do it, following along nicely nicely until they get to the presto-magic-oh-sorry-didn't-you-catch-that part where they obscure from view the mysterious humunuh zumunuh that is keeping me on the WRONG SIDE OF THE CROCHET CONSPIRACY. In the background you might see my kids standing in the doorway, alarmed.

Would you watch that video and email it to your friends? Would you please teach me how to crochet? There is something seriously perverted about trying to learn an ancient womanly handicraft off of YouTube. May I should just try learning how to make a bong from a Pringles can instead. Besides--what do I want to crochet anyways? A tea cosy? Hacky sacks? A yarmulke?

Meanwhile, I wanted to mention the Wondertime columns here and also here. And to thank you for saying all those nice things about the plain-Janeness of this blog--those nice things that I trolled for so shamelessly. Oh this old blog? Really? You don't think it makes me look a little pear-shaped? A little frowsy? Thank you.

Pottery Barn Catalogue

I hadn't planned to mention this, but arriving here today I realize that while so many of your blogs are so stylish and beautiful, with the overstuffed armchairs of design and the cozy window seats and the sunny places to lie and read, this blog--which I have had big plans for--remains the college frat boy bachelor pad of the blog world, with the vinyl venetian blinds and the milk crates for furniture and the bare walls. I am sorry for that, and also open to your tactful, low-tech suggestions.

But what I really wanted to say today (besides please go read my wondertime column) is how much I'm just loving your comments. For example, somebody wrote over there that I might consider teaching Michael to be sensitive to the kids' sicknesses, and teach him "with patience," the way you would a child. And I found this to be an utterly radical suggestion. It's hard enough for me to be patient with the children--but with my partner, my god, it barely even occurs to me to try. I don't say that with pride, just realization and a desire to change. Thank you.

Here, you have been talking about your "clothes chairs" which so hilariously mirrors the glide rocker in my bedroom, that I laughed out loud. It's my own special laundry purgatory, where the clothes are neither dirty nor clean: jeans with a tiny bit of mud on the cuff; a running bra worn for a half-mile slog through the neighborhood; a skirt that's too exhausting to hang on the thingy with the clips. I so hear you.

Also I really just appreciate so much hearing that you worry too.

And finally, I seem to have started a rumor that I'm coming to Ottowa, and I wish it were true. I was only expressing to a Canadian blogger here my interest in ice skating down a river, so naturally we got to talking about Ottowa. But I still do often wish I had a river I could skate away on.

Time of Wonder

Happy New Year, dear friends! I wanted to post a quick link to this column at wondertime, and to draw your attention to a comment at the bottom of the page that posts a link to an ebay auction raising money for the Kim family. The art that people have donated is unbelievable: honestly, it's inspiring just to look at those beautiful things. Thank you for posting that.

In related news, things are smoothing out with the comments over there, and I'm still asking you to try it out, and thanking you for trying and/or persevering, and letting you know that the good people at wondertime are eager to hear about your problems! Please send a note describing your problem, along with the e-mail address you are using to sign on, to memberservices@Wondertime.com. I mean, when else do you ever get encouragement to kvetch about your problems? You could even write them about how you, say, finally took your crib apart to put way, only you forgot that every box of memoribilia in the house was stored beneath it. Every box of crap that is now piled up, dusty and exposed, in the middle of your bedroom. I don't know if they could help you with that. I'm just saying you could mention it.

Happy Holidays!

We've been home without internet access for nearly a week now (you'd think our vacationing neighbor would be thoughtful enough to leave her wireless on for our poaching pleasure!) and even though I have missed it, I have also not missed it, if you know what I mean. What do you know--in a week I got emails neither from the MacArthur Genius Grant people (We love your blog! Here's a million dollars!) nor from some old pining-away ex who just wanted to write me a holiday note mentioning how powerfully he still fantasizes about my hot body. Go figure. And I was remarkably able to sit still without that dinging-in feeling haunting me round the clock. But now I wanted to check in and see how everyone was doing, see how the balance of magical/exhausting went for you this year. I hope it all tipped towards the magical.

I also wanted to send you to the new(ish) columns over at wondertime, here. They're both linked from the one page in the new site redesign. Fancy! Also, if I could please encourage you to post your comments over there, that would be awesome! Because they want to see your comments over there! They really really want to! If you run into any kind of trouble, come back here and post, and I'll relay the messages, like the little cyber carrier pigeon that I am.

And finally, thank you to Sarah for reposting that Chex Mix recipe (it's in the comments from the last entry), to "anonymous" for all those viagra links (I should really start deleting the spam, I know), and to everyone who posted a wise nugget about the cheese pumpkin. In the end, I fed the rest of it to our starving garbage disposal, but only because a ginormous turkey needed the spot in the fridge, I swear.

All my best to you and your families for a rich, healthy, and wonderful new year.

xo Catherine

Cheese Pumpkin

Okay, it's as bad as it sounds: cheese pumpkin, like the name of a band that's just trying to be weird by putting two different words together in a gross way. But it was part of our farm share, along with other large and frightening winter squashes, like kabocha and hubbard, and so we took it, and so I spent the better part of the afternoon covered in flour and pumpkin guts turning it into something like empanadas with leeks and thyme and cheese--and yes, they were fine, but believe me: you wouldn't have missed the cheese pumpkin. The kids pressed them flat with their fingers and then finally choked them down but were not buying the whole "pumpkin pie" thing I tried Polyannaing on their small and sorry squash-eating selves. Plus, worse, there is still half of a seeded, peeled cheese pumpkin in my fridge to be turned into--what? Cheese pumpkin relish? Cheese pumpkin meatloaf?

That's why I have no energy to write. I blame the cheese pumpkin. But I wanted to say that wondertime is doing something a little funky with its links--to be fixed soon--but this week's column is here.

You should be able to link to last week's from there--by clicking on last week's date in that right-hand column. I really appreciate you taking the time to look. What with all the eggnog waiting to be drunk. Or "egg mog" as Birdy calls it. Cheese pumpkin nog! Cheese pumpkin Chex mix! Sigh.

My Bodyguards

I feel about you all the way I felt about my high school boyfriend, who used to lean over menacingly on the subway, all 90 pounds of him, and say to various bystanders, "You lookin' at my woman?Are you? Are you, dawg?" (And these various poor men would back quietly away, instead of answering, "Um, no--I actually wasn't.") Which is to say: I am in love with you. "They thought you looked FAT? They did, did they? We'll kill them. Actually, they're dead. We killed them already." But, lovies, I was kidding. The publishers thought I looked great pregnant. They just thought the book would sell better with that other cover, and they were probably right.

But I'm so glad to know you're ready out there, with the riot gear. We will likely need it one of these days.

One-Stop Holiday Shopping

And want to see something that maybe I'm not supposed to show you?


Interesting, no? They switched it in the end because they thought my pregnancy made me look fat. No, I'm totally kidding about that. Although they did photoshop the bruises off of Ben's legs because it looked like maybe we'd been disciplining him with a croquet mallet. And I'm not kidding about that. I mean, the croquet mallet part I'm kind of kidding about--that wasn't their exact worry. Not that we were whacking at Ben's shins with any kind of bat or club, I swear.

Don't buy the book because you think you would like it or because a friend is expecting a second baby or because it offers a holiday sentiment (albeit in the form of Ben's commentary on the Grinch's penis). Buy it because you pity me. After two weeks of coughing, choking misery, the doctor grinned and diagnosed me with a "cold." Then I had to sit there trying not to look like a person who is waiting to be prescribed the cough medicine with codeine in it. You can't look like you want it too bad. "Anything for the cough?" I said, casual as a fig newton. And finally yes, yes there was something for the cough. Last night I slept on the bottom of the ocean floor--the sleep of the heavily, heavenly drugged.

I wanted to thank you for the comments you have already posted about this column at wondertime. Over and over again, that "you are not alone" feeling offers me more relief than you could imagine. And Ben's fine now, of course. It was just a heartachey breeze blowing past.

There was this, too, from last week that I never linked to, busy as I was laughing at your suggestions that I make that pinata photo the cover of my "next book." (If you have any more information about this "next book" please do write and let me know!)

I hope you enjoyed a Thanksgiving filled with thanks and with the great and ceremonious unbuttoning of your pants at the dinner table.

Another Reason Why I Love You So Much.

Another in a Long Series of Reasons, That Is.

Here I am, thinking I'm going to crack you up--that you're going to be like: "Birthday gift. Birthday gift. Birthday gift. Black brassiere! Ha ha ha." And I thought we'd all have a laugh a little bit at the expense, I'm sorry to say, of the folks who used to give me such a hard time about the dolls, the pink, the whatever it was they imagined we were giving Ben: mascara? crotchless panties? a brazilian wax?

And then instead you all made me laugh. So much. Besides the nursings and the Victoria's Secret outing (both brillian guesses), I had totally forgotten about the accidental boob pinata! What's that expression? You know me better than I know myself. (Note to new readers: it was supposed to look like a heart. I swear. But the red pompoms Ben added later really didn't help. I admit we all felt a little creepy when the kids took a baseball bat to it. But still: Candy-filled juggs! It's the wet dream of every fourteen-year-old boy in America.)

For old time's sake, I offer you this, with my deepest, most grateful affection:



And p.s.: I got the spirograph on ebay--the exact kit my brother and I used!--and it has been a tremendous hit. Not that the bra wouldn't have been a great gift in its own special way.

Three of These Things Have Something in Common

Can you guess what it is?

Are there clues here, or here? No.
But maybe here.

Beavers Are Very Sad Animals

Apparently. Because this is the expression Ben is making in every one of our Halloween pictures.

Maybe it's the incessant chewing down of trees, the constant building of dams and lodges, never knowing which are the dams and which are the lodges or what the difference is. Or maybe it's simply that they pity the fearful snakes they run into.

*Note: for your viewing pleasure, I airbrushed in a few extra chins on myself. Just to highlight the difference between Birdy's peach-face and my turkey-neck-face.

For some reason, after trick-or-treating for hours and generating 36 pieces of seasonal candy (but who's counting? Oh, Ben is.), it occurred to Birdy that she would die an immediate snakey death if she did not unwrap and devour her 10-month-old chocolate Santa from last Christmas. And so she did.

Another in the series of non-posts

I know that you guys don't actually have a spare second, what with your incessant brushing of your lips with a toothbrush and also the constant slathering onto your lips of nipple cream and udder cream and heinie cream (thank you for all your great advice!)--

But:

I wrote this.
And also this.

Over at wondertime.

I'm having a hard time keeping up with both a column and a blog, as you have likely noticed, and I wish I were doing better at it. But then again, I also wish that the caulk around my bathtub weren't dark grey and furry. And that Birdy's baby book didn't contain only a one-month photo and a five-month photo. (Is that better or worse than Ben's, which contains about a million pictures of our tabby cat and of me, pregnant--because that's when there's time to d0 the baby book! Before the baby's born!) And that I could figure out a way to get the spices to stick to the Chex without all that yummy butter.

But our gutters are fixed. OUR GUTTERS ARE FIXED. So really, what is there left to wish for? ("You saved my marriage!" I said to the Slavic teenager who fixed them, and he backed away from me and smiled and said, "Voonderful!" and backed all the way into his gutter truck and drove away.) Working gutters, two sleeping children, and a house full of miniature candy bars. Life is good.

Happy Halloween, you dear ghouls and goblins. I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow.

Because I am grateful

And also because, ahem, in all of your fabulous responses to my blog questions, very few of you mentioned "helpful hints" as a reason you come back here and I would like to rectify that, I offer you this pearl: If you have already eaten half a bag of Frito-Lay Naturals Cheetos White Cheddar Puffs Cheese Flavored Snacks, and if you are planning on eating the remaining half a bag, get yourself a pair of scissors and snip off the top of the bag! You will end up with much less cheese dust on your knuckles and wrist. Also, you will be less tempted to, say, put the puffs away, because now there's not even enough bag to rubberband closed, and so you will do the sensible thing and eat every last puff. (Kill me.)

But, now that we're sharing advice like sugar in this neighbor-across-the-fence way, can I ask: when your lips are so chapped that it's like you're wearing another pair of lips on top of your actual lips, and rubbing any kind of balm into them is as effective as, say, spritzing Spray and Wash onto a chain-mail vest to get out the stain on your underwear beneath, what do you do? Can I loofah my lips?

What? You wanted to hear about Ben and Birdy? Oh. There's this. And yes, I took that picture, and yes, that's the yolk of a poached egg decorating her maniac face.

Whoa Nelly!

So, um, holy frijoles! I askedeth and receivedeth. This is fantastic. Thank you. I probably have just about enough feedback at this point, and am so grateful for your thoughtful responses. Please know--even if I can't thank you all individually, or am too delinquent to, and even if I don't quote everyone directly--your thoughts will completely inform the piece I'm going to write.

Don't forget to bring this coupon for your free mojito!

Special Request

Dear Ones,

I''m not writing to ask you to go read this, if that's what you were thinking.

I'm not even writing to tell you how Ben and Birdy were having a quiet conversation in the back of the car last night and when Birdy said, "I know Benny, it is glorious," I didn't even know what they were talking about until Ben said, "Especially when it's so bright and full like this this." I love them so desperately. Even when we got home and Birdy fell to the floor of the bathroom sobbing when I went to brush her teeth because, "Mama, your pee in the toilet is too stinky."

I'm really writing to ask a favor. I'm working on a piece for wondertime about blogging, and I was hoping to ask you a couple of questions, whether you write a blog yourself or read other people's blogs, or both:

1. Why do you keep a blog?
2. Why do you read other people's blogs?
3. In what ways does blogging--writing or reading--affect the way you parent or think about parenting, or how you feel about your kids or being a parent? (Please be both general and specific, if you can.)
4. Anything else about blogging?

Those are my questions. I would need to hear back in the next day or two (I know--I'm such a procrastinator.) Please feel free to post your response here or to email it to catherineATbodiesinbalancemtDOTcom. And please indicate whether it's okay to quote you, and if you'd want to use your real name or a pseudonym.

Then you can come out here to Western Mass, and I will buy you a drink in gratitude.

38

I want to pretend to complain about how I celebrated my birthday by washing a black marker with all our best clothes (true). Or about how my moles celebrated by growing another eight of an inch. Or how Birdy celebrated by jabbing her celebratory elbow into my grumpy old bosom.

But really I am having such a sweet day. A friend took me running and to a shopping spree at the Salvation Army (Hello, perfect birthday morning!). There were calls and visits; there were flowers and also a bath. Michael gave me a jar of pickled eggs, a wrapped package of locally smoked pork chops, a homemade card of my faced superimposed over a hockey player holding up the Stanley Cup (Hello, Michael's wet dream!), and an IOU for a sewing machine that he's getting for me with my parents. (Will my annual Halloween sewing fiasco now involve fewer expletives and less sewing of my body parts to the children's costumes? Maybe, maybe not. "You can be whatever you like," I've already said to Birdy. "As long as it's a snake or a cat. Which are the costumes we already have. But it's totally and completely up to you. Snake or cat.")

And Ben gave me a little box of marzipan fruits. Ben who was so gracious that only when I asked did he mention that he'd spent his own money. And that is really too much for a crybaby birthday girl like me, the kind of birthday girl who is so lucky and unworthy and happy and sad just like I always am about every single thing, that I have to boohoo into the place where my cake would be if Michael hadn't been so thoughtful as to remember that I don't even really like cake that much. Here's to another year of all of it: I lift my pickled egg to toast you.

p.s. I almost forgot! Please go read this.

Still Life with Link

I'm having, like, a totally sucky day

Did you keep a journal when you were younger? Because I did, and let me tell you: these were not the writings of a person brimming over with joie de vivre. Why, when I was glad, would I have wasted one glittering second scrawling away about it? I was out in the sunshine making a daisy chain and just feeling the gladness! So the journal was filled with my ceaseless gloom. My ceaseless and deadly BOYFRIEND gloom, if you must know. In college I dated a Russian major who--how shall I put this?--didn't actually like me. It wasn't just that instead of lighting up a cigarette or whispering honeyed words he lept from bed to scrub briskly at his sex parts with a washcloth; it was that he made me feel like maybe I would have to better familiarize myself with the gloomy poetry of the Russian modernists in order to actualize my girlfriend potential. And so my journal is filled with gloomy entries about this endeavor. "Spent day reading Tsvetaeva (sp??). Tried to read on quad where K. would walk by. K walked by. K. said, 'I like your skirt." He didn't mean it probably. Or did he? He didn't want to get coffee with me after dinner, and then later he said he'd had coffee. (With library girl in the eyelet petticoat?)." Like that. (Aside: God help me if Birdy ever does anything but karate chop the knees off of anyone who makes her feel this way.)

Anyways, I mention this now because this is the impulse that blogging seems to reinvigorate in me. In a column, (there for instance--you knew I was going to plug it somewhere) what with the certain amount of words, and the desire for coherence, I feel like I'm trying to say a little bit about something or other. But here. Here. I am inclined to kvetch in sentence fragments. About Birdy's cold, for example. The school should just add it to the memo. "Your child has been assigned: snack duties for the 4th week, a nature worksheet, the third cubby, and the following viral illness: a common cold" I think how it works is that you get one virus, and then you're supposed to trade it in later for another one that your family has no immunity to. Don't get me wrong--I'll take the gagging mucus cough over any degree of barfing. And we are lucky that these kids get sick and then get better--I do not take this for granted a day of my life. It's just that I forgot to memorize my children's summer faces--the way they look without the snot running down them and drying in patches like crusty, virulent slug tracks. I guess I can wait until June.

p.s. If you "tag" me for a "meme," then I will feel very flattered (Who doesn't like to be picked? Especially people like, you know, certain people, the kind of people who were never picked until somebody finally sighed and rolled his eyes and said, "Fine. But she's not batting and you get her next time.") but also a little uncertain about the whole meme protocol. I am just warming up here, so please be patient with me. (But also: Can I kvetch in sentence fragments in the meme? Because this is the experience I seem to be looking for.)

You are the best. Honestly.

I felt like my mom herself had logged on a couple dozen times--what with all the "She's just jealous" honey you poured all over me (after I only fished for it a teeny-tiny shameless bit). Exactly! Jealous! She only wishes she had these scowl lines! She wants a piece of these leaf-impacted and warped gutters that will never be different from how they are until I divorce Michael and move away to a country where they replace the gutters for you automatically as a bonus for just being yourself! What she wouldn't give for water pouring down the side of her house in sheets onto the trashitude of a blue vinyl tarp bungee-corded under the eaves! But you--you guys are a force of kindness to be reckoned with. Honestly.

(Plus, if you ever read the babycenter bulletin boards, then you will agree with me that the hi-effing-larious "pimento cheese" comment seemed suspiciously a lot like our dear old friend "BillyJoe5555." "Carmen" isn't your new persona, is it, BillyJoe?)

Not that I wasn't mortally offended by the suggestion that what I'm writing is "not exactly War and Peace." Really? Well maybe if a very hunky and hard-haunched guy jogs up on a horse with his white teeth and fixes the gutters for me, it will at least turn into "Anna Karenina."

Which is a funny thing to write on little Birdy's first day of preschool. Which is what I'm writing my column about right now. As we speak. Somehow it is getting written. In the meantime, there's this, over at wondertime. This blog is still the best place to respond to those columns, but they are working on a bulletin board over there.

I am sending you good vibes during these first weeks of school. Send them back my way.

I sure hope she finds me here!

I'm really going to miss her. But not as much as I've missed Michael since his unexplained disappearance. . .

Date: 12:56 PM
To: All
From: 3kiddosmom
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Well, I for one, am glad that it is over. I don't dislike Catherine, and I admire one's ability to share their private lives for all to read. But.. enough already. Ya, you have cute kids ( though they dress funny) and you're a good mom, but you're not perfect. And I resent the way everyone responds to you as though you are the Ghandi of motherhood. We all have our own parenting styles, and we all think our kids are perfect, or darn near it. I guess they are truly more loyal fans/ friends than I. I find you hypocritical at times, and insensative to your children's needs by posting EVERYTHING about their lives for all the world to see ( or read). By the way, what happened to you and Michael. He seems to have disappeared....

Bear with me, my friends. While I am entirely accustomed to expressing myself in an 800-word column (see, for example, my, ahem, newest column over at wondertime which used to be called "Naked Crabs," and now seems, er, not to be. . .) I am new to blogging. Mostly, I'm still writing a weekly column, and so I may not post here all that often. And yet. So many of you wrote me here to cheer me on, and I'm thrilled. It's funny--it feels more intimate or something. Like I can tell you here that I'm having a sad week, that an old (but young) friend of ours died on Tuesday, that I cried peeling peaches and groused at Ben while he was playing *solitaire*, for god's sake. And I don't even have to turn it into a lesson I've learned. (The lesson is: People our age get breast cancer. The lesson is: Leave your children alone when they're playing cards by themselves, for god's sake. The lesson is: Love harder, but more easily too.) I will try to write here more regularly, and also more coherently. But please read that weekly wondertime column because they are counting clicks over there, if you know what I'm saying. I'm saying bear with me.