Hello!

I hope you're all eating lots of buttered corn and blueberries.

New wondertime columns are here and here.

More soon. . .

The Dress I'm Not Wearing to the Party

The most recent wondertime column is here, though another one should go up later today.

I also wanted to let you know that I was reading online reviews of local alteration places, and I decided against Julius the Tailor. Why did the reviewer give him only two out of a possible five stars? She explains: "I called and the person who answered said he passed away in march."

Now if somebody is actually just plain not alive, I'm feeling like two stars is kind of an odd rating. I'm feeling like zero stars would make more sense. Or maybe five, just out of respect. But two? "Eh. He's kind of a mediocre tailor. On account of being dead."

I was hoping to put a zipper in my dress with the long, busted zipper. (Marked down at Marshall's! Ten bucks is a great deal for a dress with a busted zipper, but only if you ever put a zipper in it. Currently all ten bucks has purchased me is a wad of unwearable fabric that sits accusingly on my bedroom chair, hogging up the air space.) But forget about the dress, I'll wear something else. Because we're leaving today to join my family in New York, where we'll celebrate my mother's 70th birthday. This mother, who is, believe me, more heart-stoppingly gorgeous now than she even was then. (I also can't help noticing that I am actually descended from a long line of baby-hair sniffers.)

A Placeholder

For the longer post I want to write. Thank you so much for your well wishes, about everything. I have felt so cheered by your comments, here and at wondertime.

Monday's column is here.

Somewhat predictably, my end-of-an-era sentimentality turned out to be a teeny bit premature, since the children seem to be migrating back to their queen bed. Which is fine with me. It's just the kind of thing I like to be wrong about.

I hope you're all enjoying the summer so far. xo

Come and See Me Some Time!

If you happen to be up in the Berkshires. This Saturday, June 23rd. At 7 pm. Which is when I'm reading with my dear, frighteningly talented friend Jennifer Mattern and my virtual, frighteningly talented friend Jennifer Niesslein. Jenn M's blog Breed Em and Weep is on some kind of sabbatical, which I completely disapprove of, but you can still go there and read all her stomach-achingly funny posts from before. Jennifer N's book Practically Perfect in Every Way is out now, and there's a fantastic excerpt here. Here's the information about the reading (below) from the site of our hosts, Inkberry, which looks like a wonderful organization. Did you know that I'd written for the New York Times? Me either! But I'm totally psyched about it. Maybe that's what I'll select my reading from! Come if you can. Party at the Holiday Inn!

A reading on Parenthood and the Pursuit of Perfection
North Adams Public Library, 74 Church St., North Adams
Saturday, June 23rd at 7:00 PM
Free
Jennifer Niesslein, Jennifer Mattern, and Catherine Newman will read from their writings on parenthood and the pursuit of perfection. Jennifer Niesslein is the author of Practically Perfect in Every Way: My Misadventures Through the World of Self-Help—And Back (Putnum, May 2007) and the co-founder of Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers. Jennifer Mattern is playwright, freelance writer, and author of the blog Breed ‘Em and Weep, which won best parenting blog in the Weblog Awards in 2006. Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir Waiting for Birdy and the weekly journal Bringing Up Ben & Birdy at BabyCenter.com. Her work has appeared in The New York Times and the anthologies The Bitch in the House, Toddler, I’ts a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons and It’s a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters.

Meanwhile, there are columns on wondertime here and here.

I didn't write a Father's Day post, because I was too busy being a total crab apple, but here's photographic evidence from our friend Pengyew's birthday party on Saturday, taken by the extremely talented Sam Masinter:


Maybe my piece for the Times was about how hunky and delightful Michael manages to be, even with crab apples dropping all around him.

A Gift

So I don't mean to keep on and on about it, but I finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and I wanted to share something from it that I loved. Have you heard about the book? It describes the year that Barbara Kingsolver and her family tried to eat only local food, most of which they had grown and farmed themselves. But of course I read it as a book about gratitude and parenting, because that's just how I am.

Our holiday food splurge was a small crate of tangerines, which we found ridiculously thrilling after an eight-month abstinence from citrus. No matter where I was in the house, that vividly resinous orangey scent woke up my nose whenever anyone peeled one in the kitchen. Lily hugged each one to her chest before undressing it as gently as a doll. Watching her do that as she sat cross-legged on the floor one morning in pink pajamas, with bliss lighting her cheeks, I thought: Lucky is the world, to receive this grateful child. Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing. (page 287)

The latest wondertime column is here, and a new one should be up later today.

The Voice

Which is like a cross between Miss Long Island reading her shopping list and a goose honking by frantically after the rest of the V has taken off. And you can hear it here. It is, truly, worse than I thought. Like Meg already said here: "I imagined it a lot deeper." I'm going to smoke a few more cigars before the next taping session.

Last week's column is here.

I'm sorry to always be asking for advice, but does anyone know of a good resource (A book! What problem cannot be solved with a trusty book?) for kids who appear to be pathological nonswimmers? You know what I'm saying here? With the flailing and the dread and the torso craning itself out of the water? Thank you as always.

Allergy Relief

does not seem to be obtained from rogue biofeedback. Ever since Michael completed his massage program, I treat him like an all-purpose health-care professional: "Look at my wart," I say. I say, "Why is my knuckle sore like this?" Mostly I say, "What about this painful part of my back/foot/leg/bottom?" and so hands are laid on, groans of satisfaction are groaned, and I am grateful. But last night, as Michael was drifting off to sleep, I said, miserable, "Honey, help me with my allergies." Our pine trees have started their annual molt, and while the curtains of pale green dust blow in the windows, I am sneezing and red-eyed and scratchy-throated. When Michael said "How?" I said "I'm so susceptible to the whole mind-body thing, so psychosomatic. I'm probably a perfect biofeedback candidate. Try that." And so Michael put his hands on my chest, looked into my eyes, and said, "Take a break from your self, you crazy, overreacting immune system. It's just eensy particles of pollen! Mere molecules! Nothing to get hysterical about." And lo and behold, I laughed out a sneeze and wasn't cured at all.

Speaking of spring things, I wanted to thank you for your advice about shade perennials! We have hostas, bleeding hearts, lilies of the valley, vinca, violets, and ferns--all of which I love--and now we are the proud parents of a dead nettle, a primula, and a bugbane thanks to your wise counsel. I also have virtual sticky notes all over my computer screen that say things like "lamium: orchid frost." But I think I forgot to mention that I am an appallingly ham-handed gardener. I should be good at it: I'm crafty and a happy, capable maker of food. But I have no patience for plants unless they're dropping their gorgeous fruits and vegetables right directly into a basket that I'm holding out without even really bending my knees or putting down my beer. Alas.

And speaking of growing things, this book--Barbara Kingsolver's latest--is so fantastic that I read it every night before I even get into bed, while I'm still brushing my teeth. I am waiting patiently for her to invite me over for some of that asparagus bread pudding.

The latest wondertime columns are here and here.

Also, I seem to have waited until it was off the newsstand to mention that I've got a piece in the May O Magazine--this one about my bitchy wrinkles.

I hope you're all well and enjoying everything there is to enjoy.

The Annual Mother's Day Pimp-My-Book Post

I am writing the annual pimp-my-book post to say that this

might make a nice mother's day gift, no? Although I managed to wait long enough that now you'd have to triple-fed-ex it, which means that for a mere, uh, 35 or so dollars you could send one person a paperback book detailing another person's waxing and waning anxiety, which, as I write this, seems kind of like a bad deal compared to a nice gift certificate for sushi or botox or, ahem, a massage.

And speaking of Mother's Day! Perhaps, if you live in the Boston area, you could take your mum to the DeCordova sculpture park, and the two of you could reminisce about how cute you were when you were just a wee thing (Big Baby, by Nina Levy)


So cute and tiny, in fact, that your mother might have felt more or less like flinging her head over the balcony (Headlong, by Nina Levy):


The new post over at Wondertime is here, and there will be another one up later this afternoon.

Happy spring to all of you! If you have any advice about hardy shade perennials, please write!

Rock-a-bye

I had this idea for a post that I was going to call "shame" and it was going to be a photograph of the snow pants Ben wore all winter: the knees patched with thick strips pink duct tape and a close-up of the size (4-5) and also, maybe, of the chart on the wall where you can see that he has grown about 8-10 inches since he was 4-5. I was going to invite you to post your own shame photos in response (not that you would have any, right?).

But then I got sidetracked by this:

And because it is more or less the antithesis of shame--because every cell in Birdy's body passes through the loving and unsullied organ of her beautiful, blessed heart--I thought that maybe this photo would be better suited to a perfect early spring day, this perfect early spring day, when we are leaving the winter and its peculiar shames behind us.

p.s. The new wondertime column is here.

P.S.

The whole reason I wrote today was to check in with you about the shootings yesterday, but then I wrote something weird and deleted it and then, shy, said nothing at all. But really, it is one thing to have an abstracted apocalyptic sense of things, the way I do these days. And it is another to live out a flesh-and-blood tragedy, a grief of senseless and unfathomable proportions. Which is how grief always feels, of course. But this--this is something else. I am so sorry is all I really wanted to say. Or maybe something dumb, like "Kiss your kids."

My Thyroid Has Great Self Esteem, Thanks to You

Here's why I love you: when I post a paranoid column about my hypochondria and psychosomatic exhaustion and neurotic wasting of doctors' time and also my vague personality disorders, your write me lovingly to say, "Maybe you should get your thyroid checked!" It's like a virtual community of mothers. "They're just jealous!" you say to me. You say, "It's only because you're so passionate!" and "We would have done the same exact thing!" Thank you for that. I see why they call it "support." You know?

Meanwhile, an April Fool's Day post--of all the repulsive things--has lingered here for weeks. Malingered. Forgive me. I can only send you to this column and this one instead. And scare you with the very fierce and frightening Caped Growly Girl King.

I Wish I'd Thought

to switch my kids' underpants with their dad's! Boy would that have killed them. It makes me laugh just to think of it now, so I will have to file that bit of lingerie hijinks away for next year. (It's not called "lingerie" when it's a man's, now, is it? I see that it looks a little too Liberace for Michael's Fruit of the Looms.)

I have two columns over at wondertime that I haven't linked to: one about Birdy turning four, and one about her great and sudden love of Yiddish.

Happy Passover to you dear ones. And happy Easter. Happy Spring-interrupted-by-the-pouring-down-of-snow. And happy days of melancholy, if you know what I mean. And I know you do.

April 1, 2007

Ben's first telephone conversation with a peer (on speakerphone):

Friend: Hi Ben.

Ben: Hi.

[crickets chirping]

F: Do you have something in your house that looks like poop?

B: Probably!

F: You could put it on the ground and say you pooped!

B: Yeah!

F: Bye Ben!

B: Bye!

In a fit of festivity, I made the children fool eggs with whipped cream and apricot halves and sliced pound cake for toast, and Ben fell for it for approximately, let's see, zero seconds. "Why are these eggs so foamy looking?" he said. "This toast looks so weird." Birdy insisted that the egg tasted like whipped cream, and then we were never convinced she'd understood the whole thing. "My egg was so creamy!" she cried. "April fool!" Still! I did an April Fool's joke! Lame and cranky me! I like the bonus holidays like these, where anything is better than nothing. Nobody expects you to make a Luke Skywalker pinata or rent a team of Clydesdales or anything.

But more successful was the cramming of a long strip of toilet paper down the back of everyone's pants and groaning, "Oh gross! We've really got to teach you more about wiping."

How did you celebrate? Don't leave me hanging. Tell me.

More Meta Commentary

Things I truly appreciate:

• The idea that we're cycling together (We're in love! Plus, I get to picture us all on a giant tandem bike with dozens of sets of pedals.)
  
• Tips on stain removal [Deleted parenthetical comment about the state of the author's undies]
  
• Suggestions about menstrual products (The Keeper! The Liza Minelli! The Moonbeam! The Spongebob Period Pants! Who new? Well, besides every last one of you guys.)
• When dissenting voices do not post anonymously (For real! Thank you!)
  
• The fact that so many of you are so naked so much of the time
• The fact that so few of you were paying close enough attention to worry in the first place about anybody driving sloshed
  
• The image of bloody zucchini

And "Celia"'s comment, of course--our beloved friend "Celia":

"This article is fantastic; is very interesting and is really good written. It’s just great!! Do you want to know something more? Read it... Glass Bongs and Bong featuring Herbal Smoke, water bongs, bongs online head shop, Marijuana Alternative,glass water bongs, Hashish, Ganja, homemade bongs, Smokeshop, cannibis, legal smoking alternatives for herbal highs and aphrodisia."

Now that's high praise. But really--is anyone looking online to purchase a "homemade bong"? Is it, like, $15 through Paypal, and then you get a box in the mail with a bent Coors Light can in it?

My wondertime column this week is here.

And can I just recommend again that the rest of you Western Mass folks schedule a massage for yourself or a friend with Dr. Hunky? If you already have, I know you haven't been disappointed. We don't call him Mister The Hands for nothing.

Edited

The funny thing is that I had actually written "I" about drinking that wine--but then became self conscious about the lonely sound of it, and so changed it to "we" the better to convey, you know, the fellowship of moderate alcohol consumption there at our friends' house. I didn't want you to think it was somehow just me in the corner with a blanket and a bottle while everyone else sat at the table soberly planning some kind of 12-step intervention.

But then, of course, oops--I made it sound like some kind of DUI/snowstorm situation when really Michael hardly even ever drinks at all.

Because he's too busy huffing ether.

Meanwhile, here's my question of the day: if you were designing a tampon, would you play a kind of menstrual practical joke whereby you appended a string that appeared to be a handy removal advice--but was really a kind of wick to draw blood quickly from body to underpants without soiling the pristine cotton of the tampon itself? This is my question. I would not think to make such a joke myself, but I see that someone has.

And really, I'm just laughing my head off. Because it's funny to see Mama's undies soaking in the sink like she beheaded someone in the night and then mopped at their bloody neck stump with a wadded up pair of Gap bikinis. Really. It's not the stuff of future psychoanalytic emergency sessions, I'm sure. Just good old-fashioned fun.

Talking About the Weather

I don't know what it is with me--maybe it's all the gigondas wine we drank with dinner that had such a gigantic sound to it that I became gigantically tipsy straight away--but I never felt frightened on our drive home: after our friend pushed us out of his driveway, Michael slid elegantly from one side of the road to the other, we drifted into snowbanks, we saw cars shuddering off the road and pitching into ditches--and the whole time I had a cozy winter feeling as if I were underneath a blanket watching The Nutcracker on TV.

I had intended to write this as a happy post about the gorgeous, late-season snowfall, but instead I seem to have revealed yet another of my personality disorders. What's this one? Treacherous Weather Dissociation? Sleet Mania? I'm not sure.

But it really is lovely here. I don't mind it right at the end like this--winter's little parting joke. If it weren't for the fact that we were supposed to see my parents, and must now wait a week, I would be just about perfectly happy.

Also because I'm not living through this.

I have got to encourage you to read the comments on this one. All I can say, with respect to barfing children, is: I'm glad we don't have a dog.

Warts and All

Thank you, as always, for your advice. I wrapped a banana peel around my heel, strapped a potato to it with duct tape, scraped at it with a pumice, an emery board, a microplane zester, and a tea-tree oil soaked cotton ball, dabbed it with plain old nailpolish remover and urine, and voila! I woke in the morning and the entire foot had falled off onto the mattress. I trust it won't grow back.

Wouldn't that be a great short documentary film? "Warts"? Just sped up and spliced together shots of people treating their warts in a million different ways, maybe set to The Sound of Music theme song? If you want to option it, you know how to find me. . .

I have a column here and here. If you're inclined to weigh in on the juggling issue, please do; they're wondering if that's an interesting topic of conversation among mothers. Hope you guys are all thriving.

Glad to Be You

Of course you don't have two warts on your foot in the first place because lovely, kempt people don't have warts is what I'm thinking. You didn't need to Google image-search them and then spend a half an hour examining the divergence of your footprint in order to diagnose yourself with, well, warts. Of course even if you did have two warts on your foot and you bought the Dr. Scholl's Extra-Strength Medicated Wart Removing Pads, you would have understood within at least the first couple of days that something was wrong. You would have noticed the warts persevering unheeded instead of happily applying the sticky cushioning donuts to your sole day after day only to shake the box weeks later and say to your partner, "What's this?" Your partner would not have come over and taken the sheet of dots from your hand, would not have patted your head and said, "Um, honey? Those are the medicated disks." And you would not have groaned, with two wholly untreated warts on your foot and no more cushioning donuts, "Maybe that's why they weren't working."

Then you wouldn't have opened your bread box to find no fewer than 20 molding heels of bread because over time your family would have learned that, if nobody's going to eat them, you should toss them out to the birds instead of preserving them like a museum exhibit curated around the theme of your own ineptitude.

Nor would you have lain in your children's bed while said children piled eleven sticky little glow-in-the-dark bugs into your belly button, holding your tummy in two fists and shaking so that the bugs looked like they were erupting from a volcanic navel.

Because you have a little self respect, right? So you also would never engage in a conversation with your seven-year-old son about how much money someone would have to pay you to throw a poopy diaper in your face. You wouldn't say "It depends what kind of poop," because, of course, you wouldn't do it for any amount of money in the world. A poopy diaper in your face! Who would talk about such a thing with a child? Let alone entertain various sums! You would certainly never say, "A thousand bucks? Just a regular turd, but sealed up inside and the tabs stuck down and everything? Sure." And when your daughter finally chimed in, jumping up and down on the mattress with excitement and glee, "What about poop smeared right in your nostrils for fifty dollars?" you wouldn't need to draw the line there because you never would have had the chalk in your hand to begin with. Even if your daughter fell to the ground laughing and cried, "I would do it for free!"

This daughter, here.

Wabbit Season

Hey, for a great debate on cartoons check out the comments going on over at wondertime. Oh, I do love a great debate.

But holy clam and cuttlefish! (as Boris would say in Amos and Boris.)

Go weigh in, please.

And your comments on Birdy's valentines are cracking me up--thank you. Also be sure to check out other people's links to their own craftstravaganzas. You guys rock.

xo

Why You Might Not Want Your Preschooler to Make Her Valentines Out of Mexican Bingo Cards

Why not, right? I mean, they're so beautiful and also hip--perfect for every occasion. Which ones will she choose? you might wonder: the beautful green pear? A juicy slice of watermelon? A bird or tree or the "Sirena" mermaid? No. Give her some blank cards and a glue stick, and she will think romantically of hearts:

Happy Valentine's Day, fellow three-year-old! Enjoy these antique buttons and blibs and blobs of glue, and also this picture of my bulging and veiny corazon stuck through with an arrow like something you might get as a shish kebob at a Brazilian barbeque restaurant. I especially like her elegant touch of trimming the heart with fancy scissors. Or:

Sweet Valentine! You're so cute you make me think of the cutest little frog EVER! Also, oddly, of a pioneer bonnet. Oh--and of el Diablo, chipped apart with a pair of scissors into tiny, devilish, decapitated pieces. I love you! And you! I love you so much that

I thought immediately of Death! La Muerte, arriving with his romantic and murderous sickle! With also some scrippy scraps of paper, a die, and a wedge of doily. Happy Valentine's Day, my dear, doomed one.