Author Archives: Naptimewriting

All I know today

Posted on by

1. Nobody likes the commentary on the Olympics. Stop talking.

2. Thank you for the suggestions, Peanut, but we willl not be naming the baby Izzabilly, Fazanu, Finasnoyo, Lindsu, Inaspinoyo, or Nabasu.

3. Microsoft is on my s–t list again. Hardcore. ‘Nother massive crash, ‘nother data wipe (albeit with a good backup this time). I will be upgrading everything soon, but they’ll rue the day. Some day a long time from now when I have the energy to fight the power. RUE, I tell you. Monolithic cretins.

4. I officially spend too much time talking with my child. To wit…

Me: We’re about to get off the freeway.
Peanut: You mean “exit,” Mommy.
[beat]
What does exit mean?
M: It means to leave, “you leave” in another language called Latin.
P: No, it’s English. The Latin for leave is “leaf.”

M: How was your day, P?
P: Great.
M: Good.
P: No, not good. Great. Like “fabulous.”
M: Fabulous?
P: Yeah. Like “tremendous” and “amazing” all together.

5. Today? Three words: Patty Griffin. Florida.
“The night wants to kiss you deep
And be on his way
Pretend he don’t know you the very next day
Isn’t it hard sometimes
Isn’t it lonely?
How I still hang around here
And there’s nothing to hold me”

(can’t vouch for the video, but have a listen…)

Don’t get mad…get worms

Posted on by

*Warning*
This post not for the squeamish. Or those who still think I should dump our cats in the Bay. If you’re easily creeped out or a cat-hater, come back tomorrow. I’ll write something lovely. Or depressing. But at least not gross.
*End Warning*

I’ll spare you the intro and get right to the phone call with the vet. Or rather, the vet’s office, populated with, as you will see, freaking jerk-ass zombie idiots sent to this planet to torment me.

Me: I’m calling to check the results of the sample I left yesterday (for my indoor cat, who should really stop licking shoes as a pasttime, else risk this particular medical issue again.)
Freaking Jerk-Ass Zombie Idiot Sent to This Planet to Torment Me: Let me check. [on hold for two minutes.] It came back negative.
M: Really.
FJ-AZIStTPtTM: Yes. Negative.
M: The sample I brought that was crawling with worms came back negative for worms?
FJ-AZIStTPtTM: Yes, ma’am.
M: I don’t have a lot of critical thinking skills lately, but I’ll try this one: which type of worms doesn’t show up on this $30 test?
FJ-AZIStTPtTM: Let me check. Hold on. [on hold for two minutes] Ma’am? What did the worms look like?
M: [I give description I will spare you, but which was heard by this same Freaking Jerk-Ass Zombie Idiot Sent to This Planet to Torment Me yesterday when I dropped off the specimen and the day before on the phone.]
FJ-AZIStTPtTM: Okay. Hang on. [on hold for five minutes.] Ma’am? I’m going to have to call you back.

She doesn’t. Shocking, from a freaking jerk-ass zombie idiot sent to this planet to torment me.

An hour later I call the clinic again and get a recording saying they’re closed, and please don’t leave a message but call back when they’re open.

Look here, you $%^&#^%&)*#)($%^)*%^ers!!!! I spent ten minutes on the phone Monday, an hour of my precious child-free time on Tuesday, and now 15 minutes of my time today to find out NOTHING except that, now, the second cat has contracted the same @#(*$^%(*#@$ parasite that the first one has, in my house with a &@#&$*^*$ four-year old and adult male whose hygeine habits are suspect, approximately 2-4 weeks before I shoot a baby out of my lower personage? Really?

Really?

Are you serious? Do you want to rumble? Do you? Because really, genuinely, seriously? I can bring it, bitch. And if any of the humans in my family get this disgusting parasitic affliction because you’ve been INCOMPETENT, I will bring their “samples” daily to your waiting room and smear them on the walls.

Try me.

Bolano’s 2666 quote of the week (4)

Posted on by

I’m not behind on my reading, but I certainly am on the blogging here and at bolanobolano.com, where they’re discussing 2666 over the course of 2666 hours.

[If what follows is derivative of the opinions blogged by the 2666 reading group, including our dear bleakonomy friend, so be it. I’m offering my first reaction and will go read their posts in a minute. i felt pretty lame last time offering a thin response to the richest sections only to find the other readers providing in-depth commentary, but such are the limitations of my life right now. I’m not writing a paper on this thing. I barely have time to read it.]

So. “The Part about Amalfitano.” Oh, my fair readers, I’m glad I made it to this section. *This* is why I agreed to tackle this novel with bits and parts of the erudite Infinite Summer group, and why magical realism is one of my favorite stylistic inclinations. This section leaves behind those self-absorbed critics and engages in the ponderous, the surreal, and the spooky. Hope the rest of the novel continues along this vein.

“For a second he thought it was all a lie, that Lola was working as an administrative assistant or secretary in some big company. Then he saw it clearly. he saw the vacuum cleaner parked between two rows of desks, saw the floor waxer like a cross between as mastiff and a pig sitting next to a plant, he say an enormous window through which the lights of Paris blinked, he saw Lola in the cleaning company’s smock, a worn blue smock, sitting writing the letter and maybe taking slow drags on a cigarette, he saw Lola’s fingers, Lola’s wrists, Lola’s blank eyes, he saw another Lola reflected in the quicksilver of the window, floating weightless in the skies of Paris, like a trick photograph that isn’t a trick, floating, floating pensively in the skies of Paris, weary, sending messages from the coldest iciest realm of passion” (182).

I don’t think I’ve read an author in a long time who writes scenery and visions and mirages as well as this.

But he’s awfully good at dialogue, as well, as in my favorite scene about the most awesome geometry-book weathering experiment:

“It isn’t mine, said Amalfitano. It doesn’t matter, Rosa said, it’s yours now. It’s funny, said Amalfitano, that’s how I should feel, but I really don’t have the sense it belongs to me, and anyway I’m almost sure I’m not doing it any harm. Well, pretend it’s mine and take it down, said Rosa, the neighbors are going to think you’re crazy. The neighbors who top their walls with broken glass? They don’t even know we exist, said Amalfitano, and they’re a thousand times crazier than me. no, not them, said Rosa, the other ones, the ones who can see exactly what’s going on in our yard. Have any of them bothered you? asked Amalfitano. No, said Rosa. Then it’s not a problem, said Amalfinato, it’s silly to worry about it when much worse things are happening in this city than a book being hung from a cord. Two wrongs don’t make a right, said Rosa, we’re not animals. Leave the book alone, pretend it doesn’t exist, forget about it, said Amalfitano, you’ve never been interested in geometry” (196).

The illogical nonsequitors in these characters’ dialogue, which read so logically, are my favorite part of this novel. And this passage has two nonsequitor retorts that honestly sound exactly the way people talk…just ludicrous.

This section was simply dreamy.

Valentine love

Posted on by

You know how sappy I am? Those to whom I send huge gobs of Valentine love this year are the select awesome and thoughtful people who sent my son a Valentine. He got five or six this year, and he’s over-the-moon thrilled. If they had *any* idea what getting a glittery card in the mail meant to him, I know they’d be pretty proud of how happy they made a wonderful little person.

What sweet, thoughtful people. Thanks, family and friends. It doesn’t take much, and you are so freaking cool to have thought of this.

Happy VD to all, and to all a good night.

And the winner is…

Posted on by

The spammer who composed this beauty:

“I was reading something else about this on another blog. Interesting. Your linear perspective on it is diametrically contradicted to what I read earlier. I am still contemplating over the various points of view, but I’m tipped to a great extent toward yours. And regardless, that’s what is so great about modern democracy and the marketplace of thoughts on-line.”

Why, nameless, faceless salesperson of all things godawful, you almost make sense. Most of the other spam is barely intelligible and so I celebrate you. This is b-lls-t, in part because I’ve never had a linear perspective in my life, and because things cannot be “diametrically contradicted to” something else (they are “diametrically opposed to” or “directly contradict”), and because modern democracy allows many fewer opinions than, say, Grecian democracy, and because since the late ’90s the Wired style guide assured us it was time to take the hyphen out of the word online (a trend followed fewer than two years later by most major dictionaries.)

Also, your fake comment has nothing at all to do with the post to which you appended it, and is the most blatant of attempts to fake your way through the assignment. I’ve seen that before, buddy. I teach English to those who believe they don’t need it.

Though your attempt is head and shoulders above the rest of the spam I get (and, honestly, better than the compositions of 75% of college freshman), it’s still schlock.

So. For your efforts: A. For your dirth of knowledge and annoying posing: F.

Still. Amusing. You win. Your prize is that I won’t post your spam in my comments because it’s still spam and obviously crap; but I will take your pathetic words and use them to amuse myself for the three minutes or so it took to deride you in public.

Yay for you, spam dude.

The results are in…

Posted on by

I’ve taken every online quiz to determine, through the magic of the Internet, the gender of this baby.

Old wives’ tales and superstitions, which are always 100% medically, historically, and computationally accurate, can be compiled with simple software prestidigitations. Of course how your uterus looks is determined by the baby’s gender. How could it not be?

And the results?

Quiz #1 60% chance for a boy
Quiz #2 too early to tell. try back later (um, people, any later and it will be easier to look in the kid’s diaper)
Quiz #3 60% chance for a girl
Quiz #4 57% chance for a girl
Quiz #5 62% chance for a boy
Quiz # 6 It’s a girl
Quiz #7 It’s a boy

Seriously, Internet coders, you’ve just wasted seventeen minutes of my time. Now, please, come up with a better quiz. Or at least one that takes longer. I have stuff to do and need to procrastinate.

Do I crave orange juice? That’s the best you can do? Here’s my official, fool-proof guaranteed to be accurate pregnancy quiz.

1. Are you experiencing a)uncontrollable rage or b)a new inner peace?
2. Were you a)wildly sick the first trimester or b)felt fine?
3. Are you a)dreaming sweet thoughts of baby or b)terrified out of your gourd about the future?

Tally the number of As and the number of Bs. If you have more As you have a 50% chance of having a boy and if you have more Bs you have a 50% chance of having a girl. If you answered every question “some of both” you have my sympathies, because you’re clearly insane probably having a baby soon.

Guaranteed.

random thoughts

Posted on by

Since when did people wanted by the law get to decide whether and how to turn themselves in? Arrest Jackson’s doctor, don’t negotiate with him. You’re wasting space on the news ticker. [okay, that was a few days ago, but I’ve been busy.]

I think the neighbor dog who barks every single day from 3pm to 6pm is an animatronic robodog akin to Weeds‘ Bubbie Botwin’s doorbell. It was barking today, outside, in the same rhythm as every other day despite rather heavy rain. And if it’s fake, I’m even more pissed that it barks every day from 3 to 6.

A CNN contributor has solved the budget crisis in three easy steps. I’d vote for all of the ideas, but I’m probably the only one.

I have to decide pretty soon whether to finish the journal article or the massive reorganization of the novel because I have about a month left of coherent thought and must use my remaining sleep-succored moments wisely. [Also out-dated. I chose the novel. It went way faster than I thought and now I have time to do the article, too. Damnit.]

The fact that tobacco companies are now making nicotine candy with tobacco that dissolves quickly would be freaking awesome if it weren’t so maniacally, diabolically, disgustingly, stupidly wrong.

After two three weeks of rain I’ve decided I can’t live in the Pacific Northwest.

Candyland is not as bad as I thought. Because it involves sitting still. I’m a new fan of sitting still.

Cats are less work than dogs but considerably more work than I want to do.

I can’t handle the lists of foods to avoid and alleged foods to call out as phonies and companies to boycott and chemicals to beware. I’m near fetal already, consumer-position-wise, and I don’t have the energy anymore.

Doesn’t help that these things that seem like good deals are really, really awful. Note that NUMBER ONE is undervalued work done by women in creating the next generation of citizens. take it seriously, because they will vote on what we teach them.

There are only so many random thoughts one can string together before either boring the reader or oneself.

Consider us in that boat together.

Bolano 2666 quote of the week (3)

Posted on by

So many to choose from. I have to admit I’ll be glad to be rid of the critics, but this week had several intriguing quotes. So. Vote if you feel like it.

1) “…he, in his own way, like Schwob in Samoa, had already begun a voyage, a voyage that would end not in the grave of a brave man but in a kind of resignation in any ordinary sense of the word, or even patience or conformity, but rather a state of meekness, a refined and incomprehensible humility that made him cry for no reason and in which his own image, what Morini saw as Morini, gradually and helplessly dissolved, like a river that stops being a river or a tree that burns on the horizon, no knowing that it’s burning” (107).

2) “It was as if the light were buried in the Pacific Ocean, producing an enormous curvature of space. It made a person hungry to travel in that light, although also, and maybe more insistently thought Norton, it made you want to bear your hunger until the end” (110-11).
[one of the best descriptions of the Sonoran desert I’ve ever read.]

3) “And yet your shadow isn’t following you anymore. At some point your shadow has quietly slipped away. You pretend you don’t notice, but you have, you’re missing your fucking shadow, though there are plenty of ways to explain it, the angle of the sun, the degree of oblivion induced by the sun beating down on hatless heads, the quantity of alcohol ingested, the movement of something like subterranean tanks of pain, the fear of more contingent things, a disease that begins to become more apparent, wounded vanity, the desire just for once in your life too be on time. But the point is, your shadow is lost and you, momentarily forget it. And so you arrive on a kind of stage, without your shadow, and you start to translate reality or reinterpret it or sing it” (121).

[This third quote is hands-down my favorite, made even more poignant by Norton’s painfully ignorant and heartless proclamation that she didn’t understand a word of it. Nothing thus far has made me like her less.]

Ben and Jerry’s newest flavor

Posted on by

I would buy two gallons of B&J’s newest flavor if they sold it out here.

It’s called “Spouse and Child Go to Santa Cruz So I Can Work on Major Revisions to My Novel (Near a Well Stocked Fridge)”.

It’s pure heaven. I got the only pint they ever made, and I’m savoring every teaspoonful.

Seriously, if Ben and Jerry made an ice cream called “Silence” I would buy it without checking the ingredients. And that’s saying a lot for the Michael Pollan in me.

(I do know, as a copyeditor and English professor that the period should go inside the quotation marks, but that doesn’t make sense to me. The punctuation applies to the sentence, not the flavor name, so I want it outside the quotes. Call me British, but I’m over fabricated American grammar and punctuation rules I don’t agree with. Yup. Prepositional end to that idea, baby. Cuz I’m wacky and wild while the men in my life are gone.)

Paul Simon agrees with us

Posted on by

Appropos of yesterday’s post, Peanut today put in a Paul Simon CD to which I sang along. With gusto.

“Well that was your mother
And that was your father
Before you wuz born, dude
When life was great.
Now you are the burden
Of my generation
I sure do love you
Let’s get that straight.”

Oh, my dear Mr. Simon. Why did I not *hear* you before?

Et toi!

Still ambivalent after all these years

Posted on by

Simon and Garfunkel sang that, didn’t they? Before the crazy version, there was being stuck between a rock and a sheer-faced cliff? Thought so.

Since the inception of this blog, I have wrestled publicly with the dilemma that I love my child and rather dislike parenting. Love, love, love the kid. Don’t get me wrong or send angry emails. Love the child. Dislike the job. It’s not a popular riff, and it’s not often said, so I feel like I’m talking to a (rather horrified) brick wall when I explain to people who ask, that I’m experiencing a range of emotions about being a breeder (ooops, there’s my problem right there, because Americans know the correct answers are “Fine” to “How are you?” and “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done” to “How do you like being a Mom?” regardless of how you feel. But I always forget that social rule and actually hear, process, and answer questions as they’re posed. Silly, poorly socialized me.)

So when someone the other day asked if I was excited about the new baby, my initial response was typical for me, caught between the headlights of social expectations and my still unabashed tendency toward truth:

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Don’t make me say the obvious: of course…yes and no…sort of…I think so…absolutely…blink blink blink. Here’s the thing, at least for me. The dive into parenthood, at least the first time, is like asking a solitary, heliophilic (lover of sunshine, not bleeder, though that might work, too), claustrophic acrophobe (nasty fear of heights…bear with me) to live the remainder of their life as a bat.

YES, there are beautiful sights to take in while you’re flying. Glorious smells and sounds and vistas unknown to humans. At…uhem…night. In the sky. Kind of high. Admittedly, there is awesome fruit to be had. A thousand times, yes, I love mangoes. Back at home, though, my small, cramped cave is filled with lots of smelly others who insist I hang upside down from the ceiling and avoid the sun. So admitting having mixed feelings seems less revolutionary than honest and, well, mandatory.

The whole foreign country/alien planet thing I’ve heard from other moms about the upending shock of plunging from independence and coherence into the unblinking and rapid-fire world of parenting implies that the surroundings have changed. Nay. Same place. I’m just living upside down. At night. By new rules with new people whom I simply don’t get. Their way is totally right for them, and it makes sense, and it’s quite lovely. But it’s godawful uncomfortable for me.

And the thought of doing it again really, really soon means less shock and more…upside down, claustrophobic, ceiling-clinging, guano-filled days. I know where to find the fun, but I don’t know how to escape when the not-so-fun threatens to overwhelm. Because you know what? (And I risk being a bit overdramatic here, but I defy you to prove me wrong….) there is no escape.

[Maybe that’s why our culture makes such a big deal about bats. It’s not the three out of, like 400 species of otherwise frugivorous bats who drink blood. It’s the fact that we know, deep down, that I’m totally awesome at similies and metaphors, and that a lot of us are living, at once by choice and against our will, in caves filled with other upside down mammals.]

So I’m learning and I’m flying and I’m having copious amounts of fun. But home isn’t home…it’s claustrophobic and smelly. And going outside is different and new and overwhelming. That sense of displacement, of not just where did I go? but where did the world go? is a little disconcerting.

Once or twice. AND twice.

Consider that next time I just stare at you and blink blink. Blink.

Blink.

chickens coming home to roost

Posted on by

Well, here’s proof that if you post how lovely it is to have a sick kid, you’re guaranteed at least two scourges of your own in rapid succession. I’ve been sick now twice in two weeks, and my only post idea is going as a guest post on another site. In short, dear reader, I have nothing for you. No snark, no sass, no waxing philosophical, no book ideas or reviews.

Nothing. Nada.

I will, however, point you to something that always boosts my spirits. Engrish.

Bolano’s 2666 quote of the week (2)

Posted on by

This week’s reading is at once slower and more explosive than last week’s. I’m still intrigued, but far from being in love.

“Naturally, Norton was happy to hear from him and to learn he was in the city and at the agreed-upon time she appeared in the hotel lobby, where Morini, sitting in his wheelchair with a package on his lap, was patiently and impassively deflecting the flow of guests and visitors that convulsed the lobby in an ever-changing display of luggage, tired faces, perfumes trailing after meteroidian bodies, bellhops with their stern jitters, the philosophical circles under the eyes of the manager or associate manager, each with his brace of assistants radiating freshness, the same freshness of eager sacrifice emitted by young women (in the form of ghostly laughter), which Morini tactfully chose to ignore. When Norton got there they left for a restaurant in Notting Hill, a Brazilian vegetarian restaurant she had recently discovered.” (95)

I’m usually not a setting person and prefer to get straight to dialogue and character development, but this image of Morini in a stream of humanity compels with its uneven pacing and jump-cut imagery.

Head over to bolanobolano.com for erudite discussions.

Sick babes

Posted on by

Oh, poor little Peanut. Poor, poor little guy. Couple of days of fever, couple of drippy nose days, now a cough and copious vomit. Poor, poor guy.

{Pssst. Over here. I know this is a terrible thing to say, but what a relief it is when this child is sick. Thankfully, illness is rare for him. We’re lucky. I don’t want to underestimate how lucky we are to have a healthy child. But with a child who has enough energy to power the Eastern Seaboard, who has strong opinions, is persistent and intense and verbal and really more than I can handle, nothing says “relaxing day” like a fever or puking. I basically get a day off to adore him with a rare minimum of effort. Sick days (as long as I’m not sick, too) are days off, parenting-wise. I’m loving and wonderful and he’s grateful and cuddly. And quiet. He’s quiet, people! LOVE it. But I can’t say that out loud. It would be wrong to say that out loud.}

I hope he feels better soon. Poor guy.

Bad, bad, bad

Posted on by

I knew this would happen, and I knew it would happen once Peanut got to school. He now knows the word “bad.”

We avoided that word for the first four years of his life, because he doesn’t need it. There are few really “bad” things in this world, and those are so off-the-charts horrible that he doesn’t need to know about them. We’ll spare the discussions about terrorism, homicide, and even theft and greed until later. Most people are basically good, but some can make better choices. When we say it that way, everyone has a chance, you know? Someone at school who has a grumpy day and takes toys or hits needs to know there are better ways to be angry. But she’s not bad. Most cats expressing themselves with feces are frustrated and need understanding and training. They are not bad. Their actions are frustrating and disgusting and won’t be tolerated, but the cat, himself, is not bad. In our house, fruit rots; it’s not bad. We feel ill or crummy; not bad. I’m not saying that this approach is right; I’m just explaining why it was weird to hear my child use the word “bad.”

Just as I tried hard to teach P that I love him and I don’t like hitting, so he knew that the person and the action are not the same thing, we tried to teach him that some things were good choices and some were not good choices. We never needed the word “bad” and we liked it that way.

So when he came home last week and asked what “bad” meant, I said it can mean a lot of things; where did he hear it and I could tell him what the person meant. “Big bad wolf tried to get in some pig houses.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, I know that story, and I guess, in that case, they mean bad because the wolf ruins the pig houses and scares them and doesn’t listen to their words. So in that case, bad is kind of like ‘not being nice’.”

So, predictably, for the next few days, he tried out his new condemnation on a variety of subjects. The cat is bad, Mom is bad, Dad is bad, this macaroni is bad…I’m going out of my mind. Because I want to let him try it, and not call attention to it for all the reasons parents *know* not to call attention to behaviors they don’t like, but that word KILLS me. It’s like a 1950s black and white world where we judge people and count them out because of one poor choice.

Spouse and I don’t say “good boy” because it makes him seek praise for any action, laudable or otherwise. Labeling a child good makes them second guess their every move to see if someone else will tell them they are good, instead of finding their own sense of self worth and justice. And being a “good boy” or a “bad boy” implies a permanence. There are no all good or all bad children. There are people who need better parenting and time to learn and help finding better choices. Even those people don’t have “bad” parents. They have parents who don’t know better or who don’t try hard enough.

Anyway. I’m miffed about the “bad.” Other parents freak when their kid comes home spewing four-letter words and I’m thrown at just three.