Author Archives: Naptimewriting

Single versus Married versus Small Children

Posted on by

If you’re single and have a  crappy day, you can sit on the couch and eat food from a bag while watching TV if you want. No cleaning, no cooking, no talking, no moving. Early bed, late bed, it’s all the same. In short, you can totally abdicate responsibilities. Shrug, announce “I give up,” and actually do it.

If you’re married and have a crappy day, you can sit on the couch and eat food from a carton while watching TV if you want. Or have someone else spoon feed you. Read a book, watch a movie, paint your toenails. Alone or with someone. No cleaning, no cooking, no talking, no moving. In short, you can totally abdicate responsibilities, and quit for the night. Or have someone do everything for you. Leave dishes in the sink. Ignore the laundry. Shrug, announce, “I give up,” and either get help or ignored. Either way, you can actually give up.

If you have small children, there is no quitting. You can’t just sit on the couch and refuse to move. Other people, who cannot feed themselves, need to eat. Have a tendency to become agitated when ignored, and by agitated, I mean smearing feces and shaving cats. They need freaking stories and songs and negotiations and sometimes a bath and always discipline and attention before bed. And often for a while after  bed. If you have a crappy day and have small kids, too bad for you. Pick up all the spilled food or someone will fall, sweep up all the dumped flour or the cats will eat it and puke and then someone will fall, calm the terrified cats or they will claw you at night, eye the tricycle-d wall, put away the scattered toys, discuss the hitting and kicking, find the shards of glass, clean the various things painted on the walls. Or one of those small people will find the evidence tomorrow and try it all again. At the end of the day with small children, even after you’ve been working all day and haven’t been allowed to freaking sit down let alone veg, someone has to recork the bottle. Because you’re gonna need it, again, tomorrow.

The Loh Down on Divorce

Posted on by

Sandra Tsing Loh, whose writing I admire and whose voice is all too often in my car, is ending her marriage of 20 years. And she has some intensely interesting things to say about women, marriage, and American culture.

Check out her intriguing article over at The Atlantic.

Made me thing of Orenstein’s book Flux, and of several conversations I’ve had lately with friends about limited hours in the day and priorities. Consider, for instance, her argument that “To a certain extent, men today may have more clarity about what it takes to raise children in the modern age. They don’t, for instance, have today’s working mother’s ambivalence and emotional stickiness.”

Carved in Stone

Posted on by

Saw the opening night performance of Carved in Stone in Hollywood last night and was amazed. I have a crush on every one of the five lead performers. Acting choices were strong, avoiding the obvious risk for overacting that arises when such characters get a new chance onstage. Staging was fine. Script by Jeffrey Hartgraves is great, and although I’d trim a line or two here and there, there are more that I want to write out and paste to my refrigerator. What a monumental effort by everyone, from producers to stage management.

It was beyond fabulous to see old friends. I can’t believe how long it has been, how sweet they are, and how rueful I feel that it took so long to see them. I love those guys.

And I am so amazed that all  three of them are following their dreams and working hard to make their art a reality. Two are just beyond impressive. One, of course, is pretending to be a rockstar dickhead, so I won’t feed his ego by saying anything except that it is quite an accomplishment to get all the cheese stains out of his clothes. That seems like a major achievement.

And only one thing would have made the night even better. As lovely as it was to catch up on old times with my date, and it was, it would have been unsurpassedly cool to be there with Spouse. Yet even without him, as Uncle Charlie says, I wanna do it  again. It was a great night out, raw food vegan cheesecake and all.

I don’t wanna

Posted on by

I’d love to write an erudite post about how the online community is reading Infinite Jest this summer, and how I welcome their inertia so I can undertake Read Number Two. http://infinitesummer.org/archives/215

But I’m just wiped out.

I’d like to enjoy my trip with family to do one thousand things with old friends  while Spouse attends to business. But I’m just too tired.

I’d love to be witty and silly and roll my eyes about how hard parenting is. But I just can’t find the energy right now.

Geez.  I’m not able to be a poser, an activity director, or a snarky whiner? That must be some serious exhaustion. Borne of only three nights of pint-sized knees in my back, A/C wars with Spouse, and running around from place to place trying not to keep the Tazmanian Devil in a hotel room for more than 30 minutes at a time.

and we’re here for another two days…

Tough call

Posted on by

For future reference, if you’re out of town and get a request to send a partial submission to the agent you really, really, really hoped would read your debut novel, it will cost you $30 to print it at Office Depot and $176 to print it at FedExKinkosFedOfficeFedWhatever.

Tough call. But  I think since David Foster Wallace’s agent actually wants to peruse my novel, I’ll go with the $176. Because there *must* be a reason paper and ink cost six times at FedEx, right?  Like, they’ll use their special lasers to make my writing even better, right? Or print in in black and white gold, right?

By the way, did I just seem all casual about the fact that the agency that found DFW in the slush pile is at least potentially interested in my novel? Sorry. Didn’t mean to make it seem off-handed. There isn’t an emoticon for “wetting my pants right now in fear, as I sob in relief,” is there?

Bright side Dark side

Posted on by

Peanut is a great traveller. Loves new sights, sounds, places. Sits patiently in the car for long rides, behaves well in public, carries his own luggage.

But oh, the nights. He wouldn’t eat until we  got ready for bed (new things kill his appetite and he didn’t eat all day and said he was hungry at 8pm Gee, you think?) and then threw a two hour tantrum last night and, as a result, went to bed three hours late. He woke and threw a meltdown fit at 2am. Yelled and cried for about 15 minutes that he never got his stories. He woke screamingly angry at 4am and revved up for a long fit about needing to brush his teeth (but Spouse caved a few minutes in because we’re in a hotel and it was 4 am and Spouse has low tolerance for early morning tantrums. Pussy. I’ll be paying for that choice for weeks, but oh well. That’s the luxury of the weekend parent. Not that I’m bitter.)

So, of course, Peanut work promptly at his usual time. 5:00. He’s had approximately five hours sleep. He’s trapped in a hotel room with a mother who has had approximately five hours sleep. He’s mad he couldn’t go with Spouse on his little jaunt of peace and quiet this morning. Apparently most of this anger is directed at the pricier items installed in this hotel room for people with taste, rather than children.

And I am faced with a day of fun, with people we love, and highlights of my favorite LA outings and the potential of either  Dr. Jekyl Travel Dude, the happy-go-lucky go anywhere friend or Mr. Hyde Nighttime Guy, the spawn of Freddy Krueger, and my worst nightmare.

Quandry

Posted on by

I’m trying to decide whether to have a full existential meltdown, or just analyze away something that’s digging away at the corners of  my mind. Let’s see where I wind up after telling you this:

A new mom, amazing person with lots of early childhood experience told me this week, “I don’t get it. This is a lot of work, but it’s just not that hard. Why do people say this is so hard?”  Cut to a few hours later, and a professional, kick-ass mom who is quite open about not finding her reason for being in parenting,  said, “There are just some women who are meant to do this. I’m not one of them.”

So I’ve been thinking, incessantly: am I cut of non-parenting cloth because I do find it hard, or are we having a difference not of opinion but of semantics? No, it’s not hard. It’s exhausting, not hard. It’s  draining, not hard. Parenting full time is more work than I’ve ever done, but it’s not, she’s right, actually hard. It is hard to do it all day every day, but the work, itself, is not hard. Hard to make it through behaving properly, but not hard to do. Fine.

A five-year veteran who doesn’t think she was  cut out for parenting has always made me feel like I’m doing okay. Now I’m rocked by a mom who has tons of pre-baby experience with children and has spent two months with her own babies and doesn’t see why people warned her it would be hard.

Maybe my phase with a newborn was different because our first four months were colored by intense breastfeeding pain. But every new family has issues that make things tough, though, so I can’t write off my lack of pleasure  as resulting from early pain.

Maybe because I start thinking, about an hour before nap and all the time after nap, every day since my child was six months old, “when are you going to sleep?!?!!!”, maybe I’m not cut out for this  work. I’ve known for a long time that my child probably deserves a more patient caregiver, but that I can’t fathom having someone else raise my child. Why have a kid, I’ve always reasoned, if someone else will spend  more time with my child than I will? But that new mom, who doesn’t think life with a newborn is hard, makes me think maybe I should have someone else do this for me. Because I don’t always like this job. In fact, I rarely like this job. Love the kid, loathe the work. The not-hard work.

I can’t get over that it’s not just the language.

Of course, I didn’t feel put out by motherhood until six or seven months. I didn’t feel completely out of my element until past a year. So maybe if I wait this out, that new mom will come over to the side of those of us who think we were probably made to do something else.

I doubt it though. She’s probably just going to be one of those who do it all well, easily, and with a smile.

Lucky babies.

Memories light the cobwebs in my mind

Posted on by

It’s been a lovely month for finding old friends, and  I am feeling much more connected to the world, myself (past and future) thhanks to a couple of recent visits.

First, a late, weeknight drive into The City to see old friends reminded me what it’s like to casually move about, unencumbered, and free to eat, drink, and talk at midnight. It felt good. I didn’t want to leave. Three old friends and one new proved interesting, exciting, and accomplished. It was nice to see them, and the follow up two days later was particularly sweet, because a conversation begun became an actual adult interaction, even with Peanut in tow. Rather apocalyptic, because we were in the financial district after hours, and were really the only humans for several square blocks. Oh well.

So tack onto the post-theate reunion another visit from an ACT ghost this week and I feel quite pleased with my life. Shocking, I  know, given the tone of most of my blogs. I thought finding my stage friends, with whom I connected creatively and celebrated nocturnally, would make me feel paralyzed in my current life. I thought seeing friends 10 years after we were all young and brash and creative would make me feel old and unfulfilled. Nope. I’m glad we had those days, annd I miss the stage, but I’m glad to have those friends, glad that our lives have sprouted dozens of facets we didn’t have before. We’re all more interesting, and maybe we’ll keep in touch for the next ten  years.

I also visited a lovely writer in DC who made me feel less crazy, less stifled, less alone only because she’s just as crazy, stifled, and alone as I am at home. I know it sounds ridiculous to enjoy being frustrated that I can’t have a conversation because someone else’s kids make it nigh impossible to interact, but if feels reassuring that it happens to everyone with children. Something feels good about the universality of a deep sigh in the middle of a stream of “Mommy mommy mommy mommy mommy listen look listen look why why why mommy mommy mommy.” It feels good to look sidelong at someone who is thoughtfully driving you to the airport while their kids shriek in the backseat, and to  share a joint eye roll. Not because the situation is at all fun. Not because you both *swear* there were snacks in the car that disappeared somewhere between the loading, playdate pickup, and symbolic open road, but now need to listen to the understandable, if a bit shrill, begging for calories from the back seat. No, not my idea of a great time. And yet, my idea of a really, really great time. Because I am not alone. Bless the blogosphere and moms and titter and and all those books that remind us of that fact.

And bless the brilliant book I’m just beginning. Oh, boy oh boy you’re gonna love this book. I’ll tell you when it’s published, I swear, but this woman can freaking WRITE. Dang. Feels good to read so much. To read so much that I like. To read and feed myself so I can go home and know I have old friends and new friends and all manner of brain cells still firing. They cannot kill us, and even if they do not make us stronger, they make us different. And I guess there’s something to figuring out what in the heck they did make us. Are making us. and what we’re making ourselves. Snacks or no.

*Sigh*

Posted on by

Dulles, you are officially the weirdest airport from or to which I’ve ever flown. A strange apocalyptic bus takes you from security along the runway to the terminal. The restaurants are alternately hardcore, midwestern meat and potatoes and vegetarian raw food agglomerations of sprouts. The insistence on delaying my flight for weather in the middle of summer shocks me beyond words (man, California is looking more and more like paradise, with its lack of humidity or summer storms).

But here’s the thing…the people are nicer than I’ve experienced in a while. Employees nice, sense of humor, polite, generally human. Passengers, too. I’m sure it helps flying Virgin America, with whom I will attempt to share all future flights; and flying to SF, where if the people are weird, at least they’re my kind of weird.

I noticed today, in Arlington and in DC, that I am certifiably born of gypsy stock. Trip to Seattle, I suddenly wanted to live in Seattle. Trip to DC, I consider moving to DC. And afternoon walking though a warmish, humid-ish Arlington and I want to move to Arlington. What is this wanderlust that tells me any breath of comfort I feel means I need to relocate my entire life to that very geographic nexus?

i guess it’s a good thing Dulles intrigues me, because from the frequent, polite, informative Virgin America announcements at the gate about airport-widee delays and weather-basd flight halts, I might be living here for a long, long time.

What in tarnation?

Posted on by

Why does it cost me $10 to get wifi at the airport? Shame on you, SFO. Hell, the rest areas in Iowa have free wifi.

Why do small people smell a crisis and grow impatient with the world just because you are?

Why does it take ATT three days to believe me that our DSL is down. “Says here you shouldn’t have any green lights. Why do you have three green lights? Maybe you need to buy a new modem.” Did that. Changed all the cords and the modem and the problem is clearly yours. “Oh. We’ll be out next week.”

Why does the company who put in the windows (thank you…just in time for summer, we can actually open our windows now) leave little shards of glass EVERYWHERE? In the toy box, in the dishes, one every floor, in the cat box, in the beds. Why did you say “move the furniture three feet away from the windows” when you meant twelve feet? Why did you not just tell us to move out? And landlord? Why did you not do this last month, before we moved in? Good damned thing I wanted windows that open…

Jerks on the red-eye across this great country: why did you all bring your kids? And why did you all buy up the upgrades before I decided it might be worth it to pay my life’s savings to get out of coach on a red-eye? Let me guess. You’re gonna keep me up all night, with your kids and your “WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A MEAL?” nonsense.

Sigh. I’m gonna miss Peanut and Spouse. I’m gonna have a blast. And goddess help me, I’m really nervous about making it home in one piece, so help me out on that one.

Good gravy

Posted on by

No Internet for several days; then tech comes just as I leave for five days to wash laundry and cook and clean and laugh and cuddle for/with/near four of the best people on the planet.

I will post, I swear.  I’m just out of touch with reality for a while…

Words to the wise

Posted on by

Dear handyman: get off your high horse and lose the attitude. It took you a month to schedule one stinking morning appointment, so if I cancel because of a family emergency (I want to take Peanut to the concert in the park and farmer’s market more than I want the leak in the sink gone, but you don’t know that and you’re not gonna) then that’s my problem. Do you want the work, or don’t you? Don’t act as though you’re losing your home just because I canceled. I gave you 48 hours notice.

Dear printer: stop lying. You’re not out of toner. I just bought you toner. you’ve printed, like, 200  pages. I know you better than this. I raised you, printer. You will shut your paper hole and I will obligingly open every stupid door and drawer, shake the toner cartidge, and put it back in, and we’ll have another 200 pages before you lie again. And I’ll go through the whole bullshit process again, at least twenty more times, and you’ll give me at least 2,000 pages, andIi’ll wonder which is harder: kidgloving my stupid f—ing printer or putting a toddler to bed. Secret answer: I don’t know. Neither is particularly fun or easy, but I have you both down to a science, so whatever. It’s like knowing you have to start your car on a hill. Sucks, but at least you know the drill.

Dear lady outside the Starbucks’ bathroom: stop rattling the g–d—- door knob. Didn’t you figure out the first four times you rattled it that someone is in here? i refuse to holler “someone’s in here” because any idiot can figure that out from the LOCKED DOOR. Also, I refuse to holler “almost done” because I just got in here and I am not almost done. I mean, relative to the guy before me who took half and hour and peed on every square inch of the seat, I’m almost done. But relative to my need not to talk to you, I’m not. You’d think I could pee by myself one freaking time this week. Just for that, I’m washing my hands twice. And checking my pores. And practicing origami on the paper towels, because it’s not like they’ve given me a lot of entertainment options in here.

Dear blogosphere: get back here. Just because I post anti-spanking and anti-segregation instead of lame jokes about how much my kid gets my goat, doesn’t mean you need to stop reading. By half. How the f— do half of you go away just because I talk all serious about stuff? Fickle freaks. What, are you over at the Bloggess listening to her in prison on the Nimitz story? Please. “Oh, look at me, I’m funny and patriotic and not ranting about respecting your kid.”  Fine. I get it. You’re not tough enough to take my brand of genius. Whatever. Your loss.      Wait, I mean, get back here. I’ll try to be funny. I swear. Or not, if that offends you.

Dear so-called medical experts: shut the f— up. You have no idea what you’re talking about. ‘Nuff said.

Ditto you parenting experts, job experts, and Pynchon experts.

Dear lady we saw yesterday: you’re damned right, you should be embarrassed. When you’re walking your first grader home from school, with your iPod blaring, you *should* feel guilty enough to drop the earbuds and listen to your talking kid. Kind of pathetic that it took us running by (not judging you because we didn’t know, until you dropped the buds like they were contraband) to make you listen to your kid. After she’d been in school all day. I’m glad you feel bad.  You totally suck.

Dear advertisers: stop manipulating people.  You suck.

Dear government: would you please get them to disclose what natural flavors they use? You know it’s anchovies, I know it’s anchovies. Would you please make them put anchovies on the label? Cuz otherwise I might someday thing, well, it’s natural, so it couldn’t possibly be ground up carmine bugs, right? Wrong. Trade secrets my ass. The amount of  brown sugar in something is a trade secret. The fact that they’re feeding dead chickens to cows and dead cows to chickens should be on the front of the package. In simple pictographs because nobody reads labels anymore.

Dear neighbor: please don’t call the cops. He was doing that because we’ve had trouble with deer eating our brand new sunflowers, and we thought that the only natural defense we have, since the Ivory everyone else swears by isn’t working,  is human urine, and I know you probably looked the other way when it was a three year old, but he doesn’t have a big enough bladder and the tall guy does. Besides, what are you going to tell the cops? It’s our yard. And our urine.

Writhing on the floor

Posted on by

It’s a lot easier to send out a manuscript to an agent you don’t know than to people you admire.

So I”m curled up in the fetal position in a cafe, writing breathless emails to people I would never, in a million years, have read my book, asking them to uncap a red pen and let me have it. Really, really, let me have it.

No wonder most authors I admire were alcoholics. This shit is scary.

Not because they will  tell me the book can be better. For they will, and should. Not because they won’t like me if they hate my writing. You can’t write what other people want to hear; you can only write the voices in your head.

So I’m not sure what the scary part is.

Okay, yes, of course I know. You know what casting directors expect when audition music cues? We all know—feel—on both sides of the mike that it go one of three ways. Either the voice I hear in my head moves the audience; passes, forgettable, though the minds of the audience; or turns the stomachs of the audience, making them laugh at my ridiculous self delusion.

Well, this is the moment when that music is cued.

And it’s just nauseating.

Negotiating

Posted on by

Cat sinks claws into Spouse’s back while trying to cuddle him. I trim cat’s claws, because Spouse refuses to. Never has. Nine years.

After the trim:
Me: Would you grab the dustpan and sweep up the cat’s nails?
S: You trimmed ’em, you sweep ’em.
M: I trimmed them for you. You sweep ’em.
S: You trimmed them haphazardly. You sweep ’em.
M: I swept all the crumbs under P’s chair. You sweep this.
S: You made *and* served food that made crumbs. You *deserve* to sweep.
M: There is no deserve about sweeping. Our house, our chores.
S: Nope. You find the puke, you clean it. You cut the nails, you sweep ’em.
M: [speechless]
S: That’s right. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
M: That’s not how you use it!
S: [Grinning and walking away] I know.

It’s a wonder I haven’t killed him yet.

And did I sweep them? Of course. Because while Spouse is at work, enjoying his own thoughts and peeing by himself  and getting paid for it (that’s all I remember about work now is thinking and peeing and getting paid), Peanut will step on cat claw trimming and scream bloody murder about how something hurt him and then will sit down to examine it and will undoubtedly try to eat it and then shriek that it’s gross and then try to stab me with it to see if it hurts me the same way it hurt his foot and tongue, and I’m not going to have that be my morning. So, yes, I swept up the nails. It’s a wonder I haven’t killed me yet, either.

Hopes and dreams and cheese

Posted on by

Peanut’s list, at three years and two months, of things he would like to be when he’s big, has not changed a whit since three years and one month. So I think this is really it. I’m looking into colleges. And since he wanted some that need college and some that don’t, and he unwittingly stumbled upon the perfectly balanced list (in his order, verbatim, except for the lack of k/g and r sounds):

Fire fighter
Nurse
Worker Who Drives Big Trucks
Astronaut
Farmer
Police Officer
Tea Maker (“at one hotel because people don’t have their teapots with them at hotel”)
Cheese Maker

I told him I would totally come visit every day at work if he were a cheese maker. And I would.  I also think that’s the best freaking job I’ve ever heard, and one of only six I haven’t tried.

Yet. ‘Cuz he needs to apprentice in the family cheesemaking business before going to some Continental cheese college on scholarship, right? Right. Gotta go get a sheep, goat, and cow. And we have to move to Pt. Reyes to learn from the Cowgirl Creamery folks.

Does Cowgirl Creamery offer an internship  for three year olds? Is there a cheesemaking  magnet school nearby? Formaggio Kitchen scholarship? CheeseBoard preschool?