Author Archives: Naptimewriting

What about the issues?

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So the blogoshere and FoxNewsForRepublicans are abuzz with silliness about Sarah Palin’s Newsweek cover. Some are upset that she wasn’t airbrushed to within an inch of recognizability. Um…two things. First, airbrushing the humanity out of women’s faces is part of the problem with the way we, in this country, judge a woman first by her exterior and almost never by her ideas. Second, other persons of political importance have had exactly the same angle and zoom, and have looked just as flawless as she does, and nobody made a stink. How sexist that FoxNews thinks this cover is nasty, just because she’s a woman and presumably valuable for her looks. The cover pictures her face, and we’re not obligated to beautify it–every human face is beautiful the way it is. Sarah Palin’s face on this cover lovely and it’s not the point, because her politics are the point. Get over the fact that we should white glove her but manhandle the three other major political figures of the American presidential race. She gets the same treatment–respectful, full frontal magnifying glass. Airbrushing is reprehensible enough for fashion models and celebrities. She’s not in this game for her face. She’s in this game for her mind. Can we finally have a picture of that, please?

(Wouldn’t that be awesome? Have medical science design a way to measure a person’s intelligence, fairness, logic, goodness, and fundamental worthiness? Then election and marriage and hiring and friendship decisions would be much easier.)

Here’s a blog about the zoom-y cover nonsense. The first response, about a plastic surgeon judging her face is positively offensive. When are we allowed to look like ourselves? Baby photos are Photoshopped for magazines, toddlers are tarted up in full makeup for Little Miss Pedophile contests, teens are mocked for their appearance, and the rest of the country carves themselves to get self esteem.

On a similar note, I was searching the phrase “Sarah Palin is a hater” because after seeing a few clips of her speeches I marvel at how toxic and acerbic her tone is. “Who is the real Barack Obama?” Ah, excuse, me, Madam Governor, but isn’t that the pot calling the kettle an outsider? If his daughter or Joe Biden’s daughter was pregnant we’d be having a different election. If his religion or Joe Biden’s religion was as extreme, we’d be having a different election. If he or Joe Biden had been found by a bipartisan committee to have abused power, we would have a different election. Barack Obama has given hundreds, nay thousands, of interviews. And he has several flaws. But we know about them. Who is the real Barack Obama? Who is the real Sarah Pain? She can’t even name what media she relies upon for her information, let alone give a clear answer (I’m not going to answer that , and will instead answer the question I prepared…I read everything put in front of me…I’ll get back to you on that…it doesn’t matter what I believe about global warming, we just need to fix it). Obama’s Christian pastor said some really eye opening things, and Obama left his Christian church. (Had to repeat that qualifer because there are still people who think he’s Muslim. Not that I would care. Religion or not, I care how people think, not which brand of god they buy.) Palin’s pastor has said some really eye opening things and nobody calls her on it. Seriously, people. When is the superficial lovefest about this woman going to end, and when do we get to hear what she really believes? After the election? She doesn’t believe in global warming or evolution or birth control or government oversight, (until just recently, when it became clear that unbridled capitalism really kind of sucks for the innocent). She believes The Lord is at work in things like gas pipelines and wars (take a look at this article). She believes that rape and incest victims should be forced to have the children conceived in those violent acts, and she believes her daughter is the only one who should get to choose what to do with her own body.

Anyway, I found this blog, which led me to this New Yorker article. Funny, I guess, if it weren’t so scary.

Makes me want to go back to teaching critical thinking, because a good percentage of this country needs some of that skill.

(Speaking of, I heard a fantastic program on NPR yesterday that included a lengthy discussion of Harlem’s efforts to lift children out of the cycle of poverty. An interesting bit, early on in This American Life‘s piece, noted that job training and welfare programs are failing because some Americans aren’t missing one skill, something teachable that, once fixed, will enable them to work. They’re missing dozens of skils, including motivation, financial knowledge, and basic critical thinking. If we give kids positive, enriching environments that teach them to think broadly about problems, we create a future of universal success. Critical thinking might also help us end the cycle of getting the government we deserve, because we might, collectively, vote in our best interests, not in our narrowest interests.)

activist judges

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So if a court, especially the Supreme Court, makes a ruling you disagree with, it’s activism? It’s legislating from the bench? Just because you disagree? Ever consider that those judges are professional legal scholars and you aren’t, and it’s their job to decide if what we do is legal? If a majority of Americans come together and vote for a law that goes against the Constitution, against everything the country was founded upon (say, for instance, Jim Crow separate but equal, or modern, homophobic separate but equal), then it’s the Court’s fault when they strike down that law? By judging a law unconstitutional, the judiciary does not create laws. They are not legislating. They are judging. It’s their job. And if you don’t like what they decide, you can’t just raise the specter of out of control judges by saying they are legislating. It’s simply not true. Declaring a law unconstitutional says that the people are simply not allowed to make the law they made. It’s judges’ job to decide if what we do is legal.

But if you say that’s activist judges at work, whatever. I mean, I’ve disagreed with the Court’s findings before, and will again. But I don’t consider their decisions activism. I consider their logic flawed and their opinions wrongheaded. But I know they vote exactly the way we could have predicted them to, since their logic is usually the same throughout their career, and their wrongheadedness consistent. That’s why Presidents choose the justices they do.

It seems more than a little ignorant to say that voters can pass laws in favor of slavery, or bigotry, or inequality and expect that Justices will uphold those laws.

btw, Prop 8 has nothing to do with religious freedom. Prop 8 amends the California State Constitution to take away a right that all Californians have. It uses the will of the many to exclude a few. And that’s unAmerican. Not religious or free. That’s ignorant hatred of people who are different than you are. There is no separate set of rules for the majority or for the minority. We all get the same treatment. That’s the point.

Here’s a little secret. If you open your mind to new ideas, it’s not as though your brains will fall out of your head, or that your old opinions will go away. Consider the new ideas. And if you don’t like them, discard them. But for heaven’s sake, just try the ideas out for a little while. You might be surprised at what you find.

But what I really want to do is direct

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Peanut: [handing over toothbrush] Mommy turn.

Mommy: [taking toothbrush] Okay. Open, please.

Peanut: [snatching brush back] Mommy don’t want it.

Mommy: [puzzled] Okay. I don’t want to?

Peanut: [yelling and shoving the toothbrush back into mommy’s hand] Peanut say DO it, Mommy DO IT!

I swear we’ve never said anything that sounds anything like that. But if I knew he was going to use that line, I might have tried it a few times. Wouldn’t have worked. But it would have felt good.

Real costs of doing business

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You know what? It’s time for us to start paying what it costs to produce and ship the stuff we buy.

I’m sick of egg ranchers saying they can’t have cages big enough for the birds to turn around because eggs would be too expensive. Well, then, maybe we, as a nation, should buy fewer eggs. (Propostition 2 in California mandates that animals be able, int heir cages, tostand up, turn around or stretch. Egg producers are fighting the measure, saying they’ll all leave the state to continue cruel farming in other states. Won’t that make eggs more expensive because of shipping costs? Nope. I forgot that in this country gas is so cheap we can throw it away and not benefit financially from buying local.)

I’m tired of farmers saying they can’t pay workers a fair wage because strawberries and lettuce would be too expensive if they paid human beings what its worth to do backbreaking labor. Well, my friends, I would pick strawberries for a living if it paid well enough (I do pick enough each week to feed my berry-centric family), and I am willing to pay more for my strawberries because I want workers paid a living wage. I’m willing to pay a lot more because I can’t eat cheap strawberries without seeing the faces of families who can’t eat after a long day in the field because they’re not paid well enough.

I’m exasperated with fast food restaurants who say they can’t possibly raise minimum wage by a dollar because it would add two cents to the cost of a burger. Two cents. Yup, that would make people stop eating a quarter-pound of cow flesh-plus-feces, all right. Two cents.

I’m irritated that big agribusiness insists it has to modify and spray and innoculate and irradiate and otherwise alter food to make it cheaper. What about making it healthful? What about making it good or natural? What about paying a little more and eating a little less (and a little mroe wisely)?

No, I don’t want Americans to have to struggle to buy their food. But as it is, we’re not paying the real cost of food. We all need to be growing tomatoes on our patios and spinach instead of grass in our yards. Because underpaying businesses for their products means they underpay workers and abuse animals and the planet in the process.

Find out more about Prop 2 here: For yes and for no.

And perspective on the precious resources animals offer here.

And the real cost of strawberries here.

Tantrum of monumental proportions

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Ah, I love a good tantrum. (Not seriously.) And we don’t get enough of ’em around here. (Seriously.) Toddler are supposed to frequently spiral out of control, overwhelmed because they feel helpless, glimpse the capricious nature of this world, and begin to realize someone else is in charge of them. Now that I recall the reasons for winding into a tantrum, I’m thinking of having a one or two myself.

But Peanut has only had two or three absolute meltdowns in our short (to me; eternal, to him) history together. So we’ve been getting off lucky. (Not really. Every kid, and I believe this, brings his or her own challenges. The tantrum freaks sleep all night; the daytime teethers sleep all night; the nighttime teethers are cuddly all day; the total nightmare children potty train at 15 months. You name the tough issue, I’ll remind you of a reason your child is a dream. Bring on the sextuplets.)

Oh, this tantrum two nights ago one beat them all. Made up for lost time. Was like whiplash all over again. Fill in the aphorism that makes it seem good that we lost two hours of sanity and several years off our lives for finding a happy resolution to last night’s fi-freaking-asco.

Screaming and writhing that he doesn’t want to do something is normal. We talk him through it; we’re firm but fair. We don’t traumatize him, but we don’t let him walk all over us, blah blah blah. He goes willingly every time because we’re wicked wily with the various positive parenting techniques. I didn’t read three-hundred-and-forty-two parenting books for nothing. I have at least five good tactics to try before I lose my patience. He gets the small choices, we get the big choices. “You choose the shampoo, but yes, we’re washing your hair one night this week.” You know the drill. And it always works, if we summon up the hours’ worth of patience it takes to navigate from dinner to bedtime. That two hour stretch is honest to god the longest freaking stretch in my life, every day. Visions of Turkish prison…give me a stint in a Turkish prison any day. NOT Gitmo. I’ll take a toddler over human rights abuses. Let’s be clear about that.

So he’s screaming and writhing going into bath. Screaming and writhing coming out of bath. No amount of negotiation or compromise seem to work. He chooses the soap, then shrieks as though he’s being stabbed as I come near him with it. [We don’t scream inside. If you scream one more time you don’t get stories tonight.] He chooses the bath toy, then flings it at my head when I say we have three more minutes. [We don’t throw toys because they could hurt someone. If you throw any more toys they go away until tomorrow.] He chooses the towel then bangs on my head as I dry him off. [We don’t hit. If you hit me again you get a time out.] It’s a lovely night.

So we’ve gotten teeth brushed and we’re reading books. (Naked reading is now the compromise to get teeth brushed. I’d rather have him grow up with strong teeth than always be fully clothed. I went to college with The Naked Guy. I don’t care if Peanut defies society on its Puritanical norms. I care if his oral hygeine becomes a familial liability. Spouse’s abyssmal record on that front makes me try even harder on the next generation.)

“Okay. We’re reading three stories tonight. This is one…(as the next one approaches) this is the second story and we’re reading three tonight. So one more after this…(as the next one approaches) This is the last story tonight. After this story we’re all done. Look at Mommy’s eyes. Say that when this book is all done, we’re all done stories. (He looks at me and screams at the top of his lungs.)

C: Mommy told you no screaming inside. Quiet voice inside. If you scream again we’re all done stories.
P: [looks at me, decides, and yells as loud as he’s able.] AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!
C: [surreal calm descends as I know if I get sucked in, the kid is getting the kind of beating that we don’t believe in but often fantasize about]: All done stories. We don’t yell inside. No more stories.
P: [crying] Please one more story.
C: No. Mommy said no more stories if you scream. Time for potty and bed.
P: [Sobbing] Please one more story.
C: No. Time to say goodnight.
P: [Stroking my face, kissing me] Please one more story. (Where did he learn that trick? It’s gonna help in college, methinks).
C: [Looking at Spouse over Peanut’s shoulder and mouthing “I really want to read the story.”] No. Stories all done.
P: [screaming and sobbing] Please one more.
C: No. We’re all done. You cannot scream and get stories. It’s time for pee and goodnight.

So he hits me. I tell him that’s not okay. He yells. I tell him that’s not okay, either. He cries, I pick him up, he slugs me. I put him down he is wracked with sobs and begging to be cuddled. I pick him up, he hits me. I put him down he screams. I go into the bathroom. He follows me, screaming and sobbing about the book, about sorry, about some other stuff I don’t understand. I help him on the toilet and he beats on me, repeatedly, while peeing. That’s some trick, I think. I tell him to stop it, he does. I tell him to wash his hands, he yells. I wash his hands, he screams. I put him down he shrieks to get up. I cuddle him he hits me. I put him down he screams. Spouse walks into the room, Peanut sobs “Daddy go ‘way.” Apparently, no pee, no wash, no window, no light, no door, no nothing but another book. If we turn off the light, he screams that he wants to turn it off. If we turn it back on, he screams that he doesn’t want it off ever.

The cat has been nervously trying to help since the whole fiasco started. He always comes running when someone cries, and since Peanut hasn’t been at cat level for much of this, the feline protector feels helpless. Finally, Peanut gets down to get his book and beg for one more story and the cat goes to comfort him. Peanut swings at the cat and hits him with the book. Spouse and I draw the line.

“You cannot hit cats. You can’t hit animals. That’s not okay. Timeout.”

We try for at least a minute to enforce the timeout and can’t, so we close Peanut in his room. He pounds on the door and sobs. We cast sad and supportive glances at each other. After ten seconds we go back in. “Cuddle.” As soon as I pick him up, Peanut hits me. (I’m getting really tired of this. I’m getting ready to hit back. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t…you just better hope I don’t drop my guard, buddy, because having on my gentle-parenting game face is all that’s keeping you from a good, sound, slapping.)

We try cuddling, we try timeouts, we try talking, we try just turning off the lights and closing the door. Each time he begs for a cuddle (which is his code for “help, I’m overwhelmed by feelings.”) Then he sobs while he hits. Mmmmm. Not enough Calgon in the world.

Repeat ad nauseum for longer than any human being should cry or be cried at. Finally, I try to shake things up. Barring beating the living crap out of him, I can’t decide what will change this cycle. He needs help out of this tantrum because he’s totally out of control and hysterical, and I need to think of something. So the next time he hits me, I fake cry. Really disappointed cry. “Why would you hit me when I love you” kind of cry. Gorgeous acting.

He gasps in horror and cries in terror. And he tries to make it better. He strokes my face and kisses me, cries, and waits.

He doesn’t know what to do. He stops crying within 20 seconds. He cuddles, he breathes (finally). I let him choose songs and I sing to him. I rock him. I talk nicely to him. It’s okay to be angry. It’s not okay to hit.

And at the end, as we’re putting him to bed, I tell him I love him. He says, “Mommy no like hitting. Mommy like Peanut.”

I tell him all the time that I love him, that I even love him when he hits, but that I don’t love hitting. I love him happy and sad, I love him angry. I love him reading, I love him running, I love him hitting. I don’t love hitting, but I love you.

Apparently, he listens.

Fire fighters in bite-sized, 100-calorie packs

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Have you seen the Chronicle Books imprint’s book Porn for New Moms? Hilarious. Pictures of men tending a baby while vacuuming, cooking dinner while cooing at an infant, and so on. Fully clothed (mostly, except the shot that offers to rub your feet while you talk about baby’s day), and only erotic in that “actually address a woman’s needs instead of your own” kind of way.

Well, I thought of it today after my son completely squelched my mojo.

Peanut and I went to the library, heaven of all heavens for both of us, and walked downtown to lunch. On our way, we stopped to watch five fire trucks pull up, disgorge their tasty wares, and sit empty in the street, flashing their red lights. Peanut watched, with rapt attention, and refused to let me leave. He likes empty fire trucks. I prefer the juicy center.

And it’s lunchtime. I’m hungry. I want to leave. I tolerate. I educate. See the oxygen tanks? The fire fighters put that on because people breathe air, like all mammals breathe air. They always need air. But if there’s a lot of smoke, they can’t breathe air. So they carry their air on their backs and breathe it through masks. [P: No masks.] Not like Halloween, babe. Like scuba. [P: No masks.] Do you mean they’re not wearing masks, or you don’t like masks? [P: No wearing masks and Peanut no like masks.] Way to clarify. If I had said, firefighters don’t make masks? He would have said yes to that, too. All I know from this week are the following inviolable rules: No masks. No helmets. No Mommy do that. No. And my favorite, No share.

So his focus on the trucks pays off in spades. (In uniformed goodness, really, but the expression is “in spades.” I would vote for a change to “that decision paid off in mouthwatering firefighting flesh,” but I don’t know that it’s up for a vote.) Fire fighters exit building, several of them with axes, and I talk to Peanut about about axes. The glory that is a mid-day, wakeful fire fighting team begins disrobing, and I tell Peanut about the special jackets and pants fire fighters wear (the appeal of suspenders is totally lost on him, and I’m considering whether to let the benefit of my wisdom open up to him a whole ‘nother world of para-nudity, a place of easy groinal access in which he would personally love to dwell in perpetuity).

What is it with firefighting?–is there a sex appeal requirement? Just to apply or in the final cut? Male and female alike, these professionals rank high on HQ (hotness quotient). What is it about the T-shirt and uniform pants that makes me totally abandon my feminist principle that humans are not just bodies—they have thoughts and feelings and are worth more than the sum of their parts—and today’s nameless, faceless specimens are no exception, I’m sure. I believe they have lots of impressive humanity under those muscles. And insignia. And suspenders. ‘Scuse me for a minute.

Okay, I’m back. So they’re all in various stages of undress (not really, if you’ve read our fire fighting book even once [we’re at two thousand times, ordered to do read and reread by a rather controlling repetition freak] you know that fire fighters put their heavy jacket and pants over their uniforms so they can shed the gear easily. Mmmm. Shedding gear easily.)

In various stages of undress, the gentlemen swoop in and out of their trucks (can’t you at least clamber, so I can see you as awkward and not too horizontally promising?), and the HOTTEST of all the county (youngest, too…yummy) sees us talking and beckons me over. (Not us. Me. Forget, for a moment, the sling and the toddler strapped to me. Believe me, this guy asked for me personally. How do I know? Please. What firefighter is a sucker for kids? Just because they drive around waving to every kid in sight, and do charity work with kids, and have all manner of openhousedness at all times for any child in sight doesn’t mean this guy was offering to show my son the truck. He was b-e-c-k-o-n-i-n-g- me. ME. You don’t have to believe me. Whatever.)

So we saunter over, my son and I, one of us carefully sucking in the sling belly that, without fail, pooches out below the sling’s bottom rail. On normal days, my borderline posture means I stick my hip and belly out to keep a two-dozen-pounder from knocking me over. But this is no normal day. Five trucks. At least four fire-extinguishing engineers per truck. You do the math for me—I’m still a bit flustered. So I suck it in. How repulsively self-eroding. And yet effective.

As we approach Officer Perfect, Peanut buries his face in my shoulder. The well-compensated and tremendously fit public servant backs off a bit. “If he’s shy, I don’t want to get too close.”

I’m sorry, sir, but did you just offer, without asking, to interact with a fire-truck loving toddler AND notice his hesitancy AND respect his age-appropriate fears? How quickly can you get that gear off? Never mind. I’ll do it. I’ve been practicing my buttons and snaps.

So Peanut begs me, more shy than I’ve ever seen him (which is saying something), to leave. [He’s hit a major shyness phase that goes beyond his standoffish wait-and-see-before-going-full-bore-goofy personality. It’s puzzling but fine with me. Afraid of strangers? Cultivate that.]

But really, are you kidding me? I want to eat, you want to stay. Then I want to stay—in the name of all that is holy, I want to stay—and you want to go.

I mentioned earlier my pre-child fears of having to sublimate my needs for my child’s welfare. And I’ve mentioned a firm decision to sacrifice sleep, career, sanity, and personal needs at many levels for his well being. But would it be wrong to let my toddler run, crying and hungry, to the store himself while I indulge in a moment of purely self-serving flirting? What if I promise it’ll boost my self esteem? What if I PROMISE it’ll make me nicer to Spouse? What if I say three Hail Marys and one Our Father? Bahaha ha ha ha. Let’s be serious. Okay, just the first two promises?

So as we walked, him thrilled to have escaped gentlemen of his favorite profession of the week, and me, dejected, feeling a bit wilted and chilly under the collar, I thought of the Porn for New Moms.

No fire fighters in that book.

Sigh.

Cop-out post

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I’ll tell you tomorrow (or the next day, or some time that I have child care) about the talk I heard tonight with Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng and Michael Krasny. Interesting on three different levels, none of which I will extrapolate for you tonight. Sorry.  It’s late, I’m tired, and I eat too much when I blog.

I should tell you why we all need to read What is the What, and how I got a very welcome dose of selfless humanity tonight. But for now, here’s this link to someone else’s blog. How’s that for lazy and uninspired? I thought you were inspired tonight, Writing at Naptime. Can’t you do better than this, when writing and reaching people and connecting on a human level seems so important right now? Yes, well, there is that. Seriously? Not quoting from and discussing someone else’s work, but just plain old linking? Um……yep. Gotta love the Internet for the sheer ease of it all. Or so said the several students every stinking semester who plagairized papers for my class despite the dire warnings.

This woman (at a little pregnant) writes so well it makes me want to stop blogging and get back to parenting poorly and barely writing one of my novels.

Can’t we just live at The CheeseBoard?

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The center of my sense of home and community is The CheeseBoard Collective on Shattuck. Living near there formed some of the most important pieces of who I am, and visiting now brings back a flood of revelations, realizations, and nine-plus-senses pleasures that make me happy to my core.

So I took Peanut there.

He’s been before, but this time we went to the store/bakery and to the pizza joint. The latter is not at all the CheeseBoard where I lunched countless afternoons in the ’90s and ’00s. It’s bigger, since they took over the shop next door and expanded with more tables (shock), a bathroom (gasp), and a full area for the musicians.

The pizza of the day was roasted cauliflower, caramelized onion, mozzarella, cheddar, chive, and garlic olive oil on the trademark sourdough crust. It was gorgeous and drippy and wonderfully flavorful. But I’ve rarely had a bad slice there.

The band was the California Honeydrops. They sunk their teeth into a soulful performance and totally captivated my son.

So we ate, me a slice of heaven and him a cheese roll from the Collective. We listened to the blues. We watched the locals and newbies, alike. We basked in the glow of the new paint, the cheerful tile, and the clean bathrooms.

And he said to me, of my favorite place in the world, (except my aunt and uncle’s house at Thanksgiving), “this place make Peanut happy!”

I cried. “Me, too, bug. This place make mommy happy, too.”

I love you, CheeseBoard family.

New Sheriff in town

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Okay, buddy. For the next few minutes, I’m going to channel the parent you’re bringing out in me. All my attachment, gentle, loving parenting is getting me nowhere fast, so here’s the mom I’d just LOVE to be this week, since you hit a major warp-speed, two-and-a-half jerk-fest. Here goes:

No more compromises. No more respecting your wishes or trying to find a way for you to control things. I’m sick and tired of this bullshit.  From here on, you will brush your teeth the first time I ask you. This is not a new concept, we’ve been doing it twice a day since you were four months old. Brush ’em! Now. Life is not full of sunshine, butterflies, and blueberries. We have some chores, too. Do it. You will put on your freaking clothes and get out the door without negotiations and meltdowns and threats and nonsense. They’re just clothes, dude, and everybody else wears them without much fuss. Choose you own, I don’t care. They don’t have to match or be seasonally appropriate. Just fucking put something on and let’s go. This simply can’t take an hour anymore. We’re two under-groomed people in temperate climes, my friend, and it should take more like 15 minutes to get you out the door.

You will wash your hands at whatever water source is closest after you pee or when you declare it’s time to eat. We will no longer try every sink in the house and then decide the cats’ water dish is the best place to clean our hands. It’s handwashing. It doesn’t have to be satisfying or fun or interesting. I’m not singing any more handwashing songs, I’m not thinking up clever questions about soap. Wash your goddamned hands and leave me alone.

Yes, we are going to share. Stop telling me we’re not going to share. I don’t care about age-appropriate, I don’t care about socialization. Give that kid your fucking shovel and shut up about it. You have two more right there. Yes, you will share your toys. Yes, you will share your food. Yes, you will share your house. No, you don’t have to share your mommy, though at this point you’re lucky to still have a mommy, so shut up about that, too.

You WILL get in the stroller, and you WILL enjoy it. I know you’re a sling baby. I know you didn’t get in a stroller more than a dozen times your first year. But I need to go for a run before my brain explodes, so get in the damned thing. You may have a snack, because you always get one, and, today, like every other freaking day, we will run to a playground so there’s something in it for you. Stop freaking telling me what to do and what not to do. I AM the boss of you and you WILL listen. I bend over backwards for you three hundred times a day. It’s your turn. Get in the goddamned stroller. Now.

I’m tired of wanting to yell at you after I repeat something gently and kindly eight times. So screw the first seven. I will say something, and if you don’t listen I’ll scream at you until you do. Got it? And I’m now going to be one of those parents who yells at you to stop crying. Because, seriously, this whole “not in control of my emotions,” “easily overwhelmed,” “new at the whole give and take of social obligations,” “trying to find my place and sense of personhood in the big world” thing is getting really old. You’re two, for heaven’s sake. Can’t you grow up?

Finally, there is no more “one more.” I’ll tell you how many stories, how many minutes, how many turns, and after that you’re done. Not one more. Not one more then one more, or as it’s been lately, one more, now one more, now one more, finally one more. Fuck this nonsense. What is wrong with you? I said ten minutes, I said five minutes, three minutes, two minutes, one minute. I got down on your level, I used nice words, and I made sure you heard me. All m-o-t-h-e-r-f-u-c-k-i-n-g done. Got it?

This is some bullshit, little boy. And at your graduation, wedding, and investiture into the Supreme Court, THIS is the speech I’m giving. Not some cute story about how loving you can be, or how wonderfully you often listen, or what lovely stories you invent when we’re just hanging out talking with each other. I’m telling everyone, including your prom date, your first love, your boss, your bass player, your dissertation professors, and your kids what a complete a-hole you were this week.

Better yet, I’m telling Nana. That’ll get you.

Caffeine-free SUCKS

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It’s day three without caffeine and everything is a disgusting shade of THROBBING and angry.

Do not, DO NOT get within one zip code of my wrath today.

Maybe by Monday I’ll be my usual, moody self. This weekend bodes nothing but irritable with showers of completely pissed off. Chance of clearing early next week, or whenever Peanut sleeps through the night, whichever comes first.

Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings—-review, sort of

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Let me begin with a caveat: I’m not a music critic. I’m not a professional reviewer or musician, and, quite frankly, don’t know what I’m talking about. But Counting Crows’ music has always had a place in my life, for various reasons, and my response to the new album is different than I expected. So I thought I’d throw it our into the blogosphere. Be gentle. These are just personal reflections.

(The short version: I started out not liking most of the tracks. Then David Foster Wallace died and I can’t stop playing the album. What seemed trite and pedestrian is now deeply meaningful. What failed to resonate is now rocking my soul. I guess I wasn’t depressed enough for a Counting Crows album until last week. Now, the band that used to know my confusion and delusions once again speaks to me. The album was growing on me with repeated play. After the suicide, though, I can’t find many faults with it. It probably won’t ever pluck the chords of my self-seeking and disillusioned gypsy soul the way previous albums did, but we’ve all turned a corner in our lives,  and at least I have a friend in the CD player again. The lyrics still grate a bit. But the instrumentation intrigues and the album finally feels like the old friend I’ve always found in the Counting Crows.)

The unapologetically long version:

Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings was purportedly intended as a musical chronicle of the hard living/remorseful hangover pattern most of recognize from some point in our lives. I figured the album would have little in it for me, since my Saturday nights can not have one iota in common with Adam Duritz’s, and my Sunday mornings are farther from my idea of a Sunday morning than I ever thought they would be. We’ve taken different paths, The Crows and I, and, even though we were never even on the same road, I was sure that this album wouldn’t even have a shadow of the hope-doubting, 3am-ceiling-staring, surrealist aspirational beauty I so crave from this band.

The earliest Crows’ albums hit me in two ways. Some of the surreal and intensely soul-wrenching lyrics pluck a moment of my inner world and echo its exact vibrations for the duration of the song. Others wrap me into a world I can’t know, but allow me some enormously cathartic empathy surfing. All of their early songs find me in a crowd, resonate within me, and then leave me speechless, jolted out of complacency and scanning my surroundings to find something familiar. For some reason Duritz often hits chords, metaphorically, that know me, shake me, and comfort me. Each of the early albums seemed to understand my current stage of hopeless hopefulness. The Counting Crows always felt like home, even though they left me feeling achingly isolated and out of place.

So I imagined that this album would disappoint me, not musically, but in its capacity to find and touch me. I’m sure that, on the artists’ list of creative and musical goals to accomplish, finding a way to address their hopes, joys, and mental anguish to me personally ranked somewhere around 365,741,980th. But I was willing to taste that morsel, stuck to the tread of the boots worn by some roadie who swept up after a Dublin concert.

As I expected, I have little in common with the Saturday Night Crows. I don’t particularly like “1492.” “Hanging Tree” is lovely and catchy, but foreign to everything in my dizzy life. “Los Angeles” bandies about all that I loathed about living down there, and makes me yearn for my “ghosts in San Francisco” even more. Now that I’ve moved back, and DFW found the soullessness of LA too much, I like the song infinitely more. While the Boston reference in “Walkaways” still makes me cry, “Los Angeles” and its mentions of Boston leave me cold. “Sundays” sounds fine, and “I don’t believe in anything” either. On paper I can really get into (Except the skinny girls bit, which will always be offensive for so many reasons.) “Insignificant,” is now playing incessantly in my head on runs–a good sign that this is old school Crows. I, too, don’t want to be insignificant, or feel so different. Similarly, the lyrics of “Cowboys” resonate, and the tune is wearing off its original shiny annoyingness to feel like worn old leather. In my original review draft, I was beginning to think I was just dead on the inside, in the little spaces where a batlike Adam Duritz used to hang upside down and keep watch on my neuroses while I closed my eyes for just a minute. David Foster Wallace swept the cobwebs from my terror, my anxiety, my literary mind; now the song is like a blanket on neurotic nights.

The album’s first half sounds fine, and, as I said, I’m not a skilled enough ear to tell you if their work here is genius or artistically middling. And I don’t care. They’re entitled to be brilliant in their hard living, fast driving chapter if they want. That’s not my world. Maybe it’s because the secret fears and horrifying sights the Crows used to paint just captivated me is now composed in a angry, driving, rock and roll voice that I just don’t have the energy to hear anymore. I’m getting too old for this.

And maybe that’s why the Sunday Morning Crows feel like they’re in the same neighborhood, if not actually home. I thought morning-after laments and impulses would irritate and alienate me (way to prejudge and artist’s work), but I find (probably in the desperation that comes from hoping you still find at least something worth in an old lover, else re-foment your otherwise forgotten regret) exactly what I remember and want and need in the band’s Sunday Morning section. It helps that they began the Sunday Morning segment with a ballad that aches of homesickness and nostalgia, for I groove on those motifs, always. Duritz’s surrealism is decidedly more obvious, overexplained, and approachable on this album, which irks me. But the music itself is more intense, nuanced, and compelling than earlier Crows’ orchestration. Though there were high points in previous albums (think This Desert Life’s “High Life” and its unexpected but gorgeous instrumentation), this album is more consistently arresting musically.

For example, the music on “Washington Square” weaves a classic Crows rock with a haunting Irish fairy dance, allowing each to ride over each other and fade in a phase-shifted wave oscillation kind of way. It’s intensely beautiful. The two lines come together then dance apart to create three musical stories beneath the lyrics.

I still haven’t heard most of “On Almost Any Sunday Morning” because the harmonica leads me off to other, lovely places. The lyrics of “When I Dream of Michaelangelo” frustrates me in their references to earlier songs, even though intertextual references are part of the Crows’s appeal for me. The song could be so strong on its own, with the friendless electrifying dance on vulnerable skin, that the angels’ presence irritates me. This is the place on the album I feel most strongly that Duritz’s surrealism has departed from a stream of consciousness that I can follow. I like to wend and stumble through his mind without having my hand held. This imagistic walkway seems to have airport-like, overly obvious signs proclaiming its otherworldliness. As it grows more worn with play, tough, I forget how out of place the play-by-play seems. And I cut him a whole lotta slack because I can’t have any more brilliant but tormented artists off themselves. I need these guys.

“Anyone but You” recalls August and Everything After. I’m still not in love with it, but its complex themes and chording are still working their way into my consciousness.

“You Can’t Count on Me,” like “Sundays” feels like a track from the Hard Candy album, which is not a bad thing, but that album was also running a course tangential, rather than parallel, to mine. The two songs are lovely and tied in knots and weren’t my cup of tea. Until Wallace’s death. (This repeated reference is getting old, I know, but it’s true, and cathartic to realize how one moment on a Monday totally shook me to the core, and how this album has a been a soft, neurotic place for me to nurse mself back into combobulation). I just fell into these Sunday morning songs like I do the couch at grandma’s. I don’t see them for what they are, but for the comfort of not having to think about them.

In beckoning us to dance, “Le Ballet d’Or” strikes me as a wilted, gravelling smoker’s siren song. In it I recognize the Moulin Rouge and theatrical back alley drinkers. Doesn’t mean I won’t go to the ball. Just means it’ll take a particularly remorseful morose impulse to get me to dance my cares away. Before DFW’s suicide I resented that the Crows didn’t even notice I need a babysitter before I can drag my sad old self to the dance. Now it sounds really, really nice to just forget myself in its repetition.

Even further from my reality, “On a Tuesday in Amsterdam,” takes all the compelling old elements—the highwire, the turned back, the rider—and fades them into a repetitive whimper that allows only the piano to shine. And man, does it.  Makes me think Ben Folds.

But the newest Counting Crows album ends with “Come Around,” which closely enough resembles the Crows I know, to suggest that the little pieces of me that echo with their music will again see them come around back to a reality I can recognize.

There. You have my rambling review. My overall advice is, keep listening. They’re a different band now, but if you let them into your life, they’ll start feeling as though they belong. I’m not sure yet if this album cracks my top three Crows albums. But only the top two are thus far insurrountable, so that third spot may be theirs, if life keeps playing out the way it is this fall.

(Side note, YouTube is a conflicting place for me. I was all excited, in an unrelated Google search, to find a clip of the band playing Washington Square on lower Sproul. Talk about surreal. It never occurred to me, as a music lover not a star f*cker, to ever research the singers, songwriters, or bands that make the music I love. I don’t know about personal lives, I don’t listen to interviews, and I don’t visit fan sites. I like the music I like, and that’s it. I don’t even go to concerts. So it was unsettling to see Duritz on Sproul , only because I always thought that hearing his music and thinking of Berkeley, of successes and failures under the broad-reaching halo of theCapanile , was coincidence. Thinking now that I might have heard Berkeley in his music because there IS Berkeley in his music, that an iota ofDuritz and a particle of me link through Oski’s bloodline is more than strange. And I don’t have time to rethink all my Counting Crows associations, the bulk of which are either from Boston missing California or from California missing a me I was trying to be. So I’m kind of mad to have found those videos. And I’m not linking to them, ‘cuz I’m still a little discombobulated about it all. It feels like a one-night stand you only barely remember, having formed all your stories and meanings about it in a vacuum, then hearing the real story from the real person rather than the idealization.)

Peanut wants to go home.

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The move went off reasonably well, and we’re hanging out in temporary digs until we either find a house we love, find a financial crisis that scares us out of the real estate market, or get tired of the utter bullsh*te of the Berkeley housing market, whichever comes first.

And we’ve been preparing Peanut for months: Daddy’s going to live with grandma in San Francisco while we find someone to pay for our house. Then we’ll live with Daddy, all the family together, in a temporary house, just for a while, until we find a new house. Then we’ll move to the new house all together and live there, all together. Yay, new house. Usual response: “Peanut SITED ’bout new house.”  I’m excited, too, buddy.

He’s been fine all along. He knows the script, he recites it along with me. He waved goodbye to the old house and made sure all his friends (stuffed animals) and his sister (doll who used to be his baby, and whom he nursed for a long time, and who he has now decided needs a brother, heaven help me because he loves babies and says he wants one–a real one) and his toys and his books were all in the truck so we could take them to the temporary house and the new house.

He knows all this intellectually. But he’s two and a half. He likes concrete nouns, not intangibles. He likes today and tomorrow, not two months from now. He likes things the way he likes them (“no mommy hold Sweetpea, Peanut hold Sweetpea; no mommy walk first, Peanut walk first; no Mommy eat hummus, Peanut no share hummus; no Peanut go escalator, go elevator first, then escalator”) and he doesn’t like that everything is different.

Today he said, “Peanut want go home.” Sure, I told him. We just need to get cat food and we can go home. “No want temporary house. Want go home.” Oh, thank goodnes you’re a quick-to-rebound kind of guy, Peanut. ‘Cuz this is gonna be rough.

“Um, well, you remember when we packed your toys and we said goodbye to the old house?”

“Yem.”

“Well, someone who paid for the house lives in that house now, and we live with Daddy. And we’re going to find a new house and move to a new house. Maybe that house near the playground that has a yard.”

“Hmmmm. No. Peanut no want new house. Peanut want go home.”

Guilt. Sadness. Buck thyself up, adult. You are the adult, you are in charge, you get to decide. This is a good move for good reasons and you want the whole family happy here, else you’ll wind up in Portland to finally give Spouse a shot at being happy. “Well, bug, for a little while, the temporary house is our home because a home is where the people you love are. And after we find a new house, that house will be home. Because home is wherever Mommy and Daddy and Peanut and the cats are.”

“Hmmmm. Peanut no like cats. Peanut no share toys with cats.”

“Ah, I don’t know what to say to that.”

“If baby comes to Peanut house, Peanut no share toys baby.”

“Um, okay.”

“Name Peanut going?”

“Temporary house.”

“Peanut want go home.”

“I know. But we aren’t going to that home. We’re going to the temporary house.”

I’m sorry, buddy, that we took you away from the only home you’ve ever known. We, the alleged grownups, always knew it was a temporary place, but I guess we never told you. I know the yard and the hiking and the creek for rock-throwing and the awesome community of yoga ladies and the nearby parks and the R family and the D family were all home to you. But I swear, now that Mommy is home, things are gonna get even better. Mommy wasn’t happy there, bug. Mommy likes San Francisco. And Daddy needs Mommy happy, because Mommy is simply beastly when she’s unhappy. Remember our thrush? Mommy was out of her head bestly. Remember the teething nights when you woke Mommy 12 and 15 times a night? Mommy was call-an-exorcist beastly. Remember how much fun Mommy can be? Well, I know this is hard because it’s all new to you, but I swear, we’re going to have fun here.

I haven’t said anything for a while, so he chimes in. “Peanut no like Berkeley. Peanut angry Mommy want new house in Berkeley. Peanut like Aaaameeeeda. Peanut like Sasso-siso.”

You and me both, buddy.

It’s good to be home. I just wish you knew it as home.

You’ll drink your rocket fuel and be grateful!

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So the EPA doesn’t think poisonous perchlorate in our water is a problem. It’s rocket fuel water, literally, but at least you’re living in a country with running water. Twenty percent of the world’s population has no access to drinking water (and you should see what we’ve done to Iraq’s water supply). Seven million people a year get sick from man-made crap in their water, and wealthy nations are paying a premium in petroleum-heavy shipping costs for bottled water that often has toxic chemicals, bacteria, and plastic residue in it.

But the EPA’s refusal to ask for a defense department clean up of their mess in our water shouldn’t surprise us. Science has been declared moot (and mute) under the current administration, and in various states. Our fish are pumped full of mood-altering drugs because we pee and flush our antidepressants into rivers.

From the LA Times:

Among the compounds now phased out or restricted in Europe but still used in high volumes in the United States are the pesticides atrazine, lindane and methyl bromide; some phthalates, found in beauty products, plastic toys and other products; and nonylphenol in detergents and plastic packaging. In animal tests, those compounds have altered hormones, caused cancer, triggered neurological changes in fetuses or damaged a newborn’s reproductive development.

The “biggest single difference” between EU and U.S. policy is in the regulation of cosmetics, said Alastair Iles, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. Cosmetics sold in Europe cannot contain about 600 substances that are allowed in U.S. products, including, as of last September, any compound linked to cancer, genetic mutations and reproductive effects.

So let’s toast with our rocket fuel water, eat our Prozac fish and hormonally altered mad cows, scrub our herbicide/pesticide infested produce, drink our toxic formula from toxic baby bottles, play with our lead-covered baby toys, and sleep on toxic mattresses and give thanks to the EPA, FDA, and USDA. It’s good to have you looking out for us.