God bless Pixar
Ruby, like many three-year olds, is a creature of habit. Every time she wants to watch a video—which is only at breakfast, lunch, snack time (morning and afternoon), dinner, weekends and holidays—she wants to watch Pocahontas or Mulan. Whenever we let her watch a video—which is only at breakfast, lunch, dinner, weekends and holidays (snack time is family time, no exceptions!)—Sam and I have the benefit of a few alone moments, if you know what I mean. (No, not for sex. Duh. These moments are for cooking dinner and paying bills and sweeping the dog hair and for me to point to which of my clothing items should not go in the dryer. As my friend Stacy and I coined after too many cocktails and while lying on her guest room bed together with our husbands, “Marriage: It’s AWEsome!”)
And so it is that the television is the built in babysitter I swore I’d never utilize. Instead, I remind my kid 74 times a day not to sit with her nose mushed up against the television screen and then, once she’s settled a safe distance from Pocahontas’ assets, I weep for the silence (silence being the sounds of the English conquering the Savages). So grateful am I that I’ve been known to drop to my knees weeping, a form of thanks to the person who invented the TeeVee. Was that Edison? Gawd how I want him.
I can pretty much divide the last three years of my life into segments, each headlined by a movie title: There was the Baby Einstein Phase (I nixed that after two weeks, it was so stupid. I can’t believe I fell for that marketing ploy); the Teletubbies Phase (this has waned over the years but unexpectedly recurs from time to time, not unlike a painful case of herpes); there’s the Elmo Phase which ran concurrently with the Sesame Street Stomp Phase; the Little Mermaid Phase, which horrified me to no end but which I was powerless to stop; the Lady and the Tramp phase; The 101 Dalmatians Phase; and, of course, the current and seemingly never-ending Pocahontas-Mulan Phase. If I ever write a book, these will be my chapter headers.
Last night, after much goading, I persuaded Ruby to try a new video while I was braiding her hair. How about Toy Story, I said. Toy Story is great! Toy Story is awesome! Toy Story is…full of toys! It has Woody! And Mr. Potato Head! And did I mention it has toys!? Nevermind that I’ve never even seen Toy Story in it’s entirety. I just needed to experience a single Monday morning in which I did not wake up singing, “LET’S! get DOWN! to BIIIIIIIZness! and deFEAT! the HUNNNS!”
The kid went for it. But not until after we finished watching Pocahontas. You win some, you sorta win some.
When Sam got home from the grocery store and saw that we were watching something new, he almost passed out from relief. “Wow! Thanks, baby!” he said, nodding. “I was so sick of Pocahontas that I was about to poke-ah my eyes out.”
I’m guessing it won’t be long before he’s ready to leave us for a desert island with a volleyball named Wilson.
I only had to click my heels three times
We’re back home and trying to readjust to the time zone. I’m wiped out—a chocolate mess, as The Gaydi Project would say. I can hardly form coherent sentences. Then again, maybe synaptic lapses are due to ingesting toxic amounts of butter and cheese.
Tonight we went for sushi with Ruby and Sam’s parents, who are staying through the weekend. As I was helping Ruby out of the car, she started to giggle that silly, round-edged toddler giggle that sort of burbles up from deep in the throat. “I got no panties on, Mama!” she said through laughter as she lifted her dress in the parking lot. I’d forgotten to put them back on after she’d used the loo earlier in the day.
Tonight, I begged my mother-in-law to change her plane ticket and stay for the month of August because the house has never been so clean and parenting never so easy. She said yes. My father-in-law said no. I pointed out that I wasn’t inviting him to stay on. Just his wife. He drew his line in the sand and I’m hoping I’ll be thankful to him by Monday morning.
And if all of that isn’t enough of an indicator of how mentally non-functional I am, I actually told the in-laws that they should sell their house and buy one here that’s big enough for all of us to live in together.
Jet lag is some serious fucking shit, people. There should be a warning label on it.
He floats like a butterfly, he stings like a bee
Me (whispered into his ear): Baby? You awake?
Him: …
Me: Honey? (Kiss, kiss…kisskisskiss on his stubbly cheek) Are you sleeping? I need to ask you a quick question. Very important.
Him: Mmmmm…I was sorta sleepin’…what’s up?
Me (Kiss, kiss): Did you remember to bring home that black sweater for me from work?
Him: Yup.
Me: REALLY?!
Him: Already washed. Laying flat to dry.
Me (kiss, kiss, kiss!): Wow, you’re the greatest!
Sam: Yeah, well, the greatest is trying to sleep.
Me: Hey, I’m having a moment here. I’m feeling nice. You oughta take the niceness where you can get it. It is fleeting, after all.
Sam: …
Me: Anyway, thanks for taking such great care of me. There. (Kiss, kiss.) I’m done. Go back to sleep.
Sam: Sure, baby. And thanks for taking such moderately good care of me.
Birth control, Part CXXIV: I suffer so that you don’t have to
(*Slightly re-vamped and completely regurgitated from a previous blog post. To my very kind and faithful readers—all my you-go-girl!ers and even to my I-read-your-blog-because-I-love-to-hate-youers— my apologies for being redundant.)
I don’t know what got into me with Ruby’s birthday festivities this year, but I put it in my head that I had to perform like a principal dancer for the Martha Graham Dance Company. If you know anything about Graham technique, then you know it’s all about contractions. As a dance major in college, I worked long hours on getting that perfect I-just-got-punched-in-the-stomach scoop, my upper body curved into a breathless “C.” I don’t dance anymore, except once in a while when I decide to see if I can still do a Grande Plié in open fourth (barely) or when I want to throw a birthday party. In which case, bring down the house lights! It’s all canes and tap shoes and top hats.
I figured 3 was the perfect age to begin memorable traditions, and by that I don’t mean hiring clowns or, worse, participating in the absurd trend of chauffeuring 12 toddlers in a limo to a day at the spa. No, I wanted something born of my own elbow grease, something meaningful yet simple enough so as to be repeatable. The simple thing I fixated on was baking a cake. A box cake, mind you. I know my limits.
I have dreamy aspirations that my child won’t hate me when she’s in high school; that she’ll never roll her eyes at me, talk back or sneak out with her boyfriend; that she won’t drink my vodka and replace it with water; that she’ll always appreciate my sacrifices. Someday, in my imaginary future, she’ll speak lovingly of me with her college roommates as they smoke a joint and eat one of my fabulous cakes that I’ve sent in a care package, complete with rolling papers.
Thanks to my perpetual state of delusion and—I’ll be honest here—my need to overcompensate for those times when I’ve regretted my choice to be a parent, I did the frenetic birthday tap dance that I swore I’d never do. I planned that party and baked that cake, despite a schedule that was more double-booked than a plastic surgeon’s office in Los Angeles before Oscar season.
In roughly 48 hours, I made trips to Children’s Land, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond and the UTC mall; I attended a cocktail party, hosted a swim play-date, received delivery men—not in a housewife-fantasy kind of way, either—made the requisite gift bags, took my kid for a hair appointment, met two work deadlines, baked cupcakes for the kids at school and baked that motherf*#@ing cake.
Did I feel accomplished? Did I feel like the Woman Who Has it All? No. I felt like a Woman on the Edge who’d done 231 things, none of them well. It’s hardly even necessary to mention that tears flowed after I dumped a pan of cupcakes face down on the kitchen floor while removing them from the oven.
But dammit! That cake turned out like no cake ever has before.
Temperatures at Pepper Grove Park hovered around 100 degrees the day of the party, and all the shaded tables were taken. Beverages were rationed because we hadn’t brought nearly enough and because we’d forgotten juice boxes for the kids and because Sam, the guy in charge of packing the cooler, has a penchant for all things mini, including miniature cans of Diet Coke. Now, I understand that he prefers a 6-ounce beverage (they are very cute). But most people? Most of us like our sodas super-sized, thank you very much. I bit my tongue and didn’t say anything about the puny drinks. He had been a huge help, actually, and didn’t deserve my wrath.
I couldn’t disguise my angst, however, when I realized that in the throes of my cake-baking obsession, party snacks never once crossed my mind. There wasn’t an Elmo cracker or a raisin or a fruit leather or a slice of watermelon to be seen at our party. All the other mothers’ parties had ’em. But not mine. Mine just had the homemade cake.
Pizzas arrived eventually, but I was already in full cardiac arrest at that point. I’m pretty sure veins were bulging from my neck as I tried to politely smile my way through the misery. (When I got home, I had boob sweat on my tank top, and unless I’ve just run three miles on the treadmill, boob sweat is against my religion.)
When it was finally over, we loaded the car as fast as possible and made for home. It was unfortunate that all of my efforts to be The Perfect Mother led me to distraction: In my haste to get out of there, I’d forgotten to buckle Ruby into her car seat. Which was extra-unfortunate since Sam decided to take the on-ramp to the freeway like Javier Bardem would surely take me if we ever crossed paths one summer night on a quiet side street off La Rambla (lord help me if I’m wearing a skirt).
Sam had almost completed the turn when he said to me, “How’d you like those mad skillz, baby?” Then he looked in the rearview mirror. “Oh, shit!” I turned around to see my kid being violently dumped to the floor. She landed there on all fours with the strap of a Pike Place Market canvas bag wrapped around her neck.
She was startled and crying. I checked for injuries and stood soothing her in my arms among the fallen eucalyptus leaves at the freeway on-ramp. Then I handed the human missile her blankie, fastened her seatbelt and quietly apologized to Sam for not latching it in the first place. I let a few beats of silence pass and then let loose with screamed expletives about how best to improve his “mad skillz.” It took everything I had not to bring up the 6-ounce Diet Cokes.
When we got home, I curled up in bed, feeling like I’d just been punched in the stomach, my body in the shape of a perfect “C.”
I don’t think I’ll try another party like this for a long while. Perfection doesn’t really suit me. I’m way more of a flailer, and the sooner I embrace that the better. I’ve come to the conclusion that all the training and technique in the world doesn’t make a bit of difference anyway. Despite my performance, there are certain inevitabilities.
The kid’s gonna hate me in high school. She’s gonna roll her eyes and talk back and sneak out with her friends. She’s gonna drink my booze and try to trick me into thinking she didn’t. And she’ll probably talk to a therapist about the time we didn’t strap her down in the car seat and why it was that she never, ever got to have a normal cake from Costco like all the other kids.
The Men-Are-From-Venus thing is total crap
Did you know that the hypothalmus regulates (among other things) breathing and sexual satisfaction? Maybe that’s why, even when my man has a horrendous cold that causes fatigue, a sore throat and congestion so severe that breathing is difficult even when he’s laying perfectly motionless, he still wants to “bury his face in [my] ass.” Isn’t that sweet? And super sexy, too!
It’s so sexy, in fact, that my level of disinterest is almost shocking. I’m feeling a bit under the weather myself, which somehow puts me out of commission for the next…oh…four to six weeks, so don’t even bother trying, Mister. Just look the other way. Like, in the direction of Naughty America.
Is a certain part of my brain malfunctioning or am I just from Mars?
Family day
Three years ago today, we flew to Chicago to meet Ruby. The delayed flight certainly added to our anticipation and also, the agony of our wait. Out of the (mere) 7 months that our adoption process took before our match, it was this last 36 hours before we held our daughter that were the most wrenching. Knowing she was a she—that she was no longer a hypothetical it, but an actual daughter , out there waiting—was excruciating. It was exhausting. It was thrilling. We couldn’t get to her fast enough.
Being a parent, as I said in an email to a friend yesterday, is like being perpetually suspended in the first stages of romantic love. I wrote, “You’re awed by every utterance, can’t wait to find out more about that person, think they may perhaps be the most perfect person to walk the planet, you want to kiss up on ‘em constantly, stare at ‘em for hours on end—even when they’re sleepin’ and you miss ‘em terribly when you’re not in their presence.”
Adopting Ruby was—and I believe I can safely speak for Sam, here—the best thing we’ve ever done. Without question.
And someone tell me, please: What would a photo of our first morning with our baby be if we didn’t have a perfect pair of breasts watching over us from above?
Self portait on a sunny afternoon
I’ve heard it said that “The Terrible Two’s” is a myth and that really, what’s terrible are the threes. Ruby won’t be three for another month but I see what’s ahead because ahead has already mowed me down. Sometime during the last week, my beautiful, darling daughter was snatched up and replaced by a person who looks, sounds and smells exactly like her, but who is, I’ve decided, the child of Satan.
In the past two days alone, I’ve been bitten, scratched, kicked, slapped and punched (twice in the eye and once in public). I’ve been growled at, sneered at, glared at, spit on and stomped away from. I’ve had pee wiped on my jeans with small brown hands while large brown eyes promised it wasn’t urine.
I’d like to say that I handled these moments with calmness and maturity but that would be a lie almost as big as the anger I’m forced to wrestle with given the circumstances. The first few incidents I dealt with well enough; I instantly deferred to the father and walked away. Really pissed off and hyperventilating, but I did walk away. The most recent incidents, however…well. I lost my shit, which I may write more about later.
Shortly after the changeling awoke for her eighth or ninth time last night (I lost count), I told Sam that I wanted out, that I’m just a ghost in our lives anyway, that I wanted to get my own apartment. Of course, it doesn’t matter where I go because as a friend told me once, wherever I go, there I am. I could move down the street or across the Atlantic and there I would be, alone with myself. Well, probably not alone. I have a feeling that Guilt and Remorse would be keeping me company.
The thing is, there are few situations in life from which we cannot extricate ourselves: You’re unhappy in your marriage, you get a divorce. You don’t like your job, you get a new one. Aren’t crazy about the town in which you live, you move on. But once you’re a parent, you’re always a parent. It’s irrevocable. And nearly unbearable when you can’t stand your child.
Upon arriving home from our date
According to my husband, it only takes 21 consecutive days of doing something before that something becomes a habit. I don’t know where he got this particular tidbit but it’s his plethora of head-scratching factoids that often makes me feel like I don’t know him very well, which in turn helps with the Marital Excitement Continuum.
“So, what you’re telling me,” I asked him, “is that 21 days of going to the gym every day and I’ll be addicted to the gym?”
“S’what I’m sayin’.”
“So, let’s say that I’m a bitch to you every day for 21 days…
“…On day 22, you won’t even have to think about it anymore.”
A day in the life: One woman goes where only the manliest of men venture
Some people say that real men love Jesus. I know some people say this, because they say it loudly on bumper stickers affixed to Mustangs and muscle trucks. To that, I offer this retort: Real men don’t advertise their spirituality on a bumper sticker. I’d like to see that on a car while I’m stuck in rush-hour traffic on the 8-East one afternoon. Yes, I would.
Since I tagged along with my mister to a doctor appointment, however, I’ve come to an additional conclusion about how to define machismo, and it has nothing to do with the big guy in the sky. Unless that big guy is the stork, in which case it totally has to do with him—specifically, with stopping him from making deliveries: I believe that real men get vasectomies. Stick that on your car and rev it.
The process began with scheduling, the most basic healthcare negotiation made supremely complex by bureaucracy. Pinning down V-Day took no time at all.
Scheduling one visit with Primary Care Physician for referral: Two months.
Getting consultation appointment with Urologist: Six weeks.
Scheduling surgery: Three months.
Time between scheduling surgery and finally getting snipped: Additional three months.
Having the doctor cancel twice (each time within 24 hours of surgery, once because of his Christmas vacation that he apparently didn’t see coming, and again for something important, presumably a golf game with a pharmaceutical representative): Priceless.
So it was that after less than a year of waiting on hold to the tune of uncountable minutes and looped Neil Diamond Muzak, I accompanied my husband to the office of Dr. I’ll Fix Your Plumbing When It’s Convenient For Me And/Or If I Damn Well Feel Like It.
Steeping in our powerlessness, we sat well past the re-re-scheduled appointment time beneath the fluorescent lights of a waiting room that resembled a sanatorium. The bare walls were a sour shade of beer-diluted urine, admittedly apropos and not ironic in the least. The paint was probably once white—we were in a hospital clinic, after all—and it’s unlikely that designers attempted color therapy by selecting Ralph Lauren’s “Evocative Sunlight” in eggshell. Even without offensive lighting, this old paint was more closely related to yellow snow than first snow.
The limited décor was as depressed and apathetic as the two sunken-eyed receptionists crammed into their chart-cluttered cubby behind a wall of ultra-thick glass. One sat illuminated by the glow of her computer screen, eyes glassed over; the other had a phone pressed hard to her ear. Neither acknowledged our arrival.
The door leading from the waiting area to the bowels (ha!) of the misery behind it required a pass-code to be punched into a number pad to unlock it. For an hour, I watched the frowning staff sigh and stomp around, escorting mostly elderly men—in obvious states of discomfort—in and out, and I wondered at the demoralizing level of security. It was as if we were in a detention center, not a doctor’s office and I finally decided I couldn’t much blame the disgruntled women at the front desk for being so acerbic. If anyone were to ask me the famous James Lipton question, “What job would you least like to do during your lifetime?,” my answer would instantly be: Work there.
We finally had our turn to move beyond the vault door, and, to my surprise, we weren’t greeted by Nurse Ratched. Happy—not her real name, but she was the only person we encountered who was—walked us to the procedure room. Cold at first, she was a seasoned and hilariously funny Filipina nurse who, for incomprehensible reasons, had abandoned pediatrics for penises.
Sam changed and lay on an exam table. I chatted up Happy about homemade lumpia and how many wieners she’d seen during her years in urology. It seemed like a reasonable segue at the time. She hooted with glee about a number too high to recall as she cloaked Sam in a blue surgical tarp with a strategically placed square hole. The only parts not covered were his head, his sock-clad feet and his limp sea urchin, if you know what I mean. It reminded me of anatomy class. It was not pretty.
A doctor walked in with a 12-year-old intern loping along behind him—neither was the guy my husband had consulted months earlier. The lead guy, who barely bothered to introduce himself, was older than Rip van Winkle and had all the personality of a health inspector with severe gastric distress and a grudge. He had a steady hand, though, and that’s what matters when injecting anesthetic directly into testicles, the most painful part, as it turned out. Sam dropped a couple F-bombs, but otherwise, he was cool. Probably because he was sweating so much. But he pushed right through it. He was manly.
Dr. van Winkle tossed his syringe on the table, grunted some directions to Happy and left for a while so the drug could take effect. Happy then “prepped” the “area” by washing Sam down with iodine. All over. Flippy-floppy, back and forth. And she wasn’t all that gentle. She was all business, that was clear, and I could see her pulling down $1,000 an hour were she to give it all up for high-end escort service.
Given his state of numbness in that region—or perhaps it was because unfamiliar hands were fondling him—Sam began to laugh uncontrollably. Which lead Happy, and then me, to break down. It was the closest thing to a threesome that we’ve come to in this marriage, and I gotta say, it was fun. And I was over on the sidelines with my camera. Happy did all the work. Still, I craved a cigarette when it was over.
Dr. Bedside Manner and Doogie Howser came back, the former wearing a disposable liquid-repellant apron that looked like one that might be worn in a slaughterhouse. He began the first incision and within 20 minutes, he’d snipped my husband’s pearly white vas deferens with me looking on. And just like that! Nine months, two weeks and several hours later, it was done. It was so simple I could have done it at home with a bottle of bourbon, a steak knife, a couple bag clips and some twist ties.
With a bag of frozen peas and some very special underwear that Happy threw in for free, Sam made it through to the other side. He’s manly like that. He’s a real man who won’t be telling you about it on a bumper sticker, mostly because I told you about it here.
(As published today in CityBeat.)