Hah!

Uhn.

So I think the definition of happiness is: You accidentally discovered on google (not that you googled) this person who dumped you is

1) Married to a beautiful woman.
2) Has at least one child.
3) MOST IMPORTANTLY: Is waaaaaaaay more successful than oneself, professionally.
4) Has soooooooo many more articles.
5) And is maybe one of the most successful academics in the kinda groovy exotic country in which he now lives. I mean, he is lauded. Newspaper articles.

And this does not bother you.

I know you are not believing me now.

The fact is that I am A-OK with the dumper's success (the dumper, whom I once called 'the evil one'). Truly, I am.  It is good that he is doing so great. I wish we had not had our unfortunate little thing because then I could email him and say: How the living *&^% do you get so many *&^%*@ articles published?' But I can't because that would be weird.

He was always really on the ball, that guy.

So it sounds like a good definition of happiness: Your nemesis, the brutal heart stomping betrayer of yore is doing even better than you and it doesn't bother you. You wish him/her well. Nor do you feel much envy because of all that you have. What you have is so good that all you can think is how that path led you to this place and this is the place you want to be, need to be. Even the whole destiny thing kind of tinkles in the background.

There might be a better way to put it, but that's like a kind of hallmark card that they will never make that you could send to that person, who was almost but not quite a life-ruiner. (Inadvertent, when I think about it.)

There were three things that he-who-shall-not-be-named introduced me to, at least in the deeper sense:

(1) The Dark Lady Sonnets...Oh, so true. Oh, word Shakespeare. Double word.

(2) Proust. Albertine. I totally got Albertine. Albertine? Is that what Proust calls her? Albertine was based on a man so I can't remember the name of the real one but the name of the fictional one.

(3) Eric Satie. I don't know. He gave me a tape of Eric Satie. I don't even listen to Eric Satie now so that hardly matters..

Anyway, it sounds good that I can wish The Evil One well and so that must mean that I am happy except I am not happy.

But it sounds good, doesn't it? Doesn't it sound like a good conception of happiness?

Is that not the very epitome of happiness even if the test fails in actuality?

What interests me is that I am not happy but my life is right. There's something to be said for this. My life is so right. Yes, I'm utterly miserable. How can that be? How can my life be right and yet I am miserable?

I dunno.

I wished bad things upon The Evil One at one point. I'm not sure why. Oh, maybe his evilness.

God knows, it was 17 years ago. Maybe he wasn't evil after all.

If I get tenure, my life will be right-er. But it's simply right. Exactly as it is. Finally.  Except for all the unfortunate events. But if you abstract away from the unfortunate events and the overall unhappiness, everything is just right. 

But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Resentment

I think, since I have to post so much, I will bore you by talking frequently about tenure and what incredible bullshit it involves.

Here's an interesting fact: I resent, deeply, deeply resent in an almost rage-filled way my university and my department. I used to be a happy, positive, ardently loyal member of this little cul-de-sac in the suburb of academia.

Now I am the local crazy. Not quite mass-murderer crazy but the one you might wonder about. You know I'm peering out from the drapes hating you, hating all of you. You don't quite know what I'm capable of but you feel my oozing wrath as you see my come home to my yellowed lawn and shuttered, dark cheerless home. I don't go to the block parties and you wouldn't be brave enough to eat my hot dish even if I did come.

Well, that's just in my head. I'm still pretending to be nice. So that when I do snap they will all say: But she was SO NICE

It's a marriage gone bad.

I have my reasons but one thing I've wondered about is whether the bitterness is not due just to the fact that everyone is so *&%$ing stupid and hypocritical and full of shit but also because they might reject me. By not giving me tenure.

I hate rejection. I'm I doing a pre-emptive break-up? But let me say: I am justified, oh so justified in my resentments, petty as they are.

And yet, any spouse has his/her faults. The thing is to love in spite of the faults and one can do that with a job as well. And yet, I hate, I despise. Also, I grouse and complain. I gripe so much that I heard my daughter griping the other day. I've already taught her to gripe! Or else I passed on the gripe gene.

But they are such mother effing hypocrites in this place. Let me tell you one awful thing they do. They say: Would you like to meet on such and such a date? Or would you like to do X to talk about Y? When of course, what they mean is: MEET ME ON SUCH AND SUCH A DATE. Like, you have no choice and yet they pretend you have a choice. Oh God, I hate that shit.

Oh, but would you like to know what is even more irritating. It is this: Even though we are virtually powerless and have to jump when they say jump they like to pretend they are giving us a choice and they are all nice to us and hence, we are supposed to feel grateful. For the fake respect we are shown.

Of course, this doesn't give you enough information. There's so much more but my wrath wearies me. But what do you think: Justified resentment? Or pre-emptive break-up?

And how long can I hide this? How long can I fool my husband even though I'm shagging the pool boy* and the mere touch of his withered hand makes me ill? Long enough for the pre-nup clause to kick in? (I.e., to get tenure?) Or will I be found out and ruined forever, forced to work at Walgreens for minimum wage growing ever more bitter, my youthful juices sucked dry, the best years of my life wasted on this bullshit school?

Tune in next week. Or next year. Whichever the case may be.

*Obligatory sex mention.

Testing 1, 2, 3

I had this brilliant plan. I'm fairly certain only academics will understand this but my plan for avoiding spending too much time on the internet  was to WAIT UNTIL I HAD TO PEE REALLY BAD AND THEN check my email.

This was supposed to ensure the amount of time spent on the soulsucking interweb would be minimal. Instead, I test the limits of my bladder even more than I did during the 12 hours I spent on the uncovered boat full of men going up the Nile.

At first, it seemed like it would be brilliant.  Almost as brilliant as my plan to avoid watching television while still knowing what is on television by buying a black and white TV whose picture did not work. I tell you, I never turn that thing on! Sometimes I can't believe how smart I am.

If these strategies make no sense to you then perhaps you did not spend your twenties and perhaps a dollop of your thirties getting paid a very low wage which you could almost live on to do absolutely nothing. Oh, except write this thing called a dissertation. Which did not need to be turned in any particular time. When one is in that position, a position of dependence that makes you scoff at the very idea welfare could create dependence, one develops some pretty clever strategems to actually work a little bit at that thing you were supposed to do which you do not really have to do all the time although if you never do it something kind of bad will happen, i.e., eventually you will have wasted your entire life. Doing nothing.

In my case, it wouldn't really be 'doing nothing.' For I did many things. I enjoyed nature. I got drunk sometimes. I slept in (but did it count? WHY DOES IT COUNT AS SLEEPING IN IF YOU STAY AWAKE UNTIL DAWN).  I yearned for death. I read more novels than most people do in a lifetime. I read what amounted to a novel a day. Oh, and the complete works of Shakespeare. Much of the Bible. Dante's Inferno. Everything in English that was written by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekov and whatshisname (long poem, Russian guy, beautiful Russian girl, disaffected nobility, author was of African ancestry...now you see that I don't remember most of what I read). Oh, and any cheap paperback version of books by Anthony Trollope, any Bronte there is, a whole hell of a lot of George Eliot and the depressing Jude the Obscure dude. Balzac. Everything written by: Phillip Roth, John Updike, Vladmir Nabokov and Saul Bellow.

It sounds hoity toity but people, I can barely remember the plots of these novels let alone the details. I can't even remember the authors who wrote the novels. Sometimes I remember the color of their covers and think things like "oh, the novel with the blue cover about the guy who thought his wife was cheating on him and went insane." That's about the extent of the personal enrichment those novels gave me.

The crucial fact here is that the dissertation I was writing had nothing--and I mean nothing--to do with literature. Or science. Consequently, I developed an interest in non-fiction popular science texts like The Panda's Thumb and all that crap.

The books, they were ruining my life. They called to me from the library stacks, from the used bookstores, come to us, Ozma, and don't write your dissertation.

When they weren't doing it, it was the movies. No cable but a VCR thingie and that was enough. When I scroll through netflix and realize I've seen every movie they recommend to me I kind of wonder what else I might done with those hours that added up to years besides watching those movies. I could have...why I could have knitted the world's longest scarf. If I could knit that is. I could have taught myself Italian or how to cook or fix cars or or or or I could also have written my dissertation. Which I did, eventually.

My brilliant strategy for not reading the novels was to switch to short stories. The thing about the novels is sometimes I stayed up all night to read them. At least with the short stories, there was a chance I could sleep. That didn't help either, though.

I then switched to poetry which sort of helped for a while. But only for a while.

RIF: Reading Is Fucked.

It's all so absurd how we live our lives and it's funny that now that I have so much less time I do so much more than I did when time stretched out before me, infinite, expansive, full of endless promise that would always allow me to make up for all the time I wasted.

And I'm not sure how things will turn out for me but it sometimes makes me queasy to remember that everything I've ever done in my life, every single thing, from the age of 21 always included the niggling realization that I should be doing something else. That is the thing about having some writing project or other on slow boil throughout your life. You can be giving birth or getting married or holding the hand of a dying friend--it does not matter. There is something else you should always do instead.

But I almost forgot my crucial question of the day: Did anyone see that detective show that featured professors and grad students as murder victims and suspects?  Is it NYPD something something?  It's the one with the investigator who is supposed to be an incredible genius who knows everything.  I  hope so, because it 's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time and I need to know what the show is called.

OH MY GOD DO I EVER HAVE TO PEE NOW.

It's: You Vomited All Night Day!*

You may fear the thoughts that come in the night.

A wise man once advised us

not to fear the thoughts that come in the night.

It may even be easy to defeat the thoughts that come in the night, to kill them, if not with roofies and violence then maybe with a little cabernet franc and some DVDs of Arrested Development. I haven't found it so easy to kill the thoughts that come in the night if I can't afford to wake up drunk. If I can, then yes, it's easy.

The vomit that comes in the night, though. This is not so easily defeated.  The vomit that comes in the night, that spews in a strangely horizontal way from the mouth of your beloved child well, there's not so much you can do with said vomit.  There's no lounging and drinking or drug use that really meets the vomit that comes in the night head on.

A few days later, even though you regretted eating so much Mongolian Beef and General Gau's chicken (damn it was good, it was the hot kind that makes you sweat a little) you still do not welcome the vomit that comes in the night. You do not welcome it even if you weigh less than you did before the Chinese food, a fair amount less.

Still, believe it or not I actually prefer the vomit that comes in the night to the thoughts that come in the night.

Sometimes people ask me, when they find out that I sometimes stay up until 6 a.m. And that I woke up at 8 a.m. And that I do this often. Why? Why do you do this? One reason is I have a lot of work. And another reason is that I fear the thoughts that come in the night even more than the vomit that comes in the night. Actually, it's not as bad now as it's been but years of fearing the thoughts that come in the night basically made me work or goof off until the rosy fingered dawn came unbidden (and totally fucking unwelcome) into my abode to let me know that 'you are going to be saying 'um' a lot today or tomorrow or Jesus Christ why don't I ever SLEEP like a normal person. Why can't I just fucking sleep?'

If you've ever met a person who answers a question like 'what time is it?' with 'Uuuuummmm. What did you say? Um?' remember that person may not be mentally deficient or on drugs. While you were dozing, insensibly, accomplishing absolutely nothing at 3 a.m., geting ABSOLUTELY NOTHING DONE  in the middle of the night some of us might have been doing something creative, and productive with that time when the world slumbers, like making a found art poem out of credit card solicitations and religious tracts handed to us on the sidewalk. Sometimes we say 'uuuuummmmm' for a reason.

It might have simply been the fact that his or her radiator makes a kind of unholy sound at 4 a.m., a sound far too much like the ones found in movies about supernatural phenomenon when the evil comes to visit, to join you, to stay for supper.

Sometimes it was good. Sometimes I'd just decided to read something good like Crime and Punishment or similarly edifyin' and I at least tell myself that it was sort of worth it. Because when are you going to get the chance to read all your favorite novels? On the weekend? Pffft! Who does that? Doesn't everyone sleep all day during the weekend?

Don't ask about the post internet remorse. 11 p.m. or worse 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.? What the fuck? Don't even ask.

* With apologies to Girls Are Pretty!

**This is my favorite post of any post in all of internetlandia. You'll laugh, you'll cry, etc. It changed my life. No, seriously! It did.

As for the thoughts that come in the night, Patrick Hughes advises us to fear them not because sometimes they have boobies. My baby's thoughts, when they come in the night, are invariably about boobies so I think he is totally on to something.

Baby Good, Mommy Crazy

If you stumbled across a letter I could write to my daughter it might sound like the artifact of a doomed relationship.

I love you. I love you even though sometimes you drive me mad.

When you are gone I yearn for you even though at times it was I who banished you.

All the things I used to find appealing—to blow my brains out; smoke an entire pack of unfiltered camels in one sitting; drink a case of Bordeaux after work; smoke pot in my underwear while watching film noir; work way too hard or avoid work;, squander my days while going deeper and deeper into debt; charge my travel to foreign countries in the expectation I’d be dead by forty—became so foolish when you came along.

I HATE, HATE the idea that when you have a baby you “fall in love” with your baby. An idiotic metaphor. Isn’t the mother-child relationship primary and isn’t a romantic relationship only a pale imitation of mother love?

So why does the analogy not go the other way? Instead we should say to our lovers that we feel like we just gave birth to them or that they make you feel like you did the first time you saw your baby. We can, I guess, call our lovers ‘baby.’ Or even ‘mommy.’

What do you call the overwhelming anxiety and pleasure of motherhood? I’ve grown to adore the smell of Dreft so much I wash my own clothes in it now. I’m on the verge of creating a shrine to the onesies she’s outgrown. I’m fairly certain I’ll be saving virtually every item that she’s ever worn. Is this just a phase? Won’t it get a bit strange when she hits her twenties?

Yes, I complained endlessly like the whiney bitch that I am through my whole pregnancy and then I gave birth to this heartbreakingly beautiful ecstatically happy charmer. What’s that say? That whole positive thinking thing is bullshit and this isn’t the first evidence I’ve had of that. I’ve never, ever thought positive. I am sure I am doomed, you are doomed, the whole human race is entirely doomed. And I got this baby. My advice? Think negative.

Every time I dare to mention her astounding wonderfulness I’m afraid that something terrible will happen. I know I’m undeserving of this glorious being. I’m baffled by my luck and wouldn’t think of taking pride in it. Will raving about her wonderfulness still bring the evil eye?

Do all babies stop traffic? When we travel with her it’s like being in the entourage of a rock star or supermodel. Heads turn. People mutter to themselves. They stare, they smile, they approach, the follow us and then we can’t get rid of them. Every time we go to get ice cream people stop by our booth to marvel at our daughter. I feel guilty when I finally have to leave the grocery store or the bank and tear her away from the adoring crowds. They need her.

She sees it is her job to bring joy to the world. She knows she has to smile. She has to cheer up the sad and weary drones plodding through their days, cheer them with her effortless joy. She scans the crowd for sorrowful faces.

There is so much that is extraordinary that she can do. For example, she makes the annoying noise in the universe. This noise is so annoying it would break terrorists, spies, sociopaths. Just play them a recording of the sound of her going eh-eh-eh-eh-eh, eya!, eh, aih!, eee!, eh, eh, eh, yeha, eh, eh, endlessly. They will beg for mercy. The will confess to crimes they haven’t even committed yet. They will do anything just to make it stop.

The most annoying noise in the universe will make you her slave. All will do her bidding in the face of the noise.

I feared motherhood because I feared I wouldn’t be able to make her happy. Yet making her happy is the easiest thing I’ve ever done most of the time. I never imagined THE POWER I would feel. Because I have never had the power to make anyone happy let alone to make someone THIS HAPPY.

Mommy Crazy

So what do you call this? I’m not brave enough to ask a medical professional. I don’t just worry about my baby and the usual things. No, not me. I imagine the apocalypse. Vividly. Sometimes it occurs due to ecological destruction, sometimes an asteroid, occasionally an unexpected economic collapse. No more stores. No more purified water. No more movies or TV or milkshakes. Violence. Cannibalism. A burning wasteland.

Then, I remember that (minus the cannibalism) that’s what life is for millions of people on earth. Millions of people. Little babies. Mothers. Children. Grandparents. They suffer and sometimes die for the lack of the smallest things. Clean water. Steady nutritious food.

Now I’m thinking: Here’s the part where you don’t want to read on. You want to go to something funny like Sarah Brown. And that’s also part of it. The juxtaposition of the trivial, the amusing, the frivolous with the thoughts of injustice, suffering, death. I can’t handle it. The colossal indifference. My powerlessness.

It’s getting so I can no longer tolerate the fact that no one is talking about the war where hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians and soldiers are being killed. It’s as if it isn’t happening. Somehow this seems so horrid that I can’t believe there isn’t a terrible punishment in store for all of us because we can be happy when so many people are being killed. The surplus of the prosperity we want so much and need so much makes this war possible. How can that not disturb us?

No, I’m not saying: We are prosperous and to stay that way we have a war. That’s naïve. In fact, I think that in the last 50 years U.S. warmaking seems to have brought with it a recession every time. I’m saying: If we were some poor scrabbling country we couldn’t afford this war. When a country has enough money to invade a country that posed no threat to it you have to assume they just had a little too much money. Maybe those who live in the U.S. wouldn’t be happy if we were poorer but I’m sure there are people in Iraq who would be alive if we have been.

I never was much of a one for liberal guilt. Personal guilt, yes. Like the time that I snapped at my 13 year old autistic second cousin (as an adult). That happened some years ago and I still feel guilty. That I didn’t want to play cards with my grandmother when she was dying in the hospital. That I didn’t call my other grandmother enough and then she also died. I never can forgive myself for those things.

This guilt doesn’t feel like liberal guilt. In fact, guilt might not even be the right way to describe it. It’s more like fear at this point. Fear that these things can happen and fear that something worse will result from these wrongs.

Sometimes I just think I’ve probably seen too many movies.

Postpartum What The Fuck: Part Two

Adulthood. A baby makes you an adult. Sort of. It makes you have adult thoughts but I had some problem with--I guess you could call it follow through.

Naturally, insane as I am with worry about the crap state of the world these days and pretty much every other day (Did I mention that I am disturbed not only by current events but by historical ones…14^th century famines, plagues, the bombing of Dresden, the siege of Leningrad, etc.? The 14th Century famine in China where people are reported to have traded children because they couldn't bear to eat their own?). I can’t help but conclude that if you are rich, if you are at all rich when someone else is dying because they can’t afford an antibiotic that costs 95 cents…Well, you are going to hell.  That’s all there is to it. I know I'm going to hell and this makes me think of the New Yorker cartoon where the husband consoles his wife with the fact that no one they like will be in heaven anyway.

And I find this interesting because I often find myself desperately wanting to be rich. As naïve, as absurd as it sounds, I never had much interest in money. What can the rich do? The rich don’t usually write well. Are they funnier? 

The day I found out I was pregnant was the day I started wanting to be rich.  I can’t believe how stupid I was before the baby. A baby? That’s why you want to be rich. Because when you are rich, your children have it made. You can hire bodyguards, caretakers, nutritionists, tutors.  That’s a reason to be rich. I just didn’t have access to this reason before my baby came.

Another reason, another things that strikes me, is that this is it. Sort of, mostly. Unless millions of dollars come my way, I’m an adult. I’ve made my life. And this is my life. Certain things have not happened to me. No alien abduction, no sudden fame, no high speed car chases. That’s adulthood, then. The things you were wondering if and when and how about? So many of them have already happened.

Warning: Do Not Read If You Are Pregnant or Nursing

I had a baby and I guess I'll never be the same. Or sane. The thing is, I expected to get postpartum depression but I didn't expect to be so upset by a story about water shortages that I would use the same bathwater 4 days in a row (and then wash my clothes in it).

Yes, before I had a baby I was anxious and quirky. Maybe in a sometimes cute way. Now I'm a complete freak, a madwoman. Any resemblance to cuteness is not only unintended but also impossible. So, my baby is almost two. When's this going to stop? Am I going to be normal...ever?

Here's a little description of some of my symptoms. Geez, no one ever tells you about these things. Not that this sort of thing ever stops you.

Postpartum What the Fuck: Part One

Goddamn Tenderheartedness

I’ve become so freaking tenderhearted, so paralyzingly compassionate since my daughter was born it’s almost like a form of mental illness. I spent several hours last week crying over the fact my brother is going to break up with his girlfriend. Because she loves him. Because she doesn’t have any friends. Because her parents are mean to her and she is young and sad. And if I keep on writing about it I’ll start all over again. The idea of anyone alone, unhappy, unloved, heartbroken, hungry, afraid, in pain makes me crazy, crazy, crazy with sorrow.

And there are millions in just such a fix. Which means I’m crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. All the goddamn time.

I can’t believe it. I can’t. Not only that I’ve gone off the deep end like this but that we let the world go one this way. WHAT THE FUCK? Why aren’t we helping, people? Do something. Holy God. Before it’s too late.

Yes, all those things that just slip by you and used to slip by me (kind of)—endangered species, global warming, the scabby man in the corner, the lonely old lady—permanently burn into my brain with their white hot depressingness. Not only that but I’ve started to recall the stories that I barely remembered reading lo these many years as a media consumer. If something bad happened to someone and I read about you can be sure that I’m ruminating over it during the wee hours of the night. And wondering what’s next. And knowing that it won’t be pretty.

And yeah, I’ve stopped reading the newspaper. Duh. I’m self-destructive sometimes but not that crazy. (The news I get the husband precensors.) But things—the horrible, terrible things that happen every day--trickle through.

Scraping The Bottom of the Monkey Barrel

What do you do when you SUCK as a mother. Is it not possible to make it into a fashion statement? Is it not possible to make it COOL?

Like ripped jeans? Back in the day, when your clothes got ripped you threw them out. In our time, a time of frighteningly constant consumption, their damage is cool--defective, but deliberate! Maybe.

What about motherhood? Can't defective motherhood become trendy? When are we going to hold up the drunken, lazy, hapless, forgetful mother as a paragon of...well, something. Rebellion or something cool like that.

So can we just have a new category? I was thinking 'the punk rock mom.' 

However, the problem with that is that you probably also have to have short hair and be punk rock and not just cut your baby's hair in one thoughtless swipe of frustration at conjunctivitis and evil day cares that send babies home as soon as they rub their eyes.

Her hair looked amazingly cool and I was instantly impressed with my handiwork while at the same time afraid to perform that kind of punk rock couture on myself and go to work the next day. At the same time: Not a haircut for the playgroup.

Punk rock mom just won't work. I'd have to have short blonde hair and black fingernails and a bunch of CDs now in circulation. I'd have to have an ipod with Flipper and The Replacements instead of a bunch of records of same that have melted and fused together in a storage shed in the Southwest. Yes, that's THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF RECORDS, maybe MILLIONS in the year 2090. That's an ORIGINAL JOY DIVISION ALBUM PEOPLE.  I could be RICH had I just remembered to stay punk rock longer and kept the records indoors instead of getting that master's degree.

Millions of dollars in records, perhaps, the ones that my felon punk rock cousin did not steal. My punk rock cousin was in prison a lot. It was strange. He was always in prison for violent crimes but he wasn't a violent person. He seemed more sneaky, with sticky fingers. I saw him this Christmas for the first time in many years. I didn't know what to say. So many tatoos. Prison fights don't always lend themselves to glowing good looks.

So punk rock mom doesn't work, not anymore. And hippie mom just makes one shudder. I used to visit my mom's hippie friends in the mountains. Like my kid, they were always covered in snot. Hair unbrushed, snarls my mother called 'rats' nests.' (I had those too! Did anyone else out there have rats' nests as a child? Anyone normal, from the suburbs, like?

C'mon! Anyone?)

Unlike my kid, kids of hippie parents were barefoot, naked and with leaves in their hair. Yes, her hair is messy.Yes, she will not wear shoes--but she wears socks at least.  Only a bit of food in her hair, no leaves. She's muddy on occasion.

OK, so I'm not that much better than the hippie moms. But we read to her OK? She has a very good VOCABULARY? People marvel at a 20 month old that can count to sixteen and say the alphabet. She uses the past tense even. OKAY?????

God, I hated those hippie weddings as a kid. I'd go from Mexico and Mexican weddings on one side of my family, with the white gloves and the satin dresses with pink tulle and parents' life savings spent on Jordan almonds and rent at the National Guard Armory to the hippie weddings in the woods.  H'ors d'oevers and mariachis on one side to naked hippies swimming in a stream on the other. Except my mother would put me in the tulle dress and I'd be sitting on the side of the stream fuming, while these adults ADULTS! would be urging me to strip naked and fling my unholy body into the churning mass at the swimming hole. They had no respect for the white gloves.

The hippie kids and I did have fun breaking lighbulbs and then playing with the shards of glass. Well, kind of. Later, those hippie kids and I blew our minds out on drugs, but on generic Target kinds of drugs. Designer drugs are for suburban kids.

So how about BOHEMIAN MOM? Can I just be BOHEMIAN MOM? Does the wash once a month, creative wardrobe choices for child and self, just a few dreadlocks in the hair now and again (I blame the carseat), child may go through caffeine withdrawal if you ever stop breastfeeding--how much of those triple espressos get through? She doesn't seem especially nervous but maybe she built up a tolerance since, oh, say, conception.

Debris and detrius spread scattered randomly through the home.

Saves broken vases.

Butternut squash and fried eggs for dinner.

Frequent conversations about death.

Bohemian mom it is. It's not like I'm PROUD of this, God no. I notice, like you'd notice a fierce stream of lemon juice in the eye that I have no talent for the motherhood thing, in the sense of family and home and cooking and not forgetting to leave knives lying around...um... on the high chair tray after I use them to cut the grapes.*

Duh. As if I don't know. How it's supposed to be. We all KNOW. I remember Jules' mom letting him sleep on a bed with no sheets and an American flag for a blanket, leaving out the five dollars so he can bike to Jack In The Box for dinner. And I knew that wasn't right.

God, I hope it never gets that bad. I'm scared but there's always my husband who likes to eat dinner while sitting at a table and who actually wakes up when the alarm clock goes off. Maybe he can save us.

Sure, I'm entertaining--the one saving grace of the Bohemian Mom. Cookie Monster puppet doesn't just refuse to answer to Cookie Monster (I'M NOT A MONSTER he says in his drunken, husky  Elephant-Man voice), as his name is Freod. That's pronouced 'Fred,' an umlaut over the 'o.' The songs he sings are songs from the hippie days, "songs I wrote when I was traveling with Ken Kesey and his band of merrymakers."

Right. The entertaining mom. That's like when Anthony Perkins says in Psycho II that he always remembered his mother's cheese sandwiches.

It's doubtful that entertainment is going to outweigh the other things on the balance sheet.

Is there any chance she can still grow up to be a doctor?

If you are worried about her, my husband is kind of normal and remembers things like 'remove the knife from the high chair tray.'

Actually, These People Are On the South Beach Diet (tm)

What, you want to eat more of our baby's candy?

HER candy? Waddya mean? We worked for that candy! We need to do it now, when she still might like Mounds.

Yeah, and she can't have nuts and doesn't all candy have nuts in it?

That costume was the smartest thing we've bought in months.

Take a Walk In The Park

The park...oh, how I hate the park.  I feel this moral obligation to take her there every day and then I don't take her there. So what does that say? 

Funny, but absurd and embarrassing aside--she kept saying 'parque' and I kept think she was saying 'paki' as in a racial slur and thinking oh! god! my baby knows some kind of ethnic insult! (Let me say that I have never said this word but this baby is strange and learns words I've never said.) I actually forgot that my baby speaks Spanish sometimes. How's that for absurd? Paki is not paki but 'parque.' PARQUE, i.e., PARK.

Her diction is not precise. She says what sounds like 'target' and in fact she's saying 'chocolate'--see post below.

I was laying on the bench in the park, exhausted, complaining to my 18 month old daughter that she made me go to the park AGAIN. "But it's boooorrrriiinggg...Can't we go home? Huh? Mommy's tired. Let's go take a nap, ok? Home? Home? C'mon!" I lay on the bench, my work suit bunching underneath me, begging my child not to make me go to the park. " A hard day! Mommy's had a hard day...now bring mommy her medicine and be quiet, be very quiet. "

She would not relent. Parque it would be.

But then I ran and got a New Yorker magazine out of the mailbox (bundling her beneath my arm, although total strangers had offered--after I asked--to watch her) and then the parque was not so bad. Maybe it's the other mothers= that make you insane? They talk to you, you can't read, the boredom sets in, the madness? It is moments away.

There is this funny thing on the jungle gym (or whatever you call it) that is a net made out of straps that look like seat belts. It is like a hammock. And ooooooohhhhhhh, is it comfortable.  Oh, God, it is irresistible. Yes, it is for the children. And yes, I fear someone coming up to me and saying 'my child wants to play there. But you are sprawled, your limbs akimbo, taking up a major part of what is supposed to be a children's play area.'  And, I confess, when that is not available, I am not averse (or: I am averse but I do it anyway) to taking a nap on the park bench. And the spongy safety material! They use to keep the kids from falling on blacktop and dying, like we might have when young! Oh! It is soooooo comfortable!

In spite of all the many opportunities to rest, which you think might be enough for me, I confess:  I have paid people to take her to the park. On the weekend!

(Of course, I am working on the weekend...but could I not play with my child? Not even for a moment? Yes! Yes! I can play with her. But not at the PARQUE. God help me, not at the PARQUE.)

That's right I HAVE PAID people to play with my child!

I got yer bad mother right here folks!