Uncanny Anagrams for George Bush

Go hug beers

He bugs Gore

O he buggers


(As you can see, I found an anagram maker on the web. I'm addicted.)

If you can't say anything nice, I'll do it for you for ten dollars and a foot massage

My superhero weakness is empathy.

When I was little I saw it as my sworn duty to befriend every new kid, every chubby kid, every weirdo booger-eating kid in my class. It’s always been second nature to put myself in other people’s shoes.

I credit good parenting for this. Also, Davey and Goliath.

Now as an adult I still feel compelled to make people--friends, strangers, the Bangladeshi cab driver--feel good. Let me be clear: I'm no Pollyanna. I can be as cynical and self-loathing as any writer on my side of the Brooklyn Bridge. I agree that The Bachelor is at its best when some blonde chippie runs off the set crying. And I’m certainly not above a good Paris Hilton jab because frankly, she’s worked very very hard to earn it. To not make fun of Paris Hilton probably hurts her feelings and now you know how I feel about that.

And if you come after my family, I'll cut you, bitch. I totally will. I have a baby nail clipper in my diaper bag and I'm not afraid to use it.

I suppose it's a bit paradoxical that now this relatively nice person finds herself here in the World of Blog--a forum where anonymity brings out the inner douchebag to a degree that gives PMS a run for its money. I could surely gravitate to the dark side, join the troll patrol. Snark comes easy to me. But when it comes down to it, I've got a kid. A really good one. And I don't plan on messing her up just yet. Which means I don't want her coming across something I've written and thinking, Mommy is mean.

Or worse: Mommy is mean. Yay!

So in honor of Thalia, I'm spreading some love from my insignificant little subdomain. I call it Say Something Nice Day at Mom 101.

In the future, maybe we'll have an entire Say Something Nice Month with its own website and a big section in the Hallmark store and a few treacly public service announcements. (Hey, maybe we can get Lorraine Bracco!) But for now I'll start with a day. A day devoted to saying nice things about ordinarily disparaged topics--all with as little irony as I can muster.

I'm just that kind of girl.

Richard Simmons
I sat across the aisle from him on a plane ride from LA to New York. While I admit that he was so, um, energetic that the cabin (quietly) applauded when he fell asleep, he couldn't have been nicer to the flight attendants. They each took turns sitting beside him and, hands pressed into his, confessed their every dietary woe. He listened attentively and with genuine compassion. He also offered each of them free advice, like "don't eat the bread."

New Jersey
If there were no New Jersey there would be no Judy Blume. And if there were no Judy Blume, I would never have been the most popular girl in fourth grade for one week, thanks to my copy of Forever which I shared with my entire class in the hallway ouside the school library. (Especially page 64, heh-heh.)

Cher
I'm all for gay marriage, and as such, I'm all for the music they play at their weddings.

Those Motivational Posters
I guarantee you that those inspirational posters you find around the office have helped more than a few people out of some tough spots in life. I myself have looked at that You Don't Fail Until You Quit poster many a time and thought, you know, they've got a point there. Know why? Because you don't fail until you quit! It's true!

Mullets
You've got to step back a minute and appreciate the loyalty that some people devote to a hairstyle that's been out of style going on twenty years. These are strong, confident people, people at peace with who they are. Couldn't we all take a lesson here?

Kids Who Go to Band Camp
Sure it's a good punch line; Universal milked it for like three American Pie sequels. But we need to encourage kids to play the clarinet or the tuba or the harpsichord so that they can grow into adults who play those instruments. Without music, what would people dance badly to at their high school reunions? And how lame would porn be?

Bridesmaids Dresses
At least you don't care when you spill your drink on one.

Jared From Subway
Let's give the guy some credit, he lost 250 pounds without eating a single crappy ricotta cheese dessert.

The Advertising Team Who Writes the Ads with Jared From Subway
Take my word for it, they're not happy about it either. I'm sure the client is all, "Guys, you have to use Jared. He's testing really well in focus groups." And the team is all, "Fine, but I'm not putting it on my reel." Then they watch Nike ads and weep openly.

Fudgie the Whale
When I was a kid, Carvel ran commercials that said, "This Father's Day, get your dad a Fudgie the Whale!" Year after year, my dad would joke, "Where's my Fudgie the Whale?" After I turned 16, my best friend and I talked a gullible Carvel manager into hiring us as cake decorators. When I wasn't snarfing down the chocolate crunchies directly from the tub, I made my dad his very own Fudgie the Whale ice cream cake and when I gave it to him he cried. If you make fun of Fudgie the Whale, you hate my dad and you hate Father's Day and you hate America too.

The Bloomin' Onion
If you have a problem with the Bloomin' Onion, you also hate America. This goes double for you, Upper East Siders.

Blogging
I'm stumped. I can think of nothing good to say because all bloggers are narcissistic navel-gazers who write about the most boring crap imaginable that no one, including their own mothers, would ever want to read in a million years. In fact I don't even believe that you're here right now.

Sentimentality Sunday

That rosy glow? Just humiliation.

What my facialist said yesterday:

"This is an anti-wrinkle serum for mature skin that I’m applying now. It’s a natural fruit acid, entirely organic, made with naseberry, raspberry extract, crushed ivy, calendula, and vitamin E. Naseberry is a natural anti-oxidant since it’s packed with vitamin C, which is in your body anyway. So it essentially works with your body’s own stores to help combat free radicals and counter the aging process."

What I heard:

"This is an anti-wrinkle serum for mature skin blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah you old biddy."

An insider's tip:

You know how you get the Pottery Barn Kids catalog like eighteen, nineteen times a month?

And you know how they feature incredibly cute if pricey items monogrammed with children's names: Benjamin's pillow. Violet's music box. Samuel's $70 we-swear-it's-not-a-choking-hazard beanbag.

Contrary to popular belief, this does not mean that Pottery Barn is featuring the most popular names with the hopes of selling more pillows and music boxes and $70 beanbags.

If you should find your child's unique name on the cover (gasp!) it does not mean that you should prepare for the onslaught of similarly named children in his preschool class. It does not mean your sweet little Iphigenia will forever more sign all of her art projects Iphigenia R. as to differentiate them from those of Iphigenia P. and Iphigenia G. (As if we couldn't tell the difference! Iphigenia G's fingerpaints invoke a sort of post-modern respect for negative space while Iphigenia P. is clearly more influenced by the neoclassicists.)

It does not mean that your child will be doomed to a lifetime of obscurity, mediocrity and quiet desperation.

What it does mean is this:

The art director (or prop stylist or photographer or photographer's assistant) has a child (or niece or nephew or godchild) by that very same name and plans on bringing home the graft after the shoot.

Carry on.

The Devil Wears Dander

God bless the little children, for they do not yet know to be wary of the deranged, venomous, man-eating, spawn of Satan who assumes the form of a cat here on earth.

She was once a sweet little black kitten named Desdemona who purred and mewed and made people say "awwwwwww." Each night, she fashioned a crawlspace between the crook of my neck and the pillow, where she curled up and licked behind my ears until she fell asleep.
Fifteen excruciatingly long vomit-on-the-bedspread years later, this creature is so ornery, so hateful, that even Nate (who would prefer to be with animals over adults any day of the week) is crossing his fingers that each hairball she hacks up will be the one that puts us out of our--er, her--misery.

Desi is still all black except for the large hairless patch on her stomach, the result of dragging her massive drooping belly along the rug. She's easily more than twenty pounds (twenty-seven with the dander) but it's impossible to know the exact number since no one dares lift her. If you try she will growl. If you ignore the growl she will hiss, summoning breath from a place so deep that it permeates the air with the stench of undigested Pounce treats from 1993. You may think you are brave; this sound will convince you that you are mistaken. Many a houseguest has tiptoed into my room in the middle of the night just to beg me to move the cat from the bathroom doorway.

This is Desi's house and she makes the rules. You do not touch her, you do not smile at her, you do not try to play with her. And she is willing to hurt you if that's what it takes to make you understand.

And then, here comes the baby. The sweet, naive baby whose delighted reaction to the cat is only second to her delighted reaction to her daddy when he does his head banging imitation while singing the jingle from the Progressive Insurance commercial.

Yesterday I cautiously allowed Thalia to pet the cat for the first time. As we approached, you could almost hear Desi's thoughts, a feline Bobby DeNiro asking "Me? You lookin' at me? You wanna play with me?" But she sat there. And she took it.

Go kiss your children, stat. The apocalypse is upon us.

(and now a break from our regularly scheduled programming)

Kristen, that beautiful soul whose mission in life is to make all people happy, informs me that some nut has gone and nominated me for the CrazyHipBlogMamas member of the week.

Certainly I'm thrilled because, hey, what insecure writer doesn't need people to stroke her hair saying "goooooood....preeeeeetttttty" (as Nate puts it). But still, it feels a little to me like the quintessential teen movie where the new kid in school gets nominated homecoming queen. This is not to say that I am Lindsay Lohan and that you are all the Mean Girls, because, well, you all seem remarkably kind so far. (Yes, even you. You know who I'm talking about. Get your finger out of your nose.)

If you found your way here through CHBM, I'm happy just to have you here. For now. Down the road, I reserve the right to become more diva-like and demanding of you.

And if you are part of CHBM I recommend you throw your vote to Kristen, whose heartfelt, introspective posts this week have really stuck in my craw. Alternately, vote for Jenn, who is not only hysterical, but a real live professional writer and you're lucky to get to read her for free online instead of shelling out $90 for two theater tickets tickets, plus the cost of dinner, a sitter, and if you're me, a parking violation.

Of course if I do win for some freaky reason, I'm buying you each a pony.

Come for the company, stay for the cheese

I was not aware that the kingdom of parental loserdom had boundaries quite so vast. Yesterday’s kind--too kind--responses have encouraged me to open up just a little more, and share the pathetic state of affairs that is my iTunes playlist.

(In the interest of disclosure, and further evidence of failure at modern-day grooviness, here I must reveal that I have deliberately written iTunes playlist and not iPod playlist. Nate bought me the iPod for Valentine’s Day a year ago and in that time I’ve used it twice. Well, carried it twice, used it once. But I love it, honey! Really! I’m going to start going to the gym soon and when I do, I’ll use it every day, I swear!)

Imagine that you’re sitting at my computer. I bring you a nice cold glass of water and a plate of Wasa crisps and some hummus, because let’s face it, I’m a nice hostess that way and if I have nothing else in my fridge I have hummus. You click open my iTunes. Your first impression is that the alternative genre takes up a good amount of space. I’ve got all the Clash and Elvis Costello you’d expect of a former 80s alternachick who thought she was extra alternative because she wore a rhinestone dog collar around her black converse high tops, and scribbled the anarchy A on the toes. In permanent ink.

As you continue scrolling through the list, you find plenty of standards, some inoffensive classic rock, and you’re starting to wonder what the big deal is about this playlist anyway. And then you get to soundtracks.

Nate always rolls his eyes and makes that guttural Yiddish chhhhhhh sound like he’s got a hair caught in his throat, whenever I race towards him in the Virgin Megastore waving a soundtrack (this, by the way, always occurs in the “cool bands 30-something mothers are not allowed to have heard of” aisle). I suppose the only way I have access to new music these days is if Wes Anderson finds it for me first. So you’re perusing my soundtracks thinking yeah, Rushmore was pretty cool, and Go! did have that great Fatboy Slim song and wait…what’s this?

Show tunes.

Show tunes!

You nearly choke on your Wasa crisp as you eyeball the soundtrack from The Music Man. And another from Godspell. And then Pippin. There are more showtunes than Beatles tunes and surely that breaks some kind of musical law.

And, holy mother of God, is that an actual K-Tel collection of soft rock hits from the 70s? You had heard of such an album, but didn’t know it was a real thing that real people actually owned. Sort of like a Ginsu Knife. Or a Flowbee.

Now you know you’re onto something, so you sort the list by artist, but only after petting my bulldog who is rubbing up against your pant leg where the dog hair will remain until the next Ice Age. Suddenly it all becomes clear. There are a disproportionate number of singles on this playlist. And what singles they are!

The Logical Song. Hello it's Me. Midnight at the Oasis.

You have hit the mother load--the secret stash of Mom101’s loser tunes.

Rockin the Paradise. Islands in the Stream. Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?

These are cherished souvenirs from the Napster days. I discovered the service the week it was being shut down, which was just long enough to download all the guilty pleasure one-hit-wonders I could get my hands on. (“Hey, whatever happened to Dr. Demento?”) It's all the music I wouldn't have been caught dead listening to as a young 80s alternachick, but now, free from the shackles of my artsy-fartsy peer group, really enjoy in a frighteningly non-ironic way.

Ride Like the Wind. September Morning. Jump Shout Boogie.

While Nate spends his stay-at-home days with the baby on his lap, introducing her to music from Spoon and the Silver Jews, I had to run to his computer just look up those names. To add insult to injury, I related this passage to him and he reminds me that these bands have all been around, like, ten years. Idiot.

Nate’s diligence is paying off; Thalia's already showing a profound interest in Belle and Sebastian. Curses, bested by my 7-month old.

Thank God I'm a Country Boy. Shaddappa You Face.

You are now looking at your wristwatch in an exaggerated way, as you prepare to tell me that you think you left the oven on back home.

But wait! How will I know which bottle of water is Nate's coldy, germ-infested one?

Maybe we'll hit the Automat next.

Only a few years ago, I was a human Zagat guide--a walking, talking compendium of everywhere in NYC that you wanted to be.

I knew where to see, where to be seen, where to be seen seeing those who want to be seen. I could point you towards strip clubs and Irish pubs and the one place in Manhattan with a mechanical bull. I could suggest the perfect place to take your drunken bachelorette party or your sober Salt Lake City parents. I even knew a little jewel of a sake bar, so exclusive, you had to enter through another restaurant entirely and head up a back stairwell just to find it.

But as we know, childbirth changes more than your bra size.

Yesterday my delusions of hipness crashed and burned as I enthusiastically recommended a favorite restaurant—that closed three years ago.

I further hear it’s been a good five years since the bridge and tunnel contingent wrested the restaurant away from hipster locals in a full-scale coup after a Friday night performance of Mamma Mia.

I am woman, hear me wimper.

It's Not a Tu-mah

There’s a woman I used to know who “had” whatever ailment was on the news that week. When an upturned furniture tack scratched her leg in a restaurant booth, she turned my birthday celebration into her own little drama starring her, as the tragic, tetanus-afflicted heroine. A little nausea? Salmonella, of course. After a summer in Fire Island where the deer and their accompanying ticks march right on up to your doorstep, she bemoaned her myriad Lyme disease symptoms well into the following year. At which point her disease magically transformed into West Nile virus.

No doubt wherever she is today she’s got a bad case of avian flu with a side order of mad cow.

In fairness I think that even levelheaded people have one disease they’re always certain they have: brain tumor, blood clot, the Plague. Nate thinks he has a weak heart. (He doesn’t.) For me, it’s toxic shock syndrome.

I don’t know what it is about TSS that captured my imagination as a young, tampon-using ingenue; I think it is to an adolescent girl what SIDS is to a new mother— inexplicable, indescribable, completely unlikely, and wholly terrifying.

So when I woke up Sunday morning feeling less than wonderful, I did what any thinking person with a computer does: I ran to my computer to self-diagnose on WebMD.

I couldn’t figure out exactly how to describe my symptoms, there being no handy little check-off box for kinda tingly, skin-crawling feeling that radiates up your body, with dizziness whenever you stand up or move or sit or lay perfectly still and just move your eyeballs to the right. So I just typed in toxic shock syndrome figuring I could back my symptoms out of my diagnosis.

Page one: A WOMAN WHO HAS RECENTLY GIVEN BIRTH IS AT INCREASED RISK…

That was all I needed.

My mind flashed forward to me setting up a tripod in my living room, vacant smile pasted on my face as I prepare to record a video diary for Thalia to watch after I’m gone. (This is something I saw on some newsmagazine show when I was pregnant, a story inspired by some bad, Mommy’s Gonna Die, tax write-off of a movie. The film looked unwatchable but the story of the real mother branded itself into my brain like some fatal car wreck on the Bruckner. Brrrr.) I tell her to study hard in school, and remember to call her grandma and, and…dammit. I'm not good with those little motivational sayings you find on needlepoint pillows. All I can think of is, "So long, and thanks for all the fish" which of course makes no sense in this context at all.

The more I’m reading WebMD, the more it’s confirming my worst fears. The vertigo is getting more intense as I home in on phrases like SERIOUS, LIFE-THREATENING SYMPTOMS and GET MEDICAL HELP RIGHT AWAY. I shakily click through to the symptom checklist and prepare for the worst.

Dizziness or mental confusion?
Check! Definitely check.

Fever over 102?
Check. Well, possibly. I took the thing out of my mouth pretty quickly after Nate pointed out it was Thalia’s rectal thermometer.

Vomiting? Diarrhea?
Well, no. None of those.

A rash resembling a sunburn?
Um…

Peeling skin, especially on fingers and toes?
Whoopsie.

I have an inner ear infection. It doesn't appear to be fatal. But the U2 song stuck in my head is killing me.

photos: evaisse@flickr

File Under: Some People Just Suck

I may be new at this whole mom thing but I do know enough to teach my daughter that "finders keepers" is only acceptable for umbrellas in taxi cabs and pennies on the street lying heads up. And maybe illegally covert White House documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The story in a nutshell: Woman loses expensive camera. Family finds expensive camera. Family won't return expensive camera because family's 9 year-old child "really loves it" and they "can't bear to take it from him."

Good lord, it's a camera, not a puppy.

(Thanks, BoingBoing)

Illusion

Sometimes she is the most beautiful, take-your-breath-away perfect baby girl ever to grace this planet or any other. When the light hits her face just so, she is an angel and a muse. She could inspire symphonies and frescoed cathedral ceilings and volumes upon volumes of poetry. She could make a criminal confess. She could lead men to claw out their own eyes, confident that they will never again encounter such beauty in their lives.

And sometimes, I'll be damned if she isn't the spitting image of Danny Devito as the Penguin.

I love the 80's part II

By request, a picture of Mom101 back in the day. I'm the one in the top right corner.

I love the 80's with my decrepit, barely beating 37 year-old heart.

Last night was a much needed girliefest with three dear childhood friends turned adult friends. The pinnacle of the evening of the was a trip back to Senior year through the magic of videotape.

A little perspective on 1986: Iran-Contra. Challenger explosion. Tommy Lee and Heather. Madonna and Sean. Mrs. Garrett. Ferris Bueller. A hot heterosexual named George Michael goes solo, a respected young actor named Tom Cruise is on "marriage" #1, and a black singer named Michael Jackson has a nose. To be honest, '86 doesn't seem like quite so long ago to me until I determine that Lindsay Lohan and the Olsen Twins were born that year. (I imagine a teeny little Mary-Kate fetus wondering, "does this placenta make me look fat?")

Over the years, I've had this nagging fear that I bounced through the halls of my high school with a poofy assymetrical haircut, fat eyebrows, and a Flashdance: What a Feeling ripped sweatshirt in every color. Last night it was confirmed when we hit Play on the VCR and watched our senior dance show in jumpy, staticky technicolor. No straw hats or sparkly suspenders here, this was a very seeeeeeerious performance of student-choreographed modern dahhhhhnce. And aside from the hair, we weren't half bad.

Which means there was still quite a bit of bad.

The truly heinous dances, we fast-forwarded through (take that, you talentless sophmores! We still control you!) until we came to my high school boyfriend in the most pretentious and unwatchable duet ever performed. Spotlight up. Two people. Earnest, faraway looks on their faces. Cue music. To the tune of...nothing--there was no discernable melody in the narcolepsy-curing piano piece they selected--he makes a shape with his arms, she makes a shape with her arms. He makes a shape with his body, she does a handstand. They make a shape together. Now hold it...hold it....and repeat. For six minutes.

I went on birth control for this guy.

But the audience still "whoo!"-ed and "yeah!"-ed because that's what you do when you're in high school and your friends are on stage. And afterwards, if it's 1986, you go out to your Datsun, put your $1.25 pack of Parliaments on the dash, turn on the radio and make out to Roxy Music, fully believing that this is how life will always be.

I think I'm in the wrong village

It's only taken few brief months of motherhood to learn that everyone knows my child better than I do.

From the gaggle of bespectacled old women who suggested rather emphatically that I should move to a table farther from the front door in the coffee shop; to the considerate nanny on the street who shouted, "get a hat on that baby!" Extra-loud. Just to make sure I didn't miss out on some rare, free advice from a paid professional childcare expert.

Thalia in a rare, hat-wearing moment

What a lucky first-time mom I am to reap the expertise of the entire community. Like the saleswoman who said, "wow, she's a skinny one. Don't you feed her?" Well my goodness, if it weren't for you reminding me, I would have gone right on not feeding her for another three weeks! And the very same day, the neighbor who said, "four months? She's huge! What are you feeding her?" You know, the usual. Chicken McNuggets.

And then there is that all-seeing, all-knowing woman in my building (every big building in New York has at least one of them). In this case, the slick, silver-tongued, aerobicized realtor who likes to grandstand for her openhouse visitors in the lobby each Sunday by greeting each resident by name and throwing out some little tidbit that demonstrates just how close she is with every one of us.

"Hi LIZ, hi NATE. Hope you had a nice trip to CALIFORNIA last week. How is your darling bulldog, EMILY? And the baby? TALIA? How is she? Still got those HUGE BROWN EYES?"

Never mind that her name isn't Talia and I've corrected the woman sixteen times.

When I was pregnant she told me there was no way I was (16, 23, 37) weeks, I was way too small. And not in a complimentary way; rather in a "get a second opinion, I could be saving the life of your fetus" way. You know, because after (16, 23, 37) weeks of counting every minute since conception, I, along with my top-rated, high-risk obstetrician, may have made a deadly mathematical error.

Once Thalia was born, I was lucky enough to continue running into this woman so that I could further harvest her little gems of maternal wisdom. Like the importance of getting a good night's sleep when I could. Or the innovative suggestion that if Nate shared some of the night feedings, I could sleep more. Once afternoon after I returned from a walk with the baby, she cornered me in the elevator and inquired whether I was still breastfeeding. Before I could answer, she stared squarely at my triple-Ds and answered her own question.

"Well of course you are. How is it going?"

"Oh just fine, thanks. Really no problems."

"You say that now. But just know that men have a very hard time with it. They're jealous of this beautiful bonding experience between you and the baby that they can never have themselves. So if you start having some problems with your husband, just know that this is what it is."

I nodded graciously, smiling with lips pressed together just a little too tightly. The elevator doors rumbled open. I appreciated living on a low floor.

"Oh!" she called out from the elevator as I headed down the hallway, "that's not to say you shouldn't keep breastfeeding. It's very good for your child!"

It takes a village indeed.

The Morning After

I just left the baby on the couch for a moment to go fix her a bottle. When I returned, she was cooing and smiling, happy as could be, playing with a condom wrapper. So that tells you how our night went.

Last night's meal (maybe the third one I've cooked for Nate in so many years) was flawless. Despite the fact that he called it The Dare Me Not to Fart Meal. A classic cheese fondue accompanied by perfectly roasted Yukon Gold potatoes, wedges of crisp fiji apples and bosc pears, morsels of crusty baguette, and a simple arugula and endive salad with a sprinkling of slivered almonds, julienned apples, and fresh chevre. In non-food writer speak, that translates to: I'm not a seasoned cook, but I can pick out expensive fruit, cut it up, and put it in bowls. Just working with what I got.

I decided to break open one of the many bottles of champagne that line the bottom of our fridge. Like the fabulous overpriced baby outfits you receive as gifts, you save them for special occasions. And save them, and save them, and save them...

I selected a hefty bottle of Veuve, thinking it would be a little more special than whatever else was in there. We popped the cork, toasted to something appropriately romantic and cheesy, and took our first sip at which point Nate's eyes bugged out of his head. He snatched the bottle off the table and stared disbelievingly at the label.

"1989? You opened the '89 Veuve Cliquot?"

"Why, is that bad?"

"It's a $500 bottle of champagne."

Oops.

We don't know how this fancypants champagne found its way into our relatively modest refrigerator. Our best guess is that someone as clueless about '89 Veuve as I am regifted it to us when we moved into our apartment. No one likes us enough to give us a $500 bottle intentionally. Nate then went to the computer and started googling it -- the only reason I would have allowed a trip to the computer during Valentine's Day dinner --and determined that it was in fact just a $400 bottle of champagne. Which only diminished our enjoyment of it by one-fifth.

He spent the next half hour posing for pictures with the bottle, a series he's entitled "Me and My BFF."

I (heart) Valentines Day, sort of.

It's amazing how quickly things can change.

A few short years ago February 14th would have meant an evening of solo journaling, mostly detailing why the entire marketing department of Hallmark needed to go to hell. Or I might have spent the night cozied up with my best girlfriend in some little West Village boite, ideally one peppered with "other" lesbian couples, so that we too would be presented with a complimentary glass of champagne and wilty red rose. Now it's a holiday I can pretty much stomach once a year.

Tonight won't be anything like GiftFest 2002, which included a weekend at a b&b, two dozen red roses, gourmet chocolates, lingerie that I actually looked decent in, a hot pair of boots, and meticulously handwritten cards that made me laugh and cry and pledge my love in the most cliché terms imaginable. But hopefully I will whip up a decent enough fondue to keep Nate from reminding me why he does all of the cooking. And if we're really lucky, the baby will decide the crib isn't a half-bad place to sleep after all.

I had actually started this entry by listing of all the reasons I fell in love with Nate way back when, long before there was a dog to walk or mortgage to pay or a baby who demanded consoling right in the middle of foreplay. But I've concluded that the list was more for him than for you. And so it's going right into his card. Not everything in a blogger's life needs to be for public consumption.

(Although I will tell you that #4 was how the first time I accidentally fluttered the sheets, he responded with, "don't worry! Farts are funny!")

As for the rest of you, I hope you get off the damn computer, at least for part of the night, and try to remember what brought you to Crazy Babyland in the first place.

Blogs are good. Who knew?

Late to the technology party as I am, I am having such a good time exploring this crazy newfangled blog thing on the internets.

Up til now I was pretty much limited to a few political blogs, and the guilty pleasure that is Pink is the New Blog. I assumed that personal blogs were just navel-gazing at best. At worst, they were an opportunity for people who had no business calling themselves writers to cheat real writers out of feeling special at cocktail parties.

I stand corrected, as you can see from my ever-growing link list.

If you've got a favorite momblog that I'm missing, don't be shy. I'm on the hunt and hungry for new meat. However fair warning, I'm not a fan of the whiny I-hate-my-husband blogs; the I'm-45-but-wanna-be-
a-homegirl blogs; or the Dear Diary blogs: Today I waited for the plumber for an hour. Then I ate some melba toast. Then I picked up Chloe at daycare and stopped at the Pathmark for more melba toast.

If you're already on my link list, it's my way of saying I wish your blog were mine.

Ass-kissing over for the day. Carry on.

Me, Nanook

If you think it's snowy where you are right now, come visit me here in the Hudson Valley. And don't come empty-handed. I'm dying for a vanilla latte.

With Nate visiting friends for the weekend, I grabbed the baby and hightailed it up to my parents' place where I will be most happily cooked for, cleaned up after, and told repeatedly to "go. Relax. Take a bath." Most Jewish mothers tell their daughters to eat something when they walk in the door. Mine tells me to take a bath.

Thalia loves coming here because she gets to to eat homemade organic applesauce that my stepfather makes her, even if she does pay for it in bowel misfunction later. She also gets to play on the floor without the threat of electronics falling on her head. A 9" RCA television passes for technology round these parts.

Home in Brooklyn right now, my baby might be staring out the window watching handymen unburden sacks of rock salt, while grumpy dogwalkers keep the snowdrifts from remaining that boring white color. Instead Thalia's enjoyed the escapades of Mama and Papa Cardinal, the bluejay bullies known as the Gang of Seven, fierce downy woodpeckers fighting over a feeder full of suet, dozens of roly-poly finches, a tufted titmouse, a yellow-belly sapsucker, a few black-eyed junkos, and a lone redtail hawk who, as my mother puts it, thinks this is all just McDonalds. If you watch long enough, evidently he'll fly right into the picture windows. Top that, Baby Einstein.

My mother is an educational consultant, once your favorite grade school teacher--the one who let you sit cross-legged in a circle and write poetry and call her by her first name. She can quote Howard Zinn and Women who Run with the Wolves, but isn't above a good Will Ferrell movie, even if she can never remember his name. She refuses to color her boy-cut silver hair, and for a time only wore shoes if they were red. She stopped as soon as she became known as The Lady with the Red Shoes. Her husband is an environmental educator and fisherman, a real-life Grizzly Adams type who sports a santa beard and hiking shorts year round (yes, even today, only with a pair of pilled, navy longjohns underneath). He has never heard of Angelina Jolie. He also makes a mean chicken soup, which is the only consolation I have if the Second Avenue Deli never reopens. A pot is on the stove right now and if you've got a snowplow and a pair of snowshoes you're welcome to join us. Lunch is at 1.

I love coming here because they give me all the highlights of that week's Air America/the Nation/Paul Krugman/NPR/Mother Jones/heresay/innuendo. Imagine Best Week Ever with a liberal news spin and you've got dinner up at my mom's house.

In less than 24 hours since my arrival, I've already learned that:

• George Bush is a sonofabitch.
• Michael Bloomberg anonymously donated $100mm to Johns Hopkins for stem cell research because deep down, he's a good democrat.
• George Bush sneaked such massive educational cuts into his budget that it totals one-third of all cuts.
  
• A school district in Missouri pulled a school production of Grease after 3 people from one church congregation wrote letters.
• George Bush is a thug.
• Al Franken needs to do less schtick on his radio show and stop interrupting everyone.
• Congressman Roberts on Meet the Press is as full of sh*t as a Christmas Turkey.
• Bush and Bush Sr. giggled through the entire Coretta Scott King funeral.
  
• George Bush's mommy taught him how to lie.
• Al Gore should run again in '08, and looks excellent with those thirty extra pounds on him.
  
• The only thing that will get Americans to start revolting against this President is a draft.
• George Bush is an asshole.
  

I admit it's a lazy way for me to get my news. But sometimes, a new mom just needs a break from the conservatively-biased media.

I am my mother's daughter.

Enjoy your blizzard.

Friday haiku

Can't say retarded/Can't say lots of funny things/Now that I'm a mom

To sing you to sleep/I need new music ideas/Wham isn't working

"Talia?" No, Thalia/"Dhalia? Like the flower?" Sigh /Forgive me baby

I jinxed it.

Of course I did. You knew I would, I knew I would, but I was so excited I had to go and blog about it. Damn it. On a positive note, Thalia's still sleeping, even as I type this blearly early morning entry, but she's sleeping in the bed. Which brings cost of her crib to rougly $67 per hour of use.

Yeah, but can she pair wine with food?

Thalia was born smiling and I have the pictures to prove it. Me: hospital gown, burst facial capillaries, teary eyes, matted hair. Thalia: smiling. And no, it was not gas. What more can you ask for in a child, once you get past the whole ten fingers - ten toes thing?

On the flip side, she's never been a sleeper. I don't know who wrote all those books that tell you that babies sleep around the clock for the first few weeks, but they're full of it. It's probably the same researcher who wrote that if you're pregnant you should approach oral sex cautiously, or your husband might blow enough air into you to cause an embolism. Thalia never liked closing her eyes, not when she could be babbling or singing or smiling manically at the pillowcase in an attempt to make friends with it. When she did nap it had to be in the swing. When she did sleep it had to between us in bed. Fitfully, actively. She divided the night between punching Nate and kicking me. I have bruises to match my under eye bags.

Only in a social context have Thalia's sleep issues been a good thing. It's gotten me out of more than a few situations where the happy baby accolades are getting out of hand. Imagine a well-meaning friend, right in front of half dozen other babies and their doting mothers, exclaiming, "wow, that's the happiest baby I've ever seen!" Next thing you know the there are six women glaring at me in almighty silence, then scrambling to make funny faces and poopy sounds in an all-out effort to demonstrate that their baby is happy too, damn it. Potential social crisis indeed. Potential social crisis averted, however, when I mention, "well, she's not a sleeper."

Oh my goodness, lord have mercy, the whole mood in the room changes. All the other moms smile at me like I'm giving away free money. Then they look at each other smugly and nod and wink and give the secret my-baby-sleeps handshake, and start relating stories about how little Olivia has been sleeping fourteen hours a night straight through since she was 3 weeks. And wakes up laughing every morning. With a clean diaper. That smells like gardenia.

But today, it all changed. After seven straight months of co-not-sleeping the unimaginable has happened: Thalia slept in her crib. All night long. No ferberizing, no force-feeding, no duct tape.

Please don't hate me, other moms. I bet your kid has much better, um, hair.

The chronology of pacifier hygiene

newborn: sterilize in boiling water after each use.
1 month: sterilize in microwave once daily.
2 months: soak in hot, soapy water as needed.
3 months: rub vigorously between thumb and forefinger under running water.
4 months: immerse in water glass at the diner.
5 months: put in own mouth.
6 months: wipe on jeans.
7 months: wipe on jeans that didn't make it in the hamper last week on laundry day.

(photo: gerry_brt @ flickr)

Can I get a refund?

Thalia turned 7 months yesterday and clearly she hasn't been reading the babycenter weekly emails. She is supposed to be sipping from a two-handled cup, cutting her first teeth, sleeping through the night, and lining up all her toys so that she might sort them by size.

She does however have an extensive vocabulary. By my count she already has 8 words:

1. aiii
2. eeeeee
3. aiieeeee
4. dadadada
5. plalalala
6. hatahata
7. plllllfffftttt
8. babataiieeeeaiyiyi
9. the mermaid name Darryl Hannah uttered in Splash, causing all the glassware in Bloomingdales to shatter. It's a very powerful word--it also caused an entire generation to name their daughters Madison.

And the big winner of Super Bowl XL is...

Dove.

For those of you communists who were doing something besides watching the game yesterday, this stand-out spot for the Dove Self-Esteem Fund featured portraits of young girls with titles like hates her freckles and wishes she were blonde, followed by the line: Let’s change their minds. It’s the one commercial the entire game that might actually have any sort of real impact. Let’s be honest, everyone at the party we attended deemed the Bud Light ads the funniest--just before heading to the fridge for another Stella.

“But wait,” you say, “an ad about…girls? And their self-esteem?”
“Yes. Girls.”
“In bikinis?”
“No bikinis.”
“On a FOOTBALL GAME?”

Yes, Grasshopper. Those journalists who referred to it as the Super Bowl’s first female-targeted spot missed the point. The media placement alone was Dove’s way of saying that this isn’t just a woman’s issue. It’s everyone’s issue. Of course it’s also their way of saying, “please buy our soap,” which I plan to just as soon as I run out of my lemon-verbena Bliss bar.

Super Bowl Sunday (tm)

If there is one good thing about today it is the spinach-artichoke dip served in a hollowed-out loaf of bread the size of my postpartum ass. It's like sitting down to a big ol' platter of refined white flour carbohydrates, but actually consuming vegetables. I'm sure it's one of those no-point Weight Watchers foods, but I have searched the Core Foods list fervently and found nothing. An oversight.

The rest of my day is will be spent trying to keep Nate from letting the baby taste his beer. You know. Because it's cute.

Petroleum jelly, sushi...same difference

Wisecracking moms-to-be on your favorite network sitcom: pure fabrication. As if you needed any more evidence that tv writers are overpaid. (Unless Nate gets a job writing sitcoms. In which case they are sorely, grossly underpaid and I will fight to the death anyone who dares contradict me.)

Pregnant women are funny, of course, but not because they're quick-witted. For nine months, I could no longer verbalize my thoughts in any sort of cohesive fashion; snappy comebacks were always just out of reach. While an unwashed catcaller might normally be sent away with, “I hope someone is saying the same thing to your mother right now,” what comes out of the mouth of the pregnant woman is something more like, “bad...man...bad...”

I spent the better part of my bedrest compiling the more amusing questions off pregnancy message boards in a futile attempt to make myself feel smarter. Share in my schadenfreude:

• Is it okay to use Vaseline while I’m pregnant?
• Help! I was with my mom who is using Ben-Gay and I accidentally took a sip of her water and it was on her glass and I got some in my mouth. I’m 10 wks...did I hurt
  my baby?
• I ate a cranberry muffin this morning and got a HUGE sugar rush. Is my baby okay?
• I read if you go to a loud horror movie or concert the baby could kick so hard he could break a rib...i want to go to the movies but nervous.
• My husband bought one of those "body fat" scales a few days ago and I've been getting on it a few times a day and lamenting the numbers. But now I just read the instructions that said that it is not for pregnant women and now scared that the electric current somehow harmed my baby.
• Pg in 1st trimester, just had 15 min cell phone conversation, bad?
• Husband just bought me a poppyseed roll. Any reason I should be concerned about consuming the large qty. of poppyseeds? Because I really want it....

And my personal favorite:

• I know you’re not supposed to get x-rays but what about regular cameras? Is it ok to to have your picture taken?

Answer: No. Sheesh, everyone knows camerals steal your soul.