lost my pants

Ugh, ugh ugh I'm so glad last week is over! At times I really wanted to run away and not be an adult anymore, if only for a few brief hours. But I took a hour to myself after visiting my Grandma, bought two pairs of jeans at Old Navy and wound up leaving them at the grocery store to be taken by whoever noticed the bag in the self check aisle. The only thing I'm thankful for is that I bought cheap jeans, if they were fancy $100 plus jeans I would have felt like shooting myself. I found out my Dad needs to go in for an angioplasty tomorrow. No real surprise given his lifestyle, which really isn't all that conducive towards living, but still it's upsetting and stressful to receive that news. My Dad's an alcoholic and a chain smoker who lives under the radar doing construction, which is all rather pitiful since he's very intelligent (he can complete Friday & Saturday NYT crosswords when I hit the wall at Thursday) and has a degree. When he's not drunk or in braggart mode he's unbelievably charismatic and the man is one of the best generalists I've ever met, he knows something about every obscure topic under the sun. Unfortunately he has a number of problems, which I think are probably biochemical in nature, and he's lost any good job he's ever had. To be blunt my Dad is delusional, he has no health insurance but isn't worried because he has friends and all these doctors he's seen have done stuff free and the cardiologist isn't charging him for the surgery so he'll only have to pay the tech bill, so my Dad said. He doesn't seem to realize that hospitals charge four dollars for a tylenol and he needs to go under general anethesia and stay overnight which all adds up to thousands, but he doesn't seem troubled at all by this. Maybe because he has a mountain, I'm talking Kilimanjaro, of debt so it's just more to that which will never be paid. But he's my Dad, how ever many faults he has, I can't cut him out of my life because I think that would hurt me more. So we're going to go visit him over the weekend to see how he's recovering. I have been so upset this weekend though, feeling like I should be with him when he goes into surgery but Toby has class that night and I'm supposed to volunteer at Owen's school that day and when I talked to my Dad he said he'd rather spend more time with us over the weekend, but I constantly have guilt chipping away at my tenuous hold of self worth. In a lot of ways I'm mad at my Dad, he has blown off coming to visit us so many times because he's working or not working or is embarrassed of his situation. I still have a Christmas gift wrapped up for him, that's how long it's been. It saddens me that he can't understand that I want to see him regardless of how much he makes or drinks or smokes or lies. As long as he doesn't drive drunk to see us. I want the kids to know who their Grandpa Boo is. Owen loves when he wraps his limbs up into a pretzel, but Oona can't even remember him. He's only seen her two or three times. Sometimes I feel so reactionary with everything I do. My Dad was a lot of fun when I saw him (on weekends) as a child, but he wasn't really a parent. He thought it was fine to spend the night drinking in a bar at an airport while his seven year old played on the escalator just outside. And this was in the seventies, before they had those emergency stops at the top and bottom of every escalator in case a shoe lace or pants hem gets caught in the teeth of the stairs and you're maimed or worse. The man has been bringing me to bars since I was little, which when I was twelve seemed super cool because I got to stay out late and the bartender would let me have one real drink, but as you get older you see how sad and pathetic that is. I am so the other side of the pendulum with my kids. I won't drink until their asleep and even then I have maybe one or two drinks a month. I sometimes feel that they won't get a chance to make mistakes or get hurt because I won't let them. I know part of being a parent is letting them strike out on their own, but I panic about every possible calamity that could happen to them. I am someone who never should have been a parent. My worrying makes it feel like torture at times, to have these two children in the world. I know I shouldn't worry so much, if I look back at all the dangerous things that happened to me while growing up (and I survived!) my kids should be fine but my mind doesn't work that way.

On the bright side though, an old friend was out in Pittsburgh on business and I got to have a lovely dinner with her. It was so wonderful to catch up with her and spend a grown up evening out eating dinner without tears or screaming or crayons/food/toys/fill in the blank thrown on the floor. My kids are usually well behaved at restaurants but just anticipating a possible meltdown can be exhausting. You can't ever let your guard down eating out with kids, but eating out with a good old friend and no kids? Heaven.

interpreter of maladies

Jhumpa Lahiri is truly mystifying to me. Who wins a Pulitzer Prize in their early 30s with their publishing debut?! I'm further blown away by how eloquent and mature her writing is and the restraint she displays in her writing, which makes her bittersweet stories resonate all the more. The stories in this collection all concern Indians or Indian-Americans, many stories deal with the particular loneliness of being an immigrant in America. Lahiri writes so subtly, yet movingly, about the disconnect for immigrants whose lives cross countries and vast cultural differences. Her stories are richly detailed with clear narratives and a compassion for her characters that makes this a book I'd highly recommend and after I finish what I'm currently reading I'm going to start her novel, The Namesake. I think I might enjoy that even more because now that I'm a Mom with little time on my hands when I do get the chance to sit down and read something I'd prefer it to be a long novel.

feverish

In the past 5 days...

1. Oona's had a high fever
2. We carved pumpkins with Toby's parents, brother and our neice and the kids were all dancing around the living room like maniacs which caused the steel and MDF entertainment center to squeak ominously, everything on it was bouncing, and made me stand up near the monster tv to throw myself in front of it and save the kids if the whole contraption decided to collapse suddenly.
3. Entertained my Grandma, Aunt and Uncle at our house and punctured our front left tire driving them all to our house. I hit the curb, which has a large metal bar bowing out of it, Toby punctured our tire last year doing the exact same thing. As soon as I hit the curb I heard air escaping from our tire at a furious pace and muttered shit under my breath and my Grandma and Aunt both said 'Are you sure the tire's flat?' Oh yes.
4. Now Owen has Oona's high fever illness and I get to bring TWO kids to the car dealership tomorrow and deal with a sickie and a two year old in the waiting area. Fortunately, McDonalds and Denny's are both close by so I'll have to seek refuge and drown my sorrows in a semi flat soda at one of those bastions to shitty food and even shittier cleanliness standards, I shudder to think of the grime on everything.
5. Toby leaves on yet another trip tomorrow, the poor guy has been travelling every week for at least a month now, he comes home late Wednesday night and gets his wisdom teeth out on Thursday.

I so need one of those spa vacations that stars and the well-heeled take regularly over a long weekend. Coke, the soda not the drug, is my equivalent of a spa vacation. That and a hot shower and some cookies followed by going to bed early.

pumpkin picking

On Sunday we went out to Riley's farm for a hayride and pumpkin picking with the kids. It was an absolutely incredible day, we couldn't hope for better weather. Well, it would have helped if it had rained recently because it was so dusty up where the petting zoo, face painting and other kid friendly activities were held. Poor Oona and her cousin were lost in the haze. At one point Oona sneezed and it was all brown from the dust. But, still there were adults who felt dry as a bone dusty hay on the ground is the perfect place to smoke and put out your butts. I have a huge pet peeve about adults smoking in zoos, playgrounds and other kid friendly places. Back when I had a disposable income and used to ski I was dumbstruck by the people that would stop halfway down the slope for a cigarette break, it seemed like a physical oxymoron. But back to the farm, here are some pics from the big day.

Choosing a prize pumpking with Dad and Jon. Jon works with Toby and is, quite possibly, the nicest single guy with children that I have ever met, but not in a creepy giggling Barney the dinosaur way. He's so great with both Owen and Oona. He and his fiance are very lucky to have each other, and I guess Toby and I are lucky to have people who are without kids and in their early twenties that want to hang out with us.

Admittedly I'm biased, since I'm his mom...but doesn't Owen have beautiful eyes. If you click on the picture you can see them in all their insanely pretty glory.







Oona communes with the pig. At least she didn't try to pull his tail. All the animals were full so we had a hard time finding any sheep, goat or pig that would take some milk from the baby bottle I bought for Owen to feed the animals. Maybe we have to arrive earlier in the day when they haven't gorged yet.

It isn't a visit to the farm without posing in a cut out of The Addams Family.

things that go boom

That would be my daughter's head, going boom, as she runs straight into the couch. Now, normally, if a child runs into the couch you don't hear the impact, but Oona's unique. Lately, she's taken to running laps in the living room and can gain such speed that she quickly loses control and tailspins into something or other. Yesterday, before we went to pick Owen up from school she slammed into the table near the sofa causing the light to fall over on me. After dinner last night I was washing the dishes, Toby was at school, and the kids were in the living room playing. I can see them from the kitchen and everything seemed fine until I head the boom and Oona's down on the ground crying. I ran over to comfort her and noticed her forehead starting to swell and bruise right away. What sort of momentum did she build to run right into the arm of the couch, bypass the cushioning, and crack her noggin into the kiln-dried hardwood frame? Fortunately, she's tough as nails and as soon as I kissed her head she was off to the next toddler extreme sport, trying to run around the living room with a blanket on her head. I quickly put the kibosh on that and redirected her to the less injurious sport of reading Moondance.

confusion about what i'm currently reading

To any loyal readers of this blog let me first apologize, I have so dropped the ball when it comes to what I'm currently reading.

First off, I've had the A Hedonist in the Cellar picture up for ages and I still have yet to finish it, but I've read one book and most of another in the meantime. I'm stopping A Hedonist in the Cellar for now, but I still think I should rank it, I got 2/3rds through. McInerney does have a tendency to name drop but I'll forgive him that minor weakness. The big pluses of this book are that McInerney has way of writing about wine that's quite engaging and he has great, accessible descriptions that are invaluable for selecting the right wine for your tastes. He clearly is passionate about the subject. The problem? Right now I barely drink, aside from one oh so regrettable evening with my husband last month. I had a wonderful time with Toby, but I drank way too much for someone who usually goes without and I was so horrendously sick all the next day. Oh God, and then I overhear Owen asking Toby if mommy's sick from drinking too much wine and I'm wincing in the bathroom, thinking that's all I need for him to say at school and then child services will come take the kids when that's the first time I've been drunk in 6 years. One other big problem with the book, it would be so much more helpful if it came with a little cliff notes, some sort of pocket guide you could bring with you to restaurants.

So I was reading A Hedonist in the Cellar when someone sweetly gave me a $10 gift card to Barnes and Noble and, sucker that I am, I bought Never Let Me Go based on the cover and eerie description on the back. British writers, at least the ones I've read, seem to break into two distinct groups; the funny, hyper-literate, manic roller coaster rides of Martin Amis or Zadie Smith and those whose writing has a much slower pace, is tinged with melancholy, and can ultimately pack a big emotional wallop, like Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote this book. First off, if you don't want to learn the 'surprise' of Never Let Me Go read no further. Still with me? Okay, I found the novel about the lives of clones completely fascinating. There is so much in the news about cloning and I've heard stuff on NPR about British scientists making chimeras, where they culture human cells and than implant them in an animal egg. Very mind bending stuff, even if the cells aren't allowed to go past 14 days growth. This story is very affecting and it's interesting in the same dystopic way The Children of Men was in that, in these alternative realities (but still close enough to reality to be frightening) you see cruelties that can emerge with desperation or, in the case of Never Let Me Go, a sort of willful ignorance. The story has a great narrative voice, my only quibble is that when I got to the end (another spoiler alert here) I couldn't help thinking, why didn't these characters run away from their ultimate fate? Maybe it isn't terribly realistic, and it wouldn't give the story it's elegiac air. But, even though it would turn the book into a Hollywood movie, I kept hoping the main character would leave what's waiting for her. There's an air of resignation that was unsettling. It makes for an effective novel, but you won't finish it feeling satisfied exactly.

a waif among waifs

So Owen and Oona went for their annual check ups and I had to have the doctor fill out forms for Owen's school. I didn't realize until after the fact that they had an area for BMI. There have been news stories here in PIttsburgh about parents getting irate when they get notes from the school nurse informing them that their children are overweight based on their BMI. These parents are usually overweight themselves and less than articulate for the camera. You know, this coverage falls under the 'more news less fluff' tagline of one of the local networks, which means we get plenty of news about any Steelers players with injuries and much prognosticating about whether they'll recover in time for the next game, but not so much about Bush's veto of SCHIP. Anyhoo, I digress. Owen's BMI is 14.3. Just to give a little perspective on this, anything under 18.5 is considered underweight. Guess I don't have to feel too guilty about Owen eating a school lunch that's high in fat. Can you see the conundrum I face trying to get him to be less of a picky eater, not allowing him to have a treat if he doesn't try to eat most of his dinner? I don't want him to go hungry, he's like the 5 year old equivalent of Christian Bale in The Machinist.

did it really seem like a good idea at the time?

I am slammed with work. It's a good thing, I shouldn't complain, I just got a bunch of projects from my one client that should help build our down payment for a new home considerably. But, Toby is away for work until late Friday night and Oona's naps have shortened considerably. Looks like some heavily caffeinated nights in my future. Not to sound vain, but when you're pushing forty going with little sleep does not look good in the morning. I hate that my face now looks so haggard some days. I usually notice this when I look in a mirror with my face pressed next to Oona's, who has that beautiful, ripe, dewy skin I cherish in little ones. Oh well, what I really wanted to lament was all the post ideas I have which will now have to wait a bit, maybe that will build up suspense in the readers out there, whoever you are. And I must apologize for my totally delinquent book list, and Owen's too. But I'll leave you with this humorous article from The Wall Street Journal, Toby gets a subscription since he's in business school and I peruse it if I'm bored or procrastinating.