Overheard

When you live in Seattle, you sometimes hear things that give you insight into why some people make the dark choice to become a Republican.

To wit, I just overheard the woman next to me at a coffee shop tell her companion about a friend who "Just got a grant... to go to Afghanistan... and play the accordion."

Blue Angels Force Local Resident to Zoo

As a child, I loved the Blue Angels. We’d take mini road-trips from Iowa City to Chicago in the summer to stay in a fancy hotel and see the air show and buy new outfits at FAO Schwartz for my brother’s stuffed dog, Henry, and my favorite doll, Baby Chicago. I loved the noise, the thrill, the way it looked like the planes were flying sideways between the skyscrapers and practically holding hands—wings—with each other when they flew in formation. I sensed how dangerous their stunts were and loved them for it.

Months after I moved to Seattle (nine years ago now!) I learned that the city was not, in fact, under attack on a random August weekend—the Blue Angels were performing over Lake Washington as they do every year.

The same Lake Washington that’s about three blocks from my house.

Every August since we met, my husband and I have hiked down to the lake in our crampons (just kidding—do I seem like the kind of woman who would wear, let alone own, crampons? Are crampons even used to climb down things? Or is that belaying? Or bungeeing?) We have sat on the banks of the lake drinking warmish sodas and marveling at the noise, the danger, the thrill. Then we have cramponed our way back home to try to ignore the hydroplanes that race like angry wasps across the surface of the lake all afternoon. (My husband would be the first person to tell you: those things are annoying.)

We bonded over our love for the Blue Angels in a town where most everyone we know takes the reasonable—but boring and predictable—stance that the Blue Angels are a waste of money and fuel, and they send a nasty macho message glorifying war, and they produce copious amounts of water and air and noise pollution, and they're just generally too much.

“I know,”—comes my standard reply—“but you have to admit they’re pretty cool.” Everyone stares at me like I’m a Republican and then details their exit strategy for the weekend. Mount Rainier. The Washington coast. The Oregon coast. The coast of Anywhere But Here.

My husband would be devastated to miss the show, and I have never been a fan of leaving town during this particular weekend until I had a baby. Who naps. In the afternoon. Between 1:30-3:30. Prime Blue Angel time.

I looked up the schedule this morning, and learned not only do they perform on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, but they practice once on Friday and twice today. Twice! How hard can it be to fly 18 inches from five other fighter jets? I mean, honestly. And what job doesn't have a 10% mortality rate?

At 10am on the nose a Blue Angel buzzed our house. The baby covered her ears, gave me an imploring look, and said, “Pane. Yowd.”

So I scooped her into the car and we went to the zoo, which is a real sign of how much I love her since I’d generally rather kill myself than have to witness a bunch of mangy, patchy bears pacing a 30 x 30 “naturalistic” exhibit (as all seven people who have read this poem of mine know)—only to learn that the jets actually cover most of the city with their flight patterns. I guess it takes a lot of room to make a U-turn at 500 miles per hour. Luckily the baby was too distracted by the pacing grrr-grrrs to be bothered by the yowd panes.

Last year, when the baby was nine months old, a rogue fighter jet (“Not a Blue Angel,” my husband recently clarified, “those guys are professional.” n.b. My husband is no more Republican than I am, he just really likes airplanes) anyway, some non-Blue-Angel illegally—and unprofessionally—broke the sound barrier—BOOM!!!!!—right over our house. I was holding the baby, who was handling it all rather well until I jumped all the way out of my fucking skin. Then she began to cry.

This year, I whisked her home from the zoo and settled her into her crib before the second practice session of the day. I turned her fan on high and left my iPhone in her room with a white-noise app—the combination of which will surely render her deaf if the sonic booms don’t. (At least I won't have to worry about the noise next year!)

Professional or not, those planes are youd. And distracting. And, in a certain mindset, very frightening, especially when you can hear them but not see them, like right now as I madly type these words before the baby inevitably wakes in terror. As they buzz our roof and make our 100-year-old windows rattle in their frames, all I can think to say is: Fuck you, Blue Angels. I love you—but fuck you. Because of you, I had to go to the zoo.

Grungy Hippies (Jellicle Cat Reprise)

At the airport in L.A. this morning I was holding the baby in one arm and Eliot the newly cleaned stuffed cat in the other when a woman around my mom's age smiled at our little tableau and, gesturing toward Eliot, said, "That cat sure is well-loved, huh? Is it a hand-me-down, or...?..."

Alas. Eliot was exposed for the grungy Seattle hippie she apparently is all the way down to her core.

I, on the other hand, am practically Republican-seeming by Seattle standards. I shave in all the standard places, wear near-prescription-strength antiperspirant, and do not own any skirts that hit below the knee, much less the calf. So imagine my surprise when I got busted yesterday at a suburban Los Angeles swimming pool for being a grungy hippie mama.

I was minding my own, changing the baby's diaper on a bench by the side of the pool (where it was 95 degrees) instead of in the locker room (where it was 117 degrees and a little too fungal-feeling for my taste) when I overheard a pubescent voice say something about "deck changes" not being allowed. Not paying much attention—and not knowing what a deck change was—I blithely continued to fan the baby's rashy, exposed bits with a dry diaper until the pubescent voice was standing in front of me with a whistle around its neck, gesturing toward the baby. "Next time, please use the locker room."

I glanced around and noticed that, in fact, no other babies were standing around naked. Likewise, no other moms had their hair in a loose braid, their bodies in a vintagey one-piece, or their boobs in the shape god made them.

I wish I were one of those people who would have finished changing the baby right there in full view of god and all of southern California, but I'm not. I perp-walked the baby to the locker room and put her in her chlorine-free diaper and bamboo pajamas in hot, hot peace. Then we piled into my mother-in-law's Prius, and off we drove into the incredible, smog-enhanced sunset.

Things to do

We're traveling on a plane today for the first time since the baby's been old enough to enjoy things like foil packets of pretzels, books with paper pages, and internet porn. I'm so excited. Can anyone out there recommend iPhone apps for a not-quite-two-year-old with a love of Elmo, cats, the letters D, M, R, and N, and the numeral 8? (She doesn't like the way headphones mess up her hairdo, so ones not dependent on sound effects for enjoyment are best.)

Travel with a toddler is fun! Right? Hellooooooooo? Anyone?

The way we're made

My child’s lovey—a black-and-white stuffed cat—took her first bath today. Eliot—so-named because it’s brand is “Jellycat” and Cats was the first musical I ever saw and my husband does this impression of a cat in Cats (even though he claims he’d rather die than attend a musical) that’s, well, to die for—so I wanted to name the cat “Jellicle Cat,” after the song/T.S. Eliot poem but that proved too cumbersome, so—Eliot.

For some reason we’d never locked in on Eliot’s gender—I’d sensed she was female but was just as apt to say “he” as “she.” The other day I randomly asked the baby if Eliot was a boy or a girl, and without giving it any thought at all she said “Gow” and nodded for emphasis.

Eliot has a black body with light paws and nose and mid-section, and the light had turned darker from seven months of love and sharing snacks and almost as many months of parental nervousness about accidentally “ruining” Eliot in the washing machine. I’m not sure what we were imagining, but since the tag said “spot-clean only,” I figured it would be like tossing an antique lace doily in there and letting the agitator rip it to shreds.

I try to take a relaxed approach to parenting—ignoring the books, not fretting over the small stuff—but the internet sometimes makes it difficult. If a million articles and blog entries and threads on old-fashioned looking things that I think are maybe abandoned chat rooms (?), if they’re just sitting there waiting to give me advice on how to wash my kid’s cat, who am I to ignore them?

Many moons ago I did the requisite Good Parent research and discovered, like all aspects of parenting, every single approach and its opposite was recommended. Dry clean. NEVER dry clean! Wash in hot water. COLD WATER ONLY. Toss in the washing machine. NEVER EVER WASH IT EVER. Hang it by its toes and gently swat it with a carpet-beater. I’M GOING TO CALL SOCIAL SERVICES ON YOU!

For practice, I tossed a similarly made stuffed animal into the machine, one that the baby likes fine but doesn’t sleep with or ask for or mention when she’s at the zoo alone with her dad, as if to say, “Eliot would really have liked these snow leopards—when we get home we’ll have to tell her all about them.”

That animal turned out just fine, all its limbs still attached and not growing inner mildew to the best of my knowledge, though how long would it take to discover such a thing?

For months we put off washing Eliot—when were we ever going to do it, anyway, given that she’s always in the baby’s arms or very close by?

“Wow, that cat’s been around the block, eh?” grandparents and random strangers would comment upon making Eliot’s acquaintance.

“Oh, she’s a little loved, I guess,” I’d say evenly, trying not to betray my maternal defensiveness. “But she wasn’t ever black and white—she was always sort of grey. And her fur’s just like that. It’s the way she’s made.”

But we’re heading to L.A. for the weekend, and you know how they are there. I didn’t want Eliot to feel like some grungy Seattle hippy with B.O. just because her owners’ parents were too wussy to bathe her.

So the baby’s daddy took her to the zoo this morning with zero stuffed animals in tow (because where there’s one, there’s Eliot), and I stayed home and washed the cat—washing machine, cold water, delicate cycle, lingerie bag—and then dried her in the dryer on low for two mildew-preventing hours.

Eliot lived to tell the tale.

She looks beautiful, in fact. The grey patches actually are meant to be white. Who knew?

I felt weirdly full of pride, like I’d accomplished something great today. I even wished I’d taken a Before picture so I could share it as well as an After version, but I realized I’d be one of those people.

Then I realized something kind of major.

I’ve become one of those people.

While I wasn’t paying attention I’ve become the kind of parent who loves her child with the fierceness of a jaguar and a lion and a tiger and a snow leopard combined.

You fuck with Eliot, you fuck with me.

And this makes me inordinately happy.

A two-step process

I took the baby to Ikea for the first time yesterday—her first time, not mine. Me, I'm an Ikea pro, or at least I was before I married a man who won’t allow anything in his home made after 1970—with the notable exceptions of me, the baby, and the cat. Back in the day, I could shop in Ikea for hours, outlasting my friend as she got a nosebleed on the escalator (true story) and my then-girlfriend as she passed out in the lighting department (also a true story).

Anyway, it was raining for the 29,317th day in a row here in Seattle, and I was itching to get out of the house and go somewhere other than the Children’s Museum, which I loathe, in no small part because it’s full of children. Ikea on the other hand tends to be full of nesting lesbians and temporarily displaced Europeans, which is not a problem for me at all.

I’ve been on the lookout for a stepstool for the bathroom sink so the baby will know how to wash her own hands when she starts preschool (!) in the fall. I don’t want her teacher to be all, “Why in god’s name does this child need help washing her hands? She’s nearly two for chrissakes. She should be able to weave a tapestry by now with those nimble little fingers.”

I’ve looked on Craigslist but haven’t found an item tall enough to be useful but short and stable enough for her to be able to, you know, step onto it. She knows the letter “C” is for “cookie” and can count all the way up to two, but she’s not what anyone would call “physically precocious.” I worry about her climbing on things, not because she’s one of those babies who climbs on everything but because she’s one of those babies who sat in one place commanding her doting/annoyed parents to get things for her well past her first birthday. Consequently, she isn’t always that steady when she does ascend something to, say, grab my iPhone so she can watch Elmo or, better yet, YouTube porn, like I found her doing this morning when I got out of the shower. (Note to self: pay attention next time someone talks about “parental controls” and how to use them. When I gently eased the phone away from her, trying not to inspire a tantrum or an early guilt/shame complex around sex, I asked, “What were you watching there, huh, kiddo?” She just smiled at me treacherously and said “ ’mo.”)

We went to Ikea to find a wooden stepstool that I could throw around the backyard a few times to bang it up and make it look as old as my husband. Even though the baby has been quite good company on outings for many months now, I still get nervous about taking her places. Like I expect her to scream bloody murder every time I stop the car at a red light or change the radio to something other than hip hop even though she hasn’t done that since she was a month old. Ah, newborn-induced PTSD.

I packed the usual selection of diapers and wipes and creams and ointments (because you never know when your child might get nibbled by a mosquito inside a giant, meandering furniture emporium), two sippy cups full of milk, one of water, a baggie of cheese cubes, and the requisite container of Goldfish because we were going to be gone for two whole hours.

Upon arrival, I bribed the baby to get into the cart with one of the cups of milk and convinced her to stay there until we got to the toy area with periodic Goldfish treats as if she were a tiny, cart-riding Shamu. Each time she didn’t pitch a fit—like when she had to put the stuffed dogs back in the bin with their brethren or stop wiping her nose on the rainbow of hand-towels—I breathed a sigh of relief and then braced myself for the next challenge, none of which turned out to be that challenging. By the time we sat down for a lunch of mac-and-cheese—Swedish-style—I was (unnecessarily) exhausted.

We hit the checkout counter with only a package of finger puppets in hand, having not found an adequate stepstool, and a woman rolled past us pushing a stroller and a cartful of flat-pack furniture boxes and mirrors and large frames and other cumbersome items with lots of sharp corners.

“Baby!” declared my baby upon seeing the stroller.

“Yes, that’s a baby,” I confirmed. Then I looked closer and saw that the simultaneous stroller-and-cart-pushing woman had yet another baby strapped to her chest. “Two babies!” I clarified because I, too, can count all the way to two.

A friend (whose delightful and adorable daughter my daughter is obsessed with—if I hear one more time about the time they rode the light-rail together, like, three months ago (“Ro-Ro, choo-choo. Ro-Ro, choo-choo.”) I might scream) recently told me about some story she heard on one of those rare NPR programs that's actually as entertaining as it is informative. It was some guy talking about raising twins, and apparently he said something like, “They shouldn't call it 'twins,' they should call it 'having two babies at the exact same fucking time.'” My first thought was that I must track down this man and make him my friend (because I like any parent who is honest about the challenges of raising kids and because I especially like parents who don’t stop using words like “fucking” just because they recently reproduced. My second thought was how I still can’t imagine having a second kid years after having the first—how do people handle two babies at the exact same fucking time?

As the Ikea woman strode purposefully to the bathroom with her carts and babies and Billy bookcases, I tucked the small package of finger puppets into the diaper bag, picked up my one baby and chased after the woman so I could offer help even though she clearly had everything under control. In fact, she probably would have offered to watch my kid while I peed and maybe even did a little more shopping had she seen me standing there looking a bit like a deer in florescent lights.

Mothers of twins (and, lordy, triplets and more)—I salute you. I admire you. I don’t know how you (fucking) do it. And if you could stop making it seem so easy, so do-able, I’d appreciate it. You make the rest of us look bad.

Back, back, back

I've been working on some other writing projects lately, namely essays for Salon and Open Salon and RootSpeak—pieces with actual beginnings, middles, and ends as opposed to this free-form bloggy stuff. But yesterday I was randomly inspired to check in with the various lovely free-form-bloggy-stuff-writers (as well as writers of things with beginnings, middles, and ends) who I used to read when I was up in the dead of night cursing—er, nursing—my (then) infant, and I discovered that they're all pregnant and working new jobs and living in new houses (and this new house and this one... I'm jealous!) and growing amazing gardens. In other words, they've moved on without me, and truthfully it made me a little sad. Like, Hey, why didn't anyone tell me?! Then I remembered they don't actually know me and it was my job to click on their blog, not their job to send me a handwritten update in the mail like my mom and grandmother still do, despite their arthritis and, in the case of my grandmother, despite the fact she doesn't quite remember who I am or where I live or where she lives or whether her siblings are still alive or whether it's really true that she's going to be "moving back home" "any day now." Don't let me get old, okay?

Anyway. Mostly-staying-at-home motherhood is lonely, and it's nice to be back here among "friends"—or other women (I feel like I'm supposed to say "people" here instead of "women," but I'm not going to—I'm going to say "women," if only to make up for all the times people (men) say "men" when they really mean "people") who would really, really like to be able to ignore their children (or their work) for just three or four minutes so they could get a tiny bit of writing done, dammit.

You care about postpartum sex and Steve Almond's essays and Ani Difranco and mixed metaphors and avoiding those granny-skirts on your swimsuits at all costs—and for that I love you all.

Something you should read

One of my students found this on the internet, printed it out, and handed it to me in class—old-school-style. It's such a lovely piece on the hard-to-articulate difference between being "someone who writes" and being "a writer." I love it (and not just because the female author has a manly sounding name) and thought I should share it via this newfangled digital technology.

I need a doctor—clearly

Here I am on Salon, embarrassingly confessing my love for Grey's Anatomy (and less embarrassingly for my husband).

They love me in Australia

An Australian website reran my MILF essay here.

Geeky like me

I have an essay here on Open Salon today.

The glory of the MILF

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Everyone loves a fireman

I have an essay here on RootSpeak about randomly running into a dude—a firefighting dude—who I obsessed over in college (back when he was cute).

Why is the TSA touching my baby?

Read about my baby getting patted-down by the TSA here on Salon this weekend. Merry almost-Christmas, everyone!

So annoying, it will make your head hurt

I have an essay here about failing at biofeedback as a treatment for migraines.

Common scents

I have an essay on Salon today about the olfactory dangers of shopping on Craigslist—click here to catch a whiff.

A Writing Experiment

Please read my most recent posts on Open Salon at: http://open.salon.com/blog/not_quite_what_i_expected

Salon

Check out an edited version of "Some Kind of Athlete" (the piece I recently read at Hugo House's Cheap Beer & Prose event) in the Life section of Salon.com!

On the Up Side

I am quoted in this month's issue of Seattle Woman magazine saying oh-so-nerdily, "The word 'essay' means 'to try'."

Modesty Returned

Today is not my day. I lost a contest to a woman with no last name (think “Sade” or “Enya”). In addition to losing and being the kind of asshole who writes sentences like the previous one, I sold a (perfectly good as far as I knew!) stroller I never should have bought in the first place on Craigslist this weekend, and now the woman who purchased it is stalking me, insisting that I duped her by selling a stroller with a broken wheel and demanding I refund her money. People return things on Craigslist??? So many ill-advised dressers and Febreeze-scented chairs I could have returned!

As I pulled out of the garage to go soothe myself with chocolate, two random dogs appeared out of nowhere and would not get out of the way, and in my attempt not to kill them (even though I wanted to!), I smashed the shit out of my side-view mirror.

The marquee on a church by my house says “You can tell the strength of a person’s character by what discourages them.”

What can I say? I’m weak. Very, very weak.

Dear Readers

I've been working on some other writing projects lately--please forgive my absence. My essay was just named (by Phillip Lopate!) as a runner-up for the Teachers & Writers Collaborative's Bechtel Prize.

And yesterday I learned that my book proposal (for which this blog has served as an exquisitely rough draft) is a contender for She Writes' Passion Project.

Also, I've been invited to read my work at Richard Hugo House's "Cheap Beer & Prose" reading series on Thursday, September 30th at 7pm. Please come. And if you don't live in Seattle, please come anyway.

(As an Iowan, it's not in my nature to brag. Thank you to my good friend and fellow Midwesterner for unwittingly granting me (and Jonathan Franzen) permission here.)

So do not fear--all is well. The baby (nine months old) still has no teeth and is not yet crawling. Her inherited late-bloomer-ness has been helping me get work done, as has our beloved babysitter.

Thanks for reading. I may have momentarily forgotten how to be modest, but I haven't forgotten you.

Getting Lost in the Stacks

It’s been forever since I’ve spent time in a public library—like cruising the shelves to see what new hardbacks are out or sitting down in a chair and reading a magazine or getting carsick from using microfilm, not just popping in to pick up the next season of Lost. Dr. Husband and I use our local branch—which, incidentally, is about as big as a postage stamp—like an internet-assisted video rental store, ordering DVDs online and picking them up when our inbox tells us they’ve arrived. I’m currently 1556th in line for The Blind Side. This works out well because by the time I’ve risen to number one on the list, the baby will be off at college and I’ll need mindless Sandra Bullock movies to distract me from my empty nest syndrome.

Since I can’t get any work done when I’m at home anymore because the baby is, by turns, too cute or too whiny and since I can’t get any work done in coffee shops anymore because my mind is, by turns, too distractible or too whiny, I gave the public library a try today—the branch second-closest to our house, about a mile away and about as big as a sheet of postage stamps.

Despite disruptions from a series of quintessentially “Seattle Nice” overhead pages about dogs attacking patrons by the front door (“There are some dogs outside that are very… active. They have tried to attack a few patrons and library staff. While your leashing is technically legal, the library will not be responsible if your dogs attack someone or if someone ‘responds.’ Again, your leashing is legal, but we recommend that you shorten the lead.”)—despite this being blasted over the loudspeaker and despite getting in trouble for surreptitiously eating a bite of pound cake to keep up my energy since I never remember to eat lunch before the babysitter arrives and am too eager to get going to stop and make a sandwich or something—my library experience made me realize that if Dr. Husband and I ever decide to leave Seattle someday (that is, when we overdose on “Seattle Nice,” I’m going to have to insist it be for a place that has a public library.

A public library—as in just one.

Singular.

One library without teeny branches or satellites every mile or two spreading the collection thin and enabling librarians to keep a very watchful eye over peckish patrons. (On the other hand, I appreciate the watchful eye being kept on the “very active” but legally leashed attack dogs.)

I’m certain that my wish for a singular library is regressive and oppressive and limiting and classist and racist to boot—as nostalgia so often is. But my intentions are good! I want everyone to have access to all the books at the same time, without them having to be trucked over from someone else’s neighborhood. Come to think of it, I want everyone to be at the library for books, not for internet access the way I am right now. Remember books? I miss books.

I want to live in a place where all of the town’s books—and internet portals—are in one place. Where my child can peruse the stacks on a lazy summer afternoon and happen across different books each time—not the same twenty well-worn Eric Carle books housed at your friendly (so long as you’re not hungry) local branch.

I want my child to frequent a library that’s not so big like the “main” Seattle branch that indie rock concerts are held in the YA section while the governor hands out awards to the 100 best local nonprofit leaders in the auditorium and stray puppies are given away at the reference desk.

I guess what I’m saying is that I want to live somewhere just as committed to literacy as Seattle but smaller and more unified and, dare I say, old fashioned. I’m probably describing a place that only exists in storybooks and maybe Wales. (Hay-on-Wye, here we come!) There’s just something about having a kid that brings out the fondness for the way things used to be… Oh, how glorious were the days when the only movie in my hometown public library’s collection was—speaking of classist and racist—a VHS tape of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm—for which there was never a waiting list.

Everyone Gets an F!

A headline in today’s New York Times unhelpfully announced: “Despite Advice, Many Fail to Breast-Feed.”

Apparently less than 100% of American women exclusively nurse their babies for their first six months of life. By giving my baby a bottle of formula a day the past few weeks, I have “failed” to breast-feed my child. If you gave your child a taste of rice cereal the day before her six month birthday, you, too, failed to breast-feed.

Why not just go ahead and title the article, “Despite Having Been Given Pamphlet After Pamphlet and Shown Poster After Poster of Suspiciously Blissful-Looking Women Nursing Their Not-At-All-Distracted, Fidgety, or Biting Babies, Moms Across the Nation Curiously Remain Too Egocentric to Prioritize Their Babies Over Their Own Selfish Desires 100% of the Time”?

99 Bottles

The baby has now had 10 bottles of formula in 10 days, and I’m here to report that her poo still smells like rhubarb. Cool.

Things They Don’t Tell You About Pregnancy #101,483

When you catch a cold five months after giving birth you will discover that your body can no longer cough and hold in pee at the same time.