Nobody's Home (Forwarding Address)

I don't know if too many visitors come around here anymore, but in case anyone does - I'm not here. Feel free to browse the archives (please do!) but I won't be posting here anymore. I think of this space as a house I used to live in - sometimes I drive past and feel nostalgic for days gone by, but I've moved on.

Where am I now? You can always click over to this page right here - that should point you my way. If you'd like to get in touch with me, you can email me at elizabethlauranelson at gmail dot com, or find me on Twitter.  I'm writing more than ever; I'm just doing it other places. I go by Elizabeth Nelson now - the name I was  born with. Sometimes Elizabeth Laura Nelson, if I'm feeling fancy. I hope you follow me to wherever I find myself!

Thanks for reading.

- E xo

Monday Morning, 8AM

In my effort to expose the girls to the news a bit more and be less overprotective, I turned the radio up loud enough so the girls could listen to Morning Edition with me today while they had breakfast and I packed their lunches.  When I switched it on, they were doing a story about sex education and teen pregnancy prevention programs.  Awesome.

"What did they just SAY?"  Molly demanded, looking scandalized.  "They're talking about sex," I said.  (I was only halfway through my first cup of coffee - what do you want?)  "MOM!  Violet's going to hear you!  Don't say that WORD!" 

Ah, Violet - our innocent kindergartner.  She was riding the train with me the other day and asked if she could listen to my iPod.  As I put the earbuds in her sweet little ears, she turned to me and whispered "Mom, do you have "Fuckin' Perfect" on here?"  This was on a packed subway car, by the way.  And it was a stage whisper.  Mom of the Year, yet again.  (In case you're wondering, yes I did have "Fuckin' Perfect" on my iPod, and yes I did let her listen to it. Shut up.)

Back to the breakfast table and NPR: I already said I hadn't had enough coffee, right? I am really  not equipped to have a serious conversation about sex education and teen pregnancy at 8AM.  Instead, I performed a rousing rendition of Jermaine Stewart's classic "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off" and danced around the kitchen while making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  I can't believe I still remember that song.  (You know what I want to know?  What IS cherry wine, anyway? Boone's Farm?)  I think the kids liked it.  Also, they never want to be seen in public with me again.  Oh, well.
                             
                                                                                                                 
    

Parenting Fail

"How come you didn't tell me about Japan?" demands my 9-year-old as she shrugs off her backpack and parks herself at the table to sort through her homework assignments.

I look up from the email I am rushing to finish so that I can put out a snack for the girls and start packing for ballet. "Um, why? Did you talk about Japan in school today?"

"YES! Mom, didn't you know there was an earthquake and a tsunami and a whole bunch of people got killed? Everyone was talking about it at school! EVERYONE knew about it except for me. Why don't you ever tell me about this stuff? Why don't you ever tell me ANYTHING?"

Lick-the-Beaters Chocolate Chip Cookies

All right, you guys. I'm going to give you my secret recipe - the one I've been refining for years (no joke) and the one everyone always asks me for. I can't vouch for how this will work at altitude, but the recipe I was working with toward the end of our time in Denver was pretty similar to this one and I had fairly consistent success with it. Everything comes out better at sea level though - it just does. After we moved here I realized I actually could bake bread and make cakes from scratch. I felt like a magician. Ah, sea level. I was always meant to come down from the mountains, you know? This altitude is so much better for me. I can breathe here.

So without further ado, here is the recipe.  Oh wait, no - one more thing. You'd probably have figured this out on your own, but I call these "Lick-the-Beaters Chocolate Chip Cookies" because they don't have eggs in them. I have no desire to do vegan cookies - I am ALL ABOUT THE BUTTER - but leaving the eggs out rocks because you can lick the beaters (and the bowl, and your fingers) without worrying about that scoundrel, Sal Monella. He wants to make you sick, but we're not having any of it. Go ahead and eat this dough by the spoonful if you want to. I won't tell.

Elizabeth's Lick-the-Beaters Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 c. butter (1 stick!)
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. white sugar
2 T. maple syrup (the real stuff, of course)
1 T. soymilk (or whatever milk you prefer - we don't do cow around here)
2 t. vanilla
1 1/4 c. flour
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
3/4 c. chocolate chips (semisweet, always!)

You know the drill: cream the butter and sugar, add the maple syrup, milk and vanilla, then add the flour, baking soda and salt. You can sift your dry ingredients together and add them in slowly if it makes you feel good - whatevs, I say. Depends on how much of a hurry you're in. Then stir in your chocolate chips, drop by teaspoonfuls onto a cookie sheet (line it with parchment paper or foil, please) and bake at 350 degrees for just about 9 minutes. Take them out even though they look just a smidge underdone, and let them sit on the cookie sheet for a few minutes to finish baking through and firming up. Spatula them onto a wire rack to cool - a little bit, at least. The chocolate really will be too hot to spatula them directly into your mouth. I know you want to, but listen: we are all grown-ups here. YES WE ARE.

If your kids are nice, you should let them have a cookie (but only if they are very very good children) and then they will look like this:

Sad Blog

Did you all know that I have another blog - sort of a secret blog? It's about missing my dad and I update it very infrequently. (You're surprised, right? I know. I am such an avid blogger.)

I have felt very private about it; I disabled comments and never really meant it for public consumption. For some reason though, I feel like sharing it today. Missing my father is such a big part of who I am now - who I'll be forever, I guess - and it feels inauthentic to pretend it isn't.

I might post some more writing there soon; it will be kind of rough and ugly. Grief is rough and ugly. No one has to read it, but maybe it will help someone. I know there are people out there grieving hard every day and pasting a smile over it. Sometimes it helps to talk about it, and sometimes it doesn't. We shall see.

You can click on the title of this post to go there if you want.

(I took this picture of my dad when we went to Antarctica together in 1994. I love it - and I love that I know he was looking at me.)

The Happiest Place on Earth

Nope, it’s not Disney World. It’s Sephora. Next time you’re having a terrible day, do yourself a favor and pop into a Sephora (New Yorkers are lucky – we’ve got 15 just in Manhattan) where you can sample makeup and perfume to your heart’s content. Is there anything better than makeup and perfume? I think not.

I may be a tool of the patriarchy, or I may have been warped in my formative years by a big box of Mademoiselle back issues given to me by my aunt, but nothing makes me happier than looking and smelling pretty. I'm sorry, Gloria.

“You smell like candy” someone said to me recently. “Really?” I said, batting my eyelashes. “That’s funny.” Of course I smell like candy – I spent an hour at Sephora, dipping my fingers into tester pots of solid perfume, slathering myself with body lotion samples, and spritzing eau de toilette onto tiny sticks of paper and waving them in front of my nose, trying to create the exact combination of smells that produce the sugary scent that emanates from me. Call me crazy, but when I smell good, I feel good. Put on a little lipstick and a dab of perfume, and the world seems brighter.

I suspect that the other parents at my kids’ school think I have it all together because I’m wearing eyeliner and lipstick when I bring my kids to school in the morning, but all it really means is that I took five minutes to moon in front of the mirror, ignoring the demands of my daughters on the other side of the bathroom door. God may have given me one face, but I have no qualms about making myself another, even when lunches need to be packed and breakfasts made. Take away my makeup and perfume, and I’ll be tempted to do my Ophelia impression at the bottom of Prospect Park Lake. Come to think of it, maybe that’s what happened to her. She was so fixated on those flowers; she was probably just jonesing for some good perfume. Forget the nunnery, Ophelia - get thee to a Sephora!

Illustration © Jaeman Park

Things That Make Us Go

The other day, our coffeemaker died after a long day of gurgling, steaming, sputtering effort which failed to produce even one drip of coffee. We knew it was coming – first the on switch stopped working and we had to set the auto timer and trick it into turning on every time, then there were several unprovoked incidents of grounds overflowing into the pot, and finally there was the death rattle that produced first a half pot, then a quarter pot, then no pot of coffee at all. Our coffeemaker gave us years of faithful service, and we worked it hard, sometimes making several pots a day. All that time I never realized how much we depend on that machine – until the day it died, and our lives seemingly came to a halt.

We dragged our French press pot down from the cupboard and tried to remember the correct grounds to water ratio, but failed most of the time, either making it too weak or too strong – usually erring on the too-strong side, we sometimes were unable to push the plunger down all the way. The French press made a smaller quantity of coffee – not enough even to get us through the first hour of the day; plus, we couldn’t set it up at night to brew us a pot before the alarm went off in the morning. The corner of the counter where the coffee machine used to sit looked so desolate, I could hardly bear to look at it.

If You Can Make It Here . . .

Last week I dropped in on a little neighborhood party where I met a nice young family who were about to leave Brooklyn. They live (or rather, lived) very close to us, which means they were in the PERFECT family neighborhood: right next to a library, a school, a playground, a pizza place, an ice cream shop, a dance studio, a sweet little wine shop, a coffee shop, a gourmet takeout shop, and, hello - Prospect Park. All those things are a few short blocks from each other, with an F/G subway stop smack in the middle of them - twenty minutes to Manhattan going one way, twenty minutes to Coney Island going the other. Why would anyone leave?

Turned out they were tired of how expensive everything is here. They felt like their money was spent before they even earned it. They wanted to drive to a grocery store, park in a driveway, and be near family who will babysit for free. They crowed about moving to a house (a real house, with a yard and a pool) that costs less than half their Brooklyn rent. They said that life here was just too hard. I smiled sympathetically, but inside I was screaming, "Yes, but you are in NEW YORK CITY! You'll have a house and a pool and you won't have to step around dog piss every day or ride the train with schizophrenics or smell the garbage baking on the curb in the morning, but you won't be in New York! You'll be in the middle of NOWHERE!" The place they are moving, as far as I know, is mostly renowned for snake handlers and incest. (Oh fine - I guess it has pretty countryside - that sort of thing is lost on me. I always think a serial killer will get me when I go to the country, and there will be no one to hear me scream.)

Watch Your Step

In the city, you've really got to watch where you’re going. Sure, you might get carried away having an animated conversation with your husband on your way to the train for a hotly-anticipated date, but if you don’t pay attention, you might just slip in a lake of vomit on the train platform, and it might splash up onto your legs as your husband grabs your elbow and valiantly keeps you from falling down into the puke. Then you’re going to have to look for a patch of grass or some rainwater so you can clean off your shoe before you go into the restaurant. And forget about eating. You’d better just have a cocktail, because every time you think about those fleshy-looking chunks swimming around beneath your feet, you’re going to feel like barfing too.

Oh, and when you’re looking for that patch of rainwater to clean off your shoe, don’t forget that time you took your daughter to the playground after school and the other kids were splashing around in a big puddle, and another parent told you it was pee. Some kid had dropped his drawers and whipped it out right there in the middle of the jungle gym. If you wash vomit off your shoe with urine, is that an improvement? Maybe – you do always hear that urine is sterile. So okay, go ahead. Look for a puddle of rainwater, or possibly pee, to rinse your foot in.

Do you ever wonder what you’d do if you stumbled on a crime scene? A dead body, a blood-spattered room, a murder in progress? Would you faint? Become hysterical? Maybe you’d be very rational and composed and call the police and keep it all together until you got home. Me, I’m a screamer - here's how I know.

One rainy Sunday we stopped at the Diana Ross playground in Central Park – a playground we’d never visited before – and the girls played happily while I went through my bag and cleaned out the detritus of an afternoon with children. My hands were full of used tissues and granola bar wrappers as I walked around the unfamiliar playground, casting around for a trash can. I was looking, but I was looking for a trash can, not looking right in front of me. I was striding around purposefully when I stepped on something that rolled beneath my foot and felt disgustingly squishy; soft but sinewy and inexpressibly icky. I whipped around to see what it was, and it took me a second to comprehend what I saw: something hideous and partially flattened, with nasty little scrabbly claws, trying desperately to crawl away – I didn't know if it was a rat or a squirrel or a mutant creature from the sewer. It looked like the Eraserhead baby, with claws. True to the cliché, time stood still, but probably less than a second passed. I looked at the gruesome creature, drew a deep breath, and screamed for all I was worth. I screamed as if someone was being murdered. Heads turned toward me as I pointed and shrieked.

Of course, it was a squirrel. A sick squirrel, surely. A regular squirrel doesn't just hang out and wait to be stepped on, does it? I suppose I broke its back. I’m sure it suffered, and I ought to feel sorry, but really I just feel affronted – indignant that that horrid little rodent had the nerve to get in my way. Thank God it had been raining that day – what if I’d been wearing something besides rain boots? What if I’d been wearing flip-flops?

That night I dreamed that there were rats in my shoe. I couldn't get them out. They kept multiplying; fur and claws and fleshy, swishy tails against my skin, crawling, trapped between my shoe and my foot. When I woke up, I could still feel them.

The Details of My Inadequacy

Today is the day my daughter starts classes at the School of American Ballet, which means we'll commute to the Upper West Side twice a week after school. It's at least a forty-minute subway ride each way, so we'll log roughly an hour and a half of train time on class days. I'm planning to bring a clipboard so she can do her homework on the train, and I guess I’d better bring crayons too, because her homework often involves coloring. I’ve already decided that if she gets any more of those mindless cut-and-paste worksheets on ballet days, I’ll let her skip them. I hate them because they take Molly a long time to do – she’s very painstaking with her scissoring - and they’re really not teaching her anything, anyway. Inadequacy number one: I let my daughter skip homework which I deem annoying and worthless.

We really have been trying to get the girls in bed earlier though, for all our sakes. Mom and Dad need quiet work time in the evenings, and little girls need plenty of sleep. A copy of The 7 O’Clock Bedtime, by Inda Schaenen, mocks us from the coffee table, where it's taken up permanent residence. We haven’t mastered it yet, but we’re trying. On ballet days, M and I won’t even get home until seven, but if we eat dinner on the subway, I can (probably) have her tucked into bed by 7:30. In search of packable, portable, healthy dinner ideas, I turned to Google (of course) and found something equal parts fascinating and horrifying (again, of course, right?).

Several Flickr photostreams showcase beautifully packed lunches, dinners, and snacks, handcrafted by supermoms for their precious and well-nourished offspring. See some here, if you can handle it. If you can’t, I’ll tell you: they’re made in Bento-box style containers and feature things like hard-boiled eggs molded and dyed to look like barnyard animals, rice balls decorated to look like cartoon characters, and exotic items such as quail eggs, kimchi fried rice, and – this is the best one – “sauté of enoki mushrooms, red bell peppers, bacon and green onions.”

Holy shit! Here I thought I was doing pretty well to slap together a PB&J and some apple slices, with bonus points for remembering to throw in a cloth napkin and a Hershey’s miniature, but apparently I’ve reached a new, previously undreamed-of level of inadequacy. Is this really what the other mothers are doing now? I hate to stoke the mommy-wars bonfire, but I can’t help wondering why you would go to the trouble of documenting your masterpiece lunches on the Internet if you weren’t trying to gloat, just a tiny bit. If I weren’t so neurotic I suppose I’d be inspired by these women and their lovable lunches, but who are we kidding? I am neurotic and insecure, and I feel like my best efforts aren’t enough when compared to such marvelousness.

I console myself by supposing that these women probably don’t give their husbands very many blow-jobs, an area in which I believe I excel. (If there’s a Flickr photostream proving me wrong about that too, I don’t want to know about it.) I wonder if my parents read my blog. See, another inadequacy: I publicly reveal intimate things about myself (and my poor husband) which my readers probably don’t need to know. But hey, it’ll be fun to see if my blog stats spike this week. To date, the entry with the most hits is still the one with MILF-eat-MILF in the title. Give the people what they want, right? I’m doing my best – it’s just never going to involve cartoon onigiri and Bento boxes.

Inappropriate Feelings

Last weekend, Tom and I went to see Endgame at BAM. The show was just all right, I have to say, perhaps because Macbeth, which we saw there in March, was so breathtaking. It was a hard act to follow. Anyway, Alvin Epstein was wonderful, but the rest of the cast was, I think, not really feeling it. Or at least if they were, it didn't show. Beckett is tricky to do well - actually he's simple, but sometimes simple is hard.

After the show, we popped into BAMcafe for cocktails, me teetering along in my painfully high heels, Tom still feeling a happy glow from the performance, which he loved, and with which he found no fault. Toward the end of my first gin and tonic, I noticed an extremely good-looking bartender doing his side work behind the bar. It was nearly closing time, and he was washing glasses and bagging up trash, no doubt eager to go home to his girlfriend, or perhaps just to prowl the night. Maybe I downed my drink just a bit too quickly, because I found I couldn't stop staring at this boy - for he was just a boy - and I started to go weak with desire. His shoulders, his hips, his smooth black hair and sultry eyes - oh, my. I wanted to consume him. Truly, I think if he'd come within reach of me, I might have devoured him. You always hear that women hit their sexual peak in their thirties, but I didn't imagine it would feel like this. Kind of fun though, really. I always did enjoy being naughty.

Then yesterday on the subway, I felt again a sort of yearning - a longing for some sort of connection with someone, or with everyone. I didn't want to rip anyone's clothes off and do dirty things to them, but I kind of wanted to ask people if they'd give me a hug. What would they have done, I wonder? How many people would, if approached by an attractive, sweet-smelling woman in the subway, give her a hug if she said she really needed one because she was feeling sad that day? Would you?

Anyway, I didn't ask. I sat down on the train and took out my knitting, and as the train jerked forward, my eyes filled with tears. It was the anniversary of the loss of a beloved friend, the day before had been full of small irritations, I was very tired, and altogether I felt like an open wound. As the train jostled me, my eyes filled and dried, filled and dried. I took deep breaths and focused on my knitting. Knit two together six times, yarn over, knit two, now purl a row, now knit again.

At the next stop, a distinguished-looking man sat next to me, and as we waited for the train to start again, I felt him watching me. He asked, in a soft French accent, if the train would be going to 50th street. I said yes, eventually it would. Still the train didn't move, although the doors had closed. Knit two together, yarn over, purl. A plainclothes police officer with a badge around his neck walked past our car, peering inside. My French seatmate wondered why announcements were being broadcast in the station but no announcement was made to us, and I joked that they didn't want the passengers to panic; it would be mass hysteria if we knew what was going on. We sat in companionable silence after that, and finally the train started to move. He asked me what I was knitting, and I told him it was a blanket for my daughter's doll. I said I didn't have the patience to knit anything but doll things and dishcloths.

"No," he said, "you are patient. I can tell. You are a very patient woman."

I smiled. He told me that I reminded him of his mother, who used to knit when he was a child. She had to knit, he said - it was how she made a living. All this time, as he spoke gently to me and I smiled and responded, I didn't lift my eyes from my knitting. I was afraid that if I did, those endless, threatening tears would well up and spill over. When he got off at 50th street he wished me well, and once again said, "You are patient. Don't worry. You are very patient." I realized that what I'd really wanted to do was lay my head on his shoulder and let my tears flow. He would have told me more about his childhood, in that lilting French accent, and my grief would have washed away along with my tears. Instead, I finished my row, took a deep breath, and got off the train at Columbus Circle, ready to go on with my day. I was precariously balanced, but with every step, I grew steadier.

Ira Glass, My Ass

I got the new issue of BUST the other day, having recently re-subscribed after a short boycott because I was fed up with them. Actually, I'm still kind of fed up with them, and I'm not sure why I subscribed again - maybe for Ayun Halliday's column. I have a love-hate thing going with BUST because their particular brand of feminism makes me really uncomfortable. The whole ironic feminism thing is wearing thin for me. You know, "Don't tell me I'm not a feminist, just because I wear red lipstick and bake cupcakes and knit sweaters and slide up and down a stripper pole! I am such a feminist that I can buy into any form of male-dominated societal bullshit and turn it on its head! My cupcakes and lipstick are ironic!" Yeah. Okay. Whatever. I'm a feminist in spite of the fact that I wear lipstick and knit and bake cupcakes - I'm not selling them as feminist acts. So mostly, I prefer Bitch for my feminist reading, though they piss me off sometimes too.

But anyway, my point. BUST has done another "Men We Love" issue, and predictably, Ira Glass is one of the chosen. Yeesh. I am so over hearing about Ira Glass crushes (and in fact, NPR crushes in general). It reeks of desperation to portray oneself as a quirky-cool, hipster intellectual. What's more, I'll bet you a million dollars that Ira Glass is a jerk. In the BUST interview, he admits that he enjoys being the object of a thousand indie-girl crushes. "It's incredibly dear," he says, qualifying with the fact that he's "devoted to [his] wife and would never consider acting on something like that." Mmmm-hmmm. Sure. Nerdy guys who never got any action in high school, but developed a patina of cool in middle-age, are usually total players. It's like they're exacting revenge for being snubbed in their younger years, although maybe it's not that malicious. Maybe they're just making up for lost time. In any case, let's stop pumping up Ira Glass's ego. If you insist on harboring a quirky crush to bolster your hipster-cred, I nominate Ben from Lost. You'd be helpless before his unblinking stare, as that calm, hypnotic voice instructed you to - well, he could probably talk a girl into doing anything at all. Creepy=hot.

Could Be a Long Twelve Years

Yesterday was report-card day for the NYC Public School crowd - the kids had a half-day and there were parent-teacher conferences in the afternoon. We don't really care one way or the other about grades; we know our daughter is happy and smart and hard-working and that's all that matters to us. We'd just as soon have her in one of those hippie schools that don't give grades at all, if it weren't for the astronomical tuition that most of them charge. (I can't understand how there are so many filthy-rich hippies out there, but what other explanation is there?)

In spite of my professed nonchalance about grades, something about going in to talk to M's teachers brings out a crazed, competitive streak in me. I'm fine while we're there, listening to the teachers say she's bright, funny, well-behaved (whatever) and a delight to have in the classroom. I'm nodding my head as they tell me she is right on target for her grade level, that she always contributes to discussions, shows empathy for her classmates, and is verbally precocious. Great, fine, good to hear, but we already knew all of that. No big deal.

At M's school, they give "grades" of 1-4. A 3 means "meets expectations for grade level," a 4 means "exceeds expectations." A 2 means "almost there" and a 1 means - well, anyway, M didn't get a single 1 or 2. M's report card sports rows of 3's, 3+'s, and a few 4's. So, great, but as I said, I don't care anyway, right? Late afternoon yesterday though, a little voice in the back of my head started to nag me. I tried to ignore it, but it just kept getting more insistent. "She should have been given all 4's," whispers the voice. "Maybe her teachers are too busy to notice that she's clearly exceeding grade level in every subject," says the voice. "They should really have given her 5's in everything - surely she's the most brilliant student they've ever encountered!" screams the voice.

So during Lost last night (isn't this the highlight of everyone's week?) I finally blurted it out. "Tom, why do you think she didn't have all 4's? Do you think she's trying to tone down her brilliance at school so she can fit in? Do you think her teachers are purposely trying not to go overboard with praise, even though she's clearly the most gifted child they've ever encountered? She is, right? You can see how smart she is too, can't you? She should have had all 4's, right? Right?" Poor Tom. All he had to do was give me one of his signature long-suffering looks, equal parts pity and patience, and I dropped it. I took a deep breath, a swig of beer, and the little voice slunk off into a quiet corner of my brain, preparing to resurface at the next likely opportunity.

And to think, I worried that I'd find it hard to adjust to the ultra-competitive New York lifestyle. Apparently, I'm ready to go in that regard. But this is only kindergarten - if I can't shut that little voice up, we're all in for a long ride.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

The tree is up - not yet decorated, but up. It smells lovely and some warm holiday feelings are beginning to stir. I've started to eschew the elevator and walk the five flights up to our apartment so I'll be able to eat as many Christmas cookies as I want - you know I love to bake. Now if the worst cold virus known to humankind will just loosen its grip on my nose, throat, ears, eyes and chest, I'll be all set. Fa la la la la.

This is the first year Violet is old enough to understand the concept of Christmas and presents, so we've been talking up the whole Santa angle and she's stoked. It's our policy not to deceive the kids about Santa being real; we just tell them the story and say how fun it is to pretend that there really is a Santa. We write him letters and leave cookies; the whole shebang.

When Molly was three we said "Santa is a character, just like Cinderella. They don't really exist - they're just pretend." She furrowed her brow, gave us a dark look and said, "Cinderella is real." Okay then!

When she was four, she couldn't fall asleep on Christmas Eve; she tossed and turned and looked anxious.Finally she said, "Mom, you and Dad are really Santa, right? So who is going to be with me tonight while you're out shopping for my presents? I don't want to be all alone." Ha! I explained that we already had the presents, and we would never leave her alone, which of course led to the next question - where had we been hiding the presents all this time? Not too much gets by her.

So tonight when the girls were playing tug-of-war over the digital camera Molly got for her birthday (unbreakable Fisher-Price style) I said to Violet, "would you like Santa to bring you a camera like that for Christmas?"

She stopped screaming "mine!" and gave the camera back to her sister. "Yes. Ask Santa. Violet cra-mea. Shoes on now. Go ask Santa. Get shoes on, ho-kay Mom?" She headed toward the door. I said that Santa was probably sleeping because it was bedtime, but we'd try to track him down at Macy's tomorrow. That's when the girls' father, who had been taking all this in with his usual bemused expression and silence, piped up.

"Hey, is Macy's really on 34th Street?"

Yes, Virginia, it really is.

"Ah, I see. It's all coming together for me now," he said.

So it seems we'll be seeking out Santa tomorrow, if not on 34th Street, then at ABC Carpet and Home. The "real vs. pretend" discussion will be put on hold for Violet until next year. Ho ho ho.

Story Time Again

Just in case you thought I was exaggerating about the library story time thing last week, the Kensington Blog has done a post on it.

See, I told you so! I did not go back this week, so I didn't witness the story time security guard. Oh, the drama.

It's a MILF-Eat-MILF World

For the past three weeks, V and I have been trying to get to the 10am Toddler Story Time at the library near our apartment. The first week we wanted to go, we ended up at the doctor's office instead, because the horrible cough she's had for weeks had gotten worse overnight. Diagnosis: garden-variety cough caused by post-nasal drip. Hmph.

So the next week, we turned up at the library at 10:01am. A librarian rushed us at the door, explaining that we were too late, we'd have to try again at 4pm, or next week, and meanwhile, did we have a flyer for the upcoming klezmer concert and the kids' reading program? Um, no. She bustled around and shoved papers at us, not content to let us browse in peace. In order to appease her, I filled out the form to get V a library card, even though I don't really think she needs her own library card yet (she's two, people!). I could hear toddlers clapping and singing behind a closed door, but every time I glanced toward it, the librarian snapped at me. "NO! You are too late!" We tried hanging out and looking at books for a while, but she kept hovering over us so we finally left.

This morning, I got V all gussied up in ponytails and a "pitty dess, mama!" and we headed out with time to spare. We walked in at 9:55 and found a long line of moms and toddlers waiting to go in the story time room. We got into line, pleased that we'd finally made it. V was smiling and excited. But as the moms started filing into the room, I noticed that they were handing the librarian tickets. Wait, tickets? I had no ticket. Several moms noticed this at the same time as I did, and they pushed past me with scornful looks.
"You have to have a ticket, you know."
"Why don't you come back at 4 o'clock?"
"You don't have a ticket?"
Was it my imagination, or were they gloating? Abashed, I went over to the circulation desk and asked where I might get a ticket. The librarian (not the overeager one from last week, but a different, angry-looking one) told me that the tickets were gone, and I should have arrived when they opened, at 9, to stand in line for a ticket. She shoved a library schedule at me.

Yeah, I have the library schedule already. You know what it says? It says story time is at 10am. It doesn't say that you have to show up at 9am and stand in line for a fucking ticket, or else be sneered at by all the other mommies and run off by the librarian. Welcome to New York, right?

Fuck story time.

I Broke My Feng Shui

I think I did something bad last week. In a fit of decluttering, I emptied out a couple of corners of our house. Good, right? But ever since, I have no energy, I can' t get anything done, and I just feel funky somehow. What did I do wrong?

Our June trip is booked - we'll be in NYC June 19-26 looking for an apartment, and OGILF will be exhibiting at the MOCCA Festival for part of that time. So I'll be traipsing around the city with my girls that week, probably paying exorbitant key-fees to look at rat-infested closets. Did I mention I'm in a teensy bit of a bad mood?

In other news, I went to the Montview Auction last weekend and had a fine time with my date, the fabulous Brian Comber, while OGILF stayed home with the girls. I highly recommend going to your child's school events and getting really drunk and inappropriate; it makes the next day's preschool drop-off so wonderfully humiliating.

I'm off to rearrange my house until I feel like myself again. I have to re-balance the chi or something, I think. Wish me luck.