who’s YOUR daddy?

13Nov09

Writing in the dark seems to be a big trend on this site. I started looking for some old friends tonight by reading some blogs for the first time in a while, and in the dark. It’s been months. I remembered why I started reaching out to strangers on the internet when I first learned about this bizarre platform of oversharing/purging inappropriate emotional content that would bore you to death or make you choke up a wordless smile as you sidle away to freshen up your drink at the clown bar next to the jumpy house at the fifth toddler birthday bonanza in a month.

Who am I kidding? I don’t even have that many children’s birthday parties to use as an excuse for a social life. I’m trapped in a radius of 3 miles between work, home and preschool. There’s a new nanny who’s actually talking to the kids and cleaning up the apartment so it’s almost spotless when I come home, but there’s still no time to address the disaster that my marriage is looking like. We’ve been running away from the recession, the swine flu, and the fact that we don’t remember why the hell we ever thought getting married was a good idea.

But back to why I decided to read a blog or two tonight instead of sleeping. Just “hearing” written voices is almost as good as having someone neutral to talk to about stuff. For me anyway. Taking a turn now, and doing the talking in front of virtual strangers and the occasional person-I’ve-actually-encountered is feeling desperate and pathetic.

I can sense the mistakes I’m making in this relationship; Not allowing enough time for myself, Not tending to my role as a wife and a friend to this guy who used to be someone I liked a lot more. The problem with all of this is that there’s no one to talk to at midnight in an apartment full of sleeping babies, so I write.

I just wonder if it’s real – all of your wonderful husbands out there? The ones who plan your birthday months in advance, or pose with your kids to take Halloween pictures? Mine doesn’t show up to most holiday events, take pictures, voluntarily plan anyone’s birthday…I mean, he does other stuff. I guess he did buy the vial of Tylenol that I used up yesterday.

I just want to get to the bottom of this. Am I the bitch or is he the colossal jerk? Right now, in the dark next to my swine fluish daughter, it’s feeling more like it’s him. I’ve been up four nights in a row with about two hours of sleep each night monitoring her 104 fever and aiming her vomit into the tub and breastfeeding or pushing motrin down her throat, changing diapers, wetting her neck and back with lukewarm water, feeling her shivering little arms wrap around my neck for comfort, walking around the dark apartment to help distract her from her achy flu symptoms while trying not to wake up my son or my husband.

And none of this really bothered me until yesterday morning when he snapped at me for admonishing him. How does he put it? Oh right, I was lecturing him. His daughter was shooing him away because these kids only want mom when they’re sick. He was a little hungover from a party that I was supposed to go to with him. The delivery of “Fine!” as he stomped away, rejected by a 16 month old with H1N1 was apparently a “JOKE”. But I thought he was being a little bitch, so I simply said his name with some urgency. That’s how I nag.

I get it though. I know that I do lecture him a lot. But you know what? I’m really fucking tired, and it’s because I haven’t slept more than three hours at a stretch for like three years. I’m a cranky witch and I’d like to get some help at night, but it’s just not happening. I’ve told myself that most women have to just man up and deal with this kind of inequality as parents. One of us is usually the tourist and the other gets up three or four times a night. In this house, that’s me. I’m the one they run to because of a nightmare, a massive booger that turns into a nosebleed, a wet bed. They know better than to try the other parent. He whines way more than they do when he doesn’t get enough sleep. Sure, he’s fun, he doesn’t mind when they bounce up and down on his head. But tap him at three am? Fuck that. It’s less painful to watch someone try to rouse themselves from a chloroform hanky during a kidnapping.

Is it me? Am I the one with the B.O? I read about these crazy men in some sickeningly sweet dedications to husbands tonight and I’m once again thinking that I smell like fucking roses. Who are these guys who worry about their wives and try to do the midnight feeding and rock the baby to sleep for hours? These dudes who take the kids to the doctor or stay home from work when their babies are sick? That must be bullshit, right? Am I asking too much? Am I being too demanding?

If you don’t know, I’ll tell you now that I’m being rhetorical for the most part. I am venting a little bit, self examining some, and trying to wrap my head around the idea of being divorced twice…It’s just that, well, it feels really dark right now with the winter wind howling outside and the fact that it’s literally DARK in the room, so I’m not finding any optimistic angles to view this whole mess. I’m pissed, he’s outraged, I’m trying not to roll my eyes, and there lies the core of the problem. What is reasonable to expect from the sex with small boobies? Should men share more of the traditional mommy roles? Am I so tired that I can’t see that he’s almost as tired as I am? It’s not a competition, but if it was, I’d be the champion of the world in the grouchy ass mom category.

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Tags: 1-800-divorce

just buy it, f the recession, buy two copies

02Aug09

The room is dark. I’m sitting with my mouth half open, unable to breathe, but strangely motivated and energetic. Sick for what must be a month now…wait – now that I’ve counted back (on my fingers, my brain is that fried), it’s only been three days, I can’t make my nose unclench. Instead of wallowing in bed at the luxuriously early hour of 8:30, I am driven here to write out of guilt. I should turn on a light so this isn’t so fucking annoying, but I’m not going to am I? Everyone is asleep and this is how I choose to spend my free time…what the fuck Stefanie?

Thinking back to how I got here, on the couch, in the dark, not in a box, nor with a fox, trying not to think about the half pint of chocolate Ciao Bella in the freezer, I remember promising to write about a book. A book that I finally finished yesterday and now that I’m done with it, I’m kind of pissed off. I had no idea it was almost over because I read it on my kindle app for the iphone. I really needed It’s Not You, It’s Me for my subway ride. Tomorrow’s Monday and now I’m fucked.

I’m in new digs – my subway ride has been sliced in half, and the old annoyance factor from the old hood has been converted to a “how-the-hell-did-I-get-so-old-and-ugly?” paranoia every day. The new nabe is full of 20 somethings with perfect asses and the kind of clothes that make you look like you’ve just cashed in your JC Penney gift card from your ex’s grandmother. And I just notice the men. My husband has assured me that the women are even more smokin’ than the dudes. Lowering my head to avoid eye contact with some younger version of Viggo Mortensen with a more sculpted pair of buttocks and some crazy combination of khakis and a tattoo on his right ankle, oh and another goddamn straw hat, reading this book has saved me from fretting about myself during that long 15 minutes jostling around under some random Paul Smith clad arm pit.

It’s funny. The book is hilarious. What else is there to say really? You can just stop reading about this book here. I’m going to keep blathering on about it, but the only thing you need to know is that it’s really fucking funny and you should download it on your kindle. Just prepare to be inappropriately grinning at the DMV or some other hell hole. Seriously, in the wrong situation, laughing out loud, like from the belly, could put your life in danger. Because I do all of my reading on the subway, trying not to think about the warm greasy pole that I’m gripping under someone’s greasier hand that keeps sliding down to “accidentally” touch mine, (I’m a recovering germaphobe) I’ve gotten some looks from people with ink begotten of an entirely different world than my young succulent Viggo. I offended someone with tats applied during time served on the inside, and she was NOT placated by me pointing out the device I had been reading just a second before. I had to distract her by throwing my rolex just within her reach and then bolting for the platform as soon as the train stopped.

Obviously, I’m still alive, and despite the brush with death and all that, I still recommend going out and buying the book. Hardcover or E cover. Whatever. It’s not like the How-to books of Stef’s Sippy Cups Empire, and you don’t have to have kids to want to read it in one sitting. It’s like sitting up with your new best friend who’s also your college roommate and hearing all the shit that she’s gone through and then thinking, “Wow, the bitch is fucked up!” It’s very cool really. I had no idea that this doe-eyed blogger hottie was kind of like Rockstar messed up. Reading about her life will make you feel as interesting as the damp lint stuck in the creases of your three year old’s neck fat, but it will also make you appreciate how clever you are for not accidentally inhaling cocaine. Mmhmm.

Okay, so that’s what needed to be said about the new book. I’m still reading the old book, Naptime is the New Happy Hour along with Netherland and something about boys with few words…(my oldest kid). It’s kind of amazing that I finished It’s Not Me, It’s You in the four weeks that it took me, because I usually don’t finish any. thing.

Here’s what I’ve been trying to get to about the Manhattan book reading that I went to right before I came down with a crazy flu and pink eye. The pink eye happened 3 days later just about the exact second that my daughter was having her first birthday candle blown out for her by my friend’s cake obsessed three year old. I was expecting to get a nasty letter from Stefanie about giving her this disgusting virus…OR about how I was such an asshole about forgetting that she was not drinking alcohol. Anymore.

See, I was in the middle of reading Naptime is the New Happy Hour because I was already feeling like an a-hole for not already having read it, but the excuses I have are pathetic next to what she could come back with.

I am still recovering from having the second kid Stef. My brain’s not right. I forget shit. Like cutting my kids’ nails or FEEDING them.

I have twins and a four year old, Bitch. I could go on, but nuff said.

I INHALED during college and did an acid hit once. I’ve never been the same.

I accidentally smoked CRANK. Nuff said.

You get the picture. My actual excuse, Stef, is that you are still writing as a drinker in Naptime, and I really did get confused because I am a shitty ‘friend’ and lazy enough to start reading your second book right before the launch of your third. Naptime is the New Happy Hour is also, by the way, getting me in trouble on the subway. I start giggling like an idiot. It’s humiliating.

Because I have actually met you twice now, and in this weird world of blogging, that means we’ve made it to a kind of second base. How does it go? Under the shirt, over the bra, but not quite giving you pink eye, yet being insanely insensitive about a glass of champagne? Right, because we are that much closer now, and It’s Not Me, It’s You is so fucking good, I am plugging this sucker back into the *oogle engines and letting people find me again. Perhaps the other guy at the book reading who so charmingly marked me as an (EW) mommy blogger who doesn’t actually want to be widely read or publicly known (WTF?) will be more comfortable now because this post, and this post only, is going to be read by at least 35 people. Those are big numbers for me, for you too Stef.

It’s too bad Metrodad was getting lipo-sculpting and couldn’t make it to the Meat Packing District to hear you read. A while back, he very sweetly put me on his ‘blog roll’ without asking me if it was cool. NOW it is. His blog singlehandedly sends at least 10 people my way every time he puts something out there. Maybe 45 people will read this book review. It’s not the Today Show, but it’s almost 50 people more (plus Oprah) who will now know about the genius that is: Stefanie Wilder-Taylor.

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stresszen

27May09

I had lunch with a former client today. I couldn’t stop the negative stories from leaping out of my mouth when I wasn’t gobbling giant chunks of Korean BBQ.

After the mister got home from work, he reported some breaking news about our MIA stoner broker who emailed from Vienna today about the appraisal on our apartment coming in 20k below the amount we’re in contract to sell this bitch. He’s in Europe because he loves to flake out on me when the real estate shit hits the fan.

I’m stressed out.

I decided to do something that I haven’t done for a long time.

With a big fat frown, I looked at some pretty pictures…and started to rip them apart.

Editorial design images are 99% rehashed versions of the same formula. White on white, rainbows of beige, throw pillows strangling sofas like ivy on a brick wall.

My husband, who is smart enough to know that I need my space in my current fragile state, was uncharacteristically neutral in his response. “Yes, but they’re very talented designers.”

(very talented hacks)

I felt better. I even went as far as finding images that were fresh. An exercise to draw out the positive in my funky state. Even though most of the people who read this blog don’t search me out to see what ICFF just regurgitated into the lap of the design world…some of whom “refuse to participate in this recession“, I’m doing this, so back off. (I know it’s bad when I want to punch someone in the nuts not only because they have none, but also because I otherwise quite enjoy their musings and passings around of other people’s musings on design.)

But honestly, you refuse? Really.

Let’s move on.

This is what I found, all via desire to inspire.

Great balance of material and contrast. Light+dark+bleached knotty wood with the draw of color in the distance. The cool circular hardware for the door pulls is amazing. Apparently this space was with styled with Ikea mixed up with higher priced stuff. Feeling my blood pressure round down.

Again with the round handles. Love that. So it’s more white on white crime, but the photograph is perfect. Spatial. The actual house is probably not as interesting as what the photograph promises to unfold if you walk through the first set of doors.

Except for the Jonathan Adler throw pillows, which annoy me just slightly less than the prospect of trying to sell this apartment all over again, the wall collage is impressive. I’m brown and blue with envy.

Life does not really look like this. Nevertheless, it’s gorgeous. The dresser’s feet are genius – they throw off the precision of the perfect grid of drawers with their painstakingly centered rectangular pulls.

So that’s it. I feel better.

Goodnight.

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“wolf!”

25May09

Max is still crying. A little face reported to me, tilted up in the dark vestibule of his grandmother’s brownstone entrance. I was astonished and needed an extra second to reply. I forced a laugh and followed Max’s nanny-circle-BFF into his house to take my children home.

The fact that Max was still supposedly crying was not the surprising thing, it was how the message was delivered. Max’s friend is a month younger than him, about 2 or 3 inches taller than him, and speaks in fluent, unbroken English. I immediately started the denial process: even though these two boys had nannies who were best friends and saw each other every day, Max’s friend had no Caribbean accent and didn’t pronounce “vitamin” as bite-a-mon. When I picked Max up that day, it was back in November, and it was easier to use the fact that the boys were only about 2 1/2 years old to gloss over other developmental discrepancies between the two. I know it’s not supposed to be important.

I spent most of tonight looking up “fear of swinging”, “children’s swing phobia”, “fear of carousels and sand”…and amid the garbage hits about women being afraid to swing, as in, sawhing…even though their husbands had been trying to introduce Bob and Carol from next door into their marriage forever, mood swings and the hormonal pregnant woman, and the carousel of fear (wtf – how fast do these carousels go anyway?), I found enough vague information to redirect a self made misdiagnosis of Asperger’s that I’ve been harboring like a felon. ADHD or Sensory Integration Dysfunction aka Sensory Processing Disorder had some familiar symptoms, but nothing was consistently resounding with all the maddening behavior that my son exhibits every day.

Terrible two’s is not enough of a politically incorrect catch phrase for our specific phase. The fucking horrible, misery-inducing, blood curdling howl that this three year old lets out if he doesn’t get his nose wiped just perfectly makes me want to stuff potatoes into my ears…and then swallow a horse tranquilizer. The same cataclysmic yelling happens every night at dinner and usually at 3 am because of a stuffed up nose, and every morning because we’re not giving him the right goddamn sippy cup. It happens probably 5 times a day.

The mister and I have cycled through different theories on why Max is like this:

1. We have spoiled him rotten and are shitty parents.
2. He’s simply an asshole. I mean, look at US – the kid never had a chance.
3. It’s a normal phase, listen to all the babycenter bulletins that greet us so cheerfully, “Hello Momomax! Tips on how to calm aggressive behavior – don’t bother with TOO much discipline, two year olds don’t understand what punishment is, so don’t stress about correcting him when he bashes his sister’s head against the floor.”
4. He’s just very sensitive and will undoubtedly test out as a genius when he takes an IQ test
5. Community colleges are not a typical goal for the classic, education-obsessed Asian parent, but whatever, we’re practically rich now!

My husband never shared my darker theories until recently. During Max’s soccer classes that he’s currently enrolled in, being the self-absorbed twits that we tend to be when it comes to noticing other children in relation to Max, we didn’t notice that other kids were hanging onto their mommies or daddies, afraid or too shy to join the bigger group. We just noticed how Max got very lethargic, held his sippy cup, slacker style, like it was a beer can in a brown paper bag, and did the exact opposite of what he was told to do. Coach says RUN: Max slows to a crawl. Coach says sit down: Max moseys off to look at a dandelion or disrupt the other class. Coach taps him on the shoulder to encourage him: Max mews a protest yelp and shrinks away. KICK, slaps with his hand. FACE ME, sits next to the coach and faces the other kids. We laughed, I was a little uneasy, but I genuinely thought parts of it were hilarious.

The 2nd class didn’t go as well…mostly for us that is. The mister is a huge soccer fanatic and did not appreciate Max’s complete indifference to the class.

Why is he the only kid not listening? Not having Fun?

I pointed out that other kids were hanging back too, not joining in. One of the coaches started showing how annoyed she was at the extra attention that Max was getting. Her assistant coaches were all very sweet but neglecting the greater good by trying to coax my kid into the exercises. I peeled him off of me and planted him back into the thick of it.

My husband’s face got tighter as he watched his son have a miserable morning learning the beautiful game.

Let’s go

We just got here.

He’s completely not interested.

We can’t just give up so fast. He needs to warm up to it.

And he did. During the last three minutes of class, Max started to participate in his own way. Amazingly, the coaches, like every other authority figure in Max’s life, let him make his own rules and do whatever the hell he wanted to do.

That must be the root cause of Max’s eccentricity when it comes to taking direction. He still thinks the world revolves around him. He’s dumbfounded when he doesn’t get his way and isn’t used to the resistance he’s been getting from me. His father is a total pushover, even though he’ll swear up and down that HE’s the disciplinarian. I married a man famous for getting dogs to fall in love with him by feeding them a never ending supply of bacon under the table. His crackpot ways are part of why I love him, but the cookies and treats that he gives to Max don’t do anything to prop up his claims of having an iron fist.

Max will laugh through a mouth full of blood after splitting his lip open on the hard ceramic tile bathroom floor one day, and then scream a shrill thin line of purple if he thinks a standard runny nose is one of his many spontaneous bloody noses. He hates swings, but loves slides. He’s a very picky eater, but prefers avocado, hummus and acai. I could go on, and it does go on and on, but my son has never been a remotely easy child.

How I’ve talked myself down from worrying about Asperger’s and Bipolar Disorder, etc. is remembering Max’s sense of humor and how he actually gets our ironic attempts at jokes. Then there’s his bizarre brand of funny. I opened the door to his room one day to find him in the hallway, pantless, head on the floor, ass in the air and feet in two plastic beach buckets to form an impressive triangular moon. He’s just being three…I guess.

Tonight, he asked me, “You Angkree? Mummy? At me?” I looked at him, not appreciating that he actually noticed my “concern”, and I almost told him the truth. Instead, I answered the actual question, “No, honey, not at you.”

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limbo

04May09

A cup of coffee. Actually, a chai latte with a shot of espresso is what I drink. A dirty chai. I carry it down the second half of the avenue to my subway stop waiting for it to cool. At the top of the subway steps, the sun is shining on the panhandler rattling his own coffee cup filled with a few nickels. Enough money to make some music and scatter the pixie dust that’s floating in the hard morning light. My coffee captures some of the dust particles through the lozenge shaped opening of the plastic lid. I imagine that I’m carrying some of the homeless guy’s plight with me in my grown up sippy cup.

Boarding the train, a young woman bumps my coffee when she rushes past me to get in. I wonder if her long hair touched the lid. I pretend that it didn’t and that I’m not germophobic so I can take a sip. I imagine that I’m now carrying her haste in my overly sweet, manageably hot coffee cup.

Landing topside outside of my office, the construction workers relaying the concrete pavers are sending up a spray of water. I cover the lid, and take a sip once I think I’m far enough away from the threat of dirty water in my under caffeinated, overpriced drink. I start to fill with a mild dread the closer I get to my building.

Taking the elevator up, I’m at the bottom of my dirty chai and I imagine that my unease has permeated the white paper and hovers above the little bit that sloshes silently as I step off. I’m starting to feel slightly nauseous and the funky unidentifiable smell of 400 architects makes me want to head back out to the fresh air. I leave my almost empty, wax-lined cup on my desk, not wanting to throw away something filled with a half an inch of polluted sorrow and hasty disregard, but I’m already late, and I want to log in before I walk to the pantry to empty the lukewarm dregs.

Hours later, I look down and the cup is still on my desk, waiting for me to knock it over and fry my keyboard or destroy some piece of paper that is monumentally unimportant. The foo has just turned three and I think about the conversation I had over the weekend with the Manhattan transplant in the backyard of my in-laws deep in suburbia. She was describing a certain kind of mom who extravagantly overspends for a five year old’s birthday party and then advertises loudly to everyone how much she has just paid to rent out a disco blah blah. I nodded in agreement that 2500 was too much to spend on a kid’s birthday party, but then felt like the asshole for spending more on maxie’s parties than the figure she guessed, splutter splutter, the disco mom spent on her five year old.

Max, my extravagantly feted child, is not growing. If we lived “out there”, I imagine that my son would grow taller. I would probably cook for him too. Theoretically, it is a simpler life anywhere but here. Not having paid any attention to the percentile figures that used to be one of the main pieces of information I took away with me after a visit with the pediatrician, Max’s latest visit surprised us with how little he actually is. His height in the 10th percentile and weight in the 50th, is a little disconcerting. I keep thinking that I should figure out what better foods to feed him. My husband and the nanny usually feed him various pasta dishes… and broccoli.

Instead of grocery shopping, I buy him shoes. I hunted down a pair of shell toed Adidas for this kid so he’d have a proper pair of soccer shoes for the Saturday classes that he seems to despise. What the hell is wrong with me? I also buy the rest of his clothes, make sure he’s seen by doctors and dentists, enrolled in classes, groomed. Ok. So there’s not that much wrong with me. I just don’t personally feed him properly. I read five books to him every night and read anything regarding his development. I’m a good mom. Why do I always feel like a bad mom?

I’ve stopped using the *f word, my favorite word, so I’d stop saying it around my kids. I am the one on poop duty every night while Max has his “midnight” poo. He makes me sit with him while he grunts and wiggles and jokes around, “all. mohst.” We’ve had some fun pooping in the dark. I’m a good mom. I know this, but the fact that Max has a Caribbean accent makes me feel like I’m failing him. He’s not supposed to take his speech cues from the nanny. I’m the one who’s supposed to teach him everything he knows dammit. I’m not supposed to be trying to catch up to the nanny.

We’ve been in this frozen state for so long, not knowing if we’ll ever move to a home that’s big enough to contain us without stifling us. Not knowing if we’ll have to go into deep hibernation mode if I lose my job. It seems like Max is not growing because we’re in limbo. Nothing is changing like I thought it would. Life is just kind of dripping into my coffee cup and I can’t manage to throw out the last negative inch.

I’m starved for good news, happy stories, anything that could mean the end of the worst of it.

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right now

17Mar09

I’m uncomfortable in the kitchen. It’s a place that will always remind of me my mom’s four day long preparations for Korean meals in the middle of the Mid-West where I was sequestered during my childhood. There weren’t the warm delicious smells of apple pie and browned butter wafting from the oven. It smelled like vinegar and hard work. It was a place that I didn’t like to bring my friends to because if I opened the refrigerator, a glass jar filled with octopus tentacles and open tubs filled with tofu bricks were lurking inside. I’d have to endure their wrinkled noses and ignorant sideways glances.

I haven’t always been so inept in the kitchen. After a series of photography classes I took in college, I finally decided that mixing chemicals, shaking film canisters in precisely timed intervals and using tongs to harvest the black and white photograph that magically unfurled on a glossy white piece of paper qualified as training for the other lab at the apartment of my first marriage. I started to throw dinner parties. One or two of them were a success.

It would usually take about 2 hours to find a few recipes that I thought I could choreograph all at once and then a concentrated trip to the grocery store for exactly the ingredients that were called for. If I deviated at all, I knew the result would be complete garbage and someone would be throwing up later that night. I had actually food poisoned myself more than once to know that I couldn’t be trusted once I strayed from the cryptic instructions of Food & Wine’s collective recipes for 1996. By the way, ‘Tbs’ and ‘Tsp’ look insanely similar. They could have chosen different letters for the abbreviations. The inverted ‘p’ has played tricks on my panicked line of sight to ruin my fair share of meals that rely on just a smidge of chili powder versus a dollop.

My guests would be treated to bizarre experiments of Indian curries and Italian rice salads that I had learned to prepare the same day. Every spoon and dish was somehow dirty by the time the meal landed on the table. The kitchen looked like a war zone. Some angry poltergeist had opened all the cupboard doors and pushed the packets of flour and cans of broth out onto the counter and sometimes onto the floor.

When I go to people’s homes now, I’m drawn to the kitchen to chat with friends or strangers just like everyone else. But the thought of producing something, like a chopped onion or a whisked bowl of eggs, to contribute to a salad or breakfast just makes my stomach knot up. The disproportionate amount of pressure I feel to perform when someone expects me to “cook” in front of them, makes my brain seize up and stop working. It’s the same kind of thing that happens to me when I’m asked a relatively complicated question in French or what the multiplication of 368 times 57 is.

My husband thinks I’m spoiled because I never offer to cook anything for my beautiful family. I don’t know how to explain to him how much effort it takes for me to dissect the simple steps in the three part procedure that scrambling an egg involves. What, for him is a no-brainer: 1. eggs out, 2. whip ‘em up, 3. pan/plate, is for me an overly complicated deconstruction of how my mom would show off how well she cracked an egg with one hand while I always created an irreparable trauma to the side of the eggshell that would embed microscopic shards into the batter/sauce/soup that I was momentarily invited to help with. Eggs were always green or the same consistency as leather after I was done cooking them. I think she reveled in her superiority over me. Maybe I missed the love that she injected into her scoffing. Who knows. Maybe it was me who was being the asshole.

I’ve been fantasizing about re-creating the Chawan Musi that Max loves so much in restaurants. My mom made it perfectly while she was here helping with Baby D last summer. I rejoiced in her failed attempts though. I admit it.

So much shit has happened since I last wrote about anything on this blog. The only reason I’m sacrificing sleep to stay up and write is because I want to remember what it’s like to be in the trenches. And we are definitely in the thick of it now. I’m still working and so is the mister, but we are sorely in need of more of everything. Space, time, resources, patience, compassion, all of it. I look back every now and then and briefly remember how Baby D used to stretch, like a good lengthening stretch right after you’ve woken up, when she was just days old. It was a silly revelation that explained why my bladder and my cooch was always feeling like they hated each other when I was pregnant with her. Incontinence, one of the many things I won’t miss about being knocked up. The thing of it is, I can barely remember that sensation. It’s such a faint memory that I’m almost not certain that I haven’t just fabricated the whole experience. With Max, he used to shake his head and cause a fluttering sensation when he was still on the inside. I don’t remember if it was extremely uncomfortable, but I just know that it used to be a vivid memory.

I want to remember this particular thought that I’m having at the moment – It is more difficult than I ever imagined to be a better parent than my own. I remember distinctly that I marked every misstep that my mom made when she mocked me for being squeamish for watching her extract the fucking eyeball from the center of a whole squid or for not being able to peel an apple with the same fluid dexterity that she and my dad used to skin that sucker in 35 seconds. She laughed at my eggrolls because they always betrayed their structural flaws when the deep fry overwhelmed the overworked eggwhite lock that I couldn’t get right. She could be a colossal jerk.

Every night, I fail my son when I order dinner for him. Every night, I fail my son when I lose it and just shut the door on his whining, wailing cries for attention. His fear of the dark mirrors mine and I still do that to him because he’s spent an hour and a half fucking around and experimenting with ways to stall and ask for a tissue, a drink of water, a pee on the toilet, his small blanket, no, the SMALL blanket mommy. I’m scared mommy. I still shut the door because I know that he’ll stop manipulating after I open it again…IF I open it again. Tonight, my husband opened the door, because I was just too pissed at my three year old. An irrational response to irrational behavior. Max wakes up his sister. She wakes up Max. Repeat three hours later. Wait an hour. Repeat. It’s 5:00 am. It’s 4:00 am. I sound like my mother. My father even. I’ve overestimated how easy it was going to be – to be a different and a better parent.

Max can be wonderful. He’s a tough kid, but he is amazing.

I’m going to make that Japanese egg custard.

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zizzy

29Dec08

His ear moves up and down with a slow twitch when he drinks. Max is able to drink from his cup without a lid and is grabbing his two handled cup with elbows pointing to the walls. He’s sitting in the crook of my body as I lie on my side with his back to me. He breathes hard into his milk as he concentrates on not spilling any. The haircut I’ve given him is starting to show the mistakes that I made, but his hair is beautiful and silky and full of white yogurt. Sun is coming through the windows. My little boy with his orange shirt and blue surgeon’s pants pulls away from his drink and shows me his profile. His mouth is covered in a milk mustache and he starts grinning. “Aah!” he gasps with satisfaction. Max copies everything his dad does and the trademark exhale after a long cold drink is one of the first copycat gestures that delighted us.

I must shoot a thousand pictures a month of my children, but I always forget these little snippets of their days. I’ve already forgotten a scene that I tried so hard to memorize just yesterday. All I remember was that Max was naked, running from room to room with legs bowed, claiming that he wanted to “poop ah potty”, but I think he really just wanted to clown around. There was more to it. I just can’t figure out what it was.

My days right now are filled, although there’s nothing of real significance that I can comment on. Even the fact that the next potential buyers of our apartment are insanely naive, asking for one clause or rider after another that absolves them of any risk. Even their question about the apartment being potentially haunted isn’t that interesting to me any more. I’m more concerned about Baby D’s supersonic diaper rash or Max’s annoying habit of repeating everything I say when he’s in trouble. The holiday haze of depression mixed with the sound of the world crumbling around us every time I turn on the news gets more murky every time I look up from the bright eyes of my daughter. Her face is a tonic that can cure a thousand ills, but in the end, I will have to face the reality outside this cramped apartment without her.

If we’re all in this together, it’s cold comfort at best. Some are worse off than others, but the prospect of staying at a fairly miserable new job with an executive assistant harping after me for every misstep I make isn’t helping me stay positive. I keep telling myself that I need to keep my head above the bullshit that’s whirling around us. If I have any shot at coming out of this recession still employed, I can’t let the hostility in the office drag me down. I’ve been doing an amazing job of not showing how freaked out I was that someone took a dump in the handicap shower inside the accessible toilet that women had been using to express milk. I diplomatically pointed out to the HR crew that New York labor laws prohibits the employer from making toilet rooms into lactation rooms. I had to finally confront the woman about how she would never take her coffee cup into the john let alone her kid’s sippy cup. After she still didn’t get it, I had to use the “labor law” tidbit to get her attention. Within half a second, she stopped fucking around. She didn’t even let me finish my sentence before she was barking at someone on the phone to put a door on a forgotten office. My summer of post-partum oblivion ended with a slap in the face, but I didn’t care as long as I could pull in some insurance, keep the plates spinning a little longer. It might have been easier to stay the course of false security if we didn’t need to move so desperately.

The apartment is filled with the half-finished argument that I’m having with the Mister. It feels like another dull pressure on my under water state. If I get laid off in the new year, I would be ecstatic with all honesty. We’ve even talked about taking a quick trip to a beach somewhere without the kids if that happens. The panic that would eventually take over could be better handled if we were both a little rested. I know that’s what he’s thinking. Our perpetual bad mood is starting to boil over onto each other. The subject of our fight is elusive as I try to remember exactly what the issues are this time.

My bubbly baby is sitting on my lap with waves of freshly bathed baby scent coming off the top of her head. The boy is starting whine about being bored and is jabbing his elbows into my knees. He wants to play “zizzy” where I twirl him around without letting his feet hit the furniture.

I have every confidence that these two will save me from myself.

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say ‘cheddar’

08Dec08

There is a tall blind man that takes the subway home with me sometimes. I have a hard time not staring. He’s handsome, black. He stepped away from me when his cane tapped my bag, a pale bluish white eye stared over my head and then he moved his gaze to a point straight ahead of him and grabbed the overhead bar. I don’t know why I thought he wasn’t totally blind. I suppose it was just a hopeful projection. His other eye was colored normally and he moved with certainty in the cramped subway car. I watched him carefully pull his headphones out of a full length black leather overcoat and put them on underneath a kind of hybrid fedora/cowboy hat that was also made of black leather. His anomalous fashion statement notwithstanding, I couldn’t stop taking advantage of my ability to scrutinize with full discretion. I had also moved away when I saw that he was blind. I didn’t want to be another obstacle in his day. No one stepped in between us even though the car was crammed full of people in the usual rush hour mash.

I see a notable character on my commute almost every day. Someone is either wearing or doing something that stands out enough to usually make me feel like living in New York is still a special experience. Not that standing next to a woman in a bright chartreuse coat with purple cuffs and a purple collar qualifies as a life enhancing event, but I have forgotten why I struggle to live here when there’s probably an easier way of life within a thousand miles of Brooklyn. Bad fashion is one thing, but spectacularly bad fashion doesn’t necessarily mean that my children’s lives will be culturally enriched in any way. The obese, tear-drop shaped man with his tear-drop pockets and tear-drop bag yelling direction to the herd, “MOVE IT! LET EM IN! YES THIS IS GOING TO MANHATTAN!!” will never improve Max or D’s understanding of human nature. He’s just a little crazy and he likes Jamba Juice a little too much. I like that we live in the same city nevertheless.

Maybe I’m clinging to old excuses or making up reasons to stay. As an old woman looking back at this time in my life, I’ll remember a sort of yellow tinged walk home from the train, past a messy drugstore that strings up warbly Christmas bells that ping carols into the cold air, a sense of impending disaster. Worry. The world is fast becoming an unpredictable place, even in the far reaches of my most secret cul-de-sac beliefs that nothing bad could truly happen in my neighborhood. A man was killed by a school bus half a block up the street about three months ago. The A-list celebrity that I liked to look for in my two-block radius has moved away. The Jerry Garcia looking dude who rummages through the garbage is not an eccentric billionaire after all, he’s just mentally unstable. I met his sister at an industry function and got the whole sad story about him. These things, although not equally important, have started to unravel the enthusiasm I have for living in an antique building with sagging floors and goopy layers of paint on the moulding.

Time is, again, the most invaluable commodity that I own right now. From the instant that Max was born, I realized with the weight of his tiny 6 pound body on my chest that I would never have enough of it. I am sad, but not surprised that I can’t remember every detail of his birth. I do remember that he opened his swollen eyes and locked onto my face. He never looked away as the nurses carried him to the warming table. Maybe I am fabricating the strength of that initial viewing between us, but the bond that started then is real. It sounds strange, but I only know now that it will be for life. The most expected emotions about having children are not a given for anyone perhaps. I remember looking at my freshly born daughter and thinking I didn’t recognize her, as if I had seen her before and she had just shown up with a nose job and a black eye.

Why are we here? We could be keeping more of the money we make for our children if we lived elsewhere. We could be protecting ourselves from the next attack that has been permeating broadcast news reports as a threat to major cities. The mister and I were here during the September 11th attacks, the blackout. What was an unspeakable tragedy and a fascinating social experiment for two singles would be immediately unacceptable living standards for my kids if I had had them before 2001. The more I ask the question, the more I’m beginning to think that quirky subway portraits aren’t good enough reasons to stick around. That’s not the only reason we’re here obviously, but if former toy company execs walking the streets of Manhattan with a sandwich board is indicative of the kind of Crazy we’re dealing with right now, I’ve got to rethink the value of this much diversity and cultural transparency.

The kids were both in Max’s crib this morning. Baby D was smiling at Max’s antics. Max was bending down to coo at Baby D and pinch her cheeks. I was happy in a way that didn’t make sense because everything else was literally in disarray. The apartment was a disaster, having been just re-photographed for a feature in the newspaper and re-critiqued by an outside interior designer. We were reinventing the portrait of our lives for yet another open house and rearranged half the apartment. And then there’s a whole effort to frantically get disqualified from the mortgage for the new apartment. And my sister and I are email bombing each other. People at my new job have been openly hostile to me because their friends are getting laid off left and right.

The mister and I are exhausted.

But these children are transcendent.

I knew I should have grabbed the camera.

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time…time…time

26Oct08

It ticks away so slowly that you can trick yourself into thinking that it’s not moving at all. Like now. The apartment is quiet. The sun has filled the living room and makes the bouncy seat, the car seat, the Max high chair, the busted Eames chairs and the gazillion toys and unfolded laundry look almost beautiful. The babies are asleep. The mister is at the office. I’ve chosen to use whatever time I have remaining in my suspended state of disbelief that these minutes are mine to use like this. To write.

With so much I wanted to jot down on paper the last few weeks as I carried a screaming toddler or a wailing infant from car to restaurant or from living room to bedroom, those distracting thoughts are are not surfacing.

***

It’s now evening. It’s quiet again. The sun is gone and the house is devolving into a more realistic, non-open-house state. I’ve written a list of pain in the ass comments for the nanny to go over tomorrow morning. The new double stroller in the living room is clean and shiny. I make my back-to-work debut tomorrow.

1. Take care of my children. They are more important than anything.
2. Take care of them by making sure they are happy while they are under your care. Do an even better job than me. I don’t care if I get jealous. I will be less devastated being apart from them if I know they are at least having fun.
3. Take care of them.
4. Take care of them, my life depends on it.

This is not as hard as the first time I went back, but I can’t stop chanting and begging the same sentiment over and over in the real list, with specific requests to make sure that Baby D’s blanket is not too plush if she’s sleeping on her stomach, and Max is not overlooked if the baby is taking too much of her focus.

She’s got a little ice cream scoop of flesh that gives off a delectable spring when you kiss her cheek. The littlest one smiles when she’s in the middle of crying if she sees someone laughing. I will miss her during the day. I will be doing that rush hour sprint to protect the hour or so that I will get to see her and Max before they go to bed every day. I’m not looking forward to it, but I’m glad to be going to a job at all.

Filed under: hormones   |  4 Comments
Tags: acid in my stomach, recessionista

a rose by any other name…stinks like the moth balls and bad breath it’s trying to cover up

19Oct08

If they could just make a blended version of Finding Nemo and Cars, I wouldn’t have to keep track of where each DVD is all the time. They’re never where I think they are and Max somehow wants the one that I don’t have 90% of the time.

Max’s third and fourth parent are these two movies. I can’t do it without these discs when I’m alone with Baby D and Max.

How do people have two kids and take care of them without an army, forget the village. I’m talking about an army of nannies, aunts, girlfriends…and no, grandmothers and men aren’t included in my army.

I just haven’t met a lot of these elusive stay-at-home dads who apparently have that missing gene that allows them to endure more than 2 minutes of a baby crying directly into your ear. Even though I’m surrounded by these dudes in my neighborhood, I don’t have the privilege of having them in my social circle mostly because they’re too busy taking care of their own damn kids.

And grandmothers are the equivalent to the town drunk in the “village” support scenario of rearing children. They’ll give your kid a chocolate cupcake for dinner just to get a photo of junior with icing up his nose 5 minutes before bed time. My husband, well, I won’t draw parallels to anyone in town, but he’s just as bad as any grandmother. He can’t help it. I think he just likes to see Max get his freak on when he’s offered a cookie. The mister has to join a support group for enablers soon. It’s getting bad.

I’ve been trying very hard to succeed at taking care of two by myself. I don’t know why it’s so important to me, but I want to prove to myself that I’m capable of doing it. Last week I was really proud of myself for not resorting to Cars or Nemo to lull Max into a catatonic movie daze while I fed Baby D. He talked to me about his “frog baby”, a stuffed doll that sings and says “I love you”. I couldn’t believe how cute he was while he tried to get “Frog. Baby.” to sleep. The delicate little pause between his words makes me wish I had a recorder all the time.

I started to shoosh the baby and rock her to sleep. Max mirrored me and had to alternate between bouncing up and down and swaying back and forth. We shooshed simultaneously and both of our babies fell asleep at exactly the same time.

I watched a bit on the television, don’t remember what, and didn’t notice that Max had climbed onto the sofa and placed a pillow on his lap, and the frog baby on the pillow. When I turned to him, he was smiling at me and pulling up his shirt. I smiled back reflexively.

Something in his expression shifted, which made me realize that I was missing something that he was trying to show off. My son is behaviorally a boy by all the conventional standards. Without scripting any of it, I have been directed by Max to purchase anything with wheels. He loves trains. He loves tractors. He loves dogs and kissing girls.

He was breastfeeding his baby frog.

I burst out laughing and asked if baby frog was hungry.

Frog. Baby. EAT.

He pointed to me and cast the frog and the pillow aside.

Mommy. MOKE

Our collaborative moment was over. He started pulling at Baby D’s feet and whining. The rest of the night was the usual collection of little failures to get Max to appreciate his little sister. Thankfully the mister walked in and we each took one kid.

The reason why I’m not sharing this story on Max’s family-friendly, gee-wilikers blog is because it pisses me off when family and friends have the same reaction as Max’s nanny did to the story. I don’t want to exploit him and brand him a weirdo to the people closest to us. That’ll stay with him forever. Instead, I turn to people I’ve never met and publicly offer him up.

I go back to work in a week. I know that the nanny can take care of two kids. She raised three on her own. I’m totally being competitive about this I’m finally realizing…

We still like her except for a few things that have recently come to light.

She stinks. And I’m talking BAD. I’ve tried to mention that Baby D tends to sneeze when someone wears too much perfume (and smells like crazy mothballs at the same time) so could she please, maybe, not where too much perfume? The next day, she came in, sans perfume, but the smell was worse. I don’t know how she managed to control the stench when she first started working, but the woman seems to have foregone the whole showering ritual that I too detest. The only difference is that I don’t sweat. It’s weird, but true. It takes me fives times longer than most people to break into a sweat…in a sauna, in the desert, in a box, with a fox. I do not like green eggs and ham.

Over the course of the next few days, she started wearing more and more perfume. I’m not talking about reasonable amounts of shitty perfume. She layers it with the lotion, the spray, probably a roll-on stick too. There are streaming waves of distorted air being projected from this woman’s body.

When I take the baby from her, she smells like this woman’s perfume. Max’s hair, the blankets, the fucking remote control. DUDE. Enough with the perfume. Right?? I tried to find an article online that would support some bullshit about perfumes and children’s health, but I didn’t really find anything concrete. I remember something about large molecules settling in children’s lungs from inhaling perfumed air on a sign in a gym. I could just make something up like that.

I want to immediately bathe Baby D if she smells like this woman. I don’t even want to hold her, which is fucked up. The mister thinks that I will end up hating anyone we hire as our nanny. He could be right, but I hate that I catch her looking bored with Max sometimes. I hate the way she smells obviously, but the bottom line is that Max is happy with her. I’m pretty sure he’s safe with her too. Am I over reacting? Is it bad that she is going to turn Max into a breastfeeding monkey for her nanny posse on Monday? I just did it for you. There’s a difference when I do it though. Or is there? What do you think?

Filed under: hormones   |  1 Comment
Tags: you would hate to work for me too