"Don't Stop/Make It Pop"

We awoke to a child screaming.  A child who wants her bitty (blanket), but doesn't want it to touch her.  A child who wants milk in a bottle, and not a sippy, even though she is no longer offered milk in a bottle.  We continued in that vein, and in anticipation of a long neb treatment, I offered a bribe of Maisy videos.

One of the best things about no longer having cable, is that we got a digital antenna and now we get a station called The Cool TV.  When I turned on the TV at 6:45am to start Maisy, The Cool TV popped up, and B and I stood transfixed in various states of undress in front of the video for "Tick Tock" by Ke$ha (Kay-dollar sign-huh).  The baby screeched for Maisy and nipped at our legs, but it was as if we were in the thrall of Ke$ha and her bottle of Jack.

OMG-now it's 9:00pm and I am once again watching The Cool TV, and after a bunch of Stone Temple Pilot shit (it must be the 90s at 9:00) they are showing Natalie Imbruglio's video for "Torn."  This video was in heavy rotation the last time that I had cable while MTV was still playing videos.  It's quite possible that I watched this video many times while on my breaks from my job at the Starbucks around the corner and contemplating my first post-college break up, and it's possible that at that time I felt that the lyrics for "Torn" were a meaningful commentary on my life.  But, now the songs over and that feeling is fading quickly.

Night Train

One blissful side effect of my parents' visit is that LB is now letting us read her a wider range of books.  She was on a book restricting kick for a month and we were down to only Maisy's Christmas, which has no narrative and is barely even a book.  Now we are back in Badgerland with Bedtime for Frances.  Much better, except that LB now finds the book scary, but still insists on reading it.  For each page, LB asks "Frances okay?" and must be reassured multiple times before moving on.  Is this a stage when we should stop reading books with terrifying themes like sleeplessness and the weird shadows made my robes?

I figured that I would test LB's gayby knowledge by asking her to point out the daddy, mama, and baby in a scene with Frances and her parents, but LB would only point out the cake, and chortle "LB's cake.  LB eat cake!" On the next page she pointed out the daddy badger and baby badger, and to try and give her some frame of reference for the world of daddies, I reminded her that she has a granddad (one who looks a bit like the father badger in the Frances books).  That was a happy thought and LB said "Granddad, Granddad, my Granddad!" This comes a week or so after one night a bedtime she started saying very insistently, "My daddy!  My daddy!" for no apparent reason.  I assume that's a daycare thing.

So far, LB is very anti gay-affirming children's literature.  My mom says she read The Family Book to LB, but I know she never lets me read it.  She would have nothing to do with Mama, Mommy, and Me when I got it out of the library.  She tolerates And Tango Makes Three, but just barely.  Her distain seems to come from a combined rejection of human characters and earnestness, and I can respect that.  I can only imagine that her teenage years will be spent reading nihilistic sci-fi novels, but even so, you can fit gay mamas into any genre, right?

A Day Without Mothers

At some point on Sunday, B leaned over and said "should we feel guilty that we aren't spending Mothers' Day with our daughter?" and I said, "we spend every damn day with that child." And I meant that in the most non-mean and non-cynical way. I love "that child" dearly and I am so incredibly thankful that she is ours.  Nevertheless, we spent this weekend galavanting around town while my parents spent time with (spoiled) LB.

On Saturday, we had lunch at Farmstead, where you can either go meaty or cheesy.  We went meaty, and now I'm a little sad.  Next time, we have agreed that we will just get a huge cheese platter and beers.  The meatiness was quite good, and we overindulged.  I really like Farmstead, and we have always had enjoyable slow service, which we stretched out even more with dessert and coffee.  After lunch, we wandered through Fox Point and College Hill and looked at all the historic houses, and I tried out my limited knowledge of historical architecture on B, "it's Federal!," "it's Second Empire!"

But, we didn't stop there, we went to the Cable Car and ate candy and saw a movie about ne're-do-well Scots and whiskey.  Then we waited a long time for the bus, and finished up at the Ivy Tavern for beer and seafood chowder-and please believe me that I would not eat chowder in a bar unless it generally had really good food.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the child behaved perfectly, weeded the backyard like a pro, ate healthy food, and accomplished various other unbelievable feats.

So, Sunday we went out for more on the West Side of Providence.  We started at Mr. Lemon for Italian ice, which is exceptionally soft and good.  I don't know exactly where we were, but let me just say that a "bad neighborhood" in Providence doesn't have anything on a "bad neighborhood" in Baltimore.  We got a little bit lost in the area around Providence College, and I saw the most heinous college slum I have ever seen: an entire neighborhood that was a debris field of red solo cups, shirtless white guys with lacrosse sticks, and rundown houses.

Mista Lemon in all its glory

Next stop, New York System in Olneyville, home of the Hot Wiener.  We got some hot wieners and a coffee milk.  The fries were just okay, but everything else was excellent and it was a great old-school place.  We finished up at LaSalle Bakery for a pizza strip (red sauce on pizza dough served a room temp, delicious) and a cupcake.  We went home to a happy, tired child, and all was good.

From daycare: one card but an inclusive lack of apostrophe

Ode to a Tough Lady

Our old dog passed yesterday.  She came to us as an older rescue, recovering from a bad case of heartworm and years of neglect.   She was a good girl, but I think her earlier life had left her very self-contained and unable to really bond with humans.  A month or so after we got her, she started barking madly at dogs, sketchy men, and any other perceived threat.  I think she had decided that she liked life with us, and was willing to do what it took to stay, even if that meant becoming a guard dog.  In the last few months, she has become a skinny, patchy version of her former self.  A good lady.

Happy families are all alike

I think my eyes were bigger than my eyes.  This is not the book pile of a non-traveling parent, but I will do my best.

So far, I've read Heaven is Here by Stephanie Neilson, who has the NieNie Dialogues blog. I enjoyed this book, but it would be better as a novel.  Sweet, shallow, pretty girl has the perfect childhood, marries the handsome love of her life, bears four lovely children, and then has a tragic accident that threatens to steal everything that she valued in life.  How good would that story be in the hands of a novelist, who would take care not to create the unbelievably perfect early life that Neilson describes.

As a reader, I feel free to critique Emma Bovary, Elizabeth Bennett, and Harriet the Spy.  They don't care if I look for their flaws and discuss them with the world.  Stephanie Neilson is a real person with thoughts and feelings, and ownership over her life story.  As a reader, this first-person age of memoirists, diarists, and bloggers is problematic.  Can you read a strangers life story in a way that is both compassionate and analytic?  Can you say anything to someone like Neilson about her own story beyond the equivalent of a gif hang-in-there kitten?

There is so much interesting material in Neilson's story about body image and gender roles.  She reports that after coming out of a months-long coma, her overwhelming emotion was guilt.  Not just guilt about choosing to get in a plane that then crashed, but guilt that she was burned and no longer pretty (she is still a very attractive person) and no longer normal.  A fictional piece would be able to dig into this idea of the burdens of perfection, while Neilson can't quite go there-and it's her story, so she doesn't owe us any feminist analysis.

I'm also reading The Magician King by Lev Grossman right now, and honestly, his fantastical world of Fillory is more familiar to me than Neilson's world of happy families.  It's interesting to read Neilson's blog alongside the blog of her sister Courtney Kendrick.  Kendrick tells stories of family joy, but also one of family pressures and constraint.  While Kendrick's writing is more understandable to me, I'm not sure that it's more honest.  It does seem to me that Neilson represents her own psyche, her own worldview, as authentically as possible, although the world she describes is barely comprehensible to me.  Shortly before reading Heaven is Here, I heard this speech by Elizabeth Smart about human trafficking and the lesson that will help young people survive and save themselves.

Interesting stuff.

Proust's Goddamn Madeleine

My professional niche mean that I encounter the story of Proust and his madeleine often, or maybe I've just become oversensitized to Proust and his madeleine, so whenever a reference pops up I notice it.  In Proust's telling, he bites into a madeleine as an adult and it leads to an overwhelming sense memory of childhood, a memory mostly of feelings rather than words.  After reading a bunch of references, I actually went to the library and read some Proust, which I did not enjoy.  I suspect most of those people who reference Proust and his madeleine haven't read Proust, and wouldn't like him if they did.

Nevertheless, the senses do provoke amazing memories.  For me, the smell of sauteing onions and garlic combined with the sound of a vinyl record popping and hissing brings me straight back to childhood, sitting in the living room in front of the stereo while my dad cooked dinner.  A certain smell of damp woods in summer brings me back to summer camp and I can almost feel my bare feet running along dirt paths.  I can't even remember what old school phones sounded like, but I'm sure the sound would bring me back to my childhood kitchen standing in front of our one yellow rotary phone.

I wonder what will trigger LB's memories?

Spring air and Alabama Shakes, making memories

Austerity Plan

This post was supposed to be a virtuous one.  As I walked to Whole Foods (and I know they are kind of evil, but I can walk there with only minimal risking of life), I planned to buy some sweet potatoes and make sweet potato fries for only pennies a portion (or dimes).  But, as it turns out, sweet potatoes, and all other sweet potato type flora, were $2.49/lb!  Unfrickenbelievable.  Are these sweet potatoes hand fed dishes of milk like Almanzo's pumpkin?  Do they wear little sweaters spun from gold thread?  In my world, sweet potatoes cost 79 cents/lb, which mean about 99 cents at Whole Foods prices.  Apparently I'm as in touch with the price of groceries as your average president (love ya' Barack).

So instead of my unsullied sweet potatoes, I bought a bag of frozen sweet potato fries for $3.39/15oz.  More expensive per lb, but when you consider the wastage that occurs when a sweet potato is peeled at home, and applications of olive oil and spices, and the fact that homemade sweet potato fries taste virtuous, by which I mean soggy, I calculated that the bag of prepared fries cost me only a few cents more, and I also cursed less while preparing them.  The frozen fries were much tastier than my home version, but likely decidedly less healthy.  I know the bagged fries had more tapioca starch, but then my eyes glazed over as I kept reading the ingredient list.  I just requested Michael Moss's Salt, Sugar, Fat from the library.  Hopefully it will make me hate myself into a love of healthy food.

It's always hard to know what's worth spending money on when you're on the austerity plan.  Our budget is already pretty lean, and our tastes reasonable.  That means that we don't have much latte factor to cut.  We already got rid of our car and cable.  We mostly eat a home.  We mostly don't buy stuff for the sake of stuff.  Still, there are those zipcar trips and loaves of bread from the good bakery.  I've seen people become so frugal that they neglect their own health and wellness (fresh fruit!) and are unable to maintain even a minimal social life.  Sometimes desperate times call, but since we are only in austere times I suppose we can still indulge in a bag of sweet potatoes fries or any sweet potato at all.