six months in a leaky body

Finn Stanley John Rowley is six months old today. I think it's safe to say that he is a man, now. Men sit up on their own. Men bang you in the jaw with their heads twice in a row. Men wake up in the morning and begin their lectures. "Baaaaaaa," they say. "MrrrAAAAOOWglphhhh."
Men pull on your shirt and try and move it out of the way of their mouths. Men wear tights, yes, they do. They are the principal dancers in the Jack-0-lantern Ballet. The feet of the tights of men hang down a few inches below the actual feet of men. This is so that men can grab the feet of their tights while they're wearing them and wave their legs around manually. Men's opinion of pears from a jar changes weekly. Men look forward to rice cereal, because it won't be long now before men eat it. Men kiss your eyeballs. Men call bullshit on various things when they have reached a certain point of tiredness. Bullshit, they imply. And they are right.

When I was a young boy, I wanted to sail 'round the world....
That's the life for me.....living on the sea....
The spirit of a sailor circumnavigates the globe....
The lust of a pioneer will acknowledge no frontier....

Here's to you, Old Master Rowley. There's a world to explore, there's a town back on shore. You just spent six months in a leaky boat!

Love,
Mama

there but for the grace of god goes jimmy connors

I loved him for an academic year.

November 1982 - July 1983

An academic year if you scoot it over a couple of months. An academic year if there were a long teacher's strike.

xoxox He was Bjorn Borg. xoxox

I didn't even like tennis, beforehand. FOREHAND! (I haven't played tennis in twenty-two years. Is it a forehand? The one that's not a backhand? Yeah. I was really good.) But then in November of my freshman year of high school, I went with a few friends to see an exhibition match between Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg.




We were sitting behind one of the ball boys on Bjorn Borg's side. (Do they switch sides?) (Twenty-two years.) I was eating Skittles. Bjorn Borg lost an important point to Jimmy Connors. He turned to get the ball from the ball boy.

I caught his eye.

I shrugged and made a "Meh, what are you gonna do?" face to him.

He shrugged back with the same face!

I suddenly loved Bjorn Borg and tennis itself. The bag of Skittles I was eating became the Shroud of Turin. I carried it like a holy relic in the plastic pencil bag that hooked onto the inside of my three-ring binder. Although I had never played a sport in my life for more than the ten minutes it took for any P.E. teacher to give up and let me sideline myself with a fake injury, I decided I would join the school tennis team. I even joined a community tennis team for a minute, concurrently. Also, I subscribed to Tennis magazine.


This bag of Skittles is a re-creation. A dramatization, if you will. The actual bag was not a bag of "fundraiser" Skittles. They were just regular non-fundraising Skittles. Although I suppose all Skittles are a fundraiser for the people who make Skittles.

I was the bottom seed of both teams. Except for once! Once, I beat the second-to-worst person on the high school team! And then I was the second-t0-worst person on the team! But then very very very soon I was the worst person on the team again. I think the teams should have been seeded according to who the happiest person on the team was. I would have been the top seed with a bullet. I was never discouraged by my poor play. If my racket made contact with the ball and made that fooomp sound, I was aces in my book regardless of whatever trajectory the ball had afterwards. If I didn't fault while I was serving, I felt like Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert Lloyd and Carling Bassett* all wrapped up. Pop! Foomp! Shuffle shuffle! Foomp! Net! Whoo!

*Carling Bassett! The Anna Kournikova of 1982. Surely you saw the tennis movie "Spring Fever", in which she co-stars with Susan Anton. Because I did.

Our tennis coach, Mr. Case, kept yelling at me, "Footwork!" And in my mind I was like, oh, footwork....footwork's irrelevant. You don't play tennis with your feet. You play it with your hand! Check me out....fooomp!



I thought of Bjorn Borg all year, and wondered if he thought of me. Who was that adorable woman who shrugged at me from behind the ball boy? She's so understanding. She relaxes me. She'd make a wonderful wife. I don't care what anyone says, I love braces on women. She's not THAT small. And what a cute blouse she wore. I am batshit for large leg o'mutton sleeves. If I was given a homework assignment, I wrangled Bjorn Borg into it however I could. I remember giving a presentation about Bjorn Borg in front of my Language Arts class. Later, many people found polite, indirect ways to tell me to please stop talking about Bjorn Borg when they signed my yearbook, as you may have seen in a previous entry.

I had to miss watching parts of Wimbledon on tv that year. Family vacation to Orcas Island. No television. HISSY FIT. NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. THE SOB THAT WAS HEARD 'ROUND THE WORLD. This resulted in a Walkman. I accepted bribes then, and I accept them now.

Boris Becker won that year, I think. And I was like, Boris Becker? Who's THIS Johnny-come-lately? I've loved tennis since LATE LAST YEAR. Feh. Tennis isn't what it used to be. Kids today. I think I'm going to hang it up.

And I hung it up. By August it was as though Bjorn Borg and tennis never existed. I dropped them like a couple of used kleenexes and started dating The Police's album Synchronicity. Bjorn Borg was the Iceman? I was the Iceman.

the plum tree house

Wooo! Woo-hoo!

Dave and I have decided on an exterior for our new house. I canna believe it.




At first I was like, it's got to BLEND into the LANDSCAPE! BLEND! BLEND! It must look like it grew out of the EARTH! Grey stone! Warm wood! But nothing we could afford was quite looking right.

And then dorking through a magazine I saw this ad for that door, and I went apeshit. Something about that blue-violet stain drives me nuts. Love it. And since the house is evicting a couple of beautiful old plum trees, that purple feels like a nod to the plums. Plus, the door. Love it, too. We'll take it.

Dave was at the Pink House today, cleaning it out (sad. SAD. Soon I will write of my relationship with the beloved old Pink House.) and when he got home I showed him this ad, and he loved it instantly, said he was rapt with it. I smacked him on the arm and some thrilled gibberish flew out of my mouth like, "TaTAH!" and then he made fun of me for five minutes. It was such a Finn-style response.

Okay, look, we're going to buy a new camera tomorrow. You've got to see that boy. He's crazy. His new thing is to suddenly attempt to launch himself backwards out of whomever's arms he happens to be in. You have to be on your toes. Placid placid placid placid NESTEA PLUNGE TO MY DEATH*!

*Universe. I am KIDDING.

i got myself a rooster and i put him on the fence and he yelled for hale high 'cause he had good sense

Well, we did it. We went to the reunion! Here's my report:

Wait. First, look, we have no photos because our camera hasn't turned up yet. I know. And also it's terrible because Finn has this excellent hilarious tall red velour mouse hat that he's finally grown into, so he looks like the Cardinal of the Mice. We just discovered that this morning. He's like, oh, my God, this magical hat makes everybody love me even more. And he bangs his mittened fist on the steering wheel of his Bébé Pod learn-to-sit-up seat with imperious new joy. Love me, subjects! Okay, now he's a king. He turned into a king, from a cardinal. Whatever, man. Bear with me. You know what I mean.

We're just going to buy a new camera, and then we'll find our missing one, and then we'll have two.

Okay.

...dum dee dum.....

Well, we did it. We went to the reunion! Here's my report:

*Ladies are easier to recognize from their youth than men. The men were largely beefed out and sort of balded up. We were given little name tags that were actually our senior pictures (!) (return of the eyeliner!) with our names written tinily beneath them. You had to really peer like hell at the little nametag to make out the name, so they were pretty useless. You weren't going to walk up to someone and sort of make out with their chest for a second and then be like, oh, hello, Mike Frank. I kind of knew you. Or (squint, squint) ...oh, sorry....Richard.....Ro...senthal. We haven't met. Also, I wasn't wearing my glasses. Oh, I had them in my bag. But I wasn't wearing them. And I wasn't gonna wear them. Reunion! Vanity! Legitimate! If silly! And all night, I was like, dang it, would you believe it? I don't have my glasses. More's the pity. What a kerfuffle! Can't see who any of you are! So I talked to far more ladies than I did fellows.

*There was a healthy bunch of people that I was really happy to see. My friend Kris from Complain-o-Peeps, she and I met up with my dear old friend Sandi for a drink before the proceedings, and together we formed a reunion home base from which to operate. It was a joy to see her. You. It was a joy to see you. I know you're reading this, you cute Sandi. Call me. Seriously. (Kris, I see you all the time, relatively, so I feel I don't have to cite you, although you are always delightful.) And my old friends Kate and Kasia, it was a joy to lay eyes upon them. Kasia I hadn't seen since high school, and it had been nearly a decade since I'd seen Kate. Great ladies. A treat. And my favorite dude from high school was there, Mike Stanford. Only talked to him for a second, but I always thought he was the bee's knees. One of those quietly hilarious guys. That was nice! And Miss Kim Clark, who was in the drama class photo from the previous entry practicing her facial expression, she was a real treat to see as well. Warm and funny and down to earth. And there were lots of others, too. If for some freak reason you're reading this and you were there and you're like, what about me?, then it's safe to say that you're utterly among them.

*I totally got mistaken for somebody else in this great way at the end of the night. Dave and I were trying to make it out the door to go home, and I ended up in conversation with this one woman I knew. Lovely conversation, we were happy to see each other, but then I cut it short because we had to get home to the baby. And she was like, "Well, I would have known you anywhere. Kasia Zasoski!" And I didn't have the time or energy to correct her, so when she said, "But it's not Zasoski anymore, is it?!" I just threw out a cordial, "No, it isn't!" and we were on our way.

*Some people turned out to be dicks, is all I'll say about that. I'm not concealing any big story, I promise. You can just tell when somebody has turned out to be a dick, and that, my friends, was the case for a few of these ol' Raiders. But this was mostly only so for people who were headed that way twenty years ago.

*The keeping-it-real prize goes to Tim Little! Man, was he ever refreshing. He was like, I don't know what all these people are talking about, all "my life is so great"....MY life has been a roller coaster! He'd tried to go back to school six times, been diagnosed with ADD, been married, been divorced, is currently a bus driver, and was like fuck it! I'm on a ROLLER COASTER! God bless him. The honesty! I love it. Live long and prosper, man.

*Some exchanges were just like, here, these are my baby pictures. Okay, I see yours. Okay. Check. Move along.

*For some reason, a lot of people thought I'd moved to California. I've never even considered mvoing to California. They were like, we couldn't find your address! We heard you'd moved to California! Maybe they also thought I was Kasia Zasoski, who really lives in California.

*I wore that shirt. Nobody was like, AWESOME SHIRT! Nor was anybody like, what's with your shirt?

*There was a lot of HEY! Nice to see you! followed by an awkward pause and then followed by I think I'm going to get a drink! Good to see you! Which is what you'd expect.

*It would be stretching it to say that I ate sixty dollars worth of spicy popcorn shrimp.

*Dave was a great sport. He and Kris's husband Orion played pool and were low-key together. And he looked all foxy in his black corduroy blazer. And I was like, man, why is this music so loud! Nobody's going to be able to hear his foxy accent! So I kept working it into conversation that he's from Australia, which is retarded, but so am I.

*I loved seeing how some people who hadn't really come into focus in high school had bloomed in the intervening years. That's always how it should be, and usually how it is. You don't want to peak in high school. It's better to save it up. I'll be advising Finn to be as awesome as he likes in high school, but keep a little awesome in his pocket to detonate later in life.

i got my braces off and I know that soon you will too

I've been poring over my high school yearbooks, boning up for the reunion. First I will share some thoughts/epiphanies/top-notch ideas I've had, and then I will treat you to some of my favorite texts from my yearbook signatures over the years.

1. I looked, and the results are in. There is not one girl in my class who wore more eye makeup than I did. No one can touch me. If a little eyeliner is pretty, a lot is SO pretty. Have a look at my senior picture. Bottom right-hand corner.



In my defense, my hair is not particularly egregious, and that photo was taken in 1985. But that is some not-fucking-around eyeliner. I remember a friend of mine gently telling me during my freshman year, "Tina, your eyes are so pretty. You don't need to wear so much eye makeup." And I was like, what is she talking about? I look GREAT. In retrospect, I understand that she was just looking out for me. If she has any sartorial or cosmetic advice for me at the reunion, I'm taking it.

2. Was it your experience that all sorts of the most random people in the world wrote their phone numbers down for you when they signed your yearbook? Give me a call this summer if you get bored. People wrote down their phone numbers who would have been seriously startled if I'd dialed them. Here's my great idea: I want to call all those numbers now. Mrs. Skoglund? Is Eric there? Oh, not for a while, now? Well, if you talk to him, tell him I was bored so I thought I'd call. Tina Kunz. Kunz. Tina Kunz. From Nathan Hale. Great. Thank you.

3. Here are some photos from our drama class. The caption for the picture at the top really shows you what a great foundation we budding actors were given. I shall provide it for you below, as it's too small to read.



"TOP LEFT: Kim Clark, Kisha Palmer, Tina Kunz, Joanna Lasky and Christi Rhodes (sic) practice their facial expressions for drama class."

To be a good actor, you really have to know how to make facial expressions. Look what a good actor I was already at the tender age of 16! I could make a look at that, that's funny expression, and I could make an I'm an airhead expression. Twenty years later, I bet I can make at least twenty variations on those. I am a wonderful actor. They say it takes twenty years to make an actor. Perhaps I will do a skit for everyone at the reunion.

**********

And now it's time to enjoy some classic yearbook signatures, or excerpts thereof, or simply a great opening line or so. Most of these are from people I didn't know well, or barely knew at all, rather than from my close friends. Those signatures are the ones I enjoy the most - the pure space-fillers. I think these people rose to the challenge of just filling the space very handsomely. I shall remove the names, so no one is unfairly shamed should they be Googled:

Hey, Tina!! Hey there's enough room up here so I think I'll start to sign! Oh no Mr. Bill! Where to [illegible] Well, hey dude! Chem was a joke this year with Mitch. Michellin Man! It was an adventure, an experience, or something like that! We're Seniors next year! Wow, Hey, Cool (and the gang) I like traffic lights I like traffic lights I like traffic lights " " " " But only when they're green!! Brrrrrrr [drawing of a rocket taking off] 1600 KJET Seattle, Whatever! KJET is cool, No class will ever be as weird or fun as Brock's! Strip Pocher in the Van! COP!! New Coke Sucks [drawing of a can of New Coke with the caption 'too much nutrasweet'] Anyway, I hope you have a rockin, rollin, splishing, splashing summer and I'll see you in September, In more classes! Bye, your friend, XXXX XXXXXX

Tina,
How's life? Or should I say how's Bjorn Borg. You know you just love him. Too bad we didn't talk too much this year. Hasn't it been so boring in History. Oh, well, keep in touch. My number is XXX-XXXX! Gerard "The Great"

Tina,
It is almost summer time and that means no more Kopta [old batty French teacher] and lots more PARTIES! Your tennis playing has really improved and somebody you will be as good as BJORG BORN. Have a great summer and see you at the beach. XXX, '86

Tina,
Radical pen!

Tina,
Your a really strange person but I'm glad I got to know you. Tina you shouldn't bring so much pizza if your not going to eat it. Not much time left so I'll just say have an awesome summer and I'm sure I'll see you around but if I don't give me a call - XXX-XXXX, Love, _arrett _mith P.S. We'll have to play some tennis this summer.

Tina,
WELL I CONFESS I HAVEN'T HAD YOU IN ANY OF MY CLASSES! So I can't say that BUT I still enjoyed the things we did and I'm going to miss you. I'm going to miss lot's of people. Remember I'm going to Germany so while your missing people feel sorry for me. However I'm not depressed right now so I think the first thing we should do is go PARTY!! Dude. In all seriousness you are a wonderful person and I think your beautiful too. So stick to it dudette, remember me, remember Ms. Kreuger and remember to smile I LOVE YA _RUCE _ASON P.S. serious good luck in the years to come and may you live in a boat this big. [arrow pointing to a big boat in a photo] P.P.S. remember everything important studette

Well, there you have it. I bought that shirt. I'm going to wear it. I have a haircut scheduled for the day of the reunion, which is always a mistake. I considered flipping through the senior photos for the most upsetting haircut, and getting mine done that way as a tribute, but I think I will just let the chips fall where they may.

In parting, here's the back cover of my senior year yearbook. See if you can find my picture in there. (Hint: Look to the eyeliner.) Also, aren't you surprised to learn that Bill Cosby, Marilyn Monroe and that bull went to my high school? Well, they did. Look at 'em.

i am waiting for the cloth version

A couple of days ago Finn had his first sit-down on his own with a book. It was a cloth number called "Fluffy Chick & Friends". (I would have taken a picture but our camera is missing. I know! Everybody send vibes that we'll find our camera. You know, find-y vibes.) It was so great! He was crinkling the crinkle business on the front cover, grabbing the pages in his little be-mittened hands and waving them back and forth.

And then I thought about cloth books, and went off on an imaginary tangent. See, I don't have a lot of time to read these days. While I was breastfeeding Finn the other day, "Fluffy Chick & Friends" was lying on the couch next to me, and since there was no grown-up reading material at arm's length, I grabbed it and read it.

The blah blah horse is in the stable. Give her a wave (or something), her name is Mabel.

I imagined some old friend coming up to me, maybe at the reunion, and asking me what I've been reading lately. And I imagined replying, "Oh, well, I'm been, um, sort of into cloth books? Um....let's see....I just read 'The Big Moose'...and that was pretty crinkly...there's a goat in it whose horns were sort of vinyl and pointy and you could grab them, so...yeah, um, it's got a lot of good textures, you might give that one a read...."

Texture is something that just gets left behind in adult literature*! And I think that should change. I'd love, say, a cloth version of Anna Karenina, where there could be interludes with different textures for various parts of the story.

*I speak not of porn, freaks.

****Anna Karenina Spoiler Alert, because I ran these ideas past Dave and he was like, I was going to read that.....******************

It could be like:

Feel Anna Karenina's black dress!
(and then you pat it with your big fat hand and you're like, oh, velvety.)

This is the wheat that Levin is growing!
(Stalky...wheaty....I can feel it with my fingers.)

Feel the icy indifference as it increases in Vronsky's heart towards Anna!
(Oh...it's cold...and hard...I can poke his little heart...(stroke, stroke)...it feels cold on my hand.)

Here's a puff of steam from the train that Anna throws herself under. Feel the steam!
(.....feels poufy.....)

****************************

I think that this is an idea whose time has come. And I'd like to hear some of your ideas for the textures we can enjoy from famous books when the cloth versions come out.

foxy guys and classy chicks, we're the class of '86

I just found out that my twenty-year high school reunion is happening in a couple of weeks. OH MY GOD. I think I'm going to go.

The timing is fucking TUBULAR, as we happen to be living with my mom. That is exactly how I always imagined rolling into my twentieth. Look. I was not voted most likely to succeed. I was the class clown. And it's because of rats! Not because of failure! But that, too, is so awesome. Yeah, we have a house around the corner from here, but we're not living there because it's infested with rats. So we're living with my mom. Hey, where are you going? I am going to walk into this reunion with my Good Listener hat firmly the freak on. No, no, enough about me. I am so interested in YOU.

Also, baby weight. But who was I kidding anyway? I would have been telling people it was baby weight at my fifteenth.

What the hell am I going to wear? Do you guys like this shirt*?



Oh, my god, I'm running my outfit by the internet. That is hilarious. I'm going to start doing this every day. Do you guys think I should wear these sweatpants or these sweatpants?

*I wouldn't be wearing that little white camisole under that shirt. And I'd wear a little black jacket with it, maybe. Some trousers. Some boots. Oh my god. I don't know. I don't know.

the rabbit is out of the hat

He's done it! Dave has begun a poetry blog!



Dave's imagination is a fantastical land. I love that he's gotten so passionate about poetry. He throws himself into whatever he does: poetry, poker, surfing, whatever it is. He eats it up, dives to the bottom of it. So smart. Such a beauty. I'm going to marry him again when he's not looking.

Go and look at hatrabbit.

Love,
Mrs. Newblog of the Seattle Newblogs

it wasn't a beret, it was a cloche, and it was really more scarlet than raspberry

So in my dream last night, I was going for an interview to be Prince's personal assistant. We met at his little house. Dave came with me. I was wearing a snappy little vintage red wool coat and hat duo, a sixties sort of number. Prince came bounding out his front door and gave my outfit the once-over. He loved it! He grabbed my hand and we skipped inside with Dave trailing behind us.

The interview was in Prince's bedroom. Prince and I chatted for a second and then Dave came into the room. He didn't seem too pleased that the interview was going to be taking place in Prince's bedroom, but he tried to sort of make nice with Prince. He saw some scrapes on Prince's knee and gave him some advice about bicycle safety. Prince, on the other hand, didn't seem too pleased that my husband was taking place in his bedroom, so he was frankly quite chilly about the bicycle safety advice. Dave left us alone to conduct the interview, and Prince made an insulting comment to the effect that Dave was overly righteous or something. I said, that's my husband! You can't say things like that about him! This interview is over!

But it wasn't over. I was getting sucked into the black hole of Prince's sexy magnetism.




Before I knew what was happening, Prince started working some sexy jujitsu on me. He had the kind of arcane tricks you just knew Prince would have! As soon as Prince planted a teeny tiny kiss on my clavicle, I was like, uh-oh. I'm going to have to go on with this interview. I'll just go on with this interview for like five more minutes. And then Prince started talking into my shoulder blade in a deep, soft voice. And I was like, the shoulder blade! We've all been overlooking the shoulder blade as very prime erotic territory! You just talk into it! Who knew?? I'm going to go on with this interview for one more minute. But by now I had overly emboldened Prince, and he was pulling out some showstoppers. I knew we must cut this interview short or my marriage would be hosed.

I summoned all of my strength and with some difficulty I pulled myself out of the bedroom of Prince. Soon thereafter I woke up.

Dave was a trooper. And Prince and I must never meet.

what it says where you can't read it

In this leftover picture from childbirth class, I'm saying:

"My shoulder is above my ear."

lost at sea

Dave just got this unbelievable fat poetry anthology called Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. It's all poets born after 1960 who have published three or fewer books. Hot! Hot hot!

Here's a poem that's apropos for us these days, by Patty Seyburn:

First Bookshelf

There is a duck lost at sea when
his crate breaks after the boat is
destroyed. Tossed, overturned,
claimed and buoyed by a frigid
ocean, he observes the moon and
stars, knows loneliness, isolation
and lack of purpose. He wonders
if he'll find a home. There is a
monkey who makes countless,
thoughtless errors and manages
to redeem himself with friendly,
anonymous counsel. He makes
great messes and never seems
to gain an awareness of what
others endure on his behalf. He
is not held accountable for his
mistakes. A royal elephant has
appropriate adventures and an
extended family. A huge dog
with morals means well but his
size often inhibits his ability to
reach his goals. He frequently
learns to compensate for his errs
by giving rides, providing shelter,
protecting the meek. There is a
mouse with balletic grace, while
her tiny cousin has nothing but luck
and the charm of the weak: you
can't choose your family. There is
another mouse, crudely drawn in
primary colors, whose exploits are,
at best, prosaic. She keeps company
with an elephant, an alligator, and
a female of ambiguous species.
She drives a bus, cleans house,
bakes gingerbread, takes a bath,
attends the fair. She is middle class.
And yet another mouse, with many
paid friends and a girlfriend, sister
or cousin, also paid. They used to
keep silent but have, of late, learned
language, which has increased their
popularity but drained the pathos
from their exploits. A company of
pigs, an obdurate spider, a ravenous
caterpillar that endures change and
sheep: lost, defiant, naked. The duck
story is somewhat true except that
we are given the duck's perspective,
which must be questioned, as we have
no small stake in believing that we
are the only ones who understand
that we exist, with little notion of why.

Finn sometimes will cry out briefly in his sleep, and I wonder if he's having a bad dream. I hate the idea. He's too little for a bad dream. And what would his bad dream be? Does it have to do with daily, earthly baby concerns? Does he dream he's stuck in a terry cloth sleeper soaked in baby cheese? Does he dream that he's thirsty for milk and facing a frustrating empty breast? Or does he have dreams of some complicated, more adult-feeling before-life? Does he miss where he came from? Does he have friends he left behind, wherever he was? Does he dream of being large and articulate and powerful, or does he dream about some former articulate glory? The little cry is so brief, but so pained. It rips pieces off of my heart and eats them.

oh my god bear with me

Picasa, I tell you! It's the joy. You can do all these things with your pictures. This is like quilting! (Yes, for those who can only make but the simplest quilts. It's not like quilting if you're one of those hotshot Devil-Went-Down-To-Georgia-Not-With-Fiddles-But-With-Sewing sorts of quiltmakers. It's like quilting if you can only sew squares together.)

These are all blog pictures I made. Some of you will be like, YEAH. I'VE SEEN THOSE. MOVE ON. And I will. But I want to point out that the picture that's second up from the bottom on the second-to-right-hand column is a picture I worked hard on for an entry about my childbirth class that Blogger wouldn't post. (The picture, that is. The entry posted. Fffff.) So, look at it. LOOK AT IT! That's what it was like in there that first day when I couldn't get comfortable for the relaxation exercise. Oh, Christ! Lord! It feels so good to finally get it out there. That's what it was LIKE.

Thank you. No more collages for at least...two days.





























A day.

mornings with quinn

Some guy that's on a poetry forum with Dave sent him a message asking him how things were going with Quinn.

Things with Quinn are going great.

This morning I was holding him in a pillow in my lap, sitting him up so we could be face to face. He'd scratched his face up because I hadn't had the balls to cut his nails in a while. One of his scratches is right around where his third eye would be, giving him a vaguely Hindu look. And he looked so wise this morning, I felt like I was holding a tiny teacher in my lap. We had a conversation. He was very serious with me - Finn is often very serious with me, when we talk.

It's sort of odd, referring to him as Finn. We almost never call him Finn. We refer to him as:

*Muffin
*Muffins McGee
*The Squizzler
*Mr. Squizzles
*The Buddy (as in, "Will you look after the buddy for a minute while I run to the bathroom?")
*Cutes McGoots
*Muggy Wuggins
*Lovey Buggy
*Mr. Fartybottom

Et cetera, ad infinitum.

It's all dignity, all the time around here.

So we were having a conversation this morning, wherein he would make a noise and I would say something encouraging like, "Tell me more!" or "You don't say!" or "Wow! And what else?" or "I'm listening!"

And then it occurred to me that I wasn't really listening. I was just pausing. So I tried to really, seriously listen. Listen underneath his face, his head, his body, underneath us in the room. It was like trying to stay underwater while wearing a suit of floaties. I kept bobbing up to the surface, where I can't really hear him. I feel like there's a place underneath us where if I can stay down there long enough, I can hear all of his meaning without the bother of the English language getting in the way.

So I bobbed around up there and tried to be heavy and sink into the silence while I waited for him to speak. His face shifted from regular baby to something like a world-weary Tibetan, and he offered up the word "bllrrr" in a cushion of bubbles.

I wish I knew what he meant.

******

Finn was in his Moses basket this morning wrapped up in his white swaddle blanket. Dave looked down at him and said, "We should scoot him over to one side and fill up the rest of the basket with Red Robin fries." He was too right. He totally looked like an order of Finn and chips waiting to be completed.

******

In other news, my feet keep slipping around underneath me today. I think somebody snuck in last night and replaced our floors with an ice rink or a raked stage.

******

Also, just you wait. I'm going to take pictures and show you the hilarious thing Dave does with Finn. I hope its hilarity translates! It might not. But it might! But it'll only happen if stupid Blogger lets me post a goddamn photo*.

*Oh, you know what I'm referring to, Blogger.

25 story ideas have come here to die

I found this list in a closet we cleaned out the other day. Apparently, years ago I wanted to write a story. I didn't know how to write a story, or what one might be about. So I made a list of things I could write a story about.

Let me preface this by saying, I WILL NEVER WRITE A STORY. I am not made to be able to write a story. I can tell you things that have actually happened to me, those kinds of stories. But I can't make up a story. I can't write a play, either, with characters. I've thought about it. This is the best play I could write, right here:

A: Hello.
B: Hi.
A: What's that you're doing there?
B: Eating toast.
A: I'm mad at you.
B: Well, I'm mad at you.

(pause)

A: I don't forgive you.
B: I don't forgive you, either.

The End

Isn't that great? It has conflict. Now, here's the list of story ideas I found:

1. a house burns down
2. a family moves away
3. a mayor is elected
4. somebody is killed for revenge
5. a family explodes*
6. a cluster of people explodes*
7. a cluster of disparate people are bound by something
8. a child is born, grows up, decides what it will be
9. a person becomes psychic
10. Two people buy a house together. They are the same. Then they find they are different. The house is a person, too. The house goes with one person. Who does it go with? They find out and the other one leaves.
11. a young woman moves to a new city. She meets what appear to be very safe people. Then they are revealed to be dangerous. Then she meets what appear to be very safe people. Then they are revealed to actually be safe.
12. a young woman is trapped in her old city. The people don't want her to leave. They devise ways to keep her there. They play upon her compassion. She finally figures it out that they are just playing a game. She breaks free and leaves.
13. a young woman who doesn't know something goes to a teacher and learns it
14. a young man hypnotizes a young woman, or a young woman hypnotizes a young man, a sensitive creature. The young man falls in love with the hypnotist and the hypnotist falls in love with the young man. Then the young woman has to leave and the young man is hypnotized and fixated and the spell goes awry and he self-destructs. The young woman is then hypnotized by an older man.
15. A very small girl discovers that something horrible is happening in her home in the memory of a young woman who is discovering that something horrible is happening in her home. As she discovers the horrible thing that is happening, she remembers what happened before. The thing she remembers helps her fix the thing which is happening now.
16. A young boy and a young girl who live next door to each other each want to trade families and live in the family of the other one, which seen through windows and visits seems very exotic. Then, one of them actually goes to live with the other one. One of several possibilities happens. One, they discover they like their own home better. Two, they discover they like this home better. Three, something happens to their original family. Maybe there is an earthquake and their home falls down. Then they have to stay with this family.
17. An earthquake happens. While a young woman is trapped in the rubble in the ground, she remembers lots of different things from her life. Also, she becomes psychic. This was starting to happen before the earthquake. But then it happens for sure. She knows things under there, and also, voices talk to her. She either dies, psychic, or she survives, and she has lost her family, and she is now the lone member of her strict family, and she is now beholden to no one and psychic.
18. a plague is sweeping through a city, a big city. The plague is that nobody knows that they were born and they will die and that there is anything beyond this life. They think they were always here and that they will always be here. Nobody knows that they are going to die. It is like the Titanic, only no one knows it is sinking. One person was gone while the plague struck, so it didn't get him. Now he's come back. He is able to convince one person that this is true by taking her on a trip somewhere where people die. So the two of them escape together and find solace in each other.
19. a girl becomes a woman in a crisis. What is a girl and what is a woman?
20. a young man makes a painting, he paints a woman that he loves. He is in love with an older woman. They are having an affair. By the time he finishes the painting, he is not in love with her. You can see it in the painting, it's changed.
21. a young man and a young woman live in a place where you're not allowed to go above ground during the day. It's like Plato's cave, only they know about the opening. It's just forbidden. They make a plan and go above ground during the day.
22. a man and woman are married. They both have affairs, each with the secret dream opposite sex version of themselves, fulfilling some forbidden wish of theirs, like the man has an affair with someone very successful and crisp and the woman has an affair with a criminal. But the criminal and the successful person are both that way in a petty way, not a grand way. The man and woman fall back in love with each other.
23. a woman has three children. Two of them will fail and one of them will succeed. But you can't tell who it will be or why, or whether she will know who succeeded and who failed. And maybe they won't know which of them succeeded and which failed. One will succeed, one will fail and the other will know which is which. So the one who knows, will fail, but know it. The other will succeed but not know it and the other will fail but not know it. Who is the success?
24. a woman gets to know another woman who is difficult to get to know. They become friends. Then it's clear that the first woman is harder to get to know than the one that you thought was hard to get to know. One is softer on the outside and one is softer on the inside.
25. a young man has an amazing sense of smell. He can smell what happened in a room. He's had this ability since he was a little boy. So he took up smoking so he wouldn't have to smell everything, and then his sense of smell dulled, which he liked. But then he takes too much Ecstasy and then he has to quit smoking, and it starts again that he can smell everything that happened. He finds a way to put it to use.

*I didn't mean that they literally explode. I meant that they blow apart emotionally and then geographically.

There. There they are. What might have been. I could have been a contender. Alas.

lookit

Look at this.

1. Dave, in baby form



2. Finn, in present form



If your reaction isn't OH MY GOD THE RESEMBLANCE, I don't want to know.

But OH MY GOD THOSE ARE TWO CUTE BABIES is a good reaction, too.

Definitely don't want to know if your reaction is
THOSE TWO BABIES SUCK.

P.S. Dave isn't in black and white anymore. He was in black and white because he's so old. But he's gotten modern and been colorized.

the old dilemma

The dilemma, it's so old and timeworn, it's such a hand-me-down. I've just grown into it, and I'm trying it on for the first time. I can't even believe I'm wearing it. You see ten thousand people parading by wearing gauchos, and they're all tearing their hair out and pulling at their legs going, "I can't believe I'm wearing these gauchos!" And you're like, yeah, yeah, the gauchos thing. And then you look down and you also have them on. And then you start doing the fucking macarena. I'm talking about the thing with the identity crisis with becoming a mother and figuring out how and when and if and where I'm still an artist.

Oh, man. See, I'm a part of this theatre company. I have been for ten years, with a tiny break in the middle. I just got a very sweet email from my friend who is the artistic director, which was in the gentlest of terms telling me not to disappear, since I'd not been to a meeting or even replied to the announcement of a meeting (!!!) since Finn's birth. I felt awful, totally distraught at not replying, and apologized to everyone forthwith.

I mostly didn't reply because I have my head up my ass - or rather, up my baby's ass. But I also a little bit didn't reply because I...don't feel like an artist right now. I feel like a fake artist. Like I'm carrying an old artist identification card and hoping I can still swing it.

I'm wiping baby puke out of my bra as I write this.

Here's my fear. I'm afraid that something is going to wither - my abilities, my confidence, my energy. I'm afraid that fear will wither the impetus to be creative in a public forum.

It's on the books that I'm going to do a solo show under the auspices of the company, the centerpiece of which is a story I've told on this blog. I've written good chunks of it. I've never done one before. It feels scary and ballsy. And I'm having trouble locating my artistic balls at the moment. Also, suckily, a way more famous and experienced solo artist person is going to be doing a show here in Seattle, and a large bit of the show is set in the same milieu as my show. I don't want my first experience with a solo show to be like:

If you like Giorgiotm, you'll love PRIMO!tm

or

If you liked Howard's End, you'll love *Enchanted April*!

Yeah. If you liked _________'s show, you'll wonder why Tina did her show.

I was weeping this morning and talking to Dave about my fears, and he was very concerned, and said I needed to make time regularly to work on art-related things, so that part won't wither. Then I cried even more. Where is the energy going to come from?

I have the energy to blog, because it can be anything or nothing, and it can just be honestly whatever.

I love art. I love acting. I love being on stage, I feel alive and alert there. Keen, like an animal. I love writing.

Who the hell am I? What's it going to look like?

I don't want Finn to have a mom that's like, "Wow, must be NICE, getting to FULFILL yourself like that. Live it up, sucker."

I realize it's only been eight and a half weeks. I guess I can take a moment to adjust to motherhood before fulfilling all my artistic aspirations. But it makes me nervous. It all makes me nervous.

tuxedo junction

Yep. That's him. That's him, all right*.

Ok. Ok. Begin the tiny tuxedo-themed post now.

It seems that Finn can't get enough of the song "Tuxedo Junction". I started singing it while burping him, and it soothes the savage beast. Never fails. I suspect he was a swingin' bandleader in his previous life, or at least some type of swingin' cat.

Here are the lyrics:

Feelin' low...
Rockin' slow...
I want to go
Right back where I belong

Way down South
in Birmingham
I mean South
in Alabam'
to an old place
where people go to dance the night away

They all drive
or walk some miles
to get jive
their Southern styles
It'sanoldjive
That makes you want to dance away the day

It's a junction
Where the townsfolk meet
At each function
In a tux they greet you

Come on down
Forget your cares
Come on down
You'll find me there
So long, town
I'm headin' for
Tuxedo Junction now


Sing that baby to the tune of "Tuxedo Junction" !


And now, here's a tiny excerpt of an interview in The Believer, wherein the author of the Lemony Snicket books is interviewing Jack Black. They've been talking about weddings, and wedding attire, and renting vs. owning tuxedos. Jack Black rents. Daniel Handler owns, and elaborates a little:

Daniel Handler: It’s nice to have a tux because sometimes you can just put it on and wear it. It sort of shocks the hell out of people.

Jack Black: [laughing] Do you do that?

Daniel Handler: Yeah, I just wore it to someone’s birthday party. If you really go all out and it’s not a sarcastic-looking tux they just don’t know what to do with you.

If all goes according to plan, Finn'll be the kind of guy who'd do that. I just gotta figure out whether to use reverse psychology or just basic forward psychology.

*Finn in his first tuxedo, a white appliqued terry cloth footed number. Shut up, it's a training tuxedo.

loot bag

1. For those who might care, with apologies to those who don't, the breastfeeding has taken! We're in, now. We can just do it. It's cool. It ain't no thing, and whatnot. We've been doing it for a couple of weeks now.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Finn's latching style is a little bit Hannibal-Lecter-just-released-from-his-mask meets random-blind-lunging-pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, but the process no longer hurts or makes me cry. Also, it doesn't give Finn that worried look on his face he used to get. He used to accompany that with "I'm on the fake telephone" hands to his ears. Like he was calling his agent with one hand and a lactation consultant with the other.

2. Also, HE'S INTO ME!

Bownh-chicka-bownh-bownh!

He's flashing that Peanuts blank-mouth smile at me all the time. And a couple of times now he's stared at me with this crazy look of stunned adoration while cooing at me in this sweet, strangulated way, as though he's striving like mad to articulate his feelings accurately.

When That Happens = Me = Puddle

3. A new blog is on the blogroll called Mundane Superhero, penned by one Heels. She's a mama and very smart and funny and charming and prolific, and she does all this crafty stuff that I would love to do if after I conceived of a project it did itself. Like, I would quilt all the time. I'd make quilts like Paul Newman doesn't personally make pasta sauce. I'd make quilts like Jude Law makes time with the nanny. I'd make like a tree and leave to go make a quilt. I go to EQuilter and design hypothetical quilts for real loved ones all the time. If ever I've spoken the words "I love you" to you, I've imagined in detail the quilt I'd make for you if I were someone who ever got anything done ever. I made a real quilt once for my parents, which ruined me by giving me the idea that I'd ever do it again.

Apropos of that,

Happy 3rd Anniversary to Kristen and Chris.



The quilt I promised you three years ago....I have the squares cut out and organized into rows. They're in a bag somewhere, slowly dying.

4. My husband got a poem published in this online journal called andwerve. He is getting so good, I tell you. He's going to let me post some here. He's the MOST, mofos.

5. Two poems for you, by Catherine Wing. She's unfuckingbelievable. Elizabeth came over and read us this one (if you're going to have poetry read to you, pretty much you want Elizabeth to do it):

The Evil Hypnotist Plans His Next Session *

Imagine,
your head is full of angry bees.
Your tongue is made of butter and
has melted. You are made of butter.
Now you are nothing but a stain on the carpet.

Imagine, please.
Your eyes are cocktail onions.
They cannot see.
Your lower half is planted in sand.
The tide is rising.

Imagine,
you are made of glass.
You are a candle snuffed.
A bubble blown - pop.
Don't breathe, please.

You are an old pickle jar
being filled with bacon grease.
A head full of dust, crumbs on a table.
You will be disposed of with a crumber.
Be still.

You are a hull of the unseaworthy.
You are the husk of a cicada,
the shell the snail abandons.
You are the bed of a stream
that's lost to drought.

Imagine, please.
A sandbag with a hole in it.
A slow leak.
A water balloon come undone,
empty and nothing until
you are dead.

You are dead.

*Alternate title: Finn Was the Hypnotist on Monday, We Were the HypnoTEES

Another one:

INTERMEZZO:
139 Words about Me

Dear Mr. Everything:
17 words about me. I like bad weather.
Seeking smarty-pants.
Drummers a plus.

*

Dear Vanilla Pudding:
My pronunciation is often bad.
ISO the world's smallest parade.
No mullets.

*

Dear Iniquitous Villain:
Kick my tires.
Seeking a synonym for nefarious.
Bad weather a plus.

*

Dear Gentle Iconoclast:
For Sale...As Is.
ISO same.
No beef jerky.

*

Dear Hey Sailor:
I'm an athletic drunk in an iron lung.
Need Deck Hand.
Usuals a plus.

*

Dear Cute Punk Rock:
Tired of kicking.
Seeking similar bird of feather.
No hootchie-kootchie to start.

*

Dear 17 Words:
Break me from my cancer shell.
ISO an iron lung.
Jesus a plus.

*

Dear As Is:
The usual parade.
Seeking Latin Cosmonaut.
No discounts.

*

Dear Dear:
I must stop somewhere.
ISO you.
The universe, please.

to bog face with love

two things about a baby

1. An observation



One of the trickiest among many tricky things about having a child is that you fall in love with him and you must not be shy to remain in love with him even if sometimes it seems like that love is unrequited. This is an unfamiliar sensation. Normally, in all my other relationships, if I've felt love blooming in me for another and sensed a dearth of love blooming back, I've either moved on post-haste or at least started making a list of things to pack for when I did eventually move. Here, there's no packing, there's no moving. If I love Finn and somehow he ends up deciding that he's just not that into me, that is too bad for me. I will have to live out my life humbly and openly carrying my torch. I'm not saying that Finn doesn't love me. I'm saying it's too soon to tell, and that sometimes a neurotic person could read his vibe as NOT INTO THAT PERSON*. And I'm totally into him. I write his name on my Peachee, his initials on my sneakers, I give him a code name**, I want to ask him to the Tolo. Finn 4-Ever. I will be the dork who never gives up. I will walk 500 miles and I will walk 500 more. I joke about this, but it's also pretty serious. It's dangerous! to bring a person around that you are going to fall on your knees adoring, and risk none of the love coming back your way. It's one of the reasons that I've never pursued acting with the vigor I might have liked to pursue it with***. Rejection is so deep, man. So scary. It's so much easier not to ask for the thing you want so much, and not to have to hear NO spoken aloud. C'mon, Finn. Love me. Mama needs a new pair of shoes.

* I also take his gassy smiles personally, though, so I'm reading things into things on both ends. Better for my emotional teeter-totter.

** NNIF YELWOR = HOT

***I will risk the icy indifference of grammarians with that preposition, fuckers.

2. A gross event





Dave and I went into Fremont for an hour the other day while our unbelievable doula Sara watched Finn. I had burped him beforehand, and he'd puked down my chest into my bra. Nothing to write home about there. Cleaned it up and moved along. But when we came home later I was idly playing with my hair and in back there was a clump that Finn had puked on that had invisibly congealed into some sort of small clear papier mache hair dagger. Oh, I can't tell you, can't tell you how creepy it was. It looked and felt like a little dagger, or a crow's claw****, or something else just horrible. I was so deeply skeeved that I could barely accompany myself to the bathroom to wash it out. I kept stalling and showing it to Dave a few times. Look! Look at it! Feel it! Look! I really had to force myself to go with myself. Ugh. Oh. Erf. Wash. Blarf.

****And now, hopefully a long hiatus from any even vaguely bird related content.

blown away

Christie, Dorothy, Meg, Lia, Eve, Girlysmack, Robin, Peggy, Adam and Suzanne:

I was so shy after I'd posted that last post. But I'd felt like I'd been giving such a one-sided picture of my experience, all milk and perfume and baby captions. I felt like a phony if I didn't tell more of the truth.

And what a reward. I wept (in a good way!) when each of your responses came in. I have a dear friend who's been sort of so-so about blogs, but she read my post and more especially your responses, and there the beauty of a blog was revealed.

You are all so kind, and your support really comes in like sweet fuel during this bumpy time. I want you to know that I'm deeply taking in everything you've said, and I so appreciate the level of your responses. How comforting to hear your stories, and how touching. My god, how life doles it out sometimes. I won't be shy about seeking help, and if we determine that medication's the ticket, then I won't balk. I have a fantastic therapist that I see, and I'll be talking a mile a minute in there.

I will say that most of the time, I'm on the up and up. It's just that occasionally I step where I think there's floor or ground, and instead I fall into a hole for a while.

I'll also say that it's as though Finn read the post and decided to kick it up about fifty notches for me. Since Sunday night, Finn's started looking at me, and today (Monday) he started truly gazing and smiling at me. Good God. Transcendent, transcendent feeling. Tonight he was snuggled and blanketed in my lap like a sleepy samurai warlord, and my face was just a few inches from his as he was heading into slumber. We were staring into each other's eyes, and I felt like the boundary between us just slipped away the longer we looked. He felt like every being in the world, and the only being, like life itself. That was a hole I fell into with bells on.

How can there not be improvement when sweet beings like you all send such loving energy our way? Your contribution to our well-being is real, and deeply felt. I'm thinking of each of you and wishing to return the favor. I'm willing for you that any pains in your lives lift and blow away. I hope blessings rain down on you, like the ones you sent to rain on me.