The words that don't fail say this:

A friend's husband died unexpectedly this week. Dave was 46, very fit, ate a vegan diet. He was a beloved father, husband, and friend. He coached Little League baseball and little girls' basketball. He was a handsome man of energy and good humor.

He and my friend were supposed to be celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary today. Instead, she's planning his funeral. There is no rhyme or reason to the world sometimes. 

Their children are the same ages as mine. I imagine each of our friends is taking a private mental stroll down "If That Were Me" Lane. It is unfathomable. I can't help but think I couldn't be half the things to our girls that Mr. Sandyshoes is to them. I can't teach them what he'll teach them, can't be the role model he is, can't, can't, can't. So much he does, I can't.

But that wouldn't be the point. Our partners are irreplaceable, period, as are we. It would be an unfixable break, an unfillable hole. A little girl is going to grow up saying "my Dad died when I was 8," and it's just dumb luck that it isn't my own little girl. We are, all of us, any given heartbeat away from our lives turned upside down.

Love like there's no tomorrow, people.  Yes, it's impossible to sustain that energy, that urgency, through every interaction with our dearest ones, let alone with every other human we encounter. But do keep perspective. Do remember what matters and doesn't. Be good to each other. Plan a long life, sure! - and fill each day of it with words and acts of love, because plans go awry, and all you really have is now.

I am the Lorax. I speak for... well, Universal Studios, I guess.

I'm going to be a wet blanket on this one. I don't think a movie should have been made of Dr. Seuss's book, The Lorax. Remember the Lorax? Who "speaks for the trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please"?  The folks responsible for Despicable Me made a movie of it.

That is, they churned out an uninspired, bland, predictable story to justify charging people to see a movie-length CGI production featuring some elements of the original. They call it "Dr. Seuss's" The Lorax, but it isn't really. It's hard to imagine that Dr. Seuss would've been down with the idea of Lorax-based merchandising. 

the original

I was planning to refuse to see it out of principle; then the Peanut was invited to a Lorax birthday party, so as long as she was going to see it, the Bean wanted to, and I was kind of stuck. 

So here's what it is. Thneedville is a walled community without trees, where fresh air is supplied by a corporation run by an evil little man and his thugs. Nobody minds. Our hero is a kid who loves a girl who paints pictures of trees on her house and dreams of seeing a real one. To win her affection, he goes off to find her a tree, and locates the Once-ler, who in intermittent flashbacks tells the story of what happened to them.

It's boring. They made The Lorax boring. There's very little of the original text in the script, and a lot of nothing added to fill time. Betty White (voicing the hero kid's Grandma) and Danny DeVito (voicing the title role), Zac Efron and Taylor Swift, cool as they are, didn't wow me. 

Adding to the wretchedness:  it has songs. The young Once-ler carries around an electric guitar, and now this is a musical.

They took The Lorax, stripped it of its simplicity, wisdom, and wit, added flat, stock characters and music not worthy of a good advertisement, threw in some obligatory cute animal bits, and spat it back out at a public ready to open their wallets. Universal Studios hasn't missed a trick - the movie contains several sequences that will make great rides in their theme parks.

Remember the villain played by Ken Jeong in Furry Vengeance? Basically the same villain here. Remember Alvin and the Chipmunks? Add fins, and you got yourself some Humming-Fish. Thneedville with its bottled air is not unlike the spaceship carrying everyone around in Wall-E. I don't think there's an original angle in this whole film.

If you see it, you won't have a horrible time. It's not actively unpleasant (except for the singing, gah!). You might even like it. My problem comes from setting the bar too high -- from believing that anyone who really read and understood this story, with its message about conservation and corporate greed, would never turn it into something as vapid and forgettable as this, let alone stamp Loraxes on stuff and go "biggering and biggering and biggering and biggering." In an arrangement that busts the irony meter into tiny outraged splinters, this Lorax is now being used to sell cars. I am the Lorax! I speak for the Mazdas!

It's the height of cynicism to have done this, and I hope it's a colossal failure.

ailing again

Folks, some damn virus is kicking my ass. Again with the sore throat, and now here comes the congestion. I got two discontinuous hours of sleep Saturday night. Last night, four in a row. Progress, I suppose.

I haven't spoken a word aloud since Saturday morning. Throat hurts so much I cringe to think about using it to talk. I'd almost rather drool than swallow, even.

I've been subsisting on apple sauce, chicken soup, and tea. After this is over I will not be drinking green tea for a while. Antioxidants or no, it just doesn't taste that good.

Here's hoping the girls miss out on this one.

ailing

Predictably, I have come down with some version of the illness that the girls had during their school vacation.

I know there are a lot worse things to be suffering from than a sore throat, but damn. I have the worst sore throat I can ever remember. It feels like someone's been at it with a cheese grater.

Drinking hot tea, sucking ice chips or throat drops, gargling salt water - none of it is much relief. Ibuprofen is some help, I guess, because when it wears off during the night I wake up crying. Boo-hoo, me.

More bad news: Swallowing is exceedingly painful, and I'm hungry, goddammit.

Been to the doctor, got antibiotics, so I'm hoping this starts to feel better fast. In the meantime I am canceling appointments, skipping meetings, and communicating via notepad and pencil. It is funny how people whisper or pantomime back to me, even though there's no reason for them to.

On the up side, I feel caught up on sleep.

Welcome back to New England!

Do risk your lives driving the icy highway home from Boston!  At home, your consolation prizes await:  12" of wet heavy snow in the driveway and a large bottle of maximum strength Advil!

Still, it is so good to be back.

More anon.

3rd grade homework

One of the Bean's current assignments is to "begin saving some interesting items from your recycling box!"  Evidently next week they will "create something" from these "interesting items."

I hope and trust that further guidance will follow, or I will be forced to conclude that third grade teachers just like fucking with parents from time to time. Not that I could blame them.

Mr. Sandyshoes is the one with the family full of artists; this is totally his jurisdiction.  Naturally, he is away this week. 

Ugh.  I always hated doing shit like this in school. Styrofoam ball solar systems, shoe box dioramas of life in a covered wagon, ugh, ugh, UGH.  Whenever possible, I chose the essay option.  I would rather have written a 30 page report on the history of the space program than create a single aluminum foil spaceship.

Also, what "interesting" is there in the recycling bins?  It looks to me like she's going to have to make something largely out of wine bottles.  I'll do my part by making sure she has enough of them.

NY Senator Diane Savino speaking truth to power

A disappointing vote by the New York State Senate. Who'd have thought that New York and Maine would have so much to learn from Iowa?

But here's hoping we haven't heard the last of Diane Savino:

A wee heartbreak

The Peanut spent yesterday afternoon and evening digging through her bin of markers and drawing little orange pumpkin faces on pages from one of those pocket-sized spiral notebooks. Each one was different, and on each, she wrote one of her classmates' names. She counted carefully to be sure she hadn't forgotten anybody. Then she clipped them together and put them in her frog backpack, and today, she was going to hand them out to everyone.

When I met her bus after school, she waved to her friends as always, and as always on the walk back to the house, I said, "so Peanut! Tell me all about it! Did you learn anything today?" And she said "Yes, but Mommy, nobody wanted my pumpkin faces, Sienna drew all over hers, and I had to throw some of them away, because nobody wanted them! I worked so hard on them, and nobody wanted them!" And she cried and cried in my arms as I whispered "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," and fought back tears myself.

I hate other kids. I hate them.*

And I know that they just didn't understand that the Peanut was giving them a piece of her heart, and that it's a lot to expect of a kindergartner to say thank you when a friend gives them a little piece of paper that seems meaningless. But my heart breaks to think of the Peanut watching her classmates reject or wreck these little gifts, and bringing the rest of them to the trash.

Did you learn anything today, indeed.

It was, at least, good timing for something like this. Peanut's best friend Gina -- who kept her little paper pumpkin face -- is over to play. Her Mom brought her over just as Peanut and I were wiping our tears. The girls took off running immediately, and the pumpkin face fiasco is suddenly ancient history. As I write, they are zooming around the yard like maniacs in between bites of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (that'd be no-salt-no-sugar peanut butter and all fruit jelly on wheat bread, because I am That Mom) and sips of chocolate milk. We're going to make lemon cheese bars (they're better than they sound) and they can eat them at the top of the play gym and then scream their little heads off coming down the slide.

She'll forget about it, or get it in perspective, and bounce right back. Me? I'm still sad. Sad to see her realize that she can't just wear her love for everyone on her sleeve and receive it back in kind. My heart broke for the Bean when it happened to her in Kindergarten, and it's breaking for the Peanut now. It's a chip out of their innocence -- just a sad, sad feeling, for a parent who cares about that sort of thing in a world where plenty don't.


*no, not really. But still.

Money down the drain: swimming lesson edition

Yeah. So I've been sitting in the goddamn pool area bleachers, where the air is conveniently heated to approximately six thousand goddamn degrees for your viewing comfort, for an hour twice a week all effing summer long. This is for the distinctly faked pleasure of oohing and aaahing in pride every time one of my girls keeps her face in the water for more than a tenth of a second, and enduring excruciating small talk from the parents who aren't faking it. The novelty wore off before the experience even started.

Today was their last swimming lesson of the session (thank God). Progress made, in all these weeks: NONE. Zero. They've spent lesson after lesson after lesson being toted around the pool by lovely young women posing as swimming instructors, who coo "GOOOOD JOB!" at them every time they make any kind of motion; their reports indicate, to nobody's surprise, that neither of the girls has accomplished a single thing, and the next level they should register for is the level they've just supposedly finished.

Screw that. Frankly, I'm in the mood to throw them in the deep end and let them figure it out themselves.

It's hard to say good-bye.

Imagine you have new neighbors a few houses up the street. They're about your age and stage in life and they seem pretty cool. After seeing each other in passing a few times, you invite them over for a cookout. Turns out you have similar educations and interests, hobbies and politics, all that. Cool! We should do this again!

Some time goes by, and you worry that maybe they didn't like you as much as you like them - ack! (Remember that episode of Friends, when Chandler and Monica met another couple who they thought they hit it off with, but the other couple totally blew them off? Gah!!!! If only Mr. Sandyshoes didn't have answers for everything! If only I didn't pepper my conversation with so many Star Wars and/or Monty Python references!)

But then they do invite you over. It's all good. And it keeps happening. As the years go by, you get together often, spontaneously or planned, with children or, too rarely, without.

The kids are close in age, and all like each other and play well together, even as they go through their various phases and stages. At Thanksgivings, when their teachers ask them what they're thankful for, they name each other. It's lovely to see that they're constants in each other's lives, as they learn to swim and read, as tricycles give way to training wheels, to be cast aside in triumph soon enough. It just feels good to know they'll eventually be getting on the school bus all together every day. There's no guaranteeing they'll always want to hang out together, but they'll have the comfort of having known each other virtually all their lives, and the security of knowing they are always loved and welcome in each other's homes.

Traditions begin to form around shared activities and holidays and maybe an annual summer camping trip. You trust each other's judgment and outlook; you know that you'll be there for each other, whatever need arises.

Now imagine that these cool neighbors, these friends who now seem more like family (in a good way!), have to move almost a thousand miles away.

We've known for months that it's happening, and now the moving van is coming in just a few days. Still, it doesn't seem real.

All of us have lived enough years in enough places to know that distance does not break friendship. But we're sad, just now.

Hurrah for Johnny; Angie, not so much.

No, not Depp and Jolie. I'm just taking an opportunity to publicly dis, and publicly praise, a couple of restaurants.

Last month the Sandyshoes family spent a weekend in Mystic, CT. We usually head down there for the first weekend in June, which we chose because it's not too awfully hot yet, and with school still in session, the crowds are manageable. Our routine has been to get into town for dinner Friday night, settle in, then visit the Mystic Aquarium on Saturday morning. Always looking to avoid the high cost and poor nutrition of "attraction food," we bring a simple picnic lunch to eat in the grass near the car, then go back in to spend more time at any exhibits we feel we shortchanged in the morning. Then it's back to the hotel for some quiet time before we go out to dinner.

For a few years now we've been going to Angie's Pizza -- a very basic family restaurant, easy parking, large-portioned pasta dishes and the like. This year we ordered a pizza. And waited. And waited. And waited. And finally asked what was going on? We were told it was coming right out... and still we waited. And waited. Then our server came out and said, "I'm so sorry, but they just dropped your pizza..." ...and the girls burst into tears, and we got up to leave. But not before being charged $5.50 for a bowl of pale lettuce that they called a "garden salad." Now if you're in the restaurant business, do you keep customers waiting almost an hour for a pizza, then drop it, and still charge them for a pathetic salad? I didn't think so. We won't be back. It was adequate in years past, but not so great that it's worth recommending or returning to anymore.

Unfortunately, it was now later than we'd wanted to be out, and we were now quite hungry. Earlier that day we'd noticed a Chinese and Japanese restaurant, Johnny's Peking Tokyo, in a strip mall near our hotel. From the outside it didn't look like anything special, but Chinese food is usually pretty quick to come to table, so we gave it a shot. What a pleasant surprise. If you like sushi, there's a bustling sushi bar. But with the hungry, cranky girls to think about first, we opted for simple, familiar dishes... cold sesame noodles (people seem to love or hate these -- I love them a lot), steamed dumplings, chicken with garlic sauce. Everything was very tasty, and the service was fast and friendly. We'll be back, at a more leisurely pace and with a more adventurous spirit, menu-wise, though I'm not big on sushi. An odd little bonus: the place was playing Latin dance music. This made the Peanut very happy. We don't know who Johnny is, but we're grateful to him.

Not our finest hour.

The Bean is outside screaming her head off. It is raining outside, and she is in her socks. I'm sure that upsets her. However, moments ago, she was inside screaming her head off, and I have decided to drive home the point that I won't listen to it.

Is this perfect parenting? Probably not. But at least it's not wintertime. I have been known to plop her down in a snowbank and go back in the house rather than let her throw a tantrum. I just. Won't. Put up with it. And when she calls my bluff, she's got an outdoor experience coming.

No, I hadn't been drinking.

Coming downstairs after putting the girls to bed last night, my left foot slipped out from under me and I fell hard, I mean f'ing HARD, on my ass, and slid the rest of the way down the stairs. It hurt a lot.

I was wearing tennis socks on bare wood stairs, which is plain stupid, and that hurts too.

I spent the rest of the evening on the couch with an ice pack on my butt. Took off my shorts for fear I wouldn't be able to get them off later due to major swelling. The bruising is substantial. Alarming, even.

Still, I'm glad I didn't hurt my back or break any bones. I'm glad I have pants loose enough to get over my still significantly swollen left butt cheek today.

The first aid book says to apply an ice pack for 20 minutes every 2 hours for the first 48 hours after the injury. Obviously I wasn't setting a timer to get this done overnight, but I'd better get back on it now. Off to the couch with me.

Be careful folks. It's the ordinary things that get ya.

One kind of liberation.

The other night I had dinner out with two friends -- like me, mothers of young children, though we knew each other Before All That -- who live a couple of towns away. Family schedules can make it tough to find an evening we're all available, but we make it happen every couple of months. This time we met at Bopha's Stir Crazy, a Cambodian restaurant which, Cape Cod/southeastern Massachusetts readers, you should absolutely visit if you haven't. (Note to self: remember this place when next lamenting the relative lack of really good, fairly casual, not-American-pub-food restaurants on the Cape, as compared to the Pioneer Valley from whence I moved, which has a giddy and delicious abundance thereof and which I sometimes heartily miss.) (Another note to self: who the hell uses "from whence" and "thereof" in casual writing?)

Ahem.

Anyway one of my friends arrived a few minutes late. Sitting down, she said she'd just come from the garden center, where she'd had to exchange one kind of hose for another, and that it had taken much longer than she'd thought it would because the cashier didn't know how to conduct the transaction, got the register all muddled up, had to call a manager over, etc., etc. Evidently the cashier behaved very rudely, as well. My mild-mannered, good-natured friend eventually said to her, "hey, there's no need to be that way with me. I didn't mess up the register," and that the cashier, while still gritting her teeth, at least knocked off the overt snippiness.

We all agreed that ten years ago -- even five -- none of us would've likely said anything, however justified. There's something about... what, turning 40? being somebody's mother? ... that has kicked in, and we just don't put up with stuff like that any more.

Looking at the menu, we thought about getting three different entrees to share. "Actually, I'd like to have that to myself," my friend said. Fair enough. If a mommy gets a night out with her friends, the last thing she should have is someone taking unwelcome bites of her dinner. Another thing we're not going to feel sheepish about. There are lots of things like this. I won't share popcorn at the movies. I never liked to, but I won't fake it any more. I want it all myself, and I want to eat it with my tongue, like a frog, if frogs ate popcorn. It's a small thing, but it makes me happy.

So we're feeling changes in our sense of self as we move into middle adulthood. But it's not just about rude strangers and popcorn. Although I still worry about it sometimes, if I'm perfectly honest I have to say I care less and less about whether people in general like me or not. I've realized that the things people might not like about me are really unlikely to change, at this stage of the game. I am who I am. There are six billion people on the planet to choose your friends from... don't choose me, if you don't want to. It's okay. We're both better off. Peace.

(My inner puppy would like to interject at this point that none of this means I'm not a likeable person or a good friend, and that you'd probably like me if we met. OK, puppy. Back in your crate now.)

However, I must not be all grown up yet because I'm still taking crap from people in doctors' offices. For example, take my recent annual ob-gyn appointments. The medical assistant who does the initial stuff -- weight, blood pressure, asking if anything's changed since last time, saying "you can get undressed, the doctor will be with you shortly" -- has become pointedly unfriendly to me. She didn't smile, didn't respond when spoken to, didn't look at me or call me by name. It is weird and unpleasant, and I was really taken aback by it. I have been a patient of this practice (is that the dumbest home page ever? No links!) for ten years now, through two pregnancies and various other bumps in the road that I won't bore you with (you're welcome). That assistant has been there for many of those years, herself, and she hasn't always been such a sourpuss. Something has distinctly changed. I have to wonder, and I'm tempted to ask her, "did I do something to piss you off? or is there just something uncomfortable up your ass?" -- because I don't deserve that.

But I haven't, and I probably won't, because 1) I would probably word it just like that, and become Part of the Problem; and 2) it's very hard to find a new doctor, and I'd hate to burn that bridge. There are only a few places to storm out of in high dudgeon (!) before I'd be out of local options altogether. Doctors around here have really got patients over a barrel. Still, basic civility doesn't seem like it should be too much to ask.

At any rate, this knowing who you are, and not feeling apologetic about it must be what people mean, in part, when they talk about how aging is "liberating." I suppose there's a fine line between "What you think won't hurt me because I'm OK with who I am" and "I don't care what you think because I'm kind of an asshole that way." Here's to achieving the former without coming off as the latter.

More than the sum of the parts

This has been a tough month for bad news. There's all the economy stuff, yes. But beyond that, I've had too much news of long ago friends and acquaintances having died recently.

I'm not old enough yet to be scanning the daily obituaries for familiar names. These are people in their 40s and 50s I'm hearing about. Lives cut short by alcoholism; cancer; sudden, inexplicable heart failure; accidents.

On one hand, they are people I'd lost touch with, or didn't spend time with independently of other, closer friends, or barely knew at all except to say hey-how-ya-doin' in passing. Still, each one feels like a loss, and given the close timing of their unrelated deaths, it's been a strange and unsettling month.

I feel disoriented and inarticulate and sad.

The latest news came in today's paper: a friend of my former husband just died in a chain saw accident in a town I once lived in and loved. My ex, my former brother-in-law, and several other friends were (are) loggers as well. The possibility of that kind of accident was a constant background anxiety in my life for a long time. It was a tough headline to see. The microseconds before I got to the phrase "...and father of five" -- ruling out my former spouse -- were tense.

I am thinking of those guys now; of how, when I knew them, they'd gather in one or the other's driveway after the day's work, sometimes just to touch base, sometimes for hours-long storytelling sessions. How they'd known each other since they were boys, and had years and years of stories on hand. How you wouldn't go two continuous minutes on the road without seeing one of their trucks, and each man had his own style of offhand wave as you passed. How news of any one of them spread to the others through the package store where they all got their Budweiser. Cases, upon cases, upon cases of Bud. How there would be pissing contests -- figurative and literal. (One of the guys could pee over a Suburban, the long way. It was legendary.) How working partnerships sometimes formed between them, but always dissolved eventually. It seems that men drawn to tree work are often those who work most happily alone.

I am picturing them gathering now, and I imagine the Bud is flowing as it did in younger days.

RIP, Marc.

winter whining... almost done edition

Waiting at the bus stop to pick up the Bean after school yesterday, the Peanut and I greeted a friend as she jogged past. She said, "Well! Summer must be coming, if you're outside!"

It annoyed me then, and it's still annoying me now. Partly because, hello? We walk at least to the bus stop and back twice a day, every school day, no matter the weather or temperature. Partly because her being outside running from dawn till dusk 365 days a year doesn't mean the rest of us are plopped on the couch watching soap operas or something.

I just hate feeling so observed, and inaccurately at that.

And yes, I'm fed up of not being outside very much because it's been so goddamn cold. I've been cold inside, cold outside, cold, cold, cold. It's gotten so I especially look forward to doing errands, because at least I'll be comfortable in the car, once the heat gets going. Sometimes I do turn up the thermostat at home, but the sound of dollar bills on fire gives me agita.

I'm tired of artificial heat, and static electricity, and air so dry my nose bleeds. I'm sick to death of fleece and closed windows. I'm sick of drinking a dozen cups of tea a day (fear not, it's mostly decaf) mostly for the sake of getting my hands around a warm mug for ten seconds... until they're cold again, and so is my tea. I wear warm socks, and my feet are sweaty... but still cold.

Fed up, I tell you.

The good news is that this week has been practically balmy, and Spring is around the corner. Hopefully my mood will catch up. If we get down to n-teen degrees again, I might have to point the car south and not stop till the thermometer reads 70.

Are we stupid?

Yes. Yes, we are.

On the upside, environmental geologists will never be out of work.

I'm trying, really I am.

Another heavy gray day -- basically dark by 4:00 PM, again.

There are so many stupid little things I have to get done; even with no paying day job, I have not much opportunity (or motivation, frankly) to do them.

My calendar is full of one obligatory event after another. Not that any one of these is unpleasant... actually, they're mostly all fun... but they are obligatory, and they are one after another after another.

Sort of a manic treadmill o'fun. Which, you know, isn't.

Christmas cards are rolling in, and instead of delight at the greetings they represent, I feel the weight of obligation to take the Christmas photo and get my own cards ordered, written, addressed, sent.

Merry, merry, fa la la...

... this really, really isn't my favorite time of year.

I'm trying hard not to say out loud that I hate it... but I do.

(Yes, I know the real Meaning of Christmas isn't about any of the stuff that I hate. But since it seems Jesus was actually born in June, I'd happily dump all the crap that has to happen in December.)

How Dangerous a Driver Are You?

I guess the premise is that you can't be a totally safe driver, but you can be less dangerous than everyone else.

Created by The Car Connection

I think I scored "above average" instead of "excellent" because I answered honestly the "have you ever driven under the influence" question. Not in the last 20 years or so, but....ever? I'd have to guess, if I'm perfectly honest, that there was one time in my very early 20s when I maybe shouldn't have driven home.

As to speeding... not so much anymore. Before marriage and kids and the overall transformation to Boring Middle-aged Person, I did like to drive pretty fast. Even then, though, I didn't tailgate or weave in and out of lanes or pass people on the right without giving them ample opportunity to move over first. Tailgaters all suck, and the tailgaters who come up close behind you and flash their lights when it's perfectly clear to anyone paying attention that there is absolutely no opportunity to move out of their way -- they suck most of all.

Rest in peace, Jimmy Damour.

Early yesterday morning, a man was trampled to death by people breaking down the door at the Valley Stream, NY Wal-Mart.

That's right: a young man is dead now, because a crowd of people stomped on his body as it lay between them and Big Savings.

Christmas spirit - yay!

(WTF is inside a Wal-Mart that's worth trampling over someone for? Really, what?)

Wal-Mart called it a "tragic situation," swept up the broken glass and reopened the store at 1:00 PM. Nobody from the company bothered to call the man's family to tell them he'd been killed. His father heard it from a friend, and went to identify the body.

I don't think it's being overdramatic to say there's something evil about that.

Something is very, very wrong with this culture. Buy stuff, buy stuff, buy stuff, buy stuff. Buy cheapest, buy most, buy first.

"Black Friday" has been perverse for a long time already. Now there's a death count.

Oh, but who doesn't love a bargain?