shunting cars and hauling freight

maura @ 9:48 pm

Gus’ waxing and waning obsession with Thomas the Tank Engine is in full wax mode these days. I think it’s because we recently discovered that the show is on PBS on Sunday mornings. Since we don’t have cable he’s not really familiar with the whole concept of TV, which means that this past weekend we spent from 6:45am (when we woke up) until 8am (when Thomas is on) repeatedly answering the questions: “Is Thomas on yet? When will Thomas be on? Why isn’t Thomas on now?”

At least we remembered to tape it last weekend. The prior weekend we’d forgotten and thus spent the ENTIRE day recounting the episodes to him: “Mommy, tell me about Fergus* and the smelter again.” After the 5th rendition I was seriously ready to rip my head off. Thank god for VCRs.

Or maybe not, because now the damn theme song is on endless loop in my head. Shoot me now.

*Little does he know that this is the very name I really wanted for his little highness, but Jonathan shot it down.

Happy Thanksgiving! Not that any meal cooked by Jonathan and my mom is ever anything less than extremely tasty, but this year’s was particularly yummy and fairly healthy to boot. Turkey, stuffing (with bacon!), sweet potato fries, kale (with bacon!), cranberry sauce, sauteed mushrooms (with bacon!), roasted squash (I think delicata?), creamed onions (eeewww, for my mom + J), brussels sprouts (for J only, with bacon!). YAY for bacon, I say. Now there’s a meat to be thankful for.

Tomorrow is Buy Nothing Day. Live radical — spend no money!

and in my heart there are no worries

maura @ 9:57 pm

At a big work meeting not too long ago someone said that a blog can’t really be considered current unless it’s updated daily, or even multiple times a day. I guess that’s life in the corporate world.

Here in the crabby crusty tired old lady world we can ignore our blogs for aaaaaaaaaaaaaages, without even offending any of our 3-ish regular readers! Oh yes, we can!

And in other news, my kid will be four (4!) in a mere 10 days and it is completely blowing my mind. Four. He’s writing his name (albeit backwards) now and can actually do some simple addition and subtraction, on the spot, with no visual aids. Go Montessori preschool, go! He’s getting this bike for his birthday, which will BLOW HIS LITTLE MIND. His best buddy from school has one and he’s been talking about it for ages.

Now we just need to put it together and find someone to lend us a pump to blow up the tires.

Time for Lost! Leave me alone!

i spend the afternoon in cars

maura @ 12:43 pm

So apparently Free Friday does not necessarily = Blog Friday, because it’s been nearly a month since I’ve posted.

We’ve been busy having a grandparenty month. J’s mom came to visit the first weekend in Oct., then last weekend we all went to Vermont for my stepsister’s wedding, then tomorrow my mom comes for the day and the following weekend my dad + stepmother are coming (plus, Halloween). Phew!

Hopefully it won’t rain ALL day tomorrow. I’d love to get my mom + Gus out of the house so I can do some cleaning. Plus I am still psychically traumatized from the eight (8!) long days of rain last week, starting the minute Jonathan’s mom got here and not ending until we crossed the border from VT to NY last Sunday. EIGHT days of indoors with a preschooler, plus a long car trip and a wedding! No wonder he made me hold his hand and walk down the aisle with him (I carried the pillow, too). If I’d have known *I* would be the ring bearer, I would have done something with my hair.

Today’s topic: the death of Autumn for me.

I LOVE fall. Love love love it. Always have. The cooler temps, the foliage, the excitement afforded by a new school year (once a geek, always a geek). Plus, Halloween! A holiday so great I got married on it. Around these parts we break out the Halloween dishtowels right after Labor Day, I tell you what.

But recently fall’s been sort of getting me down. There’s just so MUCH to do lately. First there’s Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Gus’ birthday right afterwards, then Xmas. Bam bam bam bam, suddenly it’s New Year’s. This year we also have the public school kindergarten tours sprinkled throughout November and December, for good measure.

I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

Plus, there is the gift trauma. I get very worked up about gifts recently, wanting desperately to give the perfect gift to every one: practical, fun, eco-conscious, not too expensive but not cheap either, non-disposable, useful and unique. Easy peasy, right?

Last year lots of folks got cookies, and I think we will do that for the extended family this year, too. And I actually have a really great idea for my sister and brother, providing I can find the time to execute it. Sometimes I think I should start donating to charities in everyone’s names, but that doesn’t really scratch people’s holiday unwrapping itch.

Grinchy, grinchy me.

But, on the plus side, it’s good to be back in Brooklyn, woo hoo! Seriously, while we had a nice time in VT, I just cannot fathom how those non-city dwellers can get in their cars and drive everywhere everyday and not go insane! Of course, if I didn’t get carsick I might not feel this way. Driving, bah.

humans, think they own everything

maura @ 10:49 am

It’s a Free Friday again, wahoo! I can’t remember what I did with the last one, but it wasn’t redoing this site, as you can probably tell. Today I’ve got to clean out the closet o’ Gus (into which old clothes + toys get tossed in anticipation of the day I’ll have time to organize it, roughly once every quarter or so), in anticipation of our Food Coop’s kids’ clothing swap next weekend. So let’s get right to it. I’ve been storing up stuff to write about, perhaps it’s time for a list:

1. Maggie
2. Garbage Land
3. Fun links

1. Gus, like most little kids, is a collector. Recently it’s been acorns, since it’s fall and there are just so damn many of them everywhere (also he’s been watching My Neighbor Totoro again, in which acorns figure prominently). The other day he wanted to wash the acorns, and spread them on a paper towel to dry on the coffee table. The next day, after we came home from school, I was putting stuff away in the kitchen and heard him crowing with delight in the living room, only to walk over and see that he had what appeared to be an undulating white MAGGOT in his hand.

Ew. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Ick, ick, ick.

(Although, I should pause and say how cool it is that kids are born so unsqueamish.)

Nature-boy that he is, he was of course adamant in declaring his love for the little white worm, and quite unhappy when we suggested that the worm might be happier outside, with all the other worms. He even said to Jonathan, as the worm squiggled in his little hand, “Daddy, look at that little cutie!”

We were finally able to convince him to put it in a small plastic container and take it out to our courtyard, where he put a few leaves and a little water in there and promised to come back and check on her later. Miraculously it was still alive the next day, though I’m sure it’s dead now since the temps were in the 50s last night. Poor Maggie. Luckily, Gus’ first gymnastics class was yesterday and was such a hit that it seems to have wiped all thoughts of the little cutie out of his little head.

(I’ve been calling it Maggie the Maggot, but in actuality I think it’s the larva of a fly or something, rather than a true, necrotic-flesh-feasting maggot.)

Clearly, our son needs a pet. Maybe a hermit crab, though Anne advises against them? Or, better yet, something mammalian? Stay tuned.

2. Gentle readers, you may remember from last time that I was practically pulling allnighters to finish my book before it was due back to the library. Well, I failed. I decided that it was just not worth it to be so crabby and sleep-deprived over a book. So I returned it and re-requested it. What a sane solution!

BUT, the copy of Garbage Land I requested came in, so I wasn’t book-free for long. I zipped through it in a few days (it’s shorter, and more journalism than academic writing).

It was really, really good, but also really, really scary, the kind of book I’m not so sure I’m happy to have read. I’m newly guilty about the composter (we bought one for our courtyard a few years ago, but after the first summer I kind of lost steam and I haven’t used it all summer, which isn’t SO so bad because we have a disposal but still, we should be using it). I nearly got into a huge fight with Jonathan because I bossily demanded that we must start washing all ziploc bags. But, on the plus side, I did come to the conclusion that we are doing pretty well on the whole Reduce Reuse Recycle tip, so that’s somewhat soothing, at least. Of course, municipal waste is still only 2% of the total waste generated in this country, which is kind of depressing.

3. And now, links, because there’s been too much good stuff out there in the intarweb recently to let it go unremarked upon.

– some very excellent bento boxes

– the most hilarious company cookbook ever

– very fantastic blog entry about ritalin

– You know what would really fix their little red wagon?

Hey, I’ve got a closet to clean, leave me alone!

watching the fire as we grow old

maura @ 9:58 pm

Ugh, man, it is hitting me that this site is sooooooo ugly. I was supposed to be working on that, long ago, but I totally lost my steam. And recently Jonathan even gave me some nifty php to help me out, but still I remain steam-free.

Maybe that is my project for next week’s Free Friday. Today’s was spent at a dr. appt. and cleaning the house and reading. And a small nap at my desk, which I wished had been longer.

Oh, and I’ve found my fall soundtrack (for now): this very smoove rad pop gal. Yes, I know this came out last spring, I am behind the times.

So the recent trauma is that the library really has my balls in a vice (if I had balls, which of course I don’t, so I guess that doesn’t seem very traumatic at all. New metaphor needed, alert the media!). Have I blathered yet about how much I am LOVE LOVE LOVING the library in recent years? With the new eXtreme we-chose-time-over-money economy here in our household has come a greatly reduced leisure budget, thus much less buying of books (which, frankly, is a good thing on a space level [where’s the space level? can you take the space elevator there?], too, because we are seriously running out of habitable room in our apt.). Which of course leads to much more borrowing of books from the library, or sharing, as we like to tell Gus: “the library shares its books with us, isn’t that nice?” The Brooklyn Public Library actually has a really excellent collection, and you can request books from any branch in the borough to be sent to the branch near you. And also put books on hold, which is good when you want to read a new book that the whole rest of the borough wants to read, too.

Hence, the vice: 3 of my requests came in at the same time, all new (-ish) books. We took two of them to the beach (Freakonomics [thanks for the recommendation, Anne!] and The Historian) and both of us read them with fair speed. But the third, Collapse, I neglected to bring to the beach. So I’ve been trying to read it before it’s due back on Tuesday (and of course I can’t renew it, someone else has a hold next). It’s like grad school all over again, and not just because he uses a lot of archaeological sources: I have 350 pages to read by Tuesday!

So leave me alone, you, I have work to do! And beer to drink! Yeah! Party like it’s 1992 or so!

P.S. from last time, I completely forgot one of my most favorite time v. money essays, which I initially read way back in first year soc. More on all of that another time.

P.P.S. I am quite liking Collapse, actually, even though he remains a huge proponent of environmental determinism, as in Guns, Germs and Steel. I do love me a good synthesis though, such a refreshing alternative to snooze-inducing, minutia-filled site reports. And he talks a lot about Norse Greenland, who wouldn’t love that?! (Answer: a dufus, that’s who. The story of Norse Greenland ROCKS HARD!)

P.P.S.S. I said leave me alone!!!

just keep swimming

maura @ 11:38 am

Woah, so suddenly it’s fall here, yippee! I love fall, that whole back-to-school thing, plus the promise of cooler weather (after the hellishly hot summer the weather’s been gorgeous the past few weeks) and pretty leaves and yummy roasted root vegetables. Jonathan’s listening to the Sundays, as he does every fall (though sometimes they seem more springy to me). I’m listening to the Lucksmiths, still, which is definitely warm weather music so it’ll have to be phased it out soon. But it’s too early for the Cocteau Twins, so I’ll have to find something else to hold me over.

Gus is OBSESSED with Finding Nemo recently. Like, would watch it continuously all day if we let him. This is a weird place for us, and we’re not sure where to draw the line. Historically he hasn’t much been interested in TV (we don’t have cable), and while his interest in videos has waxed and waned it’s been mostly restricted to 30 min tapes. Even with movies, he’d usually watch about 30 min then wander off. But now, he will be glued for pretty much the entire hour and 40 minutes. And we’re torn…we can get so much done in that time! And he’s quiet, and not getting into anything! At least school’s started again, so he doesn’t really have that much free time during the week anyway.

Today is my first Free Friday, having just reduced my work hours from 30 to 25, woo hoo! Hooray for some breathing room! Hopefully this will make me feel a little less like a rat (in a race). I’ve been reading lots lately (like this book) about the whole time v. money conundrum, and it’s been getting me thinking lots, too. Jonathan pointed me to an interesting article from Harper’s about the virtues of idleness (side note: sometimes I really miss subscribing to Harper’s) that is really, really worth a read.

I want to be less busy, less stressed. Part of that is my own fault — I fill the non-work and non-childcare hours with innumerable projects, lists, tasks, etc. But stress management is a huge deal for me. And in talking to a massage-therapist friend recently I’m reminded that the last time I had a massage the masseuse actually scolded me for being unable to relax! Oh, the shame.

So, to sum up: I’m tightly wound. Going to try to unwind more in the future. Meditation, I think, will figure prominently, if I can figure out when to do it (I want to do it in the AM but I can rarely get out of bed without waking Gus up). And also going to the gym more. And sleeping, yes, sleep, my favorite friend: I’m going to spend more time with you and try not to feel guilty about it. (I have mentioned before that I require a pretty big chunk of sleep to function at my crank-free best, at least 8 hrs, preferably 7 at night with a 1 hr nap [which only ever happens on the weekends but what can you do?]).

And wine, of course. Lots and lots of wine.

bereft of ideas

maura @ 10:15 pm

So I guess I’ve been practicing blogvoidance lately. Why? Eh, lots going on, somewhat depressed, UTTERLY FUCKING HOT. I mean, we have air conditioning, so I really shouldn’t be complaining about the last item. But over 90 degrees it is just too darn hot to be outside. And since doing anything at all involves walking for at least a block or two to get to the subway (and descending onto the 7th-level-of-hell steaming platforms), it just kind of sucks.

Here’s the best thing anyone said to me last week:
“Just remember, you’re DEAD, it doesn’t matter if you hurt someone’s feelings!”
(stated with utter conviction by the lawyer we are seeing to [finally] get a will drawn up)

In lieu of anything interesting in my own life, I’ll now relate a few Gus tidbits.

1) On The Subway: Thankfully, Gus is finally past the “no, I don’t want to take the 3 train, only the 2!” phase. But a series of unfortunate events have been witnessed recently that threaten to make my life miserable for ever after.

First, on one of those 90 degree days, when I’d caved to his request to take the Q home from school (which requires no less than 3 elevators down to the aforementioned 7th level of hell), we step out of the final elevator to the spectacle of a man on the subway track, throwing a cellphone onto the platform. He then hops back onto the platform, picks up the phone, and walks away. And I think, OH MY GOD that is just the end of it. Forever we’ve been drilling into Gus’ train-obsessed brain that there is noplace more dangerous than the tracks, and now he’s seen someone climb down and climb back up AND LIVE.

The rest of the day was spent in repeated question/answer sessions about The Subway Event. I repeated several thousand times that if I dropped my own cellphone on the tracks I would just leave it there, it’s just too dangerous to go down and get it. I expressed assurance that the man’s mommy and daddy would be VERY VERY angry with him for climbing down on the tracks. And I finally pulled out the big guns and revealed that if you go on the tracks and a train is coming you will die: no owies, no hospitals, actually death.

Second, today we went into Manhattan after school to have dinner with an old friend of mine and her son. In this weather the subway a/c can be inconsistent, so there were larger than usual numbers of people switching cars on the train (including us, though we did it the safe way at the next stop). “Mommy, why is that man walking between the cars when the train is moving? Is that safe?” More talk about track danger, angry mommies and certain death ensued.

Sigh. I will now fear my son’s possible subway shenanigans for the rest of my life. Thank you, cellphone man.

2) Hmm, I thought there was a number 2 (and possibly 3 as well), but I think I’ve used up all of my creative juices (eew, wipe those up!) on #1. Oh well.

HEY, what should I read??? I’m at a loss, again. I read “About the Author”, “The Savage Girl”, and “What Should I Do With My Life” (for the second time) and liked them all. But then I got out “Secret Life of Bees” and had to return it partially-read, for it was too depressing. I have a nonfiction book (“The Way We Never Were”) and the new Harry Potter blocked out for our beach vacation at the end of August. But I am jonesing for fiction, man, wanting another time-travelers-wife-like fix. Help me, dear readers!

P.S. get the new Lucksmiths record, “Warmer Corners”, it’s so great!

how scandinavian of me

maura @ 9:25 pm

Phew, the weather’s finally broken, and though it’s still humid this is NOTHING compared to the past week or so. Seriously, it was like swimming through the sweat of each and every one of my fellow New Yorkers every time I left the house (or the a/c-ed office). Eeewww.

And with the cooler weather comes Energy! And Resolve-To-Blog-More-ness! Yes sirree!!!

(Also, I’ve finally been able to drag my butt back into the gym recently, which is definitely having an impact on my mood + alertness levels.)

Alert the CDC! Recently I’ve discovered a new disease. It’s called time-to-move-itis. The description goes something like this: July 30th marks six (6!) years since we closed on our beloved apartment. Six years! That’s a long time. In fact, that’s three times longer than we ever lived in any other apartment during our entire relationship (15 yrs.).

Further, Jonathan and I are members of the 70s nomad generation. Our parents moved a lot when we were little, for various (both half- and full-assed) reasons. I can’t summon the exact lengths of Jonathan’s tenures in his childhood abodes to mind right now, but I can sure as poop tell you that in my own childhood we never lived in any apartment or house for 6 yrs. straight, no way.

AND, what’s the first thing you do when you move into a new place? That’s right, you take a day and completely, thoroughly clean that puppy, top to bottom. Inside the fridge and cabinets. Along the baseboards. The windows. Hell, if you’re really spazzy you might even paint (though we only did this once and it was nearly a relationship-killer, seriously).

So, to recap: six years is a long time to live in one apartment. Six years is also precisely the amount of time it’s been since we washed the windows or cleaned inside the cabinets. Well, except for the kitchen cabinets, since we renovated the kitchen about 4 yrs. ago.

The cure? Obviously it’s time to move!

(Just kidding. What will really happen is that I will use my summer Fridays to clean the house, except for the windows, which will just stay dirty. And the painting. We’re currently deadlocked over that, with Jonathan wanting to pay someone and me thinking we should save the cash and do it ourselves. Stay tuned!)

title, schmitle

maura @ 9:44 pm

Woah, going for some kind of infrequent blogging award here or something. And just when I was really getting into a groove, too. Sigh. Suffice it to say that I’ve been a bit melancholy lately, for personal reasons. No, I can’t tell you, it’s PERSONAL. Sheesh!

Last weekend we totally maxed out our social schedule, striving to have as little time as possible for the three of us to sit in the apartment and stare at each other and for Gus to have fewer opportunities to dump cups of water onto the floor, the table, etc. Of course, this never works, and Gus did indeed dump a cup of water into a bowl of olives on Saturday night, while we had a whole family playdate with a friend of his from preschool and her parents, whom we quite like. Why is our 3 1/2 yr old suddenly acting 2 yrs younger? Hard to tell, but that repeated button-pushing certainly keeps us hopping. Right now we’re working hard on not reacting, which is really really challenging.

And on Sunday we left the gritty city for Tranquility, NJ (I kid you not) with some neighbors to take the kids raspberry picking. It was the last day of their summer season so the bushes were kinda picked out, which was fine since the kids were more interested in eating the berries we picked (and, in Gus’ case, hoarding them: “no Mommy, this is MY container”). Then we picniced (-ked?) under a big shady tree, and our neighbors took us to school by bringing a real picnic set as well as tasty treats both savory (fresh mozzarella w/tomato + basil [from our courtyard plant!]) and sweet (homemade chocolate chip cookies). While we did bring leftovers, they were pretty tasty as well: Jonathan’s been making this salad w/blackeyed peas, cornichons, shallots and cherry tomatoes (inspired by our date night meal at Prune) and the other week we added couscous which adds yet another level of deliciousness. Yum!

So this raspberry farm was really just the bushes, a shack where containers and money are exchanged, a field to park in, and the picnic area, and a porta-potty. After lunch everyone had to pee, of course, but we were scared of the porta-potty. So we made Jonathan go in first. And boy howdy, these things have changed since your Lollapalooza days, I tell you what! I mean, probably the cleanliness was due to location (really, how many people were using that thing, anyway? A dozen a day, maybe?). But man, they are now loaded with all kinds of features: a door that locks! toilet paper! a toilet seat! blue chemical liquid to make odor nearly disappear! purell-like hand gel for after-potty cleansing! But the cream of the crop was…an in-porta-potty urinal! It was this little plastic urinal stuck to the wall of the porta-potty, with a little tube running from the urinal to the under-potty sewage area. Brilliant! AND it meant that if you are the privileged holder of your very own penis, you did not even have to look at the accumulated human waste at all, not one little bit!

I guess if you are a regular porta-potty user, this is not news to you. But for me it was a shocker! I have historically hated porta-potties so much that I risked dehydration + a bladder infection at Live Aid when I was in high school, seriously.

Time for recorded television, laundry folding and beer, sweet beer. Later, gators.

can’t fight the undertow

maura @ 1:25 pm

We’re back from our fabulous trip to the Midwest, but this week has been depressing, sad and frustrating in for many many reasons, completely trashing our stress-less vacation moods. I am still so sad about London, though thankfully all four of our friends currently living in London’s environs are fine.

So let’s sweep that downer stuff under the mental rug, pour ourselves a cup of our favorite caffeinated uppers, and recount amusing vacation anecdotes!

…or even not that amusing. We had a fantastic time. Gus was, as ever, adored and doted upon. This year there was a new, huge, motorized Thomas train set for him to direct the big people around (“Grandma, I am Thomas and you are Percy. No, go on number one track only!”). Plus a Slip-n-Slide, which admittedly gave me a little pause (I am so vain — whenever he falls I always say a little prayer that he won’t land on his beautiful face) but which was rejected by my usually cold-loving child anyway because the (well) water was too cold.

We parents slipped off to a “meeting”, overnight, in Chicago, to stay with college friends, ride the Ravenswood line, gawk like the rest of the tourists at Millennium Park, and stuff ourselves with lingonberries + potato sausage at Ann Sather’s for breakfast. Good times. We felt a little bad while riding the El — our train freak child would seriously have loved it — but the El’s not going anyplace and neither are the grandparents, so it’s not like he’ll never get his chance.

I only read ONE book (Because I Said So, which I ripped through in less than 24 hrs), but I did write in my journal three times. And we did spend about 6 hrs in the car with the Chicago trip, time which could’ve otherwise been devoted to reading. But also, I just wasn’t that into the other books I brought. I actually returned two nonfiction books to the library yesterday, mostly unread. Yes, my nonfiction love affair has been rudely broken off, thanks to Jonathan and his pesky fiction recommendation. It’s sad, really, because mostly right now I just want to go back a few weeks and read Time Traveler’s Wife again, how lame is that? But I got three mostly fiction books at the library yesterday which should hold me, I hope. The first is starting out well, at least.

Which all makes me wonder why the nonfiction glut happened in the first place. I mean, the parenting/momoir (ugh, hate that word) stuff is easy: duh, I had a kid, didn’t you know? But the other stuff, I don’t know. Maybe it’s that having-a-degree-I-don’t-use complex rearing its ugly head.

And speaking of that complex…we topped off our vacation with a visit to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum (which really is fantastic, if you have kids and happen to be in Indy you should totally go — it has FOUR floors of fun for all ages!). Of course Gus now claims that his favorite thing was “the running ramp” — the ramp spiraling up the middle of the museum, leading to each floor. We made him run up and down this a zillion times, thus insuring that he was mellow + quiet (read: tired!) on the flight home.

But I digress! There’s also a big dinosaur exhibit called Dinosphere which mostly consists of huge skeletons in a dome shaped room. The walls of the room change colors + there’s a booming sound system to imitate the weather, plant and animal sounds + visions of the Cretaceous. When we walked in here, Gus said darkly, “I don’t like this world,” like it was a video game level or something. But on the edges of the sphere there was a fake (? maybe real, hard to tell) paleontology lab. Gus had fun fitting together the rubbery, amber-colored molds and bone casts. And I made Jonathan’s stepfather take a picture of this case for me:

Look, it’s Paleontology Barbie and Ken!!! Is this not hilarious? Note her supine, loungetastic posture! Check out the spiffy attire (yes, those are tiny dinos on her shirt) and the bright pink canteen! And there’s no alcohol in sight! Surely this CAN’T be right. At least Ken is wearing latex gloves. Sigh, maybe they should hire me as an exhibit consultant.