Excuse me, did that just happen or am I hallucinating? I thought that was Jo on the phone but it was her daughter, who has a really good book she wants to lend me that she’s sure I’ll enjoy and who wants to BORROW MY BLUE SHOES.
Time is flying. Wasn’t she just in kindergarten?
With any luck she’ll grow much taller than me very quickly and won’t fit in my clothes for too long and so all my stuff won’t disappear.
Anyway, that was surreal.
Grace came to coffee hour with the badass mamas! And Elswhere (Travels in Booland) was visiting too! Sadly… Squid and Jo weren’t there and were much missed.
It’s been what, four years I’ve been going to the cafe with this bunch, every Thursday morning? I remember the point where suddenly all our babies were at preschool. That’s why we said we were the bad moms – we were in theory having a playgroup, but the kids were all basically stuffed in daycare at that point. While many of the other moms we knew were still hand-grinding the babyfood and prattling about the precious moments, we were bitching about never wanting to see another human being’s bodily waste ever again in our lives and flaring our nostrils at the scent of any “grown-up time”. So someone started joking about how we were the Bad Moms Club… and then the Badass Moms Club… or I heard also that some other people called us the Commie Mommies. (I think that was Cathie. We’re not really used to the thought that Cathie died.)
The time we spent and still spend together WITH kids is super important to me. I get to watch everyone else’s parenting and learn from it. These guys (except SuperT) all have kids who are slightly older than mine, so I got to see every new problem come up, and how they handled things with humor and tenderness… or maybe with a bitter edge of bitchy ranting. (I don’t think I’ll ever get over the pleasant shock of knowing that JP, who seems so calm and together and preppy, long ago refused to do her husband’s laundry ever again.) We usually pass books around and just kind of catch up on our lives and gossip. Now that we don’t see each other every day at preschool or the park it seems even more important to make time to hang out together.
At coffee I always try to hold the babies to give everyone else a break. I like them as temporary squeezable objects, I know how to entertain them, and it’s nice to see my nursing mom friends eat with two hands, you know? Plus as one of the moms who has only one kid, I figure I can share the energy. The real reason though… I kind of like babies. They’re always so bewildered and strange, like they’re totally on drugs.
Mona, the cafe owner, lately always comes out to steal away Squid’s baby, so I haven’t been holding her quite so much.
I’m extremely sentimental about the cafe itself! It’s in this kind of scungy area with a lot of used car lots, industrial metal buildings and warehouses, and auto body shops. It’s been gentrifying a little but there’s still a gritty, seedy industrial feel to it and then you walk in and there’s an oasis of nifty architecture, light, art on the walls, music, and great food.
Mona is sort of the ultimate earth mama. She gets up at 3am every morning to start baking, and goes home a bit after 2. (How does she do it?) She manages everything with… I want to say artistry or mastery or both. The sort of person who notices everything. Her employees rock, and they stay for years and years so you know she’s not secretly horrible to them – even though it’s a hard job. Bob, her husband, sort of mooches around doing the coffee roasting and giving customers a hard time. He plays up… on purpose… being a daft old coot. Or a codger. One of those “c” words. The kids are a little scared of him, but in a good way.
The blueberry pie and the rhubarb crisp are great… homemade and not too sweet.
Hmm, I’m off the track, but that’s where I went while I looked at the photo and thought about how hungry I am right now.
One is this sign, on a bathroom at Moomin’s school. I walk by it every day and the incorrectly placed apostrophe bothers me! It’s a bad example. And the teachers don’t seem to understand why it’s wrong. There should not be an apostrophe. If you were writing the words “the girls’ room” then the apostrophe would be after the s. But there shouldn’t be one at all, if the word is on its own. Oh my god, but it bugs me!
Tomorrow I swear I’ll take a blue sharpie marker with me so that I can furtively color in the offensive punctuation mark.
I’m cranky.
At the grocery store they had a booth up with “Earth Day” information, coloring books, mouse pads about conserving water, and posters of Koko the gorilla with her kitten Smokey. Moomin declined the face painting. I explained what “pollution” is.
So I figured we’d buy a plant for Earth Day. “Flower, or vegetable?” “Flower, please.” “Which one do you want…” *15 minutes of consideration of all the different flowerpots* He chose a foxglove I think because the name was cool and it was, in the picture of what the flower will look like, the biggest one & showiest flower.
But then! Would he help me plant it? I persuaded him at length to do some digging. But he would not touch the dirt. “Look, Moomin… dirt is nice.” “No thank you… I don’t want to touch DIRT.” “It’s actually clean dirt. Not like mud. It’s not like touching poop or anything. Well, technically a lot of it is worm poop. It’s soft and crumbly, it smells nice, it’s good for plants and animals.” “WORM POOP! HAHAHAHA!”
I made him do it. What! No child of mine is going to be a snob about *touching dirt*. “Look… Dirt is one thing when it’s on your face and you want to look nice. But when you’re gardening you can admire the beautifulness of dirt.” (You will have to imagine the look he shot me – dire skepticism.)
Not that his face has ever been dirty in his entire life. He can eat a fudgsicle in 90 degree weather and come out pristine.
I don’t get it.
Anyway, I planted the foxglove and my summer squash and then tried to recover the situation. “How about, since I like dirt and you don’t, I do the digging part and you do the watering part.” This lit him up with happiness. He was scared to turn on the hose, but managed to do it. “You can turn it on higher, and the bucket will fill up faster.” “That’s okay mom, I don’t want it to fill up faster.” So I attempted zen patience as we watched drops of water ooze from the hose. A year later when the bucket was 1/8th full, he turned off the hose – bravely.
“Can we go inside now?”
I have a feeling I just perpetuated the sort of annoying grownup behavior that I had to endure all my childhood where Grownups suddenly get it into their heads that you read too much and they try to make you go out on the lawn and play catch because it’s healthy. I stayed outside in the sun, and Moomin read comic books for the rest of the afternoon.
Nubian, at Blackademic, has declared that it’s “Blog Against Heteronormativity Day.”
What can I say… I’m not very heteronormative, no one around me seems to mind, and I’m super happy! People tend to assume I’m a lesbian, and then they find out I have a husband and it blows their mind a little. Then they may or may not find out that my life is more complicated. I’m a little bit butchy, Rook is a little bit femmy, and my girlfriend is definitely femmy. Moomin is too young to have any sort of normative anything.
Honestly it’s not all that big of a deal. People make assumptions all the time and then find out they’re wrong. Sometimes it worries me and sometimes it doesn’t at all. It certainly helps to live in California and in the Bay Area, where it’s pretty normal not to be heteronormative and (almost) no one’s going to lynch you for it.
There’s moments when I feel guilty for the times that I pass as straight…but sometimes I do.
That’s it, I think!
***
Oh, that’s not it. (Of course.) I think sometimes my close friends might be the ones who get the blowback. What I mean is: other people assume my friends are also non-heteronormative, i.e. queer as hell, because they hang out with me. So whatever risk there is to take in being that way, they sign up to take it too, in a way, just by hanging out. I think that should have some acknowledgement and thanks.
Moomin and Hamster woke up at 7:30, a fairly civilized hour. I was already just waking up and thinking of my thesis and of several other things-to-do and things done that I shouldn’t have, as if my conscience wakes up first, has its coffee, and is all hyperactive before the rest of me even has a chance to pee.
I shone with virtue this morning as I was sitting at the table drinking coffee and waiting for waffles to toast for the kids & heard the Nutmeg (aka Peanut, but I hereby rename her to a cooler nickname.) She was wandering around calling for her mom. Who was probably in bed with the pillow over her head, cussing and praying for 15 minutes more of dozing coziness. So I babynapped the Nutmeg, promising her waffles and grapes.
Under Hamster’s good influence, Moomin is playing with the Nutmeg! Hamster is unbelievably sweet to her. Well, Moomin softened too when I told him, “you know all those times you wake up early and Mommy and Daddy are REALLY GRUMPY and yell at you to go back to sleep, because they stay in bed? I think Nutmeg woke up too early.” After that he let her play with his mechanical godzilla.
So that is a nice thing about being neighbors and co-housing-mates – we can be really neighborly at random times. I get a small dose of “cute baby” without the negative parts and can be a kind auntie.
Nutmeg is talking quite a lot for a just-2-year-old. At maximal cuteness of bad grammar and babbling. “A dinosaur push a button and a walk onna floor. A dinosaur button no work. No working! A dinosaur fix a dinosaur. Put a battery inna dinosaur.” Smart! She knows about batteries. I changed the batteries & then she’d arrange the godzilla in front of her, push the button, and hide in fear of its roar and flashing red eyes.
She has eaten quite a lot of grapes this morning. Moomin and Hamster come in and ask for popsicles about every 15 minutes and I say no. I’m having a very low key relaxing morning!!!
I confess that babies gross me out fundamentally and always have. You know.. you’re talking to someone, and then they poop their pants and don’t care. It takes a little bit of the joy out of social interaction. It’s a good thing they’re so cute!
Next week, when Rook is gone to his gaming conference, I’ll wring some payback out of my housemates and get a few extra hours to work on my thesis! Or I’ll slip out to go to this super cool reading on Tuesday night, maybe.
I have not yet succeeded in teaching my kid to pick his nose or to spit.
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I worked for several hours, then went to Bad Mom Coffee hour with Elswhere, met up with everyone for a super good gossip. We talked about public vs. private schools, funding and fundraising, homework, fashion, mom-clubs in general, Seattle city-sponsored new-parent clubs vs. the model here which used to be hippie feminists but is now evolving into upper class women’s retro charity organizations. Where is the idea of the comadre – instead, membership dues to keep out poor people, and then we feel big by raising money to donate to them? That sucks.
We talked about the kids a bit, heard about JP’s horrible Oahu vacation where they opened the beaches despite a recent sewage spill so that the entire island had diarrhea at once. Then about BlogHer because if Mary Tsao and I get into the same 50 foot radius we are surely yelping about BlogHer with wild and wooly intensity. It’s guaranteed.
Els and I went to the city with Grace, but abandoned her in favor of going into EVERY bookstore on Valencia St. She is good at being open to randomness and at finding odd treasures.
She showed me an inscription on the flyleaf of a book: “To my wonderful sister-in-law: I only wish we were related by blood so I’d know you’d be in my family forever! Love, Julie.” Oh Julie, ye of little faith in either your own marriage or your sister-in-law’s! Did she mean it that way or is it just hilariously pathetic? She might as well have written, “If only we had not been so stupid and hasty, we might have married each other.”
I don’t know why but I had pictured Elswhere being sort of serene, wise, and calm. Instead she’s cute and bouncy, hyper and giggly, shy and librarianly and geekgirlish. What’s with the serene wisdom? I’m so disillusioned! And so silly! Possibly all the diet cokes she quaffed on the airplane to stay awake.
She dealt with a lot of trains, lunch with Ms. Jane, more trains. I hauled her off to the Hole and then the park. She trod those hallowed byways of park and parking lot where literary giants daily tread and felt the textual ghosts swirl about her reality, and it was good!
Moomin had a friend over, and the park trip didn’t quite work out in some crucial way but it was still sunny and pleasant, everyone together… for a little while. Back home again to lie down and kind of recharge the batteries… then off to the pseudo-fancy restaurant where they disgustingly pander to suburban yupsters with children so that you are KIND OF in a fancy restaurant… but there are vile coloringbook menus and gourmet corn dogs. The one thing held over from when it used to be a real fancy and good restaurant that was also nice to children… is the ice cream sundae with a little pitcher to pour the sauce, and dishes with sprinkly things, very fancy looking.
I felt a vicarious thrill of excitement when Eliz. and Sophie ordered Shirley Temples. They said it with such considered wisdom as if choosing from a vast array of other sophisticated possibilities, much as I would have ordered a screwdriver when I was 18 and sneaking into bars – not because i liked it but because it was the only drink whose name I could think of. The shirley temples were terribly disappointing for me tonight because they did not look like grownup drinks, which is the WHOLE POINT… but came in hermetically sealed sippy cups with cartoon characters printed on them. Hello. Where is the goddamned martini glass with a goddamned maraschino cherry ? How very humiliating! Eliz did not mind, or pretended not to. I will train her next time to ask for a virgin lemon drop.
Els and I were completely wiped out… I’m pretty much brain dead. And fretting continually about every misplaced comma in my working draft of the thesis.
I taught Eliz about angles when you have a line crossing parallel lines and made her work out what all the angles would be if she knew only one angle. I think I learned that in 9th grade… not that I couldn’t have earlier but no one ever bothered to mention it before then. It was totally pleasing to watch her work it out. She can do math in her head really well, which I never could and still can’t.
Squid told her that if your body was the solar system, and your head was the Sun and your feet were Pluto, then Uranus would be just where you’d expect. Eliz cracked up and I felt proud that my friends are cool enough to explain that crucial fact of life to an almost-10 year old.
Yesterday Moomin and I went over to his friend Hamster’s house for a playdate. They scooted off into the wild blue yonder of giant K’nex and “laser blaster shooters” while Hamster’s mom SuperT and I hung out with our computers!
We were *so* sanfransocial it was disgusting! We were both checking our email and talking on cell phones WHILE having a conversation and simultaneously blogging.
I helped SuperT “pimp her ride”, just putting her blog… Evolving Roadtrip Carnival, on Technorati and signing her up for statcounter and things like that. We added some links to the sidebar template.
She was all like, “Did I just … WRITE CODE?” Well, html… yes… yes you did! “WHOAAAAAA!!!” Her husband is totally fabulous but is clearly the sort of ubergeek who leans in to grab your mouse and do it for you…. and then you don’t know what the hell just happened. So duh she doesn’t know how to make a link and probably does not know how to turn the tv on either because I swear to god their house has the toaster connected to the washing machine, which synchronizes its swishes with the slide show of photos on the TV, which you can also be playing classic video games on at the same time, with a vibrator attuned to your very thought waves. Also, sharks with lasers. He’s that sort of geek!
We had a blast, and walked down to the playground in their little downtown, and went to the Apple store. I got super hard-assed about traffic safety because Moomin has this weird Opposite Day reaction when we hit traffic. From a very calm, sedate, wistful sort of kid … to complete spaz attack. Jumping, yanking and pulling on my hand (which I hate anyway) and sort of kicking and lolling his head around and yelling. ARRRRRRGH.
Other than that I don’t know what the kids were doing on this playdate, but the moms were having fun!
So the deal is, I’ve known Jo’s daughter Elia for 5 years now. And today picked her up from school – Me and Moomin walking together in the sun.
Elia was raving happily about the Best Field Trip in the World that was going to happen Friday. Her “enrichment” class is going to the county courthouse where they’ll have a mock trial, with a real judge, and a pretend prisoner in handcuffs, and lawyers, and everything. I liked hearing this because sometimes Elia can get a bit blasé about things.
So when Jo came to pick her up and explained that Friday they’re flying – early – out to Colorado – Elia melted down. She knows they’re going because her grandma is very sick. And I think she must know that she’s dying. We watched and listened to Elia argue logically and look for a way out. “Couldn’t we just change the plane tickets? Couldn’t I go later in the day?” She was crying and yelling and red-faced, not willing to accept that the coolest thing ever was going to be yanked out from under her.
I totally understood this. I like to have cool intense experiences.. new ones… and I hate, hate, hate for anything to interfere.
And we watched her pull herself together. I felt like I could see the gears turning as she realized:
a) I’m upset about this but in a way I’m really crying about my grandma dying. And my whole family situation, and everything uncertain.
b) My mom and Badger know this and are watching me do it. They, too, and other people, cry etc. for multiple reasons.
c) Life… and then you die.
d) Oh, shit.
That was quite a growing-up moment. I’ve seen Elia melt down and cry and kind of throw a tantrum – too many times to count. She’s a person who gets very frustrated, and … in some ways is very different from her parents in her interests and how she thinks.
Today for the first time I saw her really pull herself together, by herself.
I said, a bit lamely but gently, “It sucks, but it’s more important to see your grandma now. You have your whole life to do jury duty.” Jo said, “It’s really hard, but it might be your last chance to see her.”
It’s not fair – why NOW… at this inconvenient moment? I saw her realize that no moment would really be better (field trip or no.)
It was intense!
Holy tamales, Moomin just told me he got sent to the principal’s office for “not hearing the bell” and … I think he might have just been kind of standing around the playground after recess was over, spacing out.
His teacher did tell me that he had “trouble paying attention” today and should go to bed earlier. Yes… I know… he was up at 11:30 last night. It’s not like I can force the kid to go to sleep if he lies there in bed in the dark.
Bed at 8pm tonight and only 10 minutes of reading.
Bed for me too at 11 because I was cranky and tired all day and couldn’t concentrate on work either. I think my ulcer/gastritis problem is back too.
Iz: And there sure are a lot of lemons over here on this lemon tree. Hey, we could make some lemonade and have a restaurant. And pick flowers. When I make lemonade at Marin’s and Napa’s house we use BROWN sugar because the other kind is too sweet. Because it’s too sweet. These sure are some yellow lemons,
Moomin: What will we call the restonaut?
Iz: and I wonder if the brown spots make a difference and if they mean it’s ripe or if they mean it’s no good? Hey, this is a mutant lemon. This one’s a huge mutant lemon and this other one has
Moomin: Excuse me, Iz, what will we call the restonaut?
Iz: a bee on it or a fly or something and so we won’t pick that one because it will be all germy. And we’ll have so much lemonade and we’ll use a vase to make a centerpiece for the restaurant and
Moomin: HEY TALK TALK TALKER!!!! I’m talking to YOU, MS. TALK TALK TALKER!!!! I *said*, What will we call the restonaut?
Iz: Oh. Um, how about, “The Loose Tooth Restaurant”.
Moomin: Um, no. We will call it “The Flower Cafe”.
Dude. That ruled. It was funny to see the (not really) mild mannered Moomin call her out!
I enjoy Iz’s running commentary! It’s just like being in my own brain!
I’m going to give them the really gross “fundraiser dough” cookies we made yesterday for their cafe. No one wants to eat those cookies, ever.
Moomin: The flowers are all closed, so that they’re camouflaged. (closes magnetic blocks)
Vari: Now the alligator is coming and he eats flowers.
Moomin: Close up, flowers!
Vari: Close your petals, all you flowers!
Moomin: Whew. They’re safe.
Vari: Now the alligator’s gone.
Moomin: The flowers can all open their petals now! It’s spring!
Vari: Yay!!!!
I was a little nervous to put Moomin in the CDC day camp. Ideally he’d play with other kids and do some “activities” rather than spending 8 hours a day playing Legos by himself with me saying “Mommy is working on her thesis… can you get your own juice box?” That would be too sad.
“Camp” was a very chaotic laissez-faire atmosphere. I was worried that Moomin might not connect with other kids and be a bit lost in the shuffle.
Actually I think the unstructured atmosphere was great for him. He played just the sorts of games he likes, sitting on the floor and talking, making stuff up. I think that other kids who are like that might have seen his fun creative story-making side.
There were definitely moments of heartbreak as he watched the kid he wants to be friends with – running around playing brutal no-rules full-contact soccer on a hillside in the rain… which if you know Moomin, you can picture his place in that scene: cautiously watching from far, far away, like a wistful elf. His idol’s other activity is to play fierce video games of Lego Racetrack with blinding speed and accuracy. (Moomin is too shy to sign up for computer time, and I think it’s fine; he’s going to spend a good bit of his life and nerve cells playing some MMORPG, no doubt, so no need to rush into that world.)
So I’ve been happy to pick him up every day and find him playing with action figures or magnetic blocks or legos, always with just one other kid. He does come home, I think, a bit needy of individual attention! But it’s not a bad experience for him.
Though he did learn a lesson today about why it’s not a great idea to bring your treasured star wars dino-lego to school: someone else took it home. I hate to say it but… David P. is in BIG TROUBLE. Ahahaah! Moomin had an epiphany about why his dad didn’t want him to bring it to school: “Oh. So it’s not just that it might break… it’s that some other kid might STEAL MY STUFF.” (outrage!) I told him this story:
Once when I was 6 my mom liked to have coffee with this lady who was our neighbor. And her kid was only 5 and I had to play with him. He was okay but kind of annoying. And I had to play with him and be nice to him, or else I was in trouble! (A knowing nod from Moomin, and a sigh). So, one day I knew, I just knew, that he had stolen my helicopter. I was super mad. But no one believed me and also my mom said, even if he did take it, it’s just a dumb toy and I should let him have it because maybe he doesn’t have any toys and couldn’t I just share? “And then what happened?!” (Moomin on the edge of his seat…) Well, and then weeks later we were at the neighbor lady’s house and I had to play with that boy again. Even though I was still mad at him, I had to be polite. And he had a toy box. And I found my helicopter in there. So I put it in my mom’s purse. And later I talked to her about it. I didn’t yell at the kid. But I was glad to have my helicopter back. “How come you didn’t yell at the kid?” “I don’t know. I didn’t want to fight with him, I guess.”
I still haven’t forgiven the poor dude . Isn’t that funny? It’s terribly unfair considering the amount of things I stole from other people in my childhood! (I didn’t tell that part to my impressionable innocent child.)
Anyway.
The daycare is on-site at Moomin’s public school, partly state-sponsored. For 40 bucks a day you can drop your kid off and pick them up anytime between 6:30 am and 6:30pm. (I did 9-ish to 3-ish.) So I just paid 400 bucks plus a registration fee, so that I could work uninterrupted for 7-8 hours a day. I’m *so* relieved it was okay for Moomin.
I’m glad I remember things like that helicopter and how I felt. It helps me connect with Moomin. I have to remind myself that the things he thinks are important are VERY different from what I think is important. My experience of our life… is not going to be what he remembers. A routine minor thing for me might be a sort of touchstone for him. It’s good to keep that in mind!
Jo’s daughter Eliz told me, “Don’t push down on the waffle iron.”
“Why not? It seems like I should just…”
(sploosh)
“Oh. That’s why.”
Instead of wiping it up I documented the moment. The waffles were delicious with whipped cream and sliced apples.
For the first time in weeks I got to hang out with Jo, who has been in a crisis state for quite a while. So it was nice to see her, but also very surreal to have things feel so “normal” and hang out with kids, making waffles, hearing Eliz’s oral report practice on The Sinking Of The Titanic, watching Sophie jump off the couch and dress up for a “makeover” in lipstick and 5 layers of crinolines, with Moomin messing about on the floor with the Legos and Lincoln Logs. Is this normality real? Is it okay? It was (for me) in stark contrast to some very painful times lately.
For the first time ever, Sophie was nice to Moomin and offered to play with him. She also suggested they “watch Buffy Season 3 together on a playdate sometime.” He is not quite up to that level of sophistication.
Me and Jo sat on the couch with laptops open, typing, busy, and cosy, and me with my huge binder full of papers, trying to show it off. The kids all had a melt down around 7pm – as they nearly always do – which… strangely… was also comforting. Quarrelling and pouting hour at the Casa Spanglemonkey. I watched Jo put her foot down.
We went outside to see if there was a rainbow – and came home – where I handed off Moomin to Rook without much explanation, and locked myself in my office for hours to work on my thesis: a productive end to a long busy whirlwind of a day.
We had a great time at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley this weekend. Moomin played on the giant sculpture of DNA and on the huge whale. I had another ignoble moment of complete lack of patience as he clambered around in the DNA . He wanted to go through the entire long DNA strand; I didn’t want to, and so sat on a distant fountain wall, watching, while Rook stood there to help in sticky moments and explained (like a hero) what DNA is.
The best part of this museum is the animal room in the basement, where every 10 minutes or so they bring out a new animal for all the kids to hold, admire, and pet. We held a tarantula named Parker (after Peter Parker); a dove, a snake, a desert lizard, and more.
Now looking at this photo I am struck by Moomin’s outfit. My mom bought him many pairs of jeans recently, but he doesn’t like wearing them because they are “too rough”. He likes bright colors and sweatpants. I tend to dress him in black or grey with one other color, like I would dress myself; but when he chooses his clothes he comes out like this! And it’s cute!
Yet I know it makes him stand out more among his classmates – none of whom would wear banana-yellow pants. He is often mistaken by strangers for a girl, simply because he doesn’t always wear drab blue and green clothes plastered with footballs or snarling robot warriors.
In fact he has plenty of shirts with yu-gi-oh or dinosaurs… or other butchy motifs. Which he loves to wear. With bright yellow, green, or red pants.
My point was, I guess, that strangers often comment on the way Moomin dresses. They are worried about it. They feel it indicates something disturbing, something that I should prevent or fix. Or – on the other side – something I should be specially complimented on. One mom in Moomin’s former nursery school said to me confidingly, “I think it’s great how you dress him in bright colors, it’s sort of… European. That’s so brave of you.”
I had no idea how to decode this! European? Brave? I still think of it and wonder what the heck it meant. I have a feeling it’s like when Mexicans think I’m German because my armpits are hairy. As if it would be less rude to attribute the “disturbing factor” to some other-nation or cultural difference rather than to individual choice to vary from a norm.
It all seems so silly, to worry about what a little kid wears. When better to play around with funny hair and clothes than when you’re a kid? Maybe that will get it out of their systems and they won’t grow up to have purple hair till they die… like SOME PEOPLE.
This weekend I made two pumpkin pies, with whole wheat pie crust that was about 90% made of butter.
Yum.
I was not only a baking goddess for one afternoon… but I also made a nice dinner… Which I don’t usually do. The normal routine is: I feed Moomin some chicken nuggets and carrots, or frozen pizza, or mac n cheese, or some other embarrassingly non-ideal “food”. Then I fix myself something which is often one of those organic frozen dinners, or just bread and fancy cheese. Rook comes home later and rustles up some kind of other non-ideal food. In short, I shop but don’t often cook. If I do then it’s a big pot of soup that we eat all week, or a kind of half-assed chicken casserole.
When I am a little bit stressed out though, or have been working too hard, I cook to relax. And to assuage my guilt over being a slacker on the whole “housewife” front.
As I set out placemats the other night and flew between steak (Rook), tuna steak (me) and mac-n-cheese (Moomin) … I felt comfortingly like I was channelling my mom… I thought of how she taught me to set the table JUST SO. So I folded paper napkins, arranged everything in a (my)Mom-like way, and had a sense of essential rightness.
We sat and ate together and had Conversation. Moomin squirmed like hell, didn’t eat anything, and was annoying as all getout. I do not like to hear other people chewing, and I like to sit quietly at a table eating with a book propped in front of me.
There’s no way I’m doing this family dinner thing every night. Once a month, maybe!
What would you think if this was your mom?
Luckily Moomin seems to think I am completely normal.
At his school the other day a little boy came up to me, stood on one leg, and shyly asked, “Are you a movie star?” “No… I just have silly hair.” “Why do you have silly hair?” “Because I think it’s fun.” “Oh!!!!!” (said in tone of complete enlightenment)
They are all familiar with the sight of me at this point, waiting outside the classroom with my laptop open and tappety-tapping, on days when I get to school early!
I can’t really fathom how my mild sartorial freakitude and increasingly conspicuous haircut will affect Moomin socially. I do wonder about it, but I have no solid answers.
