Jennifer Niesslein's Internet Presence

One Glove, Two Degrees

2009-06-26T10:46:00.000-07:00

During the age of Thriller, I was in sixth grade, a tall girl with an especially unfortunate perm and the old-school kind of retainer with the layer of plastic molded across the roof of your mouth that collected saliva and forced you to slurp every few minutes. It should be no surprise that I could consider a man wearing one glittery glove cool.

My sisters and I wore out two Thriller albums. My neighbor taught me how to moonwalk, helpfully pointing out that it was easier to do if you placed a coffee table between you and your intended audience. My aunt videotaped the Thriller video and I watched it every time I went over her house.

At my middle school, there was an eighth grader who dressed like Michael Jackson, down to the glove and the jacket. The day we got our yearbooks, the school must have let everyone congregate in the cafeteria for a while to sign them. The MJ-guy had a crowd around him. One girl I was friends with got up the nerve to ask him to sign her yearbook and a small group of us rode her tails over to where he was. This was the closest, I knew, that I'd ever get to an autograph from Michael Jackson. He signed my book. Later, I was mildly disappointed to see that he signed his real name—José—in a teenage-boy scrawl, not the famous signature with the sparkler at the end.

Yesterday, as I was checking my email after dinner, I saw that the actual Michael Jackson died. Since the age of Thriller, my feelings about him have become more muddy, but suddenly I remembered José. I wondered what he might be thinking. His feelings might be just as muddy as my own, but it was lovely to remember a time when there was celebrity so big and so unsullied that a little of it could be lent to make a suburban middle school cafeteria a measure more glittery.

Anti-Foodies

2009-06-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

lactose-intolerant

wheat-disdainful

peanut- and treenut-contemptuous

lycopenally close-minded

MSG-scornful

tannin-scoffing

shellfish-derisive

Good Times

2009-06-11T13:53:00.001-07:00

Brandon and I went to the David Byrne concert last night, and holy hell, I haven't had that much fun in a long time. It's sticky and hot here in Virginia these days, and I was getting ready for a get-sweaty-and-don't-care kind of evening (a close relative of throw-your-hands-in-the-air-and-wave-them-like-you-just-don't-care kind of evening), but it started pouring right before the concert, cooled down, and if there's anything better than hearing the fabulous voice of Mr. Byrne and dancing with your fella while getting your Stevie Nicks on, what with the wind and flowy sundress and mussed hair, I don't know what it is.

For Your Pleasure

2009-05-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

There's not much going on with me. I learned a new way to brush my teeth so as to prevent gum recession. Okay, we're caught up now.

--I recently learned of Awkward Family Photos from my pal Lee's Facebook page, and I love.

--This collaboration between The Blackout Project and the UVA Jazz Ensemble is very good.

--Perhaps you will have some use for this:

Bookety Book Books

2009-04-30T06:03:00.000-07:00

I was going to write something like “So I’ve been up to my eyeballs in book stuff,” but then I thought, well, of course I am. That’s how I do. Anyhoo, that’s part of why I’ve been gone for so long: I’m writing the long book review for the summer issue of Brain, Child and my head and all of my typing ability has gone into that.

In other book news, Caleb is reading Jack London’s Call of the Wild at school. The Call of the Wild does not excite him. I originally thought, Oh, Jack London—all things considered in the canon, he’s not such a toughie. But, it turns out, he kind of is. We sat down to read together to catch up on the book, and this is the sort of sentence we got: “Civilized, he could have died for a moral consideration, say the defence of Judge Miller’s riding whip; but the completeness of his decivilization was now evidenced by his ability to flee from the defence of moral consideration and so save his hide.” And... enter Sandman.

Also, London is an out-of-fashionie. The main characters are dogs, so there’s very little dialogue and not much internal signposts of how a character is feeling. I emailed his teacher about the book—she’s given optional assignments before and I wondered if this might be one of them—but in the end, am I going to waste her time by entering into a debate about when kids should be exposed to The Canon of English Language Literature? And what parts of the canon? Nope.

I’m conflicted myself. On the one hand, you’re not going to think of reading as fun—and you’re not going to be a lifelong reader—if you learn that it’s something to be suffered though. And you’ll be suspicious of books and your own judgment in books if you’re also told that this thing you’re suffering through is considered one of the best our country has to offer. Score one for the Wii.

On the other hand, I totally get the argument that the next generation can’t be all slang and Captain Underpants. Brandon and I just finished the Up series of movies (and by the way—awesome! It’s a series of films about a group of English people. They started interviewing them when the kids where seven, and they go back every seven years), and it’s startling how articulate all the children were in 1964.

What to do, what to do. Very soon, I’m going to start my pal Dan’s book. He’s a cognitive psychologist specializing in education, and Why Don’t Students Like School? has gotten some mahvelous reviews. I imagine some light will be shed on this issue. Some moral consideration, if you will.

And speaking of friends with books—go ahead: admire that segue—I read Jessica Handler’s Invisible Sisters, and it’s just loverley. Jessica’s two sisters died from different fatal bone-marrow disorders and her book is an unsentimental look at what loss does to a family, to a person. Jessica is probably one of the most gregarious ladies I know—and she’s doing readings now. If you’re in the south, you’re in luck.

2009-04-14T05:21:00.001-07:00

When I was in elementary school, there came a time when some teacher had the idea that we all must bring in displays related to our hobbies. I was stumped. I liked to read, but we had all seen a pile of books before at the school library. I liked to ride my bike, but it didn't seem so much a hobby as what kids were supposed to do. I wasn't a gymnastics buff or horse lover or softball player.

I decided to just make up a hobby. I would be a cartoonist. Why, how surprised all my friends would be to discover that I had a secret life, kicking back on Sunday mornings, just me and my pens, doodling up some art, jotting down some bons mots! I started studying the Sunday cartoon section. After one weekend, I had a new "hobby," enough evidence to bring to school to pass off this secret life, and the most rudimentary ideas on how to draw Garfield and The Family Circus family.

Speaking of The Family Circus? I cannot get enough of this.

Some Rain Must Fall

2009-04-06T16:18:00.000-07:00

Long time, no blog, huh?

I’ve been waiting for something light-hearted and fun (or, alternately, intellectually engaging and fun) to happen so I don’t have to be the Eeyore on your blogroll, the Debbie Downer in your RSS, the black fly in your chardonnay. But it’s just not happening.

In the scheme of things, in comparison, all is extravagantly okay. We got jobs, for one. But it’s been a series of bummers, really. For example: After the surgery, my blood pressure shot up and it took a couple weeks to get it under control. The hardback of my book has been remaindered. Oprah got all Real Talk about motherhood today with guests that were neither Stephanie nor me nor anyone I know, and my grapes were ever so sour. And the worst news is that our dog Simon has bone cancer and isn’t long for this world.

I know that things will look up. I’m enough an optimist to know that in a few weeks time, life will be better and a new era will have begun and I can stop looking at the ends and start looking at beginnings. But I'm also enough of a pessimist—or realist—to know that even if that is true, my dog will still be dead. And that is what’s killing me.

Joining the Club

2009-03-20T05:37:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago, Caleb came in from playing outside in the neighborhood and told me that he had a new club.

He’s a fan of clubs. Right now, he’s in two afterschool clubs and had started another two of his own here in the hood (the Danger Club and the Candy Cooking Club, which both sound like euphemisms for meth labs but that’s not something I will think about just yet).

This latest club is the Mental Defense Club. From what I can gather, they’re all learning techniques not to get upset when another child irritates them on purpose. They went down to the creek where redbud petals had fallen. “I told them to empty their minds and just look at how beautiful it is,” Caleb told me, and maybe it was the pain pills but I just wanted to burst into tears right then and there at how, at ten, he’s still okay with talking about the loveliness of petals in a creek, that he can be outwardly moved by plain old beauty, that it’s something he’d share with his peers.

They also practiced walking away when someone said something mean to them (which, admittedly, required them saying mean things to one another) and bringing, in turns, bad and good thoughts to their minds (which, admittedly, sounds not unlike events in the fouth Harry Potter book that we read not long ago).

I can’t imagine doing something like this as a kid. Mind reading, maybe. Mental control, sure. But mental defense? Rah, rah, evolution!

An Immodest Proposal

2009-03-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

BILLY MAYS HERE! I'D LIKE TO TAKE YOUR HAND IN MARRIAGE!

SAY YES NOW AND I'LL NOT ONLY TAKE ON YOU AND YOUR TWO AILING CATS, BUT ALSO YOUR STUDENT LOAN AND CREDIT CARD DEBT!

YOU WON'T FIND A BETTER OFFER ANYWHERE, AND I DON'T CARE WHAT KIND OF MATCHES YOU FOUND ON EHARMONY!

MARRY ME, BILLY MAYS, RIGHT NOW AND YOU'LL NOT ONLY GET ME AND MY WILLINGNESS TO TAKE ON YOU, TWO CATS, AND YOUR DEBT--YOU'LL ALSO GET ACCESS TO MY LARGE EXTENDED FAMILY. MY GRANDMOTHER MAKES RHUBARB PIE! A VERY GOOD RHUBARB PIE THAT I HEAR WON AN AWARD BACK IN THE DAY! YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO FIND A RHUBARB PIE LIKE HERS ANYWHERE!

THE SUPPLY OF BILLY MAYS--NOT TO MENTION A HIGH-QUALITY DIAMOND RING, HIS WILLINGNESS TO TAKE ON YOU, YOUR CATS AND YOUR DEBT, AND GRANDMA (RHUBARB PIES INCLUDED)--IS LIMITED! SAY YES NOW!

I'm Still Here

2009-03-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

Just mildly anxious.

I'll be having a minor operation later this week, then I plan to be hepped up on pain meds and watch Flight of the Conchords from Netflix through Sunday.

Also, I saw this ecard (from someecards.com) and it made me think of myself. Then I smiled because I rarely think of myself but when I do, it's always with fondness. And if you're suspecting that someone broke into the Ativan already, you are correct.

2009-02-11T05:20:00.000-08:00

Back when I used blankets, I would think, What asshole is calling me now?

But, as of yesterday, I have found it in myself to use phone manners:

That's the good news.

I'm still adjusting to my son's becoming a wizard.

And my husband's casting of spells.

And his calling attention to just one of my breasts:

But at least now we have our Snuggies to ward off those frosty 67-degree days like we had yesterday.

Miscellany

2009-02-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

--Among many (too fucking many) other things, I’m working on my talk for the Association of Writing Program’s conference. I’m on a panel with many lovelies and we’ll be talking about the ethics of writing about your kids. So two things: 1) If you’re at AWP, come to the panel, would you? It’s on Thursday at 10:30 at the Chicago Hilton. 2) Have anything to say about the topic? I’m listening.

--Our Snuggies have left Sparks, Nevada. Also, Brandon saw Snuggies at Bed, Bath & Beyond for $14.99 a pop. I am a sucker MC.

--Out to lunch on Sunday, I saw two people in different parties that looked freakily alike. It was distracting and a little frustrating that neither person recognized the similarity.

--I read this interview last night with philosopher Tom Dumm about loneliness, the knowability of oneself or others, and how what he calls loneliness (or what I’d probably call independence) has political ramifications. I also like this quote in it: “Writing a book is very difficult to do, even a bad one. I try to remember that when reading someone else’s work.”

--It’s been very Pleasures of Yesteryear chez Niesslein lately. I just finished the fouth Harry Potter book, and we’re about halfway through the fourth season of The Office. This is one of the best lines: “The eyes are the groin of the face.” It’s funny because it’s true.

Life in the Slow Lane

2009-01-22T14:48:00.000-08:00

I seem to have temporarily (let’s hope) lost my writing mojo.

I was messaging my sister today and I mused how funny it is that we go through some things with our blinkers on.

“Blinkers?”

“Like the horsies,” I wrote.

Blinders is what I meant, even though, until she called me on it, I would have sworn that horses wear blinkers. (It makes it so much easier for the old-order Mennonite traffic.)

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately—moving slowly through Word docs, cooking dinner at half speed, ~~vainly~~ trying in vain to make a memorable Inauguration Day for Caleb and his crew—blinkers on, trying to find the mojo.

I Did It

2009-01-16T09:56:00.001-08:00

I ordered my family Snuggies.

Proof of Minor Ways in Which I Am Optimistic

2009-01-14T05:47:00.000-08:00

1. Part of me believes that, sometime in the future, Ann Coulter will announce that she’s been acting for years as a rogue scholar of Constitutional law, testing the limits of free speech.

2. I keep playing Scramble even though it’s physically impossible for me to beat Erin’s score of 274.

3. Raw oysters.

Getting Schooled

2009-01-09T08:33:00.000-08:00

We had a pretty groovy holiday. My big news is that I’m taking a fiction writing workshop with Jincy Willett, she who wrote some of my very favorite books. (Have you read The Writing Class yet? Crazy good, yes?)

I haven’t taken a workshop since I was but a lass, in college and then a couple years later at an ill-fated two-week stint at Warren Wilson College (from which I came home and immediately got pregnant, conveniently answering the question of what I would be doing in the near future). I’ve become significantly bossier since then, and I was worried that I’d be very bad at being a student. Sort of the Dwight Shrute of the class.

But I enjoyed myself—I’d almost forgotten what a workshop is like. This one is online and uses discussion boards and chat rooms to happen, which is a little weird because you can’t see the reaction of the person whose work you’re critiquing. (On the other hand, I suppose the writer on the other end can roll his or her eyes and flick off the screen and mock you if he or she wants to.) And did I mention the instructor is Jincy Willett?

I’m trying not to be all gushy and ass-kissy, but there was this moment when she asked us to introduce ourselves and say a little something about what we’re working on and about our favorite writers. You know who I wanted to say. But I didn’t.

More Soon

2009-01-05T19:56:00.000-08:00

We are sick-ish, and I must work.

But I must also go on record as saying that if that someone permanently destroyed the master copy of that goddamned Bender Ball commercial—you know the one, with that woman who has too much saliva in her mouth, saying, "I love my abdominals. I love my belly"—I would feel better.

Thanks.

Happy, Merry

2008-12-24T12:25:00.001-08:00

For my grandpap’s November birthday, I got him a pen, as seen on TV, in which you can record messages. From the commercial, I thought the gift was a little bittersweet, a good present for someone who’s experiencing “senior moments” or has had trouble with absent-mindedness. The gift giver is led to believe that, if you care, you can prevent a loved one from forgetting why he went to the grocery store. You can make it so your friend or family member doesn’t wander around a parking lot for hours, looking for the car. You can give the joy of memory, prevent the embarrassment of forgetfulness, become a human ribbon tied around a finger.

In reality, Grandpap and Gram took it to the bowling alley and used it to punk members of their bowling league.

Here’s to good surprises and joy and peace of mind for everybody this season. See you in 2009!

Pick Up Your Pencils, Boys and Girls

2008-12-17T09:09:00.000-08:00

This morning, I went to Caleb’s school for a Writers’ Hot-Chocolate House (a coffee house for the under-eleven set.) A group of the kids had gone to the museum to participate in a writing contest where they penned a poem or story inspired by one of the pieces of art. The teacher ran the readings beatnik-style: The lighting was low, the writers sat on a stool, and we snapped our appeciation.

With a few exceptions, the boys in the class seemed to focus on plot (a robot’s head was punched off, a sumo wrestler ate some art, a stone that could blow up the world was revealed). The girls? All up in character and motivation. (But WHY were you murdered?)

Which is pretty much the gender stereotype of adult writers, too. Even setting aside the obvious spy thriller/ chick lit divide, there’s this idea out there that women writers create memorable characters and men writers create ground-breaking changes to the form. Me, I’ve mostly been of the opinion that book publishing is a weird enough creature that gender is a minor factor in whether a book is successful or not.

And yet. I’ve been thinking about character a lot. I’m better at it than plot (I say, as I’m plotting this thing I’m writing within an inch of its life). Maybe it’s the hot chocolate talking, but after this morning, I’m just a teensy bit more open to the idea that if women are better at character (a big generalization, granted) and character is less valued than form (another big generalization), then women writers might have a harder row to hoe than men writers.

Last night I was reading Bitch magazine, and there was a discussion of an article they ran on ambition. “[I]t’s harder for women to have a strong, colorful persona without appearing like a hobo,” one commenter wrote. “The range of acceptable personalities is still wider for men.” Not everyone agreed, but still.

There is a class of literature, no matter how widely acclaimed, I won’t read. It’s the tale of the older guy who, fearing his mortality, has an affair with a younger woman. I know this story. It’s called About Half the Dads of People I Know, and there are no surprises in it. But other than that, I’m pretty much open to characters of all sorts. No matter who’s writing a book, I do like a strong character. It can compensate, in my mind, for a weaker plot in a way that a strong plot can’t compensate for a squishy character.

Am I being such a girl for thinking this way? Or is my own bias—that I’m better at character than I am plot, that I’m a lady writer and reader, that I don’t think I have many biases against strong female personalities—showing through?

I don’t know the answer. But this whole strong personality thing might explain some of the reviews of Practically Perfect. There are definitely positive ones (for which I’m very grateful), but I’m always taken off guard by the negative ones that aren’t criticisms of the book but of me. One called me an “irritating personality.” Another claimed that if she knew me in real life, she wouldn’t want to spend much time with me. (Aw, please?) And the local daily may or may not have equated me with Paris Hilton (the book review writing was unclear).

Or maybe it doesn’t explain anything at all. I haven’t set up a Google alert for, say, A.J. Jacobs so I don’t know if his personality gets enmeshed in his reviews.

Thoughts, questions, concerns? What do you think?

Music for Your Ears

2008-12-15T05:04:00.000-08:00

God, I love this woman's stuff:

You can get the version with the f-bombs. Work your YouTube. It's the one with the rainsdrops.

That's right. It's a cover of Nelly's "Hot in Herre."

Her name is Jenny Owen Youngs, her CD is "Batten the Hatches," and the appropriate person has already been strongly advised to get it for me.

I Could Give a Shit How Much Oprah Weighs

2008-12-12T11:24:00.000-08:00

If you’ve read Practically Perfect, you know that I like Oprah, despite some of our deeper philosophical differences.

But I really hate that her weight is in the news again. (And she put it there.) She could have framed the issue like so: I’ve been sick with thyroid problems, and here’s how I started to feel healthier. But, noooo. It’s all about 40 pounds more, 200 hundred total, two years, embarrassment, can’t stand seeing myself in pictures. If there’s anything I’m not interested in, it’s math-shame milkshake.

I know. Even Oprah admits that she’s a food addict, and I believe I’ve watched enough Celebrity Rehab to know that sometimes it’s not her but her addiction talking. But I do feel compelled to put out some karmic balance here:

Weight is not a moral issue.

Barbara said it really well here.

Dodai on Jezebel said it well here.

Rubens said it well here.

Weight is influenced by many things, including genes, metabolism, diet, exercise, how one deals with stress, shifting priorities in one’s life, age, and the ratio of satin monstrosities to regular clothes Lane Bryant is peddling. With apologies to Dr. King, it’s the content of your character, and not the junk in your trunk that I’m judging. Well, that, and if you're willing to play Scrabble with me on Facebook.

The New Kid

2008-12-10T13:11:00.000-08:00

I was the first grandchild on both sides of my family, and for years, I had a whole slew of childless aunts and uncles. This can cut both ways—you can either be the annoying kid who won’t shut up, or you could be showered with attention from people who have not yet experienced the 24/7 of, say, playing with dolls or listening to your litany of facts gleaned from the World Book Encyclopedia.

My Aunt Kathy was (and is) an awesome aunt. Tall and blonde and leggy, she’d turn heads when we walked down to the store a few blocks away. She lived in Florida, which seemed incredibly glamorous to me. She was the perfect mix of fun and silly and cool. I’m saying as if all this stopped at one point. It didn’t, but it felt like it did.

She had a baby.

By then, I had two sisters. On some level, I must have known what was to come. In those days, in my family at least, mothers alone bore much of the responsibility of the raising of the kids. I must have sensed that Kelli’s arrival didn’t mean anything good for me. While it’s true that love is endless, time is not. However cute my first cousin was, with the little ringlets and all, she was cutting into some good Aunt Kathy time. I was six or seven when Aunt Kathy and I were sitting on the porch swing sometime post-baby, and I suggested that my mom watch Kelli so that she could “take a break from the kid.” (And presumably hang out with the mature lower-elementary school crowd: me.) “Why would I want to take a break from her?” my aunt said, smiling, love-drunk with her baby. “I love her!” God knows what World Book fact I said in response.

I’d almost forgotten this whole episode, but this past weekend, Krissy came to visit with her three-month-old son. And I have to say, Caleb was acting a little, um, off.

“Why is Nick crying?” Caleb asked. “Is he hungry again?” And in anticipation of our driving together to Richmond, an hour away, he said more than once: “I really HOPE Nick doesn’t CRY in the car the WHOLE WAY THERE.” Caleb brought ear plugs.

I mean, Caleb was nice to Nick for the most part, but however I diced it, I could still see that this was a loss for him. Last time Krissy was here, she cuddled with him on their side of a booth at a restaurant and taught him how to extract the meat from crab legs. This time, she was functioning one-handed and went to bed early.

There really isn’t anything to say to Caleb at this point. He has his feelings and I have to respect that. But it gets better, I want him to know: These days, I love Kelli, too. We spent the Friday after Thanksgiving this year at her house where she hosted the whole extended family, and I got to know her sons. She’s a terrific woman. These aunt-stealers, they turn into allies, into extra repositories for your memories, into pals.

*

Confidential to H., C., and J.: Get well soon! Sending mad love!

Under Pressure

2008-12-04T06:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, I picked Caleb up from chorus practice and the school book fair and took him to run an errand with me. We went to a local kids’ clothing store to get a Christmas present for Nicholas, my nephew who will be here with his mama today.

Caleb stuck with me, his nose in a book. I’ve been to this store a million times before, and I generally like the women who work there. This time, the woman who owns it was working, and she did something to cause me to generally dislike her.

Not once, not twice, but three times, she asked Caleb if he’d seen certain merchandise. He was clearly reading and not interested in shopping, so he didn’t start begging for it, but still: Girlfriend was trying to upsell to my child.

We are unapologetic TV watchers, so from the time he could talk, we’ve taught him that THE COMMERCIALS don’t make decisions about what you buy, YOU do. We talk about the quality of products, if they’re worth the cash, yadda yadda.

Yesterday, I didn’t quite know what to say. I probably should have pointed out that I’m the one with the credit card, not the ten-year-old boy, or something. I at least should have said something to Caleb so he could recognize what she was trying to do. I guess it just took me too long to put a name to what was happening, and by then we were in the car on the way home.

What would you have done? Me, I’m just going to not go back. That, and post this on my blog.

Mature

2008-12-02T06:16:00.000-08:00

Every time I think about sitting down and writing about Thanksgiving, I get a little overwhelmed. It was really great, and I worry that I’ll leave some detail out. So let’s just say that it was super groovy—I got to hang with both the Niesslein ladies and our extended family—and dinner was delish. And now, as is my way: on to more unpleasant things.

The first night we were there, Brandon ran up to Giant and bought some beer. The fridge was full of Thanksgiving things so we put the beer on the front porch to keep cold. We all were in and out of the house, having cigarettes, grabbing another beer, taking Mom’s dog out. We were singing some karaoke and having a good old time.

Until someone stole the beer right off the porch.

I try to be generous of spirit. I try to be forgiving. I try to turn the other cheek, take the high road, wonder what Jesus would do. A lot of time I succeed, but there is a deep vein in me that is decidedly un-Jesuslike. This streak is more like the ancient gods, getting their undies in a bundle over petty things, smiting indiscriminately, flinging lightning.

I threw on my coat and shoes and ran out into the street to look for the perpetrators. My head was thrumming with adrenaline. I stomped around in the darkness, peering down the bike paths for a figure that had a Stella Artois-shaped box on his person. My hands were shaking. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I caught the thief, but he would be sorry. (Because there’s nothing more intimidating than a chubby thirtysomething in a puffy jacket.)

Brandon had followed me out, not to assist in my quest but to make sure I was safe. When I finally realized that the beer was gone for good, I came back in. I hatched a plan that I would put something really gross in the empty beer bottles and I’d then leave those on the porch. Ha ha! Ha ha! Ha ha! Ha ha! Ha ha! Sweet vengeance!

These sorts of plans are not new to me. When I was fifteen, I dated a man who was twenty. I figured he was immature for his age, I was mature, it was okey doke. He’d take me to Friendly’s for ice cream, or to the movies. One night, though, I sat in the living room for far too long, ready to go, dressed up, make-up on, waiting for him to show up at the door. He never came. That weekend, I bought a few containers of chicken livers; they come in a small vat of blood. I asked my friend to drive me to where he lived and I poured the blood over one of his belongings, and I never spoke to him again.

This weekend, I didn’t even collect the empty bottles for the plan for vengeance. After my adrenaline ebbed away, I realized that it just wasn’t worth the effort. I guess you could make the case that all that has happened from when I was fifteen to now is that I just got lazier. I like to think, though, that I’ve matured.

Also, I couldn’t figure out how to get the bottle caps back on.

Summaries

2008-11-25T06:45:00.000-08:00

I am not buying Christmas presents yet. I’m still very much in the mode of buying presents for myself, like the bundle of eight karaoke CDs I got two weekends ago.

I was happy to see how many songs I knew on them, but once we popped those babies in the machine, I was surprised to see the lyrics and the strange sort of plotlines for songs I thought I knew. For example:

--“Name” by the Goo Goo Dolls: A song dedicated to a relative or childhood friend who’s, frankly, a little obsessed with anonymity and is in need of a vacation.

--“Breakfast at Tiffany’s”: A couple has absolutely nothing in common except they both have fond feelings for one movie.

--“Getting’ Jiggy Wit It”: Will Smith dips into his generous well of self-esteem.

--“Where Have All the Cowboys Gone”: An old-timey woman is disillusioned when the terms of the relationship she insisted upon set her up for an unsatisfying life some years down the road.

--“I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”: Man watches woman sleeping, foregoes own sleep. In my opinion, creepy.

*

Happy Thanksgiving! Would it be cheesy for me to say that I’m grateful that I got to meet you peeps, whether through your blogs or comments or in real life? And that meeting you really does enrich my life? Well, too late. I already said it. Ha!

Oh, the Humanity

2008-11-17T05:56:00.000-08:00

Brandon and I try to go out by ourselves every Saturday. To be honest, I get a little pissy if we can’t. Lately, we haven’t been able to (a combination of our normal sitter’s ramped-up social life and our own laziness at finding a back-up) and I have been increasingly pissy about it. I literally don’t get out much. I work at home. It’s only the need for groceries and beer that keeps me from being a shut-in.

We had a sitter this Saturday, and humanity did not disappoint. At one bar, we got to witness a reunion of two men who both had that stoner laugh (heh heh heh heh heh). Damn, they must have missed each other. They hugged and hugged and hugged. One of them was named Stewey. I know this because whenever Stewey would leave the room (and we had our suspicions about where he was, heh heh heh heh heh) and then return, the other guy would yell, “Stewey!!!” and the mutual manhandling would begin anew.

It was a joyous thing to witness and I’m not even kidding.

On the down side, there was also an older woman, missing some teeth, nursing PBRs that she drank with a straw and paid for with change. She was waiting for her son. I know this because she pulled out a Christmas ornament with his picture on it and showed it to people. She kept asking the time. She borrowed a cell phone to call him. When we left, he still hadn’t shown. It broke my heart, a little.

I don’t know if it’s some voyeuristic thing that makes me like going out in public places like this, or just some Bowling Alone drive. As for us, we were the couple who started off discussing how restaurants shouldn’t seat people if they don’t have enough wait staff to handle it. Which had just happened to us, and we wound up leaving before getting a drink.

“We got the silverware dirty, and now they have to swap that out,” Brandon said.

“Yeah, I licked all of mine,” I said.

“I put mine down my pants,” Brandon said.

It devolved from there.

That Podcast

2008-11-11T05:21:00.000-08:00

Remember when I said I'd put up the link to the podcast of the evening Stephanie and I were at Writer House? Well, here you go.

I'm the one who, apparently, talks reeaaal sloooow.

Many thanks to Elizabeth McCullough and the Charlottesville Postcasting Network!

Some Things

2008-11-07T06:38:00.000-08:00

Dionne Ford and Margaret Gunther, contributors to the Fall 2008 issue of Brain, Child, are going to be on WBUR today; they're both mothers of biracial kids. (You read and loved the essays, no?) You can listen here from 12:10 to 12:30.

I'm also putting up the talk I gave at the ARM conference. I was going to make a video reenactment but my voice is pretty much somewhere between Kim Carnes and Macy Gray these days, so I'm sticking with the written word. It went pretty much like so:

Moral Support
by Jennifer Niesslein

When I first started writing this, I was at my sister’s house in North Carolina. Her son Nick was seventeen days old. It was not yet nine at night, and they were already in bed, nursing. To fill the down time, I sat at her kitchen counter with my notebook. In theory, I was there to help in a physical, tangible way, but my kid’s ten years old and my skills were a little rusty. Sure, I could get Krissy glasses of water and whip up some dinner. But when I burped Nick, he’d puke all over the both of us. When he fell asleep on my chest, I’d startle him as I laid his warm little body down on a cool sheet. My personal well of breastmilk had gone dry years ago.

Really, what I was doing was providing moral support for my sister. Do you remember the run-up to that first time you were going to be in charge of a helpless human being all by yourself? The day my husband went back to work, I had a panic attack. For me in those early days, motherhood didn’t go with apple pie. It went with scary love and sleep deprivation and the great big fear that I would screw up royally.

Krissy was using her time with me wisely. We went to Target. The idea was to show her that, yeah, she could no longer just sashay into the store, just her and her purse, but a life with a baby was do-able. I didn’t help her at all, which made me feel like kind of an asshole, but the point was that she could do it. So she stuck Nick’s bucket seat in the cart and we wandered through the aisles. People peeked into the cart to see Nick. He fussed a little in the store. By the time we drove through somewhere for lunch, though, he was screaming. But the world didn’t end.

It’s just that, for a time, it feels like it might.

I’m the co-founder of Brain, Child magazine, and sitting in Krissy’s kitchen, it occurred to me that it’s not just new mothers who like to hear that the world doesn’t end. I needed that message a lot in the beginning when I was afraid that motherhood would swallow me whole, but ten years in, I still need it. The funnier essays we run might point out that the world doesn’t end when you daughter points out in a crowded restaurant that you just made a poop in the ladies room, or that you get through the witching hour by having a drink or three with your girlfiend. The world doesn’t end when you try some left-field parenting advice (elimination communication) and it makes you crazy for a time, or when the drugstore really screws up your kid’s medicine. More amazingly, the world doesn’t end when it seems like it really, really should: when a child dies, for example, or when a mother slips into a serious depression.

This is from one of my favorite essays that we’ve published, “Holding On,” by Johanna Rossi:

“These girls need large amounts of time. They need me, in my imperfection. They need aimlessness, patience, repetition. How can I provide all this and out be achieving too?

“I am not trying to be everything to my children; I am trying to be what they need. My children are passionate about me: all their childish emotion is wrapped around my unworthy, reluctant self.

“One morning I go with Evelina to kindergarten and she introduces me to her classmates as if I’m the greatest celebrity in the world. I sit on the floor and these kids are crawling all over me, leaning against me. Evelina cries when I leave, and I drive home through the endless woods with my chest collapsing because I don’t know how I can support this kind of love. I don’t know how I can pour it out for her when no one’s giving it to me.”

We originally published Johanna’s essay in December 2000, and when we reprinted it in our Greatest Hits anthology, I checked in with her for updates. She wrote back, “This motherhood desperation is hard to capture because when mothers are going through it, they’re too exhausted to write about it, but once out of it, it’s too hard to remember. I couldn’t write this piece now. Three years ago is another world.”

Johanna’s right. And as a reader, there’s something extremely valuable, I think, in finding that connection that you can’t really get from other mothers at the playground, or sometimes even your close friends. The subtext for in a lot of these essays is that you aren’t alone. They reinforce what we all know: that the world—as glorious and messy and frustrating as it is—didn’t end with a given moment.

But the truth is, some moments do end. Three years ago IS another world. People try to tell new mothers that—enjoy it! it doesn’t last forever! motherhood changes you!—but we don’t listen. I didn’t anyway.

After another week at Krissy’s house, I came back to Virginia. In her little coccoon, I was news deprived. Turns out, Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter was pregnant, and conservative talking heads were tripping all over themselves to seem to approve. The stock market was in trouble, and people were finally questioning the role government has in our lives. Health care was an issue on the front page. These were all things Brain, Child had been covering for years.

It occurred to me that, crap, I forgot! I forgot to tell Krissy the other important part!

It’s the part that comes after you find out that your world isn’t going to end and that you are doing it by yourself: You start to see connections between your experience as a mother and the stuff that either is, or should be, news. This isn’t the stuff we do all by ourselves. And this is the other part of what Brain, Child does: exploring that connection between motherhood and the bigger world.

It’s something that I think about a lot these days. Because while part of what Brain, Child does is connect mothers’ experiences, the other part of what it does is offer what the writer Jennifer Mattern calls a lens to to see the world through. When my son was Nick’s age, I have to confess: My eyes would glaze over when someone would talk about the economy, but it’s a different story when your readers are trying to find a job that will accommodate their need to have money and their need pick the kid up on time from pre-school. I might have let myself be scared by statistics about, say, teenage pregnancy or online predators, if it hadn’t become my job to know the truth. Motherhood in general and Brain, Child in particular brought the world’s issues home for me, but I think many mothers go through the same transformation, where they go from wondering how they will do it all by themselves to acknowledging that there are issues that they can’t tackle all by themselves.

I’m making it sounds as if Brain, Child is an activist magazine. It’s not. I have my own opinions, of course, but we report in a balanced way. This lens that we offer doesn’t lead to any definite conclusions. It’s not our job. Our job at Brain, Child is to bring readers feelings and ideas, comraderie and debate. We don’t have an agenda, other than to put stuff out there and see who grows it.

Stephanie and I have an essay in the book The Maternal Is Political, edited by Shari MacDonald Strong, in which we start off by talking about why the bumper sticker—you know the one, “Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History”—irritates us. And I think part of what we wrote about why we’re not activists fits well here:

“When you get down to it, some would argue, every time a mother’s voice is heard—this is what my life is like, this is what I struggle with, this is what makes life worth living—it is a poltical statement because we’ve been invisible, dismissed, for so long. The two of us believe that—and have to believe it really—to a certain degree. But we also recognize that what we do is limited. We provide a stage and hope that players—the ones who can take it to the next level, the lobbyists and activists and policymakers and voters—will jump on it.

“Months ago, the New York Times ran a piece on the mothers’ movement. The big color photo accompanying it featured Kiki Peppard, the Pennsylvania activist who has worked for years to get a maternal discrimination law passed in the state. Peppard ws holding a magazine in her hands. It was at an angle. We’re sure that most New York Times readers couldn’t tell what magazine it was, but we knew—it was Brain, Child.

“We can recognize a metaphor when we see one. Well-behaved women might not make history. But we’re hoping with all our journalistic hearts that we can make a difference.”

So, you might ask, why am I at this conference devoted to the mothers’ movement? Well, like I was in North Carolina, I’m here as moral support. I know a lot of you do research and work as activists in the movement. And I know it’s in an intense period. I want to say thanks for making my job even more interesting. I’ll tell you the same thing I told Krissy when we were hugging goodbye in the airport drop-off lane:

1. You’re doing a great job.
2. Call me if you need me.
3. Except at night.

Yes!

2008-11-05T13:49:00.000-08:00

I’ve had a killer cold for the past few days, so last night when the election results were coming in, I was curled up in an armchair while Brandon and Caleb were watching the results trickle in. My heart couldn’t take the maybe yes/ maybe no, not after these eight years. I sat there and read Dreams from My Father. Maybe you’ve heard of it, by a Mr. Barack Obama?

It was a very soothing evening, the sort of hopeful one that I haven’t had in many years. I thought about the small throng of people at the polling place in front of the “First Time Voters” table I saw earlier that day. I thought about the fact that issues I care about (and have written about in Brain, Child and in my book)—like what place government has in our lives, health care, the stock market’s weaknesses—were actually part of a national conversation now. I thought especially about my friends at the Virginia Organizing Project and how thrilled they must be that one of their own would be in the executive branch.

I woke up this morning like it was Christmas. Ooh, what did the American electorate bring me last night? A President-Elect Obama?

Yes, you did.

Hey, if you’re excited about the momentum (and I know, not all of you are) and live in Virginia and want to keep up on local and state-wide issues, check out VOP. It's like in the Chicago part of Dreams from My Father, except, you know, both here and now.

Earnest and out.

Happy Halloweenie

2008-10-31T06:35:00.000-07:00

Last night Stephanie and I gave a talk at Writer House, the fabulous center for writers here in Charlottesville. (It was lovely—Elizabeth McCullough had us all kitted out with podcasting equipment and I’ll link to it when that’s up.) Before the talk, we went downtown for dinner. Apparently there was to be some doggie trick-or-treating on the mall: tons of dogs in little doggie costumes were out. I predicted that on the front page of today’s local daily, there would be a headline along the lines of “Downtown Goes to the Dogs!” I was wrong. On the front page of today’s local daily, the headline was “Happy Howl-o-ween!”

I love Halloween. You order the kid a costume, buy some candy, and that’s it. No fuss, no muss. Usually in our neighborhood, we get some pizzas and socialize before dark, then hang out on our porches.

And usually, there will come some religious folk who will try to convince us that Halloween is the devil’s work. I have to say, I can’t make myself act interested even particularly respectful to these people who are harshing my mellow. One year, though, I was standing with a group of neighbors and I noticed that Kathleen was nodding and listening and generally giving this stranger a few moments of her time out of politeness. The rest of us found it a good moment to corral the kids or refresh the beer or check the candy situation. I looked over at Kathleen and realized that she was wearing a headband that made it look as if she had a knife stuck through her head.

Happy Halloween! Here’s a song by They Might Be Giants about the tallest, widest, and most famous haunted mansion in New Jersey.

ARM: The Gossipy, Name-Dropping Piece

2008-10-30T07:49:00.000-07:00

It was dark and chilly and before six in morning. There was a cab waiting for me in front of the house because I was flying to Toronto for the Association for Research in Mothering conference, and I didn’t trust myself to drive that early. I spent the car ride listening to the driver, an amiable enough guy, tell me how, at 50, he doesn’t know why 20-year-old women find him so attractive. With that living example of The Patriarchy at work, I was off.

Damn, it was fun. I’m going to write about the ideas in the conference (“You Say You Want a Revolution?” it was titled) in the winter issue of Brain, Child, but I have to say: Half of the stimulation was the social stuff.

I had lunch with Amy Anderson from Mamazine and Amy Hudock from Literary Mama shortly after I got there on Saturday, and I had already missed a few days of the conference (argh, but the work, the family, etc.). I got to meet the organizers of the whole shebang, Andrea O’Reilly and Renée Knapp. They’d been running full steam keeping everything going, and at some point on Saturday, a university patrol officer came in and informed Andrea that her car—which she left at seven that morning in the lot in the middle of a downpour—had been running all day long, at least six hours. There was a metaphor for the mothers’ movement there, she told the group.

During the conference, Joy Rose, Lynn Kuechle,and Rebekah Spicuglia were interviewing and filming the people there to make a movie. And because I cannot interact socially without saying something regrettable at one point, this time I did it on film. I was trying to explain how, when I was a new mother, how much I resented being invisible and condescended to. Suddenly, back then, everyone was calling me Mom. “I’m sorry, but unless you came out of my vagina …” I said to the camera. Oh, no. It’s never a comfortable idea to make reference to one’s own vagina, unless you’re in a much different line of work than I am. So there you have it: I was the Eve Ensler of the 2008 ARM conference.

The panel I was on—with Joy and Lynn, Amy and Amy, and Juliana Forbes and Beth Osnes of Mothers Acting Up—was a lot of fun. We—me and the Amys—worried about it a little, talking about creativity and art, after hearing the other discussions about women in prison, say, or the future of child-making. But if I can say so myself, we did just fine.

Afterwards, ARM held a reception. I got to meet a whole lot of people that I’d heard of, and probably that you’ve heard of, through the magazine, and also some people whose work I didn’t know but I want to. I spoke with Lisa Chiu (whose panel I really regret missing), and Lori Slepian (one of the founders of the National Association of Mothers’ Centres), and a ton of other women whose email addresses I imagine I’ll be looking up for months into the future.

Later, Amy, Amy, Lynn, Jocelyn, and I went out for beers. We drank our Stella, and you know what? It was one of those very rare occasions that we could just segue right into real talk, like a discussion of mothers and abortion (and the essay by Elana Sigall in the current issue of Brain, Child). I’m trying to find words to describe what it was like to experience this in person, but suffice it to say that maybe for me, it was just the perfect storm: Good conversation, fun people, beer, more beer.

The next morning I would have breakfast with Joy and Amy Richards (writer and co-founder of the Third-Wave Foundation) and Mary Olivella (VP of MomsRising), and it would be another stimulating interaction, my last one before I had to catch my plane. Joy would send a clip she’d made of the conference, although I’m not in it, because by that time, I was standing in the customs line, worrying that I’d miss my flight.

But that night, we walked back to the hotel and went to our respective rooms. I’d bought a new travel-sized thing of contact solution, and the plastic seal wouldn’t budge. I looked around the bathroom, around the suite. I flew, so I didn’t have any sharp objects on me and the room didn’t seem to hold any either. So I stood there for what seemed like twenty minutes and gnawed at the plastic, my contacts blurry, my eyes sleepy. I thought about the conference and all these mothers, like me, trying to care of business the best way they know how.

Calling All Drama Queens

2008-10-29T05:33:00.001-07:00

Hey! This weekend, I went up to the Association for Research in Mothering conference—and boy howdy, that was fun. I’m going to write about it soon.

But until then, I’m hoping you can help a magazine out? We’re running a little low on Backtalk stories for the next issue. (It’s that section in the front where people send in anecdotes in response to a certain topic—they’re usually about 200 words or so.) If you have something in response to this:

“We know an man who likes to say, “The older I get, the further I could swim as a boy.” We can relate to that kind of inflated memory. (We swear one of our pregnancies lasted for seven years, for instance.) Tell us the tales from your childhood or parenting life that you’ve somehow managed to blow waaaaay out of proportion.”

Mind sending it to editor at brainchildmag dot com?

(I’m posting this on Brain, Child’s Facebook page, so sorry for the double whammy.)

Exquisite Corpse

2008-10-23T05:28:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article in Poets & Writers last night about a writing professor who does prompts with his students and also does them for himself to get pumped up for writing. I’m pretty sure I’m too easily distracted to do that, but I was thinking, hey, mebbe I’ll do a little Exquisite Corpse thing on the old blog!

I actually had to look it up, and this apparently isn’t a real Exquisite Corpse thing (with rules about the structure of sentences, or secrecy, or whatever), but the idea is, we write a story together. I’ll start, then in the comments, write a paragraph that picks up the story where the last person left off. At comment #20, we’ll stop.

The fun!

Okay, here’s the first graf:

We had driven a ridiculously long way and spend a ridiculously large amount of money only to end up here.

What I’ve Been Meaning to Say

2008-10-21T05:59:00.000-07:00

Long time, no blog posts, huh?

Here are some subjects I meant to blog about:

--I noticed a wasps’ nest out back the other day and was horrified that my first throught was that I needed to mention it to Brandon because I somehow believe that it’s his job to deal when the wildlife start infringing on our homestead. WTF, I believe the kids say. Be gentle when you break it to me that women got the vote, okay?

--We went to dinner at the Red Hen in Lexington, co-owned by my Brain, Child pardner Stephanie Wilkinson. Review: Y to the UM. Seriously, that red-wine/chocolate sauce is something they must serve in heaven.

--Squirrel frolicking season. Review: Thumbs down.

--A treatise on why I’ve been quiet about politics and the election, the gist of which is that I can’t bear to lose faith in my fellow Americans again should somehow McCain win.

Be back after I dig myself out from under some work!

More Time Suck

2008-10-13T05:02:00.000-07:00

Okay. I promise I won't become one of those people in your life that keeps forwarding things that are "funny" or "cute" or "something every woman should read." That said:

I'm posting this because if there's anything funnier than babies swearing, it can only be puppies knocking over a liquor store:

On Brené's recommendation, we watched the movie Once this weekend, and, boy howdy, I loved it. Have you seen it? Have you watched this song on YouTube three million times, like I did?

Various

2008-10-09T05:42:00.000-07:00

--Brain, Child is doing another caption contest for a cartoon by Beth Hannon Fuller. Get your buns over there and submit something, would you?

--The hardcover of my book Practically Perfect is going to be remaindered soon, so if you like hardcovers and dislike paperbacks, it’s now or never, peeps. Buy from Amazon here, or Brain, Child here.

--Every once in a while, I’ll drive down Jefferson Park Avenue and see the apartment that Brandon and I used to live in. It was cheap ($200 a month for each of us). All the walls were a dark wood panelling; the downstairs carpet was a red shag, and the upstairs carpet was Rice-a-Roni–inspired. It was the last place where we ever had a roommate.

The last roommate we had there subletted the place over the summer when our fabulous roommate Emily left. He was horrible. (Here I was going to go on and describe the many ways in which he was horrible, but I’m on a less-mean-is-more kick. Let’s just take this one fact to stand in for the sum of his annoyingness: He gave himself the nickname Foucault, but told us his real name was Miguel. It’s wasn’t. It was Michael.)

There were hushed, and then increasingly less hushed, conversations about him. This brought me back:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Time Won't Give Me Time

2008-10-07T05:33:00.000-07:00

Last week, I was wondering why I wasn’t getting very much done, work-wise. On further reflection, I began to suspect it had to do with whiling away a half hour taking pictures of myself for a new profile picture on Facebook. Even worse, I just wound up with some smirky black and white dealio.

I need to stop with the Facebook. I need to stop telling people what I’m doing (because guess what? it’s the exact same thing that you’re doing!). I need to stop checking in on what other people are doing. I need to stop obsessively checking to see who played a move on Wordscraper. (Caroline Grant, yes, I’m looking at you, but I understand you’re busy promoting your new book!) I need to ignore friend suggestions from my former high school classmates, particularly ones regarding people that I was not actual friends with while in high school.

Caleb’s home sick or “sick” today, with either a real or fake cough, and I have a resolution: I’m going to take my notebook downstairs and be offline ALL DAY LONG. You may now start placing bets on how long that’ll last.

Look Away

2008-10-02T13:28:00.000-07:00

I got nothing to say. I'm writing marketing copy for Brain, Child, which is harder than it seems. Some days, words not work so good for me.

So, I'm directing your attention to the following:

--Jenn Mattern's post on Wall Street. It's the first engaging piece of writing about the economy that I've read in many moons.

--Jody Mace's post on kind of tricking the goyim.

--This thing that I found via Jincy Willet's blog. It's a Photoshopped take on a Mormon ad, although the style will be familiar to anyone with a passing acquaintance with Sunday school. I laughed and laughed and if you don't hear from me in a few days it's only because the Lord has smote me.

Good to Know

2008-09-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

When I get all full of the writing angst, Brandon reminds me that, if all else fails, he has the inside scoop with a certain publisher.

When he was nine years old or so, Brandon had a Commodore computer, a dot-matrix printer, and a concept for a novel. He saw an ad somewhere: an offer to Get Your Book Published! He got on the Commodore and wrote a letter to the company. He wanted to make sure he got the format right. He gave them an example of what they could expect from him:

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz.

He also typed out the numbers and punctuation marks, and printed this out on his dot-matrix printer.

(He wasn’t going to put all the work of writing a novel if the the publisher didn’t even accept the dot-matrix print-out.)

Eventually, someone at the press wrote him back, someone who figured that he was a kid. The person wrote that they did accept that sort of print-out, but reminded him that, at this publisher (a vanity one), it was very expensive to publish a book, yadda yadda.

I love this story for so many reasons—for one, we laughed and laughed and laughed—but part of the reason it sticks with me is that it pretty much nails the writing angst at whatever stage of the game you're at: The combination of being earnest and afraid of messing up.

Young Man!

2008-09-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

Guess what I learned? How to use the video do-hickey on my camera.

[Now, a good forty-five minutes later] But apparently, I don't know how to get the motherfucker up on Blogger. I need some soothing sort of tea.

Or maybe a picture of some cute cousins. Why, look! Here's one!

Oh, Canada!

2008-09-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

Next month, I’ll be taking my first international flight. That’s right. I’m running for vice president. Oh, I kid, in an already-lame way.

No, I’m going to Toronto for the Association for Research in Mothering conference. I’m on a panel with some fine company, talking about “Creativity, Expression, and Agency.” In case you couldn’t tell from the title, it’s an academic conference, and I really have no idea what to expect, here with my aging B.A. Many of my friends are in academics, so I’m not fearing that people will suddenly start questioning me, using words like "hegemony." (I imagine they do that to each other when I'm not around. Kinky!) It’s just sort of the great unknown, both the conference setting and Toronto. True, my friend Trisha is from Canada (and thus gets first dibs on all Canadian karaoke, meaning the Barenaked Ladies and Alanis), but other than knowing the Canadian way of pronouncing “sorry,” I’m a blank slate.

Are you going? Will you? If you can’t, will you at least leave some tips on Canada and/or academic conferences?

Things You Should Know About Pit Bulls [with Lipstick]

2008-09-16T05:43:00.000-07:00

A common misconception is that Pit Bulls [with lipstick] don't feel pain. Pit Bulls [with lipstick] have the same nervous system as any other breed, and they can and do feel pain.

Allstate (depending on the state) may not insure homes with Pit Bulls [with lipstick] ... The Automobile Club of Southern California will refuse to provide homeowner's insurance if a dog living in the home "looks like a Pit Bull [with lipstick]".

Pit Bulls [with lipstick] have been reported in the news media as "adopting" other species of animals, such as kittens. This is one possible origin of the breed nickname "nanny dog". However, it is more widely accepted that the "nanny dog" nickname comes from the Pit Bull [with lipstick's] innate love and tolerance of children.

The Canadian province of Ontario, on August 29, 2005 enacted a ban on Pit Bulls [with lipstick].

Pit Bulls [with lipstick] are said to be popular with irresponsible owners, who see these dogs as a symbol of status or machismo.

Pit Bulls [with lipstick] are often used for dog fights, due to their strength, courage and widespread availability. Fight training often means using other dogs of the same sex, as most dogs will not show aggression towards the opposite sex.

Most people who own [Pit Bulls with lipstick] direct their dogs' plentiful energy toward nonviolent athletic tasks.

[Thanks, Wikipedia!]

Hitting the Road

2008-09-13T08:51:00.000-07:00

Whew! I'm back. The nephew? Gorgeous. His parents? Fabulous.

Guess what else happened this week. Stephanie Wilkinson, my pal and partner at Brain, Child, opened a gastro pub with our friend John Blackburn in Lexington, VA. They both have been busting some major ass getting it ready, and the pictures of it look gorgeous. Their chef is Tucker Yoder--he used to work at Oxo, which, if you're from C'ville, is known to have been super-delicious. The restaurant is called The Red Hen, and Steph just astounds me. I can't wait to go and chow down.

Speaking of traveling, do you know Travel Savvy Mom? It's a website run by the writer Jamie Pearson, and if you're looking for a family-friendly hotel, she has reviews of them, all over the world. (I wrote a little piece on The Anchorage in Ocracoke, if'n you're interested.)

So, I'm still catching up with stuff, which is what happens when you lounge around reading during the day and do karaoke two nights in a row. (I still don't know what I'm going to do with all that ass inside these jeans.) Be back soon.

Dear Nicholas,

2008-09-08T09:05:00.000-07:00

First of all, welcome to the family. We’re all thrilled to have you.

I know you’re busy being a newborn, but when you get a spare moment, I’d like for you to consider my case for becoming your favorite aunt:

1. I have the experience. I’m the oldest of your aunts, and while Erin and Jill are admittedly more fun than I am, I do bring a certain dedication to the job. For example, a few months ago, you cousin dropped her new mood ring in the public trashcan of a ice-cream/ coffee shop. You know what I did? I fished the ring out of the milky coffee mess at the bottom of the barrel. For real? Yes, sir.

2. I come with a good entourage. I have never known Brandon to turn down a good game of sword-fighting or pretending to be a plastic dinosaur. Caleb has proven himself to be very good with the little ones. Keep in mind: They are both part of the Aunt Jenny package.

3. I have ingredients to make Shirley Temples at my house.

4. You may have heard that I take Caleb to the bus stop in my pajamas, braless, but this should not influence your decision. That’s Caleb’s cross to bear.

5. If you don’t find anything you like on the restaurant menu, I will permit you to order dessert. I will offer you the garnish on my cocktail. I will taste the salsa first to make sure it’s not too spicy for you. When you leave my house, I will make you a small bag of goodies for your trip back home. I’m pretty good at birthday gifts (although I concede that Erin and Jill are my equals in that department). I’m good at tickling, and at the same time sensitive that some people dislike being tickled. I know the names of almost all the dinosaurs and am currently being schooled in Pokemon.

Lots to think about, I know. No rush. Good luck with the sleeping and the eating and the developing!

Love,
Your Favorite Aunt

P.S. I know that was a little pre-emptive!
P.P.S. I cannot wait to meet you tomorrow. I adore you already.

Waiting

2008-09-05T11:54:00.000-07:00

Maybe you're waiting. For what? Oh, I don't know. For an important email, maybe. Or for election season to be over. Or for your nephew to be born.

In any of these cases, I'm pretty sure this will help you pass three minutes and thirteen seconds of the time. Andy Borowitz on The Facts of Life:

(It's from Annabelle Gurwitch's documentary Fired! Have any of you seen it?)

Columnist Michael Graham, Now Out of Both Sides of His Mouth

2008-09-02T09:59:00.000-07:00

Last month, I wrote up a little news analysis piece for Brain, Child about the media coverage of the seventeen expecting teenagers in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They’re the ones who supposedly had a “pact” to get pregnant and raise their babies together, except that, whoops! There wasn’t any evidence a pact existed.

Anyhoo, I watched a youtube clip of conservative columnist and talk radio host Michael Graham skewering the school system that supports teenage mothers by providing services like day care. He also called the mothers-to-be “stupid” and got his undies all in a bundle on his blog:

“What [Dr. Brian Orr, who advocates for birth control without parental consent] and the Gloucester schools have done is to encourage the idiotic notions in their girls' heads that they are mature and responsible enough to be making these decisions. They are "choosing" (pause for a moment of sacred chanting from feminists) to go get pregnant and become moms at the age of 16. That is their "right" (pause again for cheers from opponents of abstinence-based education). Parents? They don't need no stinkin' parents. … And as a result, these girls will soon have a taxpayer-subsidized bundle of joy.”

Well. That was so two months ago. Now teenage pregnancy isn’t idiotic. It’s … “normal.”

Graham in the Boston Herald today:

“[VP hopeful Sarah Palin’s] daughter’s pregnancy highlights another part of Palin’s appeal. Her normalcy. Here’s a woman who has run a business, raised a family, who is sending a son off to Iraq, who has another son with a disability, and now has to help her teenage daughter face motherhood. These are experiences that millions of American moms have shared, can relate to and understand.”

Dude. Let’s now pause for the enormous whooshing noise your backpedalling makes.

The Salsa Stylings of My Boo

2008-08-29T04:57:00.000-07:00

If you need a little boogie up in your business, have a listen.

That's Brandon on the trumpet. The group is Conjunto Sason, and this was its practice before playing for the Charlottesville Salsa Club.

I wish I could salsa. But this is how I actually dance:

Um

2008-08-21T05:40:00.000-07:00

Caleb started school and I got a little questionnaire back. Question #3: What are your child’s weaknesses?

Well, he’s terrible at bridge.

Changes the radio station if Led Zeppelin comes on. Although that's more of a character flaw than a weakness.

Caleb has a serious weakness for Swedish fish, puppies, and Star Wars Legos.

I’m stymied.

A Recommendation

2008-08-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

Hey! Jincy Willett has a new book out! I blew off everything yesterday and read the whole shebang. The book is called The Writing Group, and it’s a mystery, about a writing workshop in which one of the participants is a murderer.

Oh my stars, as they say in the old country. I think this might be my favorite book. It’s funny and smart and suspenseful and moving. I was pissed at myself when I finished it, such a greedy guts, reading it all at once. I couldn’t resist, though. Look:

“All the Halloweens in Amy’s memory had been thrilling events, where you ran masked and free through magically unfamiliar streets. Amy couldn’t remember this part she was watching now, the first and probably most important part, when you had no idea why they were wrapping you up in a sheet with jagged eyeholes and leading you into the dark void. Outside Amy’s car window normally overprotective adults giggled at their sobbing, spooked children. The crying ghost had probably glimpsed himself in a mirror, and his mother had said, “It’s just you, silly. You’re scared of your own self!” and couldn’t help laughing when this made him cry even harder. Here was the beginning of a story idea: Why is the kid crying? No. Why is his mother laughing?”

It’s been ages since I’ve been in any kind of workshop, unless you count my foisting manuscripts on Stephanie and begging for help, but the group dynamic felt spot-on, and the mystery element is really well done. I’m gushing, I know.

Just read the thing.

I Know What I Did This Summer

2008-08-15T09:04:00.000-07:00

Oh, Ocracoke, if only you were not so far away. If only the drive home from your lovely village didn’t eventually result in tussles over which cousin was touching the other and the inevitable traffic backup. If only I had a larger car or shorter legs. If only. Because I would come down all the time.

Why was I there? The fabulous Sundae Horn hooked me up with a speaking engagement at the Ocracoke Friends of the Library annual meeting and a book signing at Books To Be Red, and a cooler bunch of people cannot be found anywhere on the Outer Banks.

For a long time, I didn’t know how to vacation properly. Oh, I sight-saw the shit out of places. I visited every museum/ historic marker/ biggest ball of twine. I dragged my loved ones to every lighthouse we encountered. I did research on what lunch venue was most satisfying. But I never got the knack of relaxing on vacation. I’d been to paradise, but I’d never been to me.

This vacation, I think I finally got the hang of balancing the activity with the relaxation. You can bet your bippy that there was activity—dining out, walking around the island, a kick-ass time at karaoke, the library and bookstore events—but I think what I’ll most remember is the relaxing moments.

Sundae’s husband Rob captains The Windfall, and they kindly offered to take us out on it for a sunset cruise. I’d never been on a sailboat before, but can I channel a little Drew Barrymore here? It was just beautiful and peaceful and, damn, I loved it.

The other moment of relaxation was at the hotel pool. This was the vacation during which Caleb and my niece discovered that adults can be lifted quite easily in the water. Caleb hoisted me up like a tiny groom and my niece administered a surprisingly good scalp massage. They called it my “treatment.” As in, Mama’s got the nerves and she needs her treatment. They gave me my treatment for quite some time before they got bored and moved on to underwater tea parties and cannonballs and handstands. But I have to say: It was divine.

Correspondence

2008-08-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

To the letter writer,

I know who you are. Back off, Cowardly Asshole.

*
To everyone else,

Be back as soon as I dig myself out of the mountain of vacation laundry!

Come Out, Come Out...

2008-08-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

Not exactly wherever you are, but if you happen to be in Ocracoke, North Carolina this coming week! I’ll be giving a talk at the Ocracoke Library on Thursday, August 7 at 7 p.m. for the Ocracoke Friends of the Library. (It’s free, and everyone’s welcome.)

Then on Friday, August 8, from 2:30 to 4:30, I’ll be at Books to Be Red, with my special pen.

I would posted all this sooner, but Blogger froze the blog yesterday because their software suspected I was a spambot. Which I suppose is better than a thousand monkeys with typewriters?

Readerly Stuff

2008-07-31T13:47:00.000-07:00

Hey, remember when I asked you if you could recommend some books? Damn. You ladies are good. I just finished Marianne Wiggins’s The Shadow Catcher, and, Jessica, I will kiss you full on the mouth for introducing this to me. It’s a novel, but reads like a history within a memoir. It’s just about everything I’ve been wanting in a book lately, and I’m all giddy that I haven’t read any other Marianne Wiggins so I can just gorge myself.

I’ve been reading a lot lately. To provoke thoughts. Because otherwise my brain has just been emitting garbage like, “I could really go for some watermelon right now” and “I wonder when the new season of Love of Rock is going to start.” I’d like to think that maybe the subconscious is busting its ass getting the structure of my new project together, but I may be deluding myself.

In addition to The Shadow Catcher,, I also found some good thought provocation in The Best American Crime Reporting. Almost every single piece in it is top-notch—yes, there is a crime, but also some great insights.

Take this passage from Ariel Levy’s “Dirty Old Women,” about women who sleep with teenage boys:

“We (still) like to keep our understanding of masculinity connected to our understanding of maturity. We’d never had a female anchorwoman deliver our news until recently, we don’t often let female columnists explain the news, and we’ve never had a female president to make the news. For many Americans, being a real grown-up requires a penis. And if you’ve got that, even if you’re only 15, you must have the maturity and the manliness to know what you want to do with it—even if that involves intercourse with a 42-year-old. Who among us would say the same thing about a 15-year-old girl?”

There’s a goodly amount of this sort of brain work in the book.

And here’s something for the journalists among us:

“Did you see Bertucci’s testimony?” he’s saying as he’s driving. “Was it good for my case? Fuuuuuuck. It was awesome for my case.”

That’s from Tom Junod’s “The Loved Ones” and I wouldn’t be able to contain myself if a quote like that fell in my lap.

Fun with Recycling

2008-07-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

I got all inspired from Rebecca Walker’s essay in The Maternal Is Political to reduce my dependency on paper towels, so I cleaned out my overstuffed drawers and set aside some old tee-shirts to cut up.

As is our way, said tee-shirts sat in a bag for a few weeks before we got around to cutting them, and finally one night, Brandon and Caleb sat down to make us some rags. I happened to glance over just as one tee-shirt—Brandon’s tee-shirt—had been scissored to the perfect crop top length. “Try it on,” I demanded.

Brandon stood up and held it up. It hit mid-ribcage. “You like?” he asked.

“Seriously,” I said. “Go try it on.” [I’m trying here very hard to write this so it sounds as if I’m not a bossy harpy, but no luck.]

So he goes into the bathroom and comes out wearing his crop top. Oh, we laughed!! And then I laughed some more! And then I had an extra side of laughing!

I recently did an interview where one of the questions was along the lines of, “Is Brandon really so awesome?” When a man will put on a piece of clothing at his wife’s request, for simple entertainment purposes, I believe the answer is: Yes.

I Forgot to Tell You

2008-07-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe I didn’t write on my blog that it was my birthday on Thursday because I am a big baby about everyone knowing when it’s my birthday because IT’S MY SPECIAL DAY AND I AM A SPECIAL GIRL!! Even the people who I incidentally run into know because I find some way of letting it slip. Would you like cash back? Well, probably not because when it’s your birthday, like it is for me, TODAY, other people are supposed to be showering you with dinners and gifts. So, no thanks.

Between QI and ZA Lies Obsession

2008-07-23T09:38:00.000-07:00

My mother and I are out of control with the online Scrabbble. We send messages like “where are you?” and “you better not leave your computer.”

Ah, well. At least all this vocab-building will really help me with my college boards!

The One, The Only

2008-07-21T12:49:00.000-07:00

I’m almost positive we don’t stink anymore. Except Simon. He totally does.

It’s not often that the ideas alone in a book stick in my craw and get me all bothered, but Jenny Block’s Open had that effect on me. To sum up from the last post: Open is about Block’s experience of, and her case for, open marriage.

I should say first off, that Block is a terrific speaker and she’s very good at capturing things like that heady feeling of first attraction. At her talk, she emphasized how an open marriage allows her and her partners to live honestly, instead of cheating—the deception and betrayal is the hurtful part of infidelity, in her experience, not the act of sleeping with someone else.

It’s interesting, I think, that only sexual stuff that leads people to an open marriage. Plenty of us who can’t get what we need from our spouses get it from other people—an appreciation of jazz, say, or a discussion of the kind of books we like. All in all, I have to believe that open marriage is definitely a workable situation for some people.

That said, it ain’t going to be me, babe. The most surprising thing about this book to me was how strong my own reaction was to it.

I should point out here that I believe that each marriage is a black box, knowable only to the people inside of it. I haven’t even had adult relationships. Brandon and I met when we were nineteen. I know our marriage well, but that’s it.

So I think part of my big issue with this book is when Block branches out from her own experience and makes assumptions about how widespread the problems that led her to open marriage are. One of her main arguments is that monogamy is unnatural and that men and women are biologically driven to multiple partners. “And if that’s how we’re wired, so be it,” she writes. It’s a frustrating argument. As Barbara pointed out in the comments, the whole “natural” v. “unnatural” is a losing game. I mean, one could make the case that we’re “wired” to hasten the deaths of our weakest newborns, say, but we don’t.

Worse, the us v. them thread put me on the defensive. Block writes: “Open marriage is not for the insecure. It is not for people concerned about what the Joneses think, or whose self-worth is inextricably tied to their partners’ faithfulness and attention … It is not for the dishonest, the close-minded, the naïve, the ignorant, or the incommunicative. It is not for people ruled by ego. It is not for the unimaginative or the unadventurous.”

I know. I know Block is tired of being thought of as some sort of promiscuous sexual deviant, but jeez. Do we really have to break it down into the polyamorists—brave, honest, and true to themselves—and the monogamists? The Snoozy McDimwits?

There aren’t any good statistics on how many of us marrieds cheat, so Block and anyone else who writes about monogamy or infidelity becomes instantly susceptable to what journalist E.J. Graff calls the my-friends-and-me method of journalism. Block suggests that it’s possible that upwards of 80% of marriages involve some infidelity. If that were true, I do believe I’d need my smelling salts.

For most of my friends and me, monogamy works fine. For me and Brandon, I know it does. And it does for a lot of the reasons that Block scoffs at. Yes, part of my self-identity is wrapped up in Brandon because a lot of my history is wrapped up in Brandon; we’re inter-dependent and introducing anyone else to this dynamic, for us, would be dangerous and stupid. I don’t get a charge out of seeing anyone flirt with Brandon, much less have sex with him. And if I want something else while making the whoopee, I ask. (Granted, this is not difficult since I’m hetero; if I wanted a pair of lady breasts to nuzzle, it’d be another ball game.)

What do you think?

The Stank

2008-07-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

On Friday night, I went to see Jenny Block speak at Writer House, our brand spanking new organization here for writers. Block wrote Open, a memoir/polemic about marriage. She and her husband decided years into their own marriage that they wanted it to be an open one. Right now, Block is married and she also has a committed relationship with a girlfriend.

Which, basically, is not for me to have an opinion on. But I was kind of unsettled by her insistence that monogamy goes against our biological imperatives. This post was going to be an examination of that.

Until some biological imperatives of a different sort came up.

I came home, poured myself a beer, and went out back to have a cigarette. Because Simon is my short and fuzzy shadow, he came with me. He trotted out into the yard. There was a kerfuffle, and the next thing I know, I see a fluffy animal scuttling off near the a/c unit. And there is Simon, stumbling up onto the porch, foaming at the mouth. A skunk sprayed him.

You know, I always thought I sort of liked a skunk smell. I don’t mind a mildly skunky beer, for example. But that was before I knew what skunk really smelled like, which is: What you think of as skunk, but mixed with an overpowering stench of rancid garlic and rotten onion. I called to Brandon, who got on the phone with the emergency vet. Caleb started bawling, and Luna got frantic to come outside. I hung out with my poor stinky pup who continued to foam at the mouth. I didn’t know where the hell the skunk was. I was scared that it would amble up the ramp onto the porch and spray us both (not likely, I realize in hindsight), but every minute or so, I said loudly, “Go away, you motherfucking skunk.”

We treated Simon with a baking soda/ peroxide/ dish soap solution, and then made a mistake: We put him in the basement until we could figure out what to do.

It’s a long boring story. Let’s just say there were several baths in the back of Brandon’s truck, there were tomatoes to be pureed, there was a basement to be mopped vigorously with a bleach solution. There were windows open in the dead heat of mid-July, and there was boiled vinegar. But most of all, there was paranoia that the three of us humans would become so used to the smell that we wouldn’t be able to tell that we were rank, too. That we would forever be The Family Stank, trailing fumes like Pepé Le Pew.

Later, I think, I’ll write about Open because it really is an interesting book. But right now I’m thinking that so-called biological imperatives—whether it’s an urge to have sex with OPP or to spray my dog with skunk stank—for me, can only create a mess and leave me paranoid about the aftermath.

Old Things

2008-07-18T08:32:00.001-07:00

I got back a couple days ago from Vero Beach, Florida. Brandon’s folks live down there, and they have—at least on vacation—for generations. His great-great grandfather drove down from Indiana, in pre-interstate days and built a house there in 1917; apparently, no one wanted a house right on the ocean then. It’s still standing, close to downtown, with additions and updates.

Given my own little genealogical project, this strikes me as indescribably cool, to have this place that your family can claim as its own. If you want to know a little bit of the town’s history? Dude, you just ask your mom! Apparently in the ‘50s, there were two columns with a big wooden sign that read “Welcome to Vero Beach.” Today, just one of the columns is standing with no apparent purpose. Brandon’s mom knows this, first-hand.

I love this shit. Me, I went up to Pennsylvania earlier this summer and drove around looking for where my great-great grandparents lived. I took my grandma with me and drove down a windy road to a tiny coal town. It was completely unfamiliar, except in the way that all of western Pennsylvania is familiar to me, with the dark dirt and leafy trees and the roads that dip up and down. Gram and I searched for a good twenty minutes before we actually found what we were looking for: a small collection of houses that made up the town where my great-great grandparents lived and died. It was the physical location, but where they lived—with men fighting outside the Hungarian Club, a movie theater where these immigrants got a taste of Hollywood, mine shafts that children feel into—doesn’t exist anymore.

On one hand, it saddens me. But on the other hand, it’s some serious progress that I didn’t grow up in a company house; that, in fact, our house was “California style,” with a great room and brand-new furniture. In my family, we’re always rushing to whatever’s newest. Our family recipes always call for a brand-name something, and “antique” means “used” and not something we want.

Ladies, it’s hard out there for an amateur genealogist.

More Free Advice

2008-07-09T11:16:00.001-07:00

So the flu/virus turned into bronchitis, and now I sound like Brenda Vaccaro gargling with gravel, but I believe I’m on the mend.

Sadly, I have nothing to blog about since I’ve been watching TV for the past nine days. Unless you need me to fact-check something from Dirty Dancing. I watched that twice. Also, the Christopher Guests movies. Why, I wonder who knows I’m staying at the Oasis? That cracks me up every time.

It’s probably time for another round of free advice, based on the search engine keywords that get people to this blog. Okay. Here we go:

--“Boyfriends ugly furniture.” True story: Once Brandon and I were helping some friends move, and it was determined that some ugly furniture was too heavy to get out of the apartment. That was a good move.

--“There’s no fear in this dojo.” In case you’re wondering, it’s okay to refuse when asked to “sweep the leg.”

--“Song lyrics ‘all the light in the house were on.’ “ Is this the song you’re looking for?
All the lights in the house were on.
Someone let the faucet drip.
Beer bottles were in the trash,
And we ignored all enviro-tips.
Hello. We’re enemies of Mother Earth.

I’m kidding. That’s not really a song.

--“And another thing jenny.” Why would you search for this? Are you hoping the other thing will show up on my blog? Well, as a “Jenny,” here are some suggestions for you:
And another thing, Jenny—I’m going to get you a fresh beer from the refrigerator!
And another thing, Jenny—you’d better not try to clean the house!
And another thing, Jenny—you look breath-taking with unwashed hair!

--“brandon dust.” Sprinkle a little of this for fantastic results!

Sick

2008-07-02T21:49:00.001-07:00

I have some kind of horrible summer virus that I keep calling "the flu" because that's the sort of alarmist I am.

Suggestions, Please

2008-06-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

I finished The Devil in White City not too long ago, and I really loved it. The new project I’m working on is kind of a historical mystery (we’ll see—history seems to take a while to move in the mail). In the meanwhile, I’m reading. If you know of any historical non-fiction mysteries you found enjoyable, I’d love the suggestion.

Today I bought some notecards to file the many facts I plan to amass. “If you’re not 100% happy with this Staples brand product, just return it anytime. It’s that easy,” the label reads. I’m trying to think of how someone could be disappointed in their notecards.

Dear Staples: My notecards smell “funny.”

Dear Staples: My notecards are too white.

Dear Staples: My notecards emit a high-pitched whining noise.

Dear Staples: My notecards are tempting me with their suggestive sexual behavior.

I’d best get back to work.

West Virginia, You Concern Me

2008-06-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

Today, we got back from our trip. We set out to see my grandparents, who live in southwestern Pennsylvania. I live in central Virginia. On the map, it doesn’t look very far, but there is a problem, and that problem is West Virginia.

I sent us on the route that took us for hours up the mountain and down the mountain, up the mountain and down the mountain. The scenery was trees. And mountains. And trees. Every once in a while, we’d see a house.

In one yard, there was a man on a riding mower, riding slowly. “Yes, I’m going to mow the lawn,” I said to Brandon. “But, you see, I’m going to do it reeeeeeal slow-like.”

Fifteen minutes later, Brandon asked, “How do these people get groceries?”

Later, we noticed a landscaping trend: partly buried wagon wheels flanking either side of the driveway. “Can you imagine giving directions?” I said. “Drive to the middle of nowhere. Turn left and drive another twelve miles.”

“It’s the one with the wagon wheels,” Brandon said. “No. The other one.”

Hey, I grew up in a little patch in the middle of nowhere that I loved too, but what I’m saying is, unless it’s your own patch, it’s not good driving.

Finally, we hit PA. If you’re around up there, do yourself a favor and get this fish sandwich from the Italian Club. They only have them on Fridays. Caleb recommends the shrimp.

I’ll back back, once I dig myself out of the mountain of vacation laundry.

The Ethicist Goes to the Pool

2008-06-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact my skin only varies in shades of pink, from pale pink to hot pink (Blush and Bashful?), Caleb and I have been spending serious time at the pool.

The other day, there were a group of younger teenagers there. Thirteen, fourteen, maybe. It’s hard for me to tell now. But some of them looked prematurely grown and others still had that goofiness of middle school to them.

Anyway, they were screwing around, throwing each other in the air and dunking each other, and the lifeguard blew his whistle at them a few times. The last time he did it, one of the kids asked, in a smart-ass kind of way, why they had to listen to him. The lifeguard sort of lost his shit and yelled back, “Because I’m the LIFEGUARD!”

I was done with my water-treading by then, and I picked up my book and sat under the shade area, next to the teenagers. I noticed that it sure looked like the boys—especially one boy, who looked more mature and wasn’t even wearing a swimsuit—were sexually harrassing one of the girls. Disrespectful touch and all that. But it also sort of looked like she liked it.

I like to think I’m the sort of person who would step in if I saw something bad going down. And I thought this was kind of bad, not in a criminal way, but in a sad gender-relations kind of way. I wanted to pull her aside and tell her that, yeah, maybe you have a crush on him, this alpha male, but when this is the kind of attention he’s giving you, nothing good will come of it. Initially, you want an arm around your waist, not a hand rubbing your booty. You want someone who calls and tells you he can’t wait to see you, not some asshole who dunks you and you come up sputtering.

But even if I weren’t some increasingly salmon-colored stranger, would she listen?

In the end, the ringleader boy stalked around and said, “Motherfucker,” re: the pool staff. Caleb was next to me, and I have a strict policy of his parents being the only one to introduce him to swear words, so I took my big action: I glared mightily. That’s the sort of involved citizen I am.

Water

2008-06-12T07:57:00.000-07:00

When I’m doing my treading water thing at the pool, this is what I’m thinking of:

Peaceful, no?

Big Boy

2008-06-10T12:54:00.000-07:00

Caleb had some money and needed to spend it today. So we went up to the toy store, and I carried his wallet in my purse. (Contents of wallet: Money, library card, and several pictures of himself.) When we got the checkout line, I handed him the wallet.

He immediately handed the clerk the money, and she joked with him. “You don’t want to give me the money now! Unless you’re trying to give me a tip! Do you want to tip me?”

He didn’t say anything because, I realized, we never taught him to make inane chatter. Is it hot enough for him? Is he working hard or hardly working? Is it the heat or the humidity? He very likely never even considered it.

The clerk offered him a bag of his own instructed him to hold onto his receipt. As soon as we left, he turned to me and said, “That woman talked weird to me. She treated me like I was five.”

We got in the car and headed to another store to get a Father’s Day gift. I parked. He wasn’t over it. “If I was five,” he said, “do you think I could have put together two of these toys so fast?” The tone was very Ha-HA, bitches!

God, I love that kid.

Things to Check Out

2008-06-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

Who’s a hot tamale? It’s me! And everyone else in central Virginia. Seriously, it’s almost a hundred degrees and so humid if you made a wringing motion in the air, you could squeeze out some drops. This is how I came to discover my dogs are, sadly, kind of stupid. They want to be outside, even though they could easily incur brain damage in this sort of heat. It’s okay, though. Smart dogs might know to come in, but then they get bored and start tearing up furniture and fucking up all your Word settings.

Anyhoo. My online pal Brené Brown is starting a blog series about her research on parenting and shame. What I love about Brené is that she’s a serious qualitative researcher and knows all this stuff about shame (the difference between it and guilt, how it has an impact on people’s lives, how uncomfortable it is for people to talk about)—and at the same time doesn’t act as if she’s immune to shame, or being imperfect. (This is my pet peeve with many experts: They always have some big conversion story when they finally realized that what they were doing—read, what you are doing—is wrong and now they don’t do it anymore. The subtext is: Looky here—now you can be perfect like me!)

Brené’s blog series is a companion to her CD on parenting and shame, which is both interesting and funny. For example, she recounts the events in this blog entry of hers that I love so much. Because who hasn’t ever hoped to be a bigger deal than you actually are? I’m looking forward to the series.

Also, if you’re a reader, you will want to know about Sundae Horn’s zine Ex Libris, in which she writes about books in an engaging and personal way. I met Sundae years ago through Brain, Child, and when I got the two latest issues of Ex Libris, I plopped my ass down on the couch and read straight through. You can order it by sending $8 (payable to Sundae Horn) to P.O. Box 544, Ocracoke NC 27960. That gets you four issues.

Oh. One more thing. You might have seen this youtube video by Dennis Cass already, but seeing Jody’s post about MySpace reminded me.

Legacy

2008-06-05T07:31:00.001-07:00

So, I’m officially on leave from Brain, Child. On one hand, I hate walking away, even for a little bit. But on the other hand, I have this genealogical obsession right now that I can’t quite satisfy while working on the magazine.

I’m keeping the project kind of vague on purpose (read: no idea what the shape of it is yet), but I’ve been talking to relatives about it. And, in my tiny, tiny infant stage of the project, this is the conclusion that I’ve come to: My great uncle Bill Crawford was a good, good man. When I was a kid, he’d call me and my sisters (and probably my cousins and distant cousins) on Christmas Eve. Santa had a definite Pittsburgh accent.

Everyone I’ve talked to so far mentions Uncle Bill—in a and you know who was the nicest guy you’ll ever meet? kind of way—although he doesn’t really have anything to do with my specific project. And I know this sounds schmaltzy, but the big takeaway for me, listening to Uncle Bill’s reputation, is that being kind and friendly and helpful really does matter. I bet he knew this when he was alive.

Here he is, having a good time with brother, sister-in-law, and my grandpap. Grandpap’s on the right, and Uncle Bill is next to him.

(For the record, I would be crazy if I had to live with that wallpaper.)

Speaking of relatives, if you’re a descendent of Adam Fisher and Clara Fisher, I’d love to talk to you. My email address is jennifer dot niesslein AT comcast dot net. Adam was born on Valentine’s Day, 1914 and served in the Army.

Kickin' It

2008-05-29T13:13:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was on the phone with my sister Krissy, and I was relating a story about Caleb. (Who is spelling-bee-tastic, by the way.) “So, he comes up to me and wants to ride in the car,” I tell Krissy. “ And I was like, ‘What’s the matter, shorty?’ “

“Did you just say ‘shorty’?” Krissy asks.

Oh, but I did. I meant to say “sweetie.” I laughed so hard I almost knocked the wind out of myself.

“It’s cold in the motherfucking car,” Krissy says, all gangsta-style.

“Stop it,” I wheezed. “I’m going to pee myself.”

I almost did, yo.

Reader Girl

2008-05-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

So, after the long weekend, I was all revved up to get down with some work today (an embarrassingly large amount of unanswered email), but I started Never Let Me Go last night and finished it this morning. And I cannot stop thinking about it. It’s one of those books where I definitely never ever want to meet the author (Kazuo Ishiguro) because if he turned out to be an asshole—or even just a regular flawed human being—a small part of my inner life would crumble. (This is meant to be a compliment.)

You know what? I’m not even going to describe it, mainly because it unfolds so beautifully but also because it came out in 2005 so you might know everything about it anyway. Just, my socks are officially blown off.

And now, Brandon just brought in the mail, and I got my copies of The Maternal Is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change. It’s an anthology edited by Shari MacDonald Strong, and just looking at the TOC, I’m getting the feeling that today might be one of those Lost Days, all nose in a book. Stephanie and I have an essay in there, but guess who else does. Go ahead. Anne Lamott. Susie Bright. BARBARA KINGSOLVER. That’s right. Not to mention what I think of my Brain, Child people (which must be annoying for them), like Jane Hammons, Carolyn Alessio, and Valerie Weaver Zercher.

Ten emails and I’m calling it a day.

TMI Time

2008-05-25T11:53:00.001-07:00

Today, we will be talking about my cycle.

You could set your watch by my cycle, if you had a watch that could somehow be hooked up to the contents of my uterus and if you could convince me to give you my consent. What I’m saying is, thirty days, and Aunt Flo is in the hizzouse.

Except this month. Yesterday, I was in the weird predicament of having no period, yet having a (okay, three) negative pregnancy tests. This hasn’t ever happened to me before. It’s always been one or the other. But two days after beyond the normal cycle, and I figured out what hell would be for me: Not knowing.

This isn’t an unusual occurrence. (I know because I Googled “missed period” and “negative pregnancy test” and got to a 400+ post discussion board where women reported that the same thing happened to them.) And it turns out, it doesn’t really mean one thing or the other—you could be pregnant or you could be not pregnant. Either way.

“You know your body better than anyone else,” some of the women on the discussion board counselled. When I talked to my sister last night, we had a good laugh at that one. Sure, I know my body better than anyone else, but I also know my brain better than anyone else. This brain can easily convince itself that the body has had (variously): meningitis, breast cancer, pancreatitus, a brain tumor. Hey, why not an embryo?

So I just sort of let my imagination run, but on a short leash. If it were a girl, I was thinking maybe Calliope. For a boy, the baby Jesus. Wouldn’t that be horrible for Caleb? Yeah, this is my brother, the baby Jesus. He gets all the attention.

I couldn’t get too carried away, of course. I’ve read far too much about infertility to sink my heart into wanting it. In this body and with this brain, I can’t emotionally afford that kind of yearning. I’ll probably not speak of the maybe baby on the blog again. Aunt Flo finally came this morning, and I mostly felt relief at finally knowing. Thank you, baby Jesus.

Quiet. Maybe a Little Too Quiet.

2008-05-21T12:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I think, it’s better not to write anything on the blog when you’re at a period in your life when some calls and asks, “What’s new?” and you say, “Not much” and then fall silent. It’s mostly been a month of story starters with no dramatic endings.

For instance, last weekend, Caleb was outside playing and it was time for us to head out to dinner. I went out on the porch and called his name. Nothing. I called louder. Still no response. On the next block, the ice cream truck made its way down the street. The Doppler effect distorted its tinny music, changing the key and making it creepy and sad. “Caleb!” I called. Then another little boy came out from between the houses and told me where Caleb was. I found him. He washed his hands and we went out to dinner.

Or, earlier this month, it was storming. Brandon had the day off and we had plans to drive to another city forty-five minutes away. As soon as we slammed the car doors, the rain came out in earnest. Seriously, cats and dogs. My stomach twisted a little as we took the on-ramp to the interstate. People still were flying at 70 miles per hour. Semi trucks passed us, leaving our windshield drowned in their wakes. We turned down the music so Brandon could better concentrate. Then the rain let up. The fog wasn't as bad as we'd expected. We got haircuts. I was very pleased with mine.

Today, I was in line at the post office. A woman walked up next to me, and I smiled and let her pass. Instead of passing, though, she cut in line in front of me. Just me. She didn’t try to cut in front of anyone else. Normally, I’d say something, but some bit of intuition told me there was something off about her, something I didn’t want to entangle myself in. Just before it was her turn to walk up to the counter, she offered her spot to a college guy. He declined. She insisted. He declined again. She left. I took my spot at the counter and mailed my package. The end.

Exciting and New

2008-05-16T11:42:00.001-07:00

I love a new project. I’m working on one right now and am trying to wrap my head around how to structure it. Someday, I keep telling myself, I’ll know this one so well, I’ll be able to describe it in my sleep. As one wise Mr. Michael once put it, “You got to have faith, faith, faith.”

Also? I downloaded a form today titled, “Death_by_mail.” No CODs, huh?

Big Fat Liar

2008-05-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

The neighborhood I live in really, really dense with kids. There’s a chicken in every pot and at least one child in every house.

Not long ago, I was outside and one of the kids—a little girl who just turned three, whom I adore—made good on her promises to come over for “a little visit.” We went inside under the idea that we’d see what kind of toys we have at my house. Once in the dining room, though, she noticed right away that the fish we had (whose name was Blue or Gold or Puce or some color that inexplicably was not on its body) was missing. We didn’t have the fish for long, and I sort of forgot that she even knew we had it.

“Where’s the fish?” she asked.

“Uh, we don’t have it anymore,” I said. “Hey, do you like puzzles?”

“Where’s the fish go?”

I took a breath. “Well, you know, sweetie, fish don’t live very long. Ooh, I think you’ll like this puzzle.”

She looked at the puzzle and asked for a tissue, which I got for her. “I know what happened,” she said. “You took the fish back to the store so it could live with someone else!”

I paused. “Yes,” I said slowly. “That’s what happened.”

Oh, The Places We Went

2008-05-09T13:17:00.000-07:00

I’m not going to be able to see my mom on Mother’s Day, which bums me out. We have fun together, even in less than perfect conditions.

For example, one time she and my sister Erin came to visit me. Brandon and I had just moved to a place called Mt. Crawford, and I was not yet fully aware of the culture. I found a music festival and we all hopped in Erin’s little convertible. The festival was called “Home Grown.” A more discerning person might have gotten a clue what the festival was really all about from the title, but it was only after we parked the car amid a field of Jeeps and jacked-up pick-ups, and as we picked our way through the patchoulli-scented crowd—Mom carrying her white purse, Erin in a kicky floral print, me in dressy sandals—did I realize that I had taken my mom and sister to a big, rednecky pot party.

Or: When we went on vacation to the Outer Banks and attended a performance of the Lost Colony play. (Every vacation with me somehow turns into a social studies field trip.) We sat in the audience, rapt, as the players reenacted what might have happened to the lost colonists. At one point, a main character accuses the group of being willing to desert the colony. We had good seats. So good, in fact, that we could hear the murmurs of the bit actors. “I’D NEVER DESERT!” one piped up. Mom and I promptly lost our shit and started laughing loudly and inappropriately. The actors dispersed towards the outer edge of the stage. I had visions of them coming to scold me and stifled it. Mom did not get it back together, however.

Or last summer, when we went up to North Adams, Massachusetts. I was scheduled to give a reading with the awesome writers, Jenn Mattern and Catherine Newman. I did. But then I booked us in the hotel for an extra day for some mother-daughter hijinx. Guess what happens on Sunday in North Adams, Massachusetts? Nothing. NOTHING AT ALL. The big modern art museum was open, so we went and gawked at things like a video by a woman who claims she has two people living inside of her (not twins, but two separate and mentally healthy people inhabiting the same body) and some paintings of what an Italian hotel room wall looked like at various times of the day. For dinner, we had items from the hotel vending machine. We went back to the room and analyzed our own walls. We read the museum’s program notes. We were pretty happy not have noticed the installation made from used tampons.

I can’t wait until this summer. We’ll be taking on New York City.

An Open Letter

2008-05-06T07:48:00.000-07:00

Hey! The paperback of Practically Perfect in Every Way comes out today!

When I turned in the manuscript two years ago, I was very, very sick of thinking about myself. In my work with Brain, Child, I’m either on the phone with Steph, emailing writers/artists/photographers, checking in with other editors, writing a newsletter for readers, blahdee blah. In other words, interacting with people. Whatever I did next, I thought, it best be collaborative. This life of being sent off to work alone in the attic for months at a time? Who am I—Emily Dickinson?

I didn’t realize then that the really collaborative part comes after, and it’s between the reader and the writer. Because, hey, you can write all you want and even get a publisher to snazz it up between two covers, but if no one reads it and no one talks about it, it might as well not exist.

This is all to say thank you for making PPIEW exist. I’m offering up all the gratitude in my moderately hopeless little heart to everyone who bought the book, read the book, posted a review on Amazon or Good Reads or Library Thing, wrote about it online or in print, recommended it to a friend, invited me to a book club, come out on my travels last year, had me at their bookstore, had me on their show, sent me a kind email, or somehow felt a connection to the book.

Mad love to you. And now let the Amazon ranking obsession begin anew.

Six

2008-05-03T05:58:00.000-07:00

Oh, thank you, gods of the meme. You’ve saved me from posting a movie that Caleb and I made Thursday night. (And by “movie,” I mean two minutes of the two of us being unable to tear our eyes away from the image of ourselves in the monitor. Don’t let your babies grow up to be narcissists, people.) In a very cool coincidence, both Tiffany and Libby tagged me for the Six Things Meme.

The rules:
1. Link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Post these rules on you blog
3. Share six unimportant things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your entry.

In honor of the impending paperback release of PPIEW and the finishing of Brain, Child’s summer issue (not there yet), I’m going to do six things about me related to publishing.

1. When my proposal for the book went out, quite a few houses wanted to see a picture of me. So I scanned in a bunch and sent them off. Then they came back and asked for, like, full-length ones. Miss Jay said I lost my neck, but Tyra thought I looked “fierce.” On my go-sees, everyone agreed I needed to work on my walk. Oh, I’m kidding. Except about them asking for pictures. And looking fierce.

2. If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have written the whole section about Caleb and Parker in PPIEW. I believe I did it well and sensitively, but nonetheless, I wouldn’t do it again.

3. The cover of the hardback PPIEW is the same image that we ran as a cover one time on Brain, Child. I kind of fought against having that image on the book until I almost wound up with a cover with a fake-me-out Barbie doll, then one of (inexplicably) toast. Eventually, I became fond of the cover. But I really like the snazzy new paperback cover. One of the little circles has a drawing of a dog that looks like Luna, one of our pups. The woman holding the book is not me, although I do admire the arch of her eyebrows.

4. At Brain, Child, we run between one and two percent of the essay submissions we get. Isn’t that crazy? And to be honest, in the early years, if I myself had submitted an essay to Brain, Child, it probably would not have gotten in. I’ve learned so much about writing from editing really good writers. So, holla, you BC contributors!

5. I have really excellent graphic design skills for a person working in 1995.

6. Stephanie and I live about an hour and fifteen minutes from each other and I don’t have a single picture of us together that floats my boat. (We were recently asked for one because faces tend to attract people's attention--hence all those magazines with babies/models/celebrities on the cover.) There’s one that comes close, but the expression on my face might be best summed up as Yes, I Work For Brain, Child, But Let Me Tell You, I Am Not Happy About It. Subscribe today and you can achieve the same grimness as me! Jeesh.

So, I can’t remember who does memes and who doesn’t, so if you’re interested? Consider yourself tagged!

Two Things

2008-05-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

Thing One: This, from Julianne, cracked me up so bad.

Thing Two: A woman named Lauren Thompson dancing with herself, at four:

via Crooked House.

Think her influences might have included the Solid Gold dancers?

[Added later: I just rewatched and the four-year-old bit was filmed in 1987, so duh to me. At that point, I'm pretty sure the SG dancers had stopped filling all our lives with music and putting rhythm in our souls.]

Last Lecture

2008-04-30T07:15:00.000-07:00

When I was but a whippersnapper, one of my first real assignments at C-Ville Weekly (then C-Ville Review) was to interview this guy at UVA who’d done pioneering work in virtual reality. I was not computer literate; I wrote all my college papers on a Brother typewriter. I’d actually had to learn how to use a computer (thank God, a Mac) for this job. At C-Ville, we didn’t have Internet access and I did most of my research at the library.

I went to the interview with a photographer. The guy I was interviewing was a young professor, cute (although I was a student at the time and well schooled in What Is Inappropriate, which included finding professors cute). He was good at explaining things in layman’s terms. I got to try on some virtual reality goggles and run through his program. It was really cool, but I have weak eye muscles and wearing the goggles gave me a headache. That’s about all I remember from the interview.

The guy was Randy Pausch. If you’re an engineering folk, you might know him from his accomplishments in the computing field, but if you’re a YouTube watcher or a bestseller-list observer, you might know him from his Last Lecture. Pausch was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and has blown people away with this lecture.

I don’t really have anything to add to what’s already been said about his talk, which is funny and inspirational. But yesterday, I was feeling whiny and overwhelmed and up to my armpits in three different projects, and the lecture popped in my head. I (or any of us, really) could be dead by next year, I thought. Which is, I know, kind of maudlin and drama-queen-ish, but sometimes it takes maudlin and drama queen to get me to realize that I need to chill the fuck out.

If you have seventy-six minutes to spare...

I Need to Be Stopped

2008-04-23T12:36:00.000-07:00

Holy hell. Have you ever gotten sucked into Ancestry.com? Every spare minute I have, I'm on it, which makes me either (a) researching a project, or (b) impersonating a retiree who just discovered the Internet.

I can read old newspapers all day. So far, my favorite thing I've come across is one of those old-timey ads that looks like an article. The headline is: "Attention, Fat Girls!" I could kick myself that I kept reading.

Paperback Writer

2008-04-19T12:59:00.000-07:00

So, the paperback of Practically Perfect in Every Way comes out on May 6. It has a new cover, a reader’s guide of sorts, and the correct spelling of seretonin. I’m all kinds of excited.

I’m also a little nervous. It’s no big secret that in publishing, you have, max, three months to make a splash before the next crop of books rises up and takes over the shelf space. So part of the job, with nonfiction anyway, is putting on a publicist hat and (if I can take this metaphor and torture it), the hat is about as comfortable for me as a bale of straw. I think I’ve gotten pretty okay with it, though. But I’ve come to a wall; I’m not quite sure what else I can do to publicize PPIEW.

Except, maybe ask you? If you’re interested in writing about the book—whether it’s a review, an interview with me, or a suggestion for your book club—I’d be ever so grateful. I have some TV and radio experience, too, if you need a somewhat chunky lady with fabulous new shoes to book on your show. (jennifer dot niesslein at comcast dot net.)

Even posting this request kind of weirds me out. I guess I’m trying to practice what I preach: If you need help, ask for it. And it’s true: you should, I should, we all scream for ice cream. But the other part of me, the part that believes in chaos and randomness and what will be will be, is at work, too. I pre-ordered the paperback on Amazon and wrote a small, kind note to myself. It’s to remind me that even if the three months pass without a blip, you can still revel in small victories and use them to keep on trucking.

Reach Out and Touch Me

2008-04-18T07:05:00.000-07:00

Unless I’m sick and you’re Caleb, in which case you will probably shrink into the far recesses of the couch and keep one wary eye on me, lest I try to kiss the top of your head. You might also ask me to get you snacks, then in lieu of saying “thank you,” demand, “YOU DIDN’T TOUCH THIS, DID YOU?” I was not so weak that I couldn’t deliver a manners smackdown.

But it’s over. And I learned a very important lesson: When I’m sick, I need to ask Brandon to take the Merck Medical Manual and hide it someplace secure. Because by the end, I convinced myself that it was very unlikely that I had a stomach bug. Much more likely was something rare and fatal. These are, almost without fail, the signs that you have something rare and fatal:

Fatigue
Nausea
A low-grade fever

You might want to get that checked out.
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Hey, Theo Nestor’s book came out this week! Theo’s been a contributor to Brain, Child since day one, and I’m a huge fan. Her book’s called How to Sleep Alone in a King Sized Bed, and it’s a memoir of her divorce and life after. She doesn’t need me hollering about the book—girlfriend has a blurb from Frank “Angela’s Ashes” McCourt—but I want to go on record that I predict big stuff.
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Oooh, I wish I’d written this: Barbara Card Atkinson’s article in which she takes some of Dr. Phil’s advice and applies it right back at him. I believe—if I remember my drinking games, and I think I do—that’s called “zoom zorch.”
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What? You like making up captions? Brain, Child is having its first cartoon caption contest. Check it out. There is a prize.

Pardon Me

2008-04-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

I'm getting over the stomach flu. Which is a euphemism, of course, for hell.

Gone Wild!

2008-04-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

It’s spring break around these parts and I’ve been busy having ill-advised sex and doing beer bongs. Oh, I kid. Kind of.

In other news, my baby sister Jill turns twenty-five today. HBGF!

I remember the first time I saw her. Before we got to go into Mom’s hospital room, Erin and I had a wicked fight over who got to hold her first. Jill was born almost a month after the due date. She was an intimidating-looking newborn: red, sporting a crease between her eyes, and a don’t-mess-with-me-because-I-will-bring-it-mutha air. I loved her. I took her picture to school with me and showed it to everyone. Here’s my sister! (And also a somewhat revealing picture of our mom!)

I love many things about Jill. Not the least of which is her mad karaoke skills.

(Damn. I've been doing the rap wrong.)

Watch Out, Internet

2008-04-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

I got an email the other day, titled “whas sup.”

Hi you got plans today? Anyway loveya
Caleb (your son)

Yep. That Caleb. Caleb got an email account. He and Brandon set it up while I was across the room on my own computer.

I wonder how long it’s going to take him to figure out that when I say I’m going upstairs to check my email and come down forty-five minutes later that I’m not only checking email but sneaking away for a game of online Scrabble. Let’s not even tell him about the blog.

Part of An Essay I Started That I'm Posting Because I'm Sort of Out of Normal Blog Material at the Moment

2008-04-02T05:32:00.000-07:00

Dogs were the only source of anxiety my entire childhood, but they were fucking everywhere.

There were the elderly people next door, on the other side of the grape vines. My aunt called them the gnomes, because they were short and gnarled and grouped not in a man-woman combination, but in a grouping where it was unclear who was married and who was not. In the gnomes' backyard, they kept a pen of dogs in a series of small sheds. They dogs never left the sheds, but you could hear them, barking, howling, generally getting riled up. Lying in bed, I knew when my father got home from work by listening to the commotion in the pens.

On the other side, a retired couple had a large white dog, Fluffy. They once asked me if I'd like to feed Fluffy while they went on vacation. Fluffy was closet growler, it turns out. After one feeding, I took a managerial position and handed the kibble to my dad.

My uncle had an Irish Setter named Casey, a skittish gallumph who always seemed to be dripping lake water. Casey was a solo dog, but I didn't trust him either. He seemed so cowed by my uncle that I could imagine Casey plotting some wild digressions—maybe eating a child—when my uncle wasn't looking.

I claimed, for a long time, that I loved our dog Jake, a Golden Retriever, but my love for Jake was conditional. The condition was that he had to be bone-tired and lying inert on the floor. That was the sort of dog I could get behind. As it was, Jake was young, unneutered, and poorly exercised. He spent a good amount of time in situations that would make the Dog Whisperer scream—in the basement, for example, or chained to his doghouse out back.

I don't know what was wrong with everybody then. My own parents, now divorced, each own a dog, both of whom are named Daisy, and you can bet your bippy that neither one of them would dream of letting their Daisys sleep outside or swatting them with a newspaper. Mom's Daisy stretches out on her couch, her bed. Dad takes his to work with him.

It was another time, I guess. Back then, people painted their homes the color of rust. No one was tired of novels about middle-aged male professors who sleep with students. An entire generation wore shorts that showed their ass cheeks, and drunk driving was still considered kind of funny.

Readerama

2008-03-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

So today was the last day of the Virginia Festival of the Book, but I officially finished last night at the fancy-schmancy authors’ reception at Carr’s Hill, where the president of UVA lives.

Like every year, I get all excited and start marking off my festival program as if I’ve mastered the human need to eat, not to mention take care of the boy, do my job, and all the rest. You could literally pack your schedule from ten in the morning until nine at night. Me, I went to four events, and I got sort of overwhelmed with brain overload and social contact as I do every year.

But I love the festival for the simple fact there there are an awful lot of fascinating books that I might have never discovered. I know writers, but mostly through Brain, Child. In my civilian life, most of my pals are teachers or professors or stay-at-home mothers. We, like most of America, get book recommendations from various media and whatever the bookstores decide should be facing out or placed on a table. If nobody decides that a certain book is The Next Big Thing (and it’s not motherhood-related), chances are excellent I won’t hear about it.

The festival provides this great serendipity. On the bus home from the reception last night, I got to talking with Carleen Brice, whose first novel is Orange Mint and Honey. We had a nice conversation (shared with another lady) and I looked her book up. Here’s a description from Publisher’s Weekly: “In Brice's accomplished debut, African-American Shay Dixon, a burnt-out grad student, has a visitation/fantasy/fever dream featuring Nina Simone, the high priestess of soul, who counsels Shay to go home. To do that, she must face Nona, the drunken failure of a mother she's not spoken to in seven years and blames for a harrowing childhood that left her emotionally scarred. Still, she takes Nina's advice, heads home to Denver and discovers that Nona's now an A.A. member with a good job, a lovely home and an adorable three-year-old girl, Sunny, Shay's half-sister. Their reconciliation is complicated by Shay's stubborn anger, Nona's A.A. sponsorship of a troubled young woman and Shay's sexual awakening. Brice's straightforward prose is dead-on in describing the challenges Shay and her mother face as they reconnect.”

I ordered that baby up toute de suite.

I went to the panel on which Logan Ward (who wrote See You in a Hundred Years) was speaking. I hadn’t heard of the other panelists, but I was totally charmed by historian Scott E. Caspar’s talk about his book Sarah Johnson’s Mount Vernon. Johnson was born a slave at Mount Vernon and, after the Civil War, returned to the historical home to work as an employee. Caspar pieced together Johnson’s life through a paper trail and the book is her story but also that of race and segregation in the nineteenth-century. It sounds super, and I ordered that one, too.

Okay, one more example: I’d planned on going to the panel on monsters at Friday at six, but Caleb’s school had its fundraiser and Steph and her family were in town. So I bought the books instead, and I’m about halfway through Paul Bibeau's Sundays with Vlad. It’s a nonfiction quest that looks at the historical and literary Draculas; the quest takes him all over the place, from the problem Romania has with promoting Dracula for tourist money to intellectual property law to the subculture of vampire-obsessed folk. His writing is funny and smart. This is so going to be a cult classic, at minimum.
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And hey! I got to meet Elizabeth McCullough at Cville Words. My first reaction upon seeing her nametag at the reception was to make finger guns at her, as if I were Isaac the bartender from "The Love Boat." I can’t take myself anywhere.

Bossa Nova With Me!

2008-03-28T07:34:00.000-07:00

It's really beautiful here today, and it has been for the past few days. The grass is thickening up, and it's just starting to smell like a good time for reading on the porch swing. Last night, we drove to dinner with the windows open. The three of us had a really lovely time: a third-grader snuggled close to me, a silky oyster stew and thick bread, a tall glass of beer.

It seemed ridiculous that the night before, around midnight and just twenty minutes down the interstate, a sniper or snipers had set up on an overpass and fired into cars passing on the interstate. No one was seriously injured, from what I've heard. But it occurred to me what a mess everything is, that I can hold these two emotions: joy at the onset of spring and a lurking fear that the shooting wasn't an isolated occurence. (Update: police arrested two guys early this morning.) I don't know what it says, either, that the joy is winning out.

I wish I knew how to embed this, but I don't. Have a listen. It gives me chills in a good way.

The Anniversary of Steel

2008-03-27T10:29:00.001-07:00

On Saturday, Brandon and I will celebrate our eleventh wedding anniversary. And by “celebrate,” I mean that we’ll probably make out in the kitchen while Caleb plays on his DS.

The traditional sort of gift one is supposed to give for the big eleven is steel. I’m just spitballing here, but one lucky guy just might get:

A. A Terrible Towel

B. Looking at him with this face.

C. Quoting, thoughout the day, lines such as “Shelby, drink your juice,” “Looks like two pigs fightin' under a blanket,” and “The only reason people are nice to me is because I have more money than God.”

D. A mix CD, featuring the works of Steely Dan, as well as Billy Joel’s “Allentown.”

E. A swordfight.

F. The Empire State Building.

If It’s Ugly and You Love It, Clap Your Hands

2008-03-25T05:23:00.001-07:00

Many moons ago, Brandon and I went furniture shopping. We fell in love with a huge tangerine-colored leather couch, and somehow got caught up in the fantasy that this thing would last even an hour in our house. These are mean streets here, what with the dogs’ nails and the boy’s rivets on his jeans and the general hard livin’. (So hard we can’t even be bothered with the g’s.)

As nineties band Belly might say, sometimes there’s no poison like a dream. This weekend, my dream of living in a Pottery Barn catalogue officially died. We are the owners of some blue puffy furniture. It’s powerful ugly, and I love it.

In truth, it might not be so much ugly (unlike the camo armchair we saw at the same store) as tacky. Last night, I sat on the couch, the section that reclines. I pulled down the section with the drink holders. (You heard me right.) I saw down with my book and my beer and when Luna popped up next to me and started licking her paw, I nudged her, but didn’t freak out. This motherfucker is indestructible. However tacky the couch may be, indestructability brings its own sort of peace.

Thar she blows:

A Festival! Of Books!

2008-03-21T09:16:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the light posting this week. I’ve been, as they say in the old country, busting my ass to get work done because next week is the Virginia Festival of the Book here in Charlottesville. Which means I will spend a goodly portion of next week being the book super-fan that I am. Last year, I saw Mary Roach speak. Mary Roach! And the year before that, I saw the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg. I’m afraid that I did the intellectual equivalent of throwing my panties. Worse, I’m afraid that I meant it.

This year, as always, there’s some great stuff. A.J. Jacobs, of The Year of Living Biblically, is speaking on the Nice Jewish Boys Gone Wild panel. Logan Ward, who wrote See You in a Hundred Years, is speaking on the Virginia Stories: Reconstructing the Past panel.

Jennifer Ackerman wrote Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body, a book I’m dying to read. Her panel is moderated by Susan Tyler Hitchcock, who’s also a fabulous writer. Her latest is Frankenstein: A Cultural History. Susan is also participating in a panel called Dracula vs. Frankenstein: A Monster Mash of Fact and Fiction. A thousand years ago, as an undergraduate, I took a fiction writing class with the other guy on the panel: Paul Bibeau. I really liked his writing then, and I’m looking forward to reading his first book, Sundays with Vlad.

And if you happen to be around, I am requesting your presence at the panel I’m on, called Self-Help, Twelve Steps, and You. I’ll be doing the thang that I do with Practically Perfect. My co-panelist is Martha Woodroof, whom you might know from NPR or her book How to Stop Screwing Up: Twelve Steps to a Good Life and a Pretty Good Time. We’ll be at the City Council Chambers on Wednesday at 6 p.m., and the parking garage is right there. My inner Judge Judy is hoping there is a gavel for me to use.

Which Is More Awkward?

2008-03-19T08:30:00.001-07:00

The remote control was lying on the couch; someone must have sat on it and changed the channel to a non-kid one. Nine-year-old son is home sick. After lunch, mother and son retire to the living room to watch some cartoons together. A commercial is on. Before mother realizes the content of this commercial, it's over and son has a question for her: "What is herpie?"

OR

Mother, daughter, and grandparents are relaxing after dinner. All agree they'd like to watch a movie from the on-demand feature on the satellite television. Daughter suggests "The Black Dahlia." It takes a while to get into. And then, maybe forty-five minutes into it, daughter watches in horror as the plot takes a turn. She is at that moment watching lesbian soft porn with her mother and grandparents.

I Think I'm a Groupie

2008-03-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

I'm going to the They Might Be Giants concert tomorrow, and I just realized that this is at the very minimum, my seventh TMBG concert. If you are reading, They Might Be Giants, I'll be the drunk lady in the black tee-shirt with pet hair on it who shouts "WOOOOOO!" the loudest. Hello. Also, if I can put in a request?

I Wanna Learn How to Fly—High!

2008-03-13T15:48:00.000-07:00

The other night, Caleb started haranguing Brandon and me about why we’re not running for president. The implication was that we’re a couple of lazy asses. I started to explain to him very earnestly about the things we do to be good, involved citizens, how we are Americans! He didn’t want to hear it, and I realized why later.

Caleb is under the mistaken impression that I am famous and he is a little bit famous. (He’s young, and I can’t yet break it to him that writers or editors rarely achieve the level of fame of, say, local newscasters.) He makes no bones about how he’d like to be “more famous.” And the President’s kid? That’s auto-fame, baby.

Once, I put him on the cover of the magazine. We were running out of time, the thing was due at the printer, and I thought it’d be funny to have, instead of some perfectly groomed little angel on the cover, this wacked-out looking boy. When I got my box of issues, he took several out. He stared at the cover for a while. Then he decorated his play kitchen set with them, his own face on every surface.

He’s years away from being able to sign his own release form for a reality show, but I'm keeping an eye out.

Old Timey Businessman Dictates Letter Addressed to Prospective Date, Makes Case for the Quality of His Loving

2008-03-12T10:09:00.000-07:00

Baby:

Here I am: a man on the scene. I can give you what you want—but you’ve got to come home with me. I can give some good, old loving (and I’ve got some more in store). When I’m done giving it to you, you’re going to come back for more.

Some things come dime by the dozen. Well, that’s nothing but a ten-cent loving. Hey, Little Thing: Let me light your candle because, Mama, I am,

Sure Hard to Handle

Jobby Job

2008-03-11T07:13:00.000-07:00

The other morning, I woke up and while I was lying there, trying to make sense of the fact that it was dark outside (damn you, Spring Forward!), I thought, It should be an easy work week. Then I thought, Girlfriend. You’ve been doing this job for nine years now. None of it is hard.

But some parts are more fun than others. Like when the whole issue comes together, which is where I am now, with a box of new SP08.

Online, you can read and discuss (if you’re so inclined), a feature on vaccines by Sari Weston. Sari has a scientific background and she looks at the studies done on vaccinations—she’s neither pro-vax or anti-vax. It’s a great one.

Also online, Ann Whitfield Powers writes smartly about being an older mother and the weird prejudices that go with that, and Tracy Mayor has a lovely essay about the bus ride she takes with her son, who’s increasingly less and less of a little boy. There’s also an interesting debate on whether rewarding kids is a good parenting practice. I tend to agree with both sides, in this case, Kathy Gillen and Renée Hill.

In print, there are also fabulous reads. Jody Mace wrote an essay called “Inappropriate for Children” and the line about the boy touching a picture’s private parts makes me giggle every time. The inimitable Jenn Mattern wrote an open letter to surly teenage boys. And do you know Katherine L. Hester? She contributed a stellar short story that’s a play on the Rumplestiltskins tale. Oh, and there’s a lot more. Here. Look at the table of contents.

I’m reading submissions now. And let me just put this out there: I’m sorry it takes so long. I can’t do much about it because we editors all have to agree on things and we take the content and the balance of tones in the issue with the seriousness of, I don't know, brain surgery or shotgun cleaning, but I am sorry.

All right. Back to reading.

Bargain Basement

2008-03-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

The other weekend, Brandon bought a Hammond organ, which resulted in days’ worth of hilarity because if you think we can talk about Brandon’s “organ” in a mature manner, you’re sadly mistaken.

Brandon’s organ was so heavy that he had to have a friend come over and help him lift it. Brandon plans to spend a lot of time in the basement, playing with his organ. I am, of course, welcome to go down and play his organ as well. A few days ago, Brandon printed something off the internet on how to service his own organ. He concluded that servicing one’s own organ is too complicated. I told him that I’ve heard that one before.

But before all this, we had to make some room in the basement, so we rounded up a bunch of basement flotsam, including my high school yearbook from senior year. I put in a pile of other stuff and took it upstairs. (Where, incidentally, it still sits.)

Later I flipped through it. Here are Beth and I. I remembered that we’d worked on the high school literary art mag together. I did not remember however, this level of dedication to Cosby fashion.

Maybe my sweater's design is a Rorschach blot. I kind of see an organ.

Older Than I've Ever Been

2008-03-04T13:48:00.000-08:00

I took Simon to the vet this morning because he’s been limping around and generally looking mopey. He turned eleven last month and he’s growing skin tags (bonus extra dogginess!) and generally slowing up. But I knew something was actually wrong when Luna, as she is wont to do, started humping his face and Simon protested.

It turns out, he’s just getting old and achey. We got him all hepped up on goofballs, and it seems to be working.

Once a week in the mail, I get a reminder of my mortality. Sometime in my twenties, I was placed on a mailing list for demographic a generation or more older than me. The AARP wanted me so bad. So bad. They had a lot to offer, they told me. I could be part of this exclusive club, they suggested. There is a magazine, they tempted.

Since then, I’ve aged, and now, according to the list, I’m past the 55 and older (or “better” as some of the literature says) demographic and well into what Simon’s experiencing. I’m getting a lot of postcards. One for Life Alert. One for a burial plot. Another for one of those snazzy looking wheelchair scooters and yet another for a chair that springs my ass up into a standing position. Ones for supplements, supplemental insurance, orthopedic items. I could go on.

I wonder what will happen first: If I’ll actually age into needing these services, or if I’ll be knocked off the list as an implausibly spry 120-year-old. Life is short, but direct mail lists last forever.

Again, With the Minor Parenting Snafu

2008-02-29T05:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Caleb came home from school and The Worst Day Ever. Apparently there was some bad behavior while standing in line and he had to write half a page on the topic of Respect in Line.

I’m realizing more and more that part of my job as his mother is to provide him with a little perspective. The little perfectionist takes on any punishment with some serious drama, so I try to instill the attitude of Okay You Messed Up and You Need to Take Your Lumps but For God’s Sake, It’s Not Like You Masterminded Some Really Horrible Plot.

So he started his half page on Respect in Line, and it turns out, there’s not a whole lot to say on the subject. “Don’t talk in line,” he wrote. “Don’t play around in line.” He paused then wrote, “Don’t get out of line.”

“What else?” I prompted.

He was still in high drama mode, and so he said, “Don’t die in line.”

“I don’t think anyone could help it if they died in line,” I said. And then I said the thing that I wished I could snatch back as soon as it came from my mouth. I said, “But you shouldn’t kill anybody in line.”

He started writing and I said, “Stop! Stop!” with visions of social services and guidance counselling darting around in my head. “I’m not writing that,” he said. “I put, ‘Don’t hurt anyone in line.’ ”

Thank God he has common sense. I toned it down and asked him what he thought about safety and repecting others’ personal space. I didn’t share the things that would take up at least half half a page.

Don’t strip down to your underwear in line.

Don’t throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don’t care in line.

Don’t line dance in line.

And so on.

Doing Good, Thanks

2008-02-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, I was reading the little USA Today insert that comes with the local daily. Usually, I just scan the inside front cover, where readers/publicists write in questions like, “I sure enjoyed watching Julianna Margulies on E.R.! What’s she up to these days?” I kept flipping and came across the paper’s Leap Day event: The story goes, you have an extra day during leap years—why not spend February 29 volunteering?

Later that day, I started reading A.J. Jacob’s The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. Jacobs winds up both tithing ten percent of his income and trying through his actions to help his fellow man (in many ways, including working at a soup kitchen). It’s a lovely book—funny, smart, and sometimes poignant—and, in some ways, I think he tackled his bizarre project for the same reasons I tackled mine in Practically Perfect.

Sunday was also the day my piece in the Post came out, and I started getting lots of emails, some kudos and some, uh, not. The anti-kudos mostly said things like individualism is vital to living a good and solvent life. And I know that, if things are going smoothly, this philosophy works just fine. But I guess what I was trying to get at—and do get at in the book—at is that our country individualism has become Xtreme! (if I can get all nineties on you), and to temper it, we have to recognize that there is such a thing as luck and that there is such a thing as effort on behalf of a group.

Which is what both the USA Today insert and Jacobs’s Bible project are about. (See? Full circle, baby!!)

Anyhoo, speaking of effort on behalf of a group: I didn’t know what a community organizer was until I met one toward the end of my quest. Turns out, they’re people whose job are to connect others in hopes of achieving some goal. (Joe Szakos and Kristin Layng Szakos have written a book about community organizing, called We Make Change.) Joe’s the director of the Virginia Organizing Project, and I love feeling connected by working with this group. I haven’t done it in a while. I need to get off my duff.