SuspendedAnimation

dweeb, sociopath, leper, pariah

Everyone loves Hallowe'en!

Except me. And my secret confederates. I take care not to show my satisfaction with other expressions of seasonal grumpiness too demonstrably, lest I be lynched for the heartless nonbeliever that I am--especially in my Hallowe'en-besotted suburban milieu. Weeks ago the signs began to appear, well before the the leaves started to turn colors in earnest. Neighbors put out sparkling pumpkin light strings, fake (but costly!) boneyards of ceramic headstones akimbo, witches, skeletons, Death and his handy cordless Scythemaster™, scarecrows, sprayed-on cobwebs ... parties were planned, and costume ideas taken up and abandoned with frenetic bursts of enthusiasm, doubt, anxiety, and anticipation.

Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck. I dread it. One more sign that I don't know how to be in my community. I don't have the energy, I don't have the organizational skills, I don't have the fucking time to devote to this. When the Jellybean had interesting and inventive ideas for her Halloween costume, I was pleased on her behalf; but alas, her brave designs to be a ball of fire dwindled, weakened, died; and she is trick-or-treating tonight as a cringe witch. Dressed in black; witch's hat; bright blue holographic nailpolish (we convince ourselves this is inexplicably 'witchy'); fake broom. Full stop. yawn *crickets chirping

Also, we are invited to a neighborhood adults/children Hallowe'en party by one of the moms at the bus stop! Which is fun! And means that after two and a half years maybe we are finally becoming Part Of The Neighborhood! And I don't have to continue to feel like a Suburban Fraud for the Rest of My Life! Because maybe I'm not such a Monumental Freak After All!

I really was glad when Caroline invited us to the Hallowe'en party. When we moved here, I swore I'd become a true municipal citizen. I'd read the weekly paper, and know who the local politicians were, and get involved in civic affairs (whatever that means). Never happened. I still seem to live, at best, week-to-week, and at worst, covering my head in dread of the next hour. I don't feel situated firmly in space and time; have no sense of a foreground and background within which, among which, I dwell. In other words? Faking it.

As the party drew near, it began to dawn on me that we were expected to show up in costume. Howie and I are both costume retarded. We have no ideas; our eyes glaze over when the time comes to figure out how to be oh-so-inventive and get ourselves up in some kind of disguise. So there was one reason to dread the party. I finally suggested, at the latest possible moment, that we could both go as double-nine dominoes. Howie went as 3-8 and I went as 7-9. Just a big piece of foam core in a domino shape, carefully drawn and colored, and hung round the neck with a ribbon--not burdensome. The Jellybean got into her unadventurous, low-key witch costume and we set off for the party three blocks away.

It was everything I don't like in a party. I knew next to no one; the hostess seemed neither especially pleased to see us, nor interested in introducing us to anyone else there; and I was at my frozen worst on my own. I had a total of three conversations, each one more insipid than the previous one, where I quipped such memorable bon mots as, "So how long have you lived in this neighborhood?" and "Ah, I met you at Parent's Night, I believe." I drank some very sweet, poisonously alcoholic punch; ate nasty party foods. It has been unseasonably warm in our region for the past day or two, and the house was stiflingly hot; I started to get slightly ill and pitiable. I paced around the several rooms, making the circuit three times looking for Howie and feeling increasingly unloveable and foolish; finally, I found him in the basement, where a movie (The Haunted Mansion) was playing on a gigundous-screen plasma TV. At least it was cool in the basement, and I found my man. Happily, there were very few people there at that moment; we got to snuggle quietly on the couch in the company of less than half a dozen other people. This could not last. In short order, both kids and adults found there way to the cool-aired haven, and it got noisier and less pleasant. Among those arriving was the daughter of our hostess: a young lady one year older than my daughter whom I'd always regarded as very clever and charming. She seemed to know what was coming in the plot, so I asked her if she had seen it before. "Um, it's my movie for my party, helloooooo!" she replied with an eyeroll, and I began to reconsider my earlier assessment of her merits.

I whispered to Howie, 'Can we go?' and he agreed. We wrestled the Jellybean outta there and I went home, feeling as miserable as I ever have upon leaving a party--including when I was single. This sort of thing just never gets better. I don't want to ever socialize again with people I don't already consider my friends. Life is short.

The pen is mightier than the ... sword

It really can't be by accident that a mere slip of a space transforms that expression into The p*nis mightier than the sword.
Anyway. There's something about IM. It generates all kinds of discussion that you really just can't imagine happening in any other way. And who can ever explain where they start? You know what? Even if I could explain to you how this topic was introduced ... I don't think I would. But let's just say that Amber and I started thinking about how some people can derive a lot of ... satisfaction from their verbal abilities ...

amber: my! what a BIG Vocabulary you have!!
jilbur: that was a HARD word!
amber: so full!
jilbur: and wide as a beer can!
amber: what a penetrating word!
jilbur: I could talk like this ALL NIGHT LONG
jilbur: that word was so big I don't even think it'll fit in my ear!
amber: Oh! was that your participle dangling?
jilbur: no dear, it was my modifier
amber: *snort*
amber: that's one of the longest words I've ever had in my mouth
jilbur: hahahahahahahhahha
jilbur: okay you really got me there
jilbur: can't breathe
jilbur: around the big word
jilbur: it's gagging me
amber: you gonna blog this?
jilbur: I must!
amber: that word is too slippery to swallow!
jilbur: *reaching for something*
amber: heh
jilbur: *wait for it*
jilbur: I'll make you eat your words!
jilbur: eh
jilbur: not so good
jilbur: you win
amber: That meaning is OH so deep!
jilbur: I'm spent
jilbur: shot my bolt
amber: me too
jilbur: 'shot my bolt' always sounds dirty to me
jilbur: is it meant to?
amber: sounds like something a guy should say
jilbur: yeah, they get all the fun

A visit with my diseased brain

Am I the only person on the planet who thinks that log entry is a hilarious double entendre?

Yeah ... I thought so ...

See Century Jill, nos. 47-48.

Go back to your decent life, you, and leave me to decay in peace.

Caveat lector

More offspring anecdotes ahead. If you don't fancy the sort of thing: step aside, move on--whatever. Hey, sue me! We're still in a transitional period here at SuspAnima.

i. the other day, Howie and I were wrangling about dinner. The ALCS was still in swing, so we were up for minimal effort. But of the half dozen or so options, it seemed as though we were lacking a principal ingredient for every one of them, and it was monsooning outside and no one wanted to drive out in it. Meanwhile: the Jellybean had been steadily lobbying to go out to a restaurant (NO) or at least get takeout (well ... maybe). While the two of us were still enmeshed in this titan struggle over dinner, the Jellybean came to weigh in for the eleventy gazillionth time, and I was getting testy of the sheer petty irksomeness of it all. So I was not a nice mommy. I said something like this to her: "Jellybean, your contribution to this conversation is not helpful." You know what? That's a kind of shitty thing to say to your kid. That's kind of a putdown. And she's no dumb. She burst into tears and stormed off to her room. Howie gave me a look, and after sputtering out lame defenses for being a bitch (She started it! No, I didn't really say that), I sighed and went down the hall to her room to apologize.

I found her scribbling quite energetically on a piece of paper. When I walked in she looked over her shoulder and had a peculiar, wounded but slightly defensive expression. I apologized, and we chatted for a bit; then I returned to the momentous discussion of filling the dinnertime pieholes. About five minutes later, the Jellybean showed up with a piece of paper in her hand which she offered to me. This is what it said:
I Frgiv You
I ♥ You
Nice awwwww moment, right? We had some hugs and smiles, and she wandered off. Then I flipped the paper over and saw, very heavily crossed out:
i hate You
You are
Apparently I had walked in before she had a chance to choose her closest vocabulary equivalent to 'monstrous' ...

ii. Dialogue waking up in the family bed this morning:
Jellybean [fluttering eyelids and sleepyvoiced]: Let me know when it's morning ...
Me: Already!
J: Then I might as well wake up I guess ...
Me: I guess so ...
J: Because otherwise I just have to go back to dreaming about looking for a pencil ...
Me: Really? Why were you looking for a pencil?
J: Because I had to write down 7 + 7 ...

Don't cry for me, Blogentina

It wasn't that bad, really. Just a couple of snuffly days. And really, it was a lot of fun searching for all those waaahhhh songs, for the post and all.

Meanwhile! all manner of shufflings and shenanigans, principally mundane, are afoot in my bailiwick. Some of what is not mundane is unbloggable: sorry. Sometimes I feel as though I only offer you, my loyal internet, the table scraps. But as those of you who are parents of young children already know, that alone could feed a small municipality. Here is a sample of what currently occupies me:

• The Jellybean wants to be 'a ball of fire' for Hallowe'en. For a previous Hallowe'en costume, we made large butterfly wings for her out of foam core, and she consequently had great difficulty with her wide clearance in getting through doorways and avoiding whacking other children in the head and the like. So I am soliciting ideas on a 'ball of fire' costume that avoids this hazard ...


• Howie made braised short ribs for dinner last night. Ohhhhh they were good. We are back to eating beef because of the recent opening of a large Whole Foods market nearby: all their meat is guaranteed to have no animal byproducts in feed, so I can drop my BSE paranoia and freely carnivorate.


• Our new babysitter is fourteen years old and has braces. She is by far the youngest we've ever hired. Disadvantage: her telephone affect is nonexistent--she sounds like she's on heavy tranquilizers. Curiously, that impression vanishes when speaking to her in person. It's just a function of that still excruciatingly-self-conscious phase of adolescence, I think. Really she's a sweet girl. Advantages: She's a couple of bucks cheaper per hour than her later-high-school competitors, and we can milk a couple of years out of her before she disgraces her family and community by running away to college. Also, she appears to have abundant weekend availability, so Howie and I are going to try to stick to a strict every-other-weekend date schedule even if it kills us. Which, really, is not that likely.


• It has recently come to my attention that people who are attempting to recover from an episode of mental distress requiring medication and a number of other supporting interventions are probably unwise to take a full graduate course load. The result, in my case, has been. um. lamentable. So I'm now trying to correct this situation. Happily, when I took this topic up with my psychiatrist in hopes of getting a letter of support, his response was antagonistic and obnoxious. I mean, he didn't refuse to write a letter. However, he did his best to make me feel like a criminal for asking him to provide his honest professional opinion about whether I had a legitimate reason to claim that my condition compromised my ability to take a full course load. So that was a fun conversation, and it fully substantiated my view that psychiatrists that do nothing but write prescriptions for a living are, not to put too fine a point on it, assholes. In any case, I'm probably going to succeed in dropping my least favorite course. Yay me!

This concludes the current I Have No Idea What The Fuck To Blog Anymore Report. Please send donuts. I thenkew.

get out your handkerchief

I've been in a funk. Time for music therapy! Here's my playlist for the past couple of days. Requests always welcome ...

Cry, Cry, Cry--Johnny Cash
Tears Like Rain--Delta Wires
Cry Baby Cry--The Beatles
I Cried Last Night--Charles Brown
Too Late To Cry--Allison Krause
The Crying Game--Brenda Lee
The Tears Of A Clown--Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
I'm Crying--The Animals
Cry--Johnny Ray and the Four Lads
I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry--Hank Williams
Teardrops Will Fall--Wilson Pickett
World Without Tears--Lucinda Williams
Cry, Cry, Cry--Bobby "Blue" Bland
Crying--John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers
Lonely Teardrops--Jay and the Americans
I Cried For You--Billie Holiday
Lock, Stock and Teardrops--Alejandro Escovedo
I Cried Like A Baby--Koko Taylor
Tracks Of My Tears--Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
Crying--Roy Orbison
Big Girls Don't Cry--Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
Crying The Blues--Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry
Somebody's Crying--Chris Isaak
Where Teardrops Fall--Bob Dylan
The Sky Is Crying--Etta James

Journalism 101

who
That would be me. Because as we know, that's kind of what a blog is all about.

And yet, I tire of me--and I can only guess that you (and by that I mean you, reading me now; you needn't glance over your shoulder: this is just between you and me, and don't you know that you are always with me?), yes, you tire of me as well. You tire of my guardedly self-ironized theatricals, of my endless alternations between the world-weary, slightly irritable veneer of kindness and starry-eyed infatuation with Big Dharmic Lessons.

Never fear! By my calculation, I'm going through so many changes that, via cell turnover alone, a new Jilbur should be on her way within some fairly short time. So don't give up on me now, internet. Refresh! Refresh!

what
A more difficult question to answer than you'd think. Memoir? Diary? Not exactly--because rarely does anything seem to happen. My "thoughts"? How much thinking have you been seeing around here lately? Comedy? Tragedy? Parody? Anybody's guess.

when
The Great Unending Now, always conveniently confronting me (and you), open 24/7/365, with ridiculous markup on Ben & Jerry's, but at least a good flavor selection.

where
The same Undisclosed Location in the mid-Atlantic USA, surmisably not especially far from New York City, yet at least forty minutes away from the nearest truly good restaurant.

why
Huh? Oh. Well, someone recently suggested: Showing off. I think not, but haven't got a firm grasp on an alternative rationale. A strong impulse to put it out there, and a wavering, sporadic notion that there's something to be said? Lately, I know, I've been dwindling and sputtering. People, dear people: I'm awaiting a new spark. Bear with me.

how
Oh, please. Don't get me started--or rather, I'm not sure if I can get started; and if I do, who knows if I may ever stop ...

Dinner conversation

[Context: we had been discussing Friday's presidential candidates' debate ...]
Jellybean: Do you think John Kerry has a blog?
Me: What do you think a 'blog' is?
J: A place where you write about yourself? For people who live far away?
Me: Uh huh?
J: And a place where you show off!
Me: You think?
J: Yeah! and so that's why it would be a really good idea for John Kerry to have a blog--so he could show off how great he would be at being a President!

stuckitude

Last year, the Jellybean's Montessori school had an after-school event they called "Aquascapes", which was a rather confusing combination of a swimming exhibition, display of some of the students' art project, and a craft activity. This was the first time they had planned such an event, and it showed: epic poor planning, utter chaos. The pool there is quite small, so the swimmers had to be split into small groups, and adherence to a harrowingly rigid schedule--into locker room! into pool! out of pool! into locker room!--was essential. We're talking about children principally between the ages of three and seven. In the riotously loud auditorium where we all were waiting for the signal over the microphone for each group to move! move!, we kept our children company and wondered what the fuck was going on. Of course, all the kids were skeetering around the eleventy thousand folding chairs that had been set out in rows for no evident reason, since nothing was happening in that room except a craft I couldn't figure out in one corner and some tables in the back displaying the artwork. And every two minutes one of the teachers, Mrs. Vaguewit (yes I made that up, gawd), said over the microphone Wid padense od dra dawlpim goop preeth nor plocheev true va ploog anea, for example, meaning to convey that parents of the Dolphin group should come to the pool to see their kids swim.

This scene just freaked our kid the fuck out. She hadn't the slightest idea where she was supposed to be, when. The groups the kids were split up into had no bearing on who they'd been having lessons with, and the Jellybean's group were kids she didn't know at all, so there was no familiarity in anything that was happening. Her response was to cling to me and go into fits of anxiety about when she was supposed to get dressed. We finally sent her off to the locker room possibly earlier than she was supposed to go, because she was so convinced that she wouldn't be ready at the right time; this led to one of the teachers in the locker room trying to coerce her into joining another group, which in turn led to tears and hysterics. So she came out of the locker room and stayed with Howie and me waiting for the time that her group was to appear in the pool, though the rest of the group were entering the pool from the locker room. Her mood was still barely more together than 'frantic.'

When it was time for parents of her group to go to the pool, we took her in; the rest of her group were already sitting on the edge of the pool in a line, and one of the children had started swimming. The Jellybean took one look at the scene, and all possibility of salvaging the event was over. She was late. If she joined the group, everyone would be looking at her.

She flat out refused to participate. And, she also refused to go, unable to face the idea that she wasn't going to swim. There was nothing we could do to make the situation she was in tolerable to her: she couldn't stay, and she couldn't go. So, she planted her feet into the floor beneath her like the roots of a mighty oak, and yelled her adorable little mudderfrickin head off ...

And she is there to this very day.

Kidding! But at the time, it felt as though she would be. No--really.

So, I was thinking about this recently, as an emblem of being stuck. I've been there enough to know the feeling that, even though there's some kind of choice in front of me, I hate both alternatives so much that I can't move in any direction. Adult rarely just literally stand there and scream when this occurs (though I can think of times when some of them do). But there's a figurative form of the same response, and that's how I think of my stuck times: essentially, I struggle, I wrassle with myself, I argue ceaselessly within the confines of my own skull, thinking that I could tire out the choices confronting me by sheer dint of my furious refusal to comply with forces as calmly inexorable as the the unilinear nature of time. It can wear you out; it can get you down.

The only way out of this that I have found--and it still isn't a cakewalk--is a willingness to examine what I'm interpreting as the meanings of the choices. In the Jellybean's example, she was certain that both participating in the event 'late', or leaving, presented her with horrific humiliation and failure; to everyone else in the room, however, neither of her potential actions carried those implications at all. The thing that makes this a challenging approach is, I often am very attached to the inferences I've drawn from my situation. I really don't want to think that they are less solid than I imagine them to be, however unhappy I am about what I perceive the consequences to be. Being willing to let go of some of those long-standing interpretations is hard work--usually, because they have implications in other areas of our lives.

Gah. I really don't know if this is making any sense ... I realize I'm being somewhat vague and abstract. Don't go away imagining I'm deep--I'm just a semi-insomniac who doesn't know how to finish her post ...

when shall we three meet again?

I'm pretty lucky to have siblings that I like, and who (as far as I know) like me, too. As my Century just mentioned, I'm the middle child of three girls. My older sister, a little more than two years my senior, was generally friendly and protective of me, even though I occasionally did stuff like this to her ... we were quite close, and frequently playmates. My younger sister is more than six years younger than me, and it's possible that some of my bonding with BigSis occurred at the direct expense of LittleSis, as we at times invented elaborate games with the subverted intention of tormenting her: stuffing her under mattresses or in dresser drawers while disguised as 'villains' in order to come to her rescue subsequently as the Heroic Sestren. BigSis even once put her in the clothes dryer and turned it on, and though I wasn't even present for this potentially lethal stunt, I was somehow implicated in it during its periodical retelling forever after. Unfair!

Anyway. As in many families, we three sisters ended up geographically near and dispersed at various times, with some overlaps: BigSis and I lived in the Boston area at the same time for a few years; then, some time after BigSis moved to Atlanta, LittleSis moved to the Boston area, as well; then Howie and I moved to Rochester; then LittleSis moved to the Netherlands with her (Dutch) husband; then BigSis moved back to the Boston area; we moved to our current undisclosed Mid-Atlantic location; LittleSis moved back to the Boston area, and thereafter to Virginia. Now what's the square root of the difference between the distances travelled by LittleSis and BigSis? Just checking if you were awake! In any event, it seemed as though the three of us didn't have much time together any more: all three sisters had families, and visiting times tended to be overscheduled ...

A couple of years ago, sometime between Christmas and New Years, the three of us were all in Boston at the same time, and we realized that we hadn't been out together--just we three sisters--for ten years. This could no longer be endured. So we consigned the husbands to child detail and headed out on the town, all tarted up and all. BigSis drove in her new-to-her car.

First stop: Chinatown, where we parked near the ailing Combat Zone and went for Vietnamese food. Then, Whiskey Park for stupidly expensive cosmopolitans and apple martinis. BigSis used the glam toilets here and had a tale to tell when she came back to our table: the stall next to her, when she glanced down, had two pairs of shoes toe-to-toe (the wearers of which were trying to be very quiet). Later she signalled to us the table with two young, attractive women accompanied by a very disappointing-looking older man with a comb-over. My guess was that the more interesting part of their evening was already over. I visited that bathroom later, and while I found no semi-public sexual conduct in progress, it was a most impressive room anyway, with strangely-lit sinks that appeared to be floating.

We walked to a dessert restaurant afterward. It was about a ten minute walk away, and it was a very cold night with a bitter little wind. But we were having a lot of fun, in our easy-to-please, we-don't-get-out-much way.

It was only a little after midnight, and we were a bit abashed at how tame our little night out had been when we got back to BigSis's car to head home to the waiting husbands. So imagine our delight at this interesting turn of events: her car wouldn't start. The car appeared to be stone cold dead: no ignition at all.

This put the evening in a whole new light. BigSis called for a tow; we phoned the husbands to get a ride home and found an all-night Korean restaurant and bar to wait in. Howie joined us there and waited with us. But when the tow truck arrived, it was impossible to get the car out: the car in front had parked (illegally) with the bumper practically touching, and there was nothing the tow driver could do. At this point, we could all see the likely outcome; but BigSis, panicking with the realization that at 7AM her legal parking spot became a tow zone, was standing in the middle of the street, begging the tow-truck driver (who was trying to drive away) not to leave, while calling the police to ask them to tow the troublesome vehicle that was making all the trouble. By now it was past 1 a.m.; bars were closing; and as Boston is not such a wild town even on such a Saturday night, the drug dealers and hookers meeting up with their pimps were all starting to emerge and congregate on various doorsteps and corners all around us, and we really needed to be heading out of the area right away. However BigSis was oblivious to this, still hoping to get her car safely towed before we left, and had to be more or less deceived into getting into the car; and we drove her back home under protest ...
...
Now I've more or less finished the story--and there was no real serious harm that came of it all: the car was safely removed the next day, and the problem had been merely a sticky ignition cut-off switch. And as I look over this evening that the three of us had together, it's a little bittersweet: how sad that I have so few stories to offer of the three of us, so separated as we now are, with me more or less in the middle, more than five hours away from each of the others. And it's more than the (really not insurmountable) geographic distance--it's the density and intractibility of day-to-day life that keeps us out of one another's way more than we would like. We shared such a small evening, so short. Even its misfortunate climax is in miniature. BigSis, LittleSis: I miss you both.