SuspendedAnimation

dip-a-soin-ted

i.e. my general attitude toward today.

because there's a snowstorm in progress at the moment, and that just makes everything appear to be holdings its breath;
because after half-a-dozen variations in Attempting To Read, I fell asleep in my own bed Attempting To Read;
because I am ill accustomed to napping and therefore woke with a start and couldn't determine for a few heartbeats whether the time on the clock was a.m. or p.m. and therefore momentarily experienced what I hereby dub 'temporal vertigo';
because I'm a passionately orderly person held captive in an ADD brain ...

for all this but wait there's more, I'm-a-let-down with myself.

Which appears to call for some exploding dog!
the caption for this is: don't worry, i am not even listening

Who's Afraid of Jud1th W4rner?

Oh naturally I got my thong all in a monkey fist when I read the review of what's-her-name's book about mothering devolution there you go again fucking up whatever it is she was writing about—some topic that is both, as I hear it, excruciatingly boring and obsessively fascinating, especially for people who don't spend any time doing it. But then, several other people had something to say about it that was a lot more intelligent and funny than anything I had to say, so, enough already about that. I'd really rather write about fell4tio, but I'm not going to do that either. At least, not on my blog. At least, not today.

but oooohhhhhhh I can't resist. Just this. My hobbyhorse. What's breathtakingly newsworthy about jockeying for status within a social class? People to whom this is an essential life-activity will grasp at any aspect of their lives that seems like a plausible tool with which to leverage privilege ... that is, power. And yeah, those whodon't play that still get stress from it. The 'hobbyhorse' of my point is: this isn't about mothering, or parenting, per se. We see this behavior across the board within certain class positions, but the focus in this book on the phenomena as 'mothering' issues globalizes inaccurately across class, and as a result once again puts individual parents under the microscope rather than larger social policy issues.

That was what pissed me off about the 'mommy blog' wars, too. Stick the word 'mother' or one of its synonyms into any social observation and suddenly you seem to have a novel situation with a life of its own. Maria Dolorosa (bathed in golden light) and Susan Smith (burning in effigy) take their respective places, and participants scramble to grab and toss all pertinent issues into the 'good' and 'evil' baskets. Context disappears. Middle Class Mothers are a good stand in for all mothers, because those are the mothers we see on TV. Brilliant!

Of course those are not all the mothers we see on TV. Not that any of the other mother types are less of a caricature, but the one that inhabits this book is just Betty Crocker however updated. SS, DD. I am struggling so hard to articulate what is so troubling to me about all this: it seems to obvious to state that mothers are just women who happen to parent children. That the term is so heavily, unbearably overdetermined to be useless to discuss in any meaningful way. Mothers talk to each other about mothering; but these same women are talking in the next breath about worker's comp for their RSIs or possibly about fell4tio (see? worked it in again) or, who knows, how much they can bench press.

As for anyone else talking about mothering ... well, it just seems as though it's always about something else, really. I tire of it. I've been at home and out of the home; working full-time, a student, and a convalescent. We have a semi-family bed just because we like it. I don't cut my kid's nails, much less sign her up for 'enrichment' classes. I sometimes forget to schedule her for regular dental appointments and annual doctor visits. I refuse to play Candyland. I'm no one's version of a fantasy mother, though I'm an ordinary white middle-class overeducated woman ... I wanted a child. We had a child. That is all. And we love her and we want her to be smart enough to make smart decisions and kind enough to make kind decisions, so we try to act accordingly. That is all. As the one who grew her in me and pushed her out, I'm her mother. That is all.

Can we talk about fell4tio now? Please?

more food for thought

I'm away until Sunday, making a long-anticipated short escape à deux with belovèd spouse. But I leave you with this:

Some women taste a bit like onion sometimes—true or false?

things to think about,

Or, Not.
But first: for the very premier instance in my whole life, I did this kind of thing that some people do on the dreaded V-Day. Lo, I purchased thusly: This looks pretty good on me, although/because I am not a malnourished bitch with implants, frightening sunken collarbones, wishbone arms, and lavish airbrushing.

What I have been thinking about is cool. Sorry, I mean: What I have been thinking about is "cool", the concept. A while ago I read a New York Times feature article on the demise of "cool," but man, they had really been scooped on that one. We've been talking about it for years. Well, not in the same terms. The Times article was, as I remember something about how "cool" wasn't "cool" anymore, and now the way to be "cool" was to be "hot." Thank you, stylewriter mindfuckers. That's neurosis-nourishing mental contortionism at its finest.

One of my pals—the husband of one of my friends, actually, and about twenty years our senior—commented to me years ago that one of the most comforting moments in life comes when you realize that, actually, nobody is cool. You, dear reader, may say to yourself: But surely I am cool--well, I am at least a wee little bit cool, Am I Not? Really, I'm not trying to speak for anyone else. Certainly, I am not cool, thank goodness. See? What kind of cool individual says 'thank goodness'? You see where I'm going with this.

And no: it's not über-cool to not be cool. It's not. It's quite simply dorky, nerdy, spazzy, clumsy, gauche, occasionally boring ... and often unselfconsciously funny in that way where you sometimes inadvertently drool a bit.

I made my peace with this whole number some time ago ... which is not to say that I don't sometimes trip over myself playing it cool, or more likely laughing at myself for my twinges of lust (or perhaps merely nostalgia) for cool. But I still see around me herculean strivings in the direction of cool. At times I assume that everyone else has struggled with the cool delusion and moved on, but sadly this is not so. Recently I came to the stunning realization that one writer that I really like—someone whose weblog is (I use this word soooo sparingly) unique—still saw 'cool' as an attainable object. Don't think that I feel 'above' that ... certainly I don't. I'm a mass of vanities, insecurities, and small mean gestures, myself; I'm 'above' nothing. But I shrink from places where 'cool' still has a foothold.

Likewise, I freeze at irony and cynicism, and guarded, laconic displays of kitsch intended to evoke expressions of oblique, wry pseudo-admiration. I think that this sort of thing lost its charm for me in my earlier experiences in graduate school. I do involuntarily raise one eyebrow, but it's not an ironic gesture; it's just a quirk of how my face has aged.

To summarize: there is no cool—at least, I don't think there is. And I may be wrong, because I often am. So if there is cool, then I'll leave it at this: I am not cool. Are you? And have you uncovered any pernicious myths of your own?

ha! made you look!

I bet you thought I had a post!

I've been trying to write something for days. It's just not happening. Eventually there will be pictures from the party--it really did go off well, if you don't count the part a couple of hours before everyone showed up, when I was either hyperventilating, or cowering in the corner, or wondering how I was going to be able to decorate a cake while shaking like a jackhammer. And no one seemed to notice that I was the equivalent of 2 blunts stoned on side effects.

That's right, I'm hardy.

More later—promise!
Promise schmomish.
No, really.

A clean slate

Irresistible! Let's write on it!

And here's what you can do:

Enter mig's Second Fourth Ordinal Annual Valentine's Day Limerick Contest. Write! A! Limerick! About a skin condition! or a medical pioneer! or a microscopic animal! I haven't yet asked him whether pathogens are animals!

but know this: you haven't got a prayer of winning this one. I am rabid to prevail ... if only because it would give me hope that I am not, after all, in a rapid and steep intellectual decline.

and please, if you love me (or not)—watch the scansion, would you? try to keep it anapestic, people.

be ever on the alert for teachers

because they crop up in the most unexpected places. Back to that theme in a moment. First, this: over the course of today I kept meandering back to grumbling thoughts about how dissatisfied I was with my last post. Now that I think of it, it's a brilliant rhetorical stroke to mention casually, now and then, my dim assessment of my own performance: doesn't it cunningly imply that, even if I can't write worth a damn, at least I have the good taste to recognize it?*

Let it pass; anyway, even those tens of thousands of us who had the great good fortune to be entirely ignored by the New York Times are, I'm guessing, just a wee bit more self-conscious in the wake of this instance of Serious (Yet, Somehow, Dismissive) Attention From The Major Media. I know I am. It won't last long, I'm sure; when I think of all the horrendously embarrassing incidents I've survived thus far in my life, it's implausible that a mildly annoying, lukewarm Lifestyle piece-- written by a reporter who was, at least, smart enough to identify some of the very, very best blog writers I have ever read--will break my stride.

But I can't resist pointing out my frustration that somehow parenting--and especially mothering--always trumps every other characteristic and becomes the object of hyperfocus and inevitably implicit criticism. You can write about, really, anything and no one will wonder why someone would want to read about it--why not? I read a bit of The botany of desire two years ago: here's a book with the premise that plants adapt human behavior to assist in the plants' own reproduction. A bestseller. You know? it's a really intriguing, well-written book. No one wonders why people want to read a good book; but by god, if you have the temerity to actually write about anything concerning the process by which squawling red lumps of helpless flesh are gradually brought, over the process of almost two decades, to the point at which they, in turn, can write bestsellers about Monster Truck Rallies (or become gazillionaires selling collectibles on eB*y, or whatever)—the idea that anyone would be interested in this arguably necessary activity is viewed with skepticism. Pfffft.

So, on to the guru teachings of my child. She was explaining to me, in vivid detail, a playground squabble and her righteous vengeance upon the discourtesy of one of her classmates, who had (woe betide her) attempted to exclude her from play! In the course of our discussion about how these kind of conflicts arise and the various options available to dispatch one's adversaries, the Jellybean mentioned that one of her peers had said, "I won't be your friend any more!"

So what did you say then?

Nothing ... I didn't let it bother me. You know, I used to get upset when one of my friends would say that she wouldn't be my friend anymore. Mollie used to get angry with me and say that, and the next day she would come up to me and say, So, you to play? And I would think, I thought she wasn't going to be my friend any more ... but she would forget about it the next day. People just say that when they're mad, so now, I don't mind when someone says they won't be my friend anymore.

* Someone who will go nameless has pointed out on another blog that this sentence totally sucks, and I quite agree. Actually, she said it's not a sentence. It is a sentence—I have a linguistics background, and I could parse the fuck out of it—but it is one of the shittiest sentences I think I've ever written nonetheless. Anyway, I'm letting it stand on principle. On the other hand, I'd like to say that at least I'm not an asshole, whereas the person who displayed my crappy sentence is (while not unintelligent) an egomaniacal slag who cares more about being right winning than just about anything. I should be grateful to her, though, because she thinks I'm 'young.' But then, since everything else she thinks about me is also 100% false, I can't take her assessment of my age very seriously.

Too late to party like it's 1999

But I do remember when it was not too late.

Yes, there's gonna be a par-tay. You're all invited, but you'll have to figure out the address for yourself. This is The Internet, as in, Oh What A Tangled Internet We Weave / When First We Practice To Supply Personal Information To God Alone Knows Whom And I Am So Not Going There. But I love you all nonetheless. BYOB.

This grande soirée this Saturday is in honor of the seventh birthday of The Jellybean, and her personal request this year, to our surprise, was the inclusion of all of her cousins—none of whom live locally—in the celebration. We explained to her that this would mean no party, to speak of, with her local buddies, but she was firm. So: it's an enormous family gathering, with all the grandparents, all the Jellybean's first cousins and their parents, another aunt and uncle ... eight children and twelve adults, and the first time I've had extended family to my house. We'll have been here, this June, three years.

The fact that I've never had a family party at my home just goes to show you what an effusive and generous hostess I happen to be. I'm terrified. We've done some careful, judicious planning; I wasn't nuts enough to think I could do this without catering platters: wings, quesadillas, crudité, fruit. There'll be a homemade cake, so that will be something of a production ... and I'm making seven layer dip—because I'll use any excuse to do that—and punch and a pot of black beans (special request of the birthday girl) and rice; there's kind of a Mexican theme because that's a favorite of the Jellybean, who also asks that we play Latin or Latin-inspired music (mariachi, Los Lobos, Cuban) on the stereo as a soundtrack. We've been planning decoration, supplies, sleeping arrangements, dinner next-day breakfast for the stay-overs ... gah. I feel really inadequate and ill-equipped to pull this off.

But I'll tell you this: when the Jellybean and I are finished making our fabulous three-dimensional hanging cake decoration with streamers, I will definitely post a pic.

No worries!

I don't deserve you people. Really—I am fine. I just ride in a flimsy boat on a varying tide is all. Like all of us—like all of us. I have nothing to complain about. Here's a quote from me, me, me that I stole from an email that I sent yesterday:

having driven most of the way in, I realized that I was in a pretty good mood because I'd been singing with the cd player (velvet crush) the entire way and not ruminating on anything. And I felt so grateful just to feel normal. Normal enjoyment. Then it dawned upon me that I've been spending the last ... seven months? waiting and waiting for life to 'go back to normal,' and there's no point in that, is there? my life never was 'normal,' it's never going to be 'more' or 'less' normal, and that was entirely a delusion that such a thing ever existed, wasn't it? and waiting is like that word 'hope', it's
something that is a rejection of what is in that time, and every moment of waiting or hoping is a loss of the now. Trite dharma for a monday morning.

See? Fine! xoxoxoxox