Thankful

Our expedition to Vermont, and our holiday with our friends, were both beyond expectations. We relaxed, the kids played, my friend and I cooked together all day Thursday and the meal, which I had no hand in planning, was divine. Our friends, a college friend of mine, architect turned movie producer, her husband, an IT genius who manages systems for a major investment bank, and their six year old son are some of the kindest people we know. She and I have known each other for around twenty years, so there aren't too many surprises for us, just the comfort of a constantly renewing and deepening friendship. The husbands, on the other hand, have met only a few times over the years, and though they have liked each other very much , you never know, I find, how men will or will not connect with one another--or maybe this is just my man. In any case, they quickly discovered a shared interest in the Japanese game go; this kept them occupied in every free moment--they were like teenage lovers stealing away from the adults (in this case, the wives) in order to make out.

Wish I could have been there....

This is too, too good.

The Snowy Day

Do you remember that wonderful Ezra Jack Keats book, The Snowy Day?

We had a little bit of that wonderment today with our first real winter storm. When we woke, there was a dusting of snow on the ground, and it was beginning to rain. Warm enough, we thought as we readied for the day, that the drive to school would be uneventful, if a little slick. By the time we all piled into the car (both kids had school today, and it was "Family Sharing" day at Dido's, which meant that we had to both be in the classroom at 10:30, so we decided to drop them both off, grab breakfast in Lenox, and then go to school, rather than doing the drive twice in one morning) the flakes were falling again, the kind of wet, large flakes that sound almost like hail when they hit your car. Our driveway was white, the road was white on top of icy wet, and we felt our first slight skidding shudder as we headed down the hill that is our road.

The H has only driven in snow maybe four times in his life, two of them in the last year (once here, when he arrived in April, the other in a big storm in Mammoth, CA with our friends last winter) and he doesn't like it so much. Plus I think he spends the whole time he's driving in bad weather thinking about how much scarier it would be if I were the one behind the wheel (he puts little faith in my driving ability in dry, sunny weather, so combination of me, snow and automobile gives him fits.) He was grumpy and white knuckled by the time we hit the "highway" that takes us out of NY state and into Massachusetts, and the two cars we saw slide off the road did little to improve his mood.

In Massachusetts, the snow seemed heavier and thicker than in our little town, and there was nary a plow to be seen. The trip that usually takes 30 minutes took almost an hour, and it was scary. If it hadn't been the last day of school before the Thanksgiving break, we probably would have turned around and just called it a family snow day. But we pushed through, breakfasted at (not nearly as good as I remember it from my New Hampshire high school days) Friendly's, and showed up for Dido's big day, which was lovely. After fetching the Babe, we all headed home to play in the snow (them) and work on taxes, mail and other fun (me.)

We ended the day with a field trip to pick up our locally raised, heirloom breed turkey from a beautiful farm about 30 miles away, in the south part of the county. (My friend over at The Town Tart used to live in this part of the county, and if I'm not mistaken, on my travels today, I may even have driven by the biker bar she used to own. Maybe she'll stop by and let us know for sure.) In any case, our beautiful bird will not be eaten on Thursday as planned; we accepted a last minute invitation to visit friends in Vermont for the holiday, and I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled even though the only thing I'm expected to prepare (and it's already done--I made it tonight) is cranberry sauce. This represents something of a change for me, and my attitude about my favorite of all holidays, and I'm still puzzling over the metamorphosis.

I've posted before about my Thanksgiving mania ( really--it's a disease- see here and here, and here), a truly unattractive need to be in total control of the food and festivities, to the exclusion of good spirits or good manners. I've been a real bitch about it in the past. This year, I could care less. We were supposed to have family visiting here for the holiday, but an ugly falling out, as yet unrepaired, has kept them from coming to us. I'm really, really sad about that, and for the last couple of weeks, until we planned to go away, I was anxious about the holiday, worried, I think, about the four of us sitting forlornly at home, trying to be festive.

Thanksgiving also has a history, for the H and me, of consistently being a rare day of raucous, explosive, f*** you fighting; he has a sour mien most Thanksgivings that culminates in no fun at all...but as he keeps remarking, delighted and surprised, he doesn't feel pressured and awful this year. He attributes it to not having overdue work (hard to have when you're on a work stoppage) but I think it's beyond that, and I wonder if, for us both, it's a kind of freedom in leaving behind the many profound relationships we had in California. Their many blessings also entail great and welcome responsibility, and although all that responsibility still weighs on us like a warm blanket, there is also a sense of joy and fleeting freedom in throwing it off and running outside into the cold air. Of course, this feeling is only a good one if you know you can then run promptly back inside.

Happy Thanksgiving, all. What will you be doing for the holiday? (This would be a good time for a little quick commenting, a little de-lurking, if you're so inclined, dearest readers.)

Love,
Paige

The Internet! Too New!

The H, apparently, is so taken with the powers of the blogosphere (who knew?) that he's setting up his own little corner of it. Sorry--family and friends only (but then, most of my readers fall into that category) but I think it's just hilarious. He's using Apple's iWeb software to set up his site, and when I tried to explain why that's not necessarily the best blogging tool (wholly uncustomizable, for one thing) he just looked at me. He's very busy building a couple of pages with adorable pics of the kids--this is what unemployment will do to a man, apparently. Anyway, it's sweet, and oddly flattering, and we'll see how long it last.

Meanwhile, we had our first noticeable snow fall on Saturday--light, lofty flakes coming down when we woke up, and within what seemed like nanoseconds, the kids had pulled on their snowsuits, hats and mittens and run outside. The total accumulation was maybe a quarter of an inch, and it all melted that afternoon, but for fifteen minutes, they were transfixed. It was a magical start to a lovely weekend, and I blame the loveliness (and the general busy-ness) for my absence from the computer. Now it's Monday, the day of bills and paperwork and no fun, and I'm digging in.

Tomorrow, I'll try to be back with something more interesting to say. In the meantime, enjoy a little Jon Stewart.

The Stranger, Part II

I feel the need to quickly explain myself from that last post. Here's the deal--it's different here than in California. Duh, right? But the differences are subtler than I anticipated, and more difficult for me to navigate. I had an assumption (bred, I think, in the unique California culture that I probably need to go immerse myself in Joan Didion to define) that I would easily navigate the social waters of my new home. And, to some extent, I have. I am making great, wonderful friends (many, many of whom, it bears mentioning, are not from around here.) And the prevailing culture is different--not worse, not better, just different--from what I had in L.A. And being away from L.A. lets me see nuances there that I was missing, or blind to, before.

I am, I fear, neither fish nor fowl, a bit of an outsider, which is, truthfully, how I've felt everywhere, my whole life. Maybe we all feel that way.

Stranger in an unstrange land

One thing about trying to post every day is that I definitely feel the pressure to dig a little deeper--for meaning, or theme, or something...--in my daily experiences in order to come up with something more scintillating than, say, the weather, to write about. Sometimes, it doesn't work out. But other times, the muse is on my shoulder. Ah, but I flatter, and get ahead of, myself.

Today, the H and I (and the Babe) took a drive across Massachusetts to visit our nearest Trader Joe's. Anyone who's read this blog for any length of time (or who knows me from my old life) knows how I feel about TJ's. In L.A., I pretty much only shopped there, and the Hollywood Farmer's Market. Here, given that my closest outpost is an hour and fifteen minutes away, it's a little harder to stay so loyal (or stubborn.) But with a bare cupboard and an attempt at strike-induced economy, the trip made sense. (Let's just say that the flour tortillas my kids live on are half the price--half!--there than at our closest market; pasta is a quarter of the price. In the Prius, the trip makes sense, at least economically.)

After our mega-shop to stock up for winter (the most money I have ever spent at TJ's, and that's saying something) we headed a little further east, to Amherst, to have lunch at a Chinese restaurant that Gourmet magazine highlighted as one of the country's best farm-to-table dining experiences. Amherst Chinese was good, if not fantastic; certainly the best Chinese food we've had since we moved here, but we're spoiled, coming from L.A., which is probably the best place outside of Asia to eat Chinese. Nevertheless, we had good scallion pancakes, which made us both sigh with contentment, and the sauces on the other dishes didn't taste like corn syrup, unlike the faux-nese we've eaten here. We were happy.

Neither the H nor I had ever been to Amherst before, and the town is charming, centered on a long rectangle of a village green, with restaurants, bookstores, inns and so on all around. A pretty picture-perfect New England small town, and we were both sorry we didn't have more time to explore (we had to book back to Lenox to pick Dido up at school.) As we were heading out, the H made a comment (as he often has, since our move) about me feeling at home, feeling that here, I'm among "my people" (his words.) I've been thinking about this lately, about whether or not I am truly at home in the northeast, if I really identify more strongly with the culture here than in California, which I still (somewhat secretly) think of as home.

What I realized, pondering this during our drive back, and tonight as I was putting the kids to bed, is that during our months of slow extrication from Los Angeles, I spent a lot of time justifying our decision (to move) to myself (as well as, no doubt, everyone else.) That justification took the shape of a critical view of what I posited as the predominant culture in L.A.--celeb & money centric, possibly shallow, narcissistic. Not my friends, mind you, none of whom deserve a molecule of those labels, but the world around them and us. And, to a large extent, I think that's true. But having been away now for six months, I can also see (highlighted, standing out in relief against the new culture in which I am immersed) the positive elements of Los Angeles that I ignored (or, perhaps, truly could not see) in my desire to leave. Parents in L.A. are rabid about educating their kids. They immerse themselves in their children's school communities and donate unbelievable amounts of time and money to improve those communities. People are open and welcoming.

[to be continued...and none of the positives about L.A. should be construed as absent here in my brave new world...just different; I'll elaborate when I finish...]

Back to the source

Trouble in my dear Mieke's life prompted me to go back to the beginnings of her blog, to the very first entry. I had no memory of it, though I read it probably the same day it was written, almost four years ago. What I found made me unspeakably sad; if you catch up on her current entries, you'll understand why. That's her story, and not mine to tell, but as I have before, I encourage you to send kind thoughts her way. She needs them.

As I've written recently, Mieke's enthusiasm for her blog encouraged me to start mine, which began here. For reasons I don't remember, I started it on Salon, back when they had a blogging section, and there I discovered my first blogging friend, Alyssa (who doesn't blog anymore, which bums me out, but I love her anyway.) My beginnings were not so inspired, but hopefully, my writing has gotten more interesting over time.

When I go back to read some of my past entries, I'm struck by a few changes--I used to post a lot more about politics, and I used to post a lot more recipes. I haven't done either of those in a long while, and I think I need to get back on the diet of KOS and White House Briefing and Raw Story that fed a lot of that energetic outrage. When Bush got reelected, I kind of gave up--I think a lot of liberals feel the same. With an election on the horizon, I am trying to find it in me to try again, the way I tried in 2004, to contribute to the discourse (at least in my tiny corner of the world) and to effect some change. I have not yet decided who I support among the Democrats, so maybe it's time to really delve in, stake a position, and get to work.

As for the cooking, well...I started my food blog at the beginning of the summer to track my cooking-from-the-CSA-box adventures, and that adventure quickly--uh, burned out. I may try again, because I enjoyed it, and got great feedback from those who read it. I am hoping, at some point, to do some more formal food writing, as I ease back into trying to actually work for a living. In the meantime, you might have to endure some food posts here every once in a while...

Back in the present tense...things are getting much, much better for me. After a rough time, I am feeling much more myself and on top of things. And we've even had a respite from the cold--it's a balmy 46 degrees here as I write this. Ah, New England.

Nearly six weeks until winter

And it's 24 degrees outside. What in the world was I thinking?

Flexible Flier

Here in the northeast, it's starting to get cold. As I type this, the temperature outside is 30 degrees F, and headed south. My joints are not sure they're really ready for this return to winter, and they're even more uncertain after spending the afternoon watching scary human tricks, aka Chinese acrobats, none older than 20 I am sure, all flexible and strong beyond belief. Rather than making me feel the exalted possiblities of the human form, though, watching them today made me wince--repeatedly. Something of a shift, I think, from seeing their abilities as superhuman potential and instead, as indicators of my own looming frailty?

These are the good old days

Or, they were, when the Lovely Swiss helped put my kids to bed and clean up the kitchen after dinner. Alas, she has left us, high and dry, but I learned one thing from her: tis a greater glory to completely clean your kitchen at night than to leave it for the morning. Our neighbors came to dinner tonight, for Cuban roast pork and frijoles a la Edith, and my kitchen is spotless. I am only slightly red-wined, and off to bed. The day was hard but ended well, and that feels like an accomplishment.

Pink is the antidote to blue

It should come as no surprise that someone who has bothered before to post about pink nail polish would amuse herself by painting her daughter's fingers and toes pink in the name of passing time, amusing said daughter, and elevating her own mood.

It worked, for both of us.

For those who might be concerned, this is not the formaldehyde-laden polish we all know, love and fear. It's Aquarella, supposedly less harmful.

The moral of the story

Never quote really depressing songs on your blog, or, do, if you want lots of friends to send you worried emails. Thanks to you all; I love you and although I am not fine, I am ok, if that makes any sense at all.

Meanwhile, the Babe is busy "writing" a note to her daddy, possibly all over the new mattress in our guestroom. When I said I had to send Daddy a note, I meant an email, and when she said "I want to write a note, too!"--she also meant email. When I handed her pen and paper she looked at me like I was a total moron. "No. A NOTE. On the caputer. With the email button."

The Blue of Blue

The blue of blue
Is mostly grey
Ain't no silver line
No brighter day
Last of the coming up
Didn't come my way
Looks like I'm down here to stay...

Not mine. Nicholas Holmes and Carly Simon

Rough day. Nothing to do but quote sad songs.

And another thing...

Folks keep asking me about the Writers Guild strike. For the best information on what is really going on, visit journalist Nikki Finke's site, Deadline Hollywood. The mainstream press and the Hollywood trade papers (Variety and Hollywood Reporter) have not been reporting accurately about the issues that motivated the Guild's decision to strike.

And yes, it's incredibly stressful, and I am in good company hoping that it will be resolved swiftly and equitably. Lots of people's livelihoods depend upon the business of Hollywood staying in business.

Welcome, Husband

We interrupt our regularly scheduled post to alert the seven regular readers of this blog that indeed, the earth has spun on its axis. The H actually read my blog today, and dare I say it, I heard him laughing. He also mentioned that it's a little depressing and that he's not sure he comes off so well. I say to you all, there's nothing I say about him here that I wouldn't say to his face--only the timing might differ a bit. So bid my striking spouse welcome, and share my awe that he finally paid attention. (I jest--but only a little.)

Day 5 of NaBloPoMo

So it's only my 4th post. It's still a hell of a lot more frequent than I usually manage, and no snide remarks, please, about regularity. Not in the mood.

No progress to speak of on the au pair front, though thanks to Sitemeter, I discovered that the Czech Flake does seem to check my blog obsessively. "Of course she does," said my best buddy. "She wants to see if you're writing about her." Ok, there you go. Now stop coming by. I'm done; there's nothing here for you.

Meanwhile, I am interviewing about a million 20 somethings by email and growing increasingly zen about the whole thing. B today noticed that I was in a "really good mood" (which just shows you how dark it must have been around here the last few weeks) in spite of it all. I realized that the really good mood was occasioned not simply by my giving up chilling out about the au pair drama, but by my husband performing the hated afternoon drive to pick up the kids...I had a whole afternoon to sort piles of old bills in my so-called office. You cannot imagine the joy, as I contemplated actual filing (remember the Freedom Filer post?) instead of shamed hurling of unopened envelopes into stylish fabric storage bins. Now if I could only get my tax info pulled together found, all would be right with the world.

Family circus

Yes, that is the circus train, going through our closest little town. It was impossibly long, and seeing it was one of the highlights of an otherwise pretty tense week.

We told Dido tonight that B is leaving. He cried, he sulked, he hid, he acted out and I wanted to die. Ok, not really; that's melodramatic (see where he gets it?) But it was awful...I think it drove home for her that her departure is going to have a big impact on all of us, which I guess I was sort of horribly glad about, but I felt sad for her, too. No one wants to make a six year old boy cry. She didn't know (I hadn't told her yet; I didn't want to complicate her departure plans, which I knew she had already made based on the supposed arrival date of the girl I will forever think of as the Czech flake) that the Czech had, uh, flaked. As for the Babe, who has finally, I think, started to accept B (she's liked her the whole time she's been torturing her, as only a two year old can do) she was sad for about a nanosecond and then start gabbing away on her horrible new purple Barbie cell phone.

Have I mentioned that I think our (fifteen year old) dog might be on his way out, too?

Oh, and right, the writers' strike starts in, what, six hours?

Good times.

More errors than comedy

First off, let's just acknowledge that the Nablopomo pledge has already been broken. I am going to choose to view this as taking the pressure off, rather than as some kind of highest order character failing.

Now that that's out of the way...

A few more fun things. As I wrote the other day, our lovely au pair decided a week or two ago that au pair work is really not for her; she'd rather be on a beach in the Dominican Republic. (If there are any mothers of two year olds out there who wouldn't rather be on a beach on the Dominican Republic, please let me know. I'd like some of whatever you're taking. In other words, her decision is entirely sane and understandable, if a bit solipsistic and inconveniently after-the-fact.)

I spent the next weekend emailing prospective au pairs. One, a Danish girl, was really interested, couldn't wait to talk to me, but was in transition leaving her former family. She'd call me, she really would. She disappeared for two days. No one else responded to my emails. Finally, the Dane emailed me proposing a phone interview the next day. We set a time. Two hours later, she emailed again to say sorry, no thanks, she'd taken another au pair job with a different family. Ok....

In relatively short order, I found and interviewed a Czech girl who was already in the States, au pair-ing for another family, but unhappy in her situation and wanting to move. We had a nice conversation, she seemed smart and good with kids and cheerful and entirely committed to being an au pair--this last was important to me, given the experience with B. The H and I discussed it, agreed to give it another shot, and I told her we wanted her to come here. In short order, she agreed. After much buck-passing, travel arranging began. This all happened on Hallowe'en and the day after. Then, yesterday afternoon, I received a terse email from the Czech--she'd changed her mind. She was going home to her parents. Oh, so when I asked her, repeatedly, if she really wanted to do this, and she said, repeatedly, yes, yes yes--that must have just been a passing feeling. I see. Ok.

At what point in life do people actually start to consider commitments they've made to others? My dear friend, who came from north of Boston for the night yesterday (along with her delightful daughter) and I agreed that the magic age of responsibility might be 27. I think that's about when it kicked in for me.

If I believed in destiny, which I don't think I do, I might say that I am, clearly, not meant to have an au pair. The H keeps telling me that now that he's going to be on strike, he'll have more time to help me with running our lives. Stay tuned...

Event-full

In addition to the arrival of the first two eggs, we've had three more, for a grand total of five. Mind you, I have eleven hens, and they're supposed to lay around five eggs, per bird, per week. I'm just assuming that I have a hen or two who is precocious, maybe even slightly slutty, and that the others are late bloomers.

I scrambled a couple of the eggs for the kids' breakfast yesterday--the first one had a double yolk, and as everyone had predicted, it was sunflower yellow. I didn't try any (though I plan to) but the aroma was incredibly rich and, yes, eggy. The H and tend to like our eggs poached, so that may be on the weekend breakfast agenda, especially since I acquired these seemingly ridiculous but incredibly handy tools. If you prefer to support small, local businesses instead of corporate behemoth culinaria conglomerates, I bought mine here.

As to other events, a few worth noting are first, Halloween, which yesterday, duh, was. My kids' costumes are self-explanatory, but of note was our first localish 'ween celebration, the town parade in Lenox, MA. Two fire engines, the high school band in a flatbed truck, and a bunch of costumed kids and parents marching up Main Street. It doesn't get much more fantasy-American than that. If only there were a way to have the kids eat great local candy, like a particular brand of local fudge (Fiddle Fern) which is so unbelievably good that I have been pining for it like Proust without his madeleine since I received it as a holiday gift from this illustrious personage about 8 years ago. It is, inconveniently, not available for online purchase, but if you're a fudge freak, email me and maybe I'll get around to sending some out. Meanwhile, we've got big bags of candy crap in the kitchen, and no doubt I'll have sugared-up crazy kids for the next few days until I make the rest of it disappear.

A little blue perfection

Our chickens made these today. I found them on the coop floor--the nesting boxes I so carefully mounted a few weeks ago remain unexplored, the wood shavings I filled them with lofty, pristine and untamped.

The kids were waiting for me in the car this morning, while I ran to open the birds' pen so they can range, and then into the barn to check their water. When I came back cradling these treasures, they were awestruck. So am I. For one thing, I can now be sure we won't starve during the seemingly-unavoidable Writers' Guild strike, that could begin as early as next week. Now if I can only talk the H into the sheep.

Monday, Monday

Oh right. It's Friday. Just feels like Monday, or, more accurately in my personal lexicon, like Tuesday, which, when I was working like a dog in a paying job, I referred to as the "Day of No Hope." Or maybe, today is actually Wednesday, because yesterday definitely felt pretty bleak.

In the last four days, the Lovely Swiss has decided that au pair-ing is not for her, and she's going to leave as soon as we find someone else (or the beginning of December, whichever comes first.) I am frustrated, and trying hard not to be angry, and a little bit--ok, a lot--at the end of my personal rope. The last six months, in truth, the last year, have been incredibly intense, from the decision to move, to getting our old house ready to sell, to juggling two houses, to moving, to fixing up this house to the H's exacting specifications, to dealing with the H being an invalid for a couple of months before and after his back surgery, then having him working seven days a week for pretty much the entire time we have lived here, meaning he was unable (or unwilling, you decide) to pretty much ever give me a break from the kids. Did I mention that the Babe is two with a bullet and completely willful, really f-ing smart, and prone to hysterical, cannot-be-assuaged temper tantrums and occasional sleep boycotts? All this--stress? stuff? pressure?-- led to a whole bunch of conflict between the two of us, between us and other family members and, to be fair to my husband, resulted in him admitting that he doesn't do his share of family stuff and that he needs to do better. I know he wants to, and I hope he will. (Let me just say that I know my problems are not divorce, or cancer, or poverty, or despair. They are, however, my problems, and I feel them, and they f*** up my life. So bear with me, and please don't tell me how lucky I am. I have enough guilt about my good fortune to choke a barn full of horses.)

So with B electing to leave (not, she says, because we're so awful, but just because she doesn't really want to do this, which makes it worse, somehow) I hit the wall. I pinned too many hopes on her helping me get caught up (remember the chaos post of a few weeks ago) and now I'm getting the payback for anticipating that one change would change everything. But today looks somehow brighter. I have found a couple of new au pairs to interview, B is still here (and at the moment wrangling a screaming Babe) and Dido, super big boy that he is, read his first book (Green Eggs and Ham) last night. This week, he also lost his first tooth. Change is afoot, and I just have to get on board.

Life and Time

It has started raining here again, after a long period without. We had our first storm in a while about a week or so ago, and it's raining again tonight, not hard, not too windy, but a steady sound made more pronounced by our house's copper roof. After many weeks of feeling fragile and blue, I feel better. We have pits and peaks and plain bad days, but we're all hanging in there, treating each other (mostly) with care and kindness, and as a very important and very dear friend said, describing what another wise soul told her was truly necessary in life, mostly we are moving forward together.

Meanwhile, I have friends who are lurching forward on rough waters without sound charts.

If you read me, you may read my darling Mieke, too. Mieke is the entire reason I blog. So for those of you who have (a lot of you, lately!) sent me such incredibly nice feedback about my writing, and your enjoyment of this little window into my little life, you are already connected to Miek. It's her fault that I do this, though I did almost stop when, Mieke, on her third glass of wine at our (misbegotten?) John Kerry fundraiser in 2004, outed me and my blog to about a hundred people (including Arianna Huffington, our guest of honor.) I wanted to kill her (Mieke, not Arianna.) Nobody knew I was blogging then, but luckily, most of my friends had also had too much wine, and promptly forgot. A couple, mostly people I didn't know very well, cornered me and asked for the address, and I wanted to drop silently into the ground under the cocktail tables. Since then, I've apparently become much more of a verbal exhibitionist, and I out myself, constantly. I think Mieke gets the credit for that, too. She is one of the freest, warmest and most utterly open human beings you could ever have the pleasure, or the awe, to know. She is a force of nature, and right now, she's having a tough time, and not much will make it easier, except more time. So take a minute, and send a kind thought her way. She deserves it, and right now, she needs it.

I am, for those who don't know me, one of the least "new age"-y people I know, in spite of my penchant for yoga, meditation, and images of Buddha. (I'm not a Buddhist, I practice a vaguely Hindu form of meditation but without any basis in faith, and I pretty much reject all organized religion, though I do love the ritual and the music, and being in church at Christmas time. Call me what you will.) In any case, I don't so much know what the power is of those good thoughts sent spiraling off into the ether. But I do know she deserves them, and she needs to know that she is surrounded by hundreds of people who all feel some thread of attachment to her, some kinship with her and her struggle to survive and eventually transcend a very painful path.

Karma

A couple of mornings a week, I work out at a small gym across the street from Dido's school. Today, sweaty and rank (as I am after every workout--but that's a good thing, right?) I decided to pop across the street to a cool outlet store (in the same complex as the school) to get some new sheets for our guest room-to-be (B took the real guest room, but we have a spare room on the floor with our family bedrooms that is now going to be for guests. They now have to share a bathroom with our kids, but I'm not feeling sorry for us or them, because, let's face it, we're all living very comfortably. I digress....)

As I pulled out of the parking lot, I had to drive by the front of school. Today is Picture Day. In its honor, Dido pulled out all the stops this morning: collared shirt, beautiful green crew neck sweater (hey, folks, it's chilly here now!) and even let me comb and glue down with gel his (two) cowlicks. He couldn't have looked more handsome. So as I drove through the parking lot, I glanced to my right towards the school. Picture Day was in full swing, and who was perched on the stool in front of the gorgeous, still blooming zinnias, but my boy, grinning ear to ear, looking so big and happy and proud. He didn't notice me as I drove by; he was laughing about something with the photographer, totally engaged in his own joyful world.

Last night, I was beating myself up for not being as good as I'd like to be at all these tasks I've taken on--especially the parenting ones. Seeing him like that, unexpectedly, gave me so much joy, and made me think about what I want him to be and to have in his life. And here's what I came up with (and thanks to my old friend Gretchen over at The Happiness Project for helping me clarify these....since finding the site, I've been thinking a lot about what she calls the Commandments for being happy...)

1. Be yourself.
2. Be kind.
3. Keep learning.
4 (Hopefully as a result of the above) Be happy.

The trick for me is to not let my frustration, aggravation, insecurity and fear get in the way of my kids achieving the above. Today was a great reminder that the most important thing I need to do every minute I am with my kids is to allow myself to really, really feel and express all the love I have for them, which, as I tell them constantly, is bigger than the sky and the stars and all the planets.

Status report

The H is in L.A., holed up in a fancy hotel (thanks to his potential next job,) trying to finish the current job. He left on Monday morning, flies home tomorrow. B was away in NYC Sunday and Monday, taking the train back up here Tuesday night. While it hasn't exactly been the Fortress of Solitude here on the farm, it has been different.

I felt funky from Monday morning on--agitated, stressed, craving (and enjoying) chocolate, and any other sweet-y, starch-y comestible comfort I could lay my hands on. Yesterday was more of the same, culminating today in an agitated, spacey morning where I missed a yoga class and ran aimless, not entirely necessary errands just to fill time while the Babe and B went on a playdate with another au pair'd child. Driving through Pittsfield (which is not as bad as the name suggests--thanks, Cupcake, for allowing me to rip that snappy thought right off from your blog), I had the Homer Simpson-esque "DOH" moment. In a flash of insight, I knew what was wrong. I was lonely. Lonely is not something I have much allowed my self to feel. I am an only child; I crave solitude; I am good at entertaining myself. I like it when my husband is away: I treasure the rare moments I have alone in my house. These are closely guarded rules of how I think about myself. But there was no need and no desire to try to walk (or drive, or munch) away from this reality. It was simply there, solid, calmly filling every bit of me. And as soon as I recognized who, or what, was lurking in the corner of my head, the anxiety drifted off.

It was too early to call any friends in L.A. Sending emails wouldn't guarantee contact. I felt weird calling the few people I know well enough here yet to call about, well, feeling lonely. So instead, I sent a text to a friend (I text now; this is what happens when you live with a 24 year old.) A new friend. One who lives here. We're having coffee tomorrow. I feel much better.

Of nature and nurture

This blog has been shocking lately in its lack of indignation. I used to blog politics all the time, and then Kerry "lost", and so I lost nearly all will to read the s0-called news. The impulse to outrage seems to be coming back, though instead of focusing on the horrors of our so-called democracy, I prefer to focus on really stupid public figures. So many! So little time! Interestingly, Bill Maher, despite his propensity for bimbos, is someone I usuallly find intelligent, if a little smarmy, and belligerent about some of his beliefs. This time, though, he's been just plain dumb in his rail against, of all vulnerable and exhausted targets, breastfeeding moms. You can watch it, and read my brilliant friend Sarah's noble riposte, here.

That pink sky up above? It was reflecting into our pond this morning, making the surface of the cloudy water shiny and pink (just the way the Babe likes, well, everything these days.) All that's missing is the quiet sound of deer eating just inside the edge of the woods, and out of sight, and the concurrent sound of my roosters, crowing.

Seeing the branches, and the trees

Now that the Lovely Swiss is here (I cannot, cannot, despite some readers' evident desire, call her the Swiss Miss. That's just too--weird) friends and mere acquaintances keep asking me what I am going to do with all my free time. Hmmmm. I want to answer, "What freaking free time??" and run out of the room, but that would be antisocial and not too productive. I do have more time; right now, as I type this, I can hear the Babe and the Swiss playing downstairs, and better, all seems to be amiable, which has not been the case every day. Having a new babysitter around seems to have made the Babe realize just how swank it's been for the last six months, free of babysitter fetters, free to cling to my legs, arms and abdomen all day, pretty much every day, save a few hours here and there in the playroom at the gym, the two-day-a-week daycare we started over the summer and a morning here or there "helping" our housekeeper clean. The lack of constant mommy has been translated into emphatic, "I no like YOU"s, directed at poor B (the Swiss.) So to overhear tantrum-less engagement is reassuring.

The truth, the ugly truth, is that I need to catch up. Our files, our finances, our basement, all the things in a family life that most require organization--none of them have any. I have to set up systems anew, since the ones I moved from L.A. were on life support, at best, during the year after the Babe's birth. I meet moms of little kids who seem to have everything so pulled together; if only. That is just not me. So the question becomes, after I catch up (and I have my Freedom Filer system glaring at me from across the floor) then what? That is the real question. My goal (and I'm putting it onscreen to taunt me) is to get all of the chaos under control by the end of October. Then, maybe, just maybe, I'll figure out what it is I am supposed to be doing with my life. (On that subject, visit here for some inspiration.)

Meanwhile, the leaves that started to turn two weeks ago are now falling, dancing like red and gold snowflakes in the exhaust wake of pick up trucks going too fast down our country roads. There's an old, fragile looking maple outside my window that is nearly bare, but the oak next to it is still green, except at some of its outer branches. Do you remember, if you live somewhere without fall, what eddies of leaves look like when they swirl suddenly on the ground?

Tuesday Meld

I am all betwixt and between today. Our new au pair, the lovely Swiss, arrived on Thursday. She couldn't make a better first impression. The kids adore her, fight over her, won't leave her alone. Meanwhile, my terror that she will implode from bucolic boredeom is manifesting by giving me the most intense feelings I've yet had that this has all been a terrible, disastrous, ill-considered, cliff-jumping, um, mistake. "This" being the family rural relocation, of course.

Mind you, I don't really think we've done the wrong thing--it's great here. (Fall, anyone? It is truly divine.) We are finally making real friends. Dido loves his school so much we wonder what the heck was the matter with the old one. The Babe is, well, The Babe--demanding, opinionated, prone to screaming temper tantrums, preferably in restaurants, and so obscenely cute that we forgive her all of it. The H is happier than I think I have ever seen him--calm, less moody (really! LESS MOODY!), loving and focused on his work. And I--I feel like the same disorganized flake I was before. Aha. My old shrink warned me about this. She told me when I announced our plans that she thought I was just changing venue in the hope of escaping the bag of flabby demons I have slung over my shoulder at any given time. I feel like Anne LaMott trying to write her school report, before her dad gave her (and she internalized) the "bird by bird" advice.

Any advice out there for me?

Something to consider....

A dear friend, who's known me (ulp) more than a quarter of a century, wrote this after reading through this blog for the first time,

" Do you know what is interesting though - that occurred to me as I read them and thought of just seeing you - is how you seem more breezy, blunt, caring and also matter-of-fact in person - and then on these blogs - caring throughout but also much more contemplative, less assured, less edgy and more observer."

I have to think about this. This friend happens to be an extremely meticulous observer herself, so I have to really ponder this as truth, and figure out what it means....Anyone else who actually knows the real me, as opposed to the virtual one, I'd love to know what you think.

We interrupt the self-pitying navel gazing...

for a message from a neighbor.

Many, many afternoons after I pick up Dido from school, or, in the case of what we'll kindly call our summer "schedule", retrieve both kids from their two-day-per-week day camp, we stop on the way home at a place we call the General Store. It is not actually named General Store, and the lovely couple who run it are not actually named, as I tend to refer to them (mostly to clarify for the H, who can barely remember my name, let alone two names of two men he's only met once) General Store J----n and General Store H---. My children adore this place. It closes early most days, and we nearly race there (we would drive faster if I were not living in fear of speeding tickets in two states) to get there before closing time. Mostly, the kids like it because there, I let them choose snacks I typically ban: Doritos, crappy ice cream sandwiches, even an occasional soda. The store doesn't have a huge selection of healthy snacks (though they're adding some, as one of the guys proudly and sweetly pointed out to me the other week) and sometimes, I think a little junk food at the end of a long day is just fine. But I think the kids also like it because they feel a connection to it: it's near our home; the owners treat them with love and respect; they feel both empowered and safe there.

Yesterday, we got to the front door about 3 minutes after closing, but the guys were sitting up front apparently having a meeting and, as ever, graciously, sweetly accomodated us. Instead of sitting inside where the Babe could smear ice cream sandwich goo over every (just cleaned) surface, we moved to the front porch, where we were joined a few minutes later by an even-later, post-closing patron; he'd missed lunch and purchased some salads to down before heading off--wherever. His pickup was parked at a rakish angle to the front door--he too had raced in, hoping not to be disappointed.

He was probably in his fifties, and gracious about my kids racing back and forth on the porch as he tried to eat and relax. The kids were being pretty good, but arguing about sharing their treats, and highly resistant to my suggestion that they simply sit down. He watched me for a bit, as I attempted negotiation and occasionally sighed; he made a comment about his own daughters, now teenagers, and then said, very simply, "You know, don't you, how rich you are?"

Often, I forget. Thanks to the stranger from North Hillsdale for the reminder.

Part II

The sad truth is, like Her Bad Mother, I cannot write about the rest of the strangeness. Unlike Part I, the improbably story of finding unknown family here in the back woods, the rest of the strangeness was all bad, full of pain and hurt feelings and probably some much-needed personal growth, too, because they usually all travel together...but that doesn't mean it was good or kind or wished-for. I am, to use cryptic and uninteresting words, still processing it all.

Meanwhile, here at the ranch, uh, farm, I am having my first moments--now turned into days--of regret, indecision, and overt, teary sadness about our move. (Hey, I have some problems feelings my feelings, so maybe it just takes me a while? And maybe it's related to the emotional beat-down of last week? ) I'm not sorry, exactly, to have moved, but I have been feeling desperately lonely, completely inept, and downright woeful. Some of it, I think, is also about the turn in the weather: not just leaves are falling, but temperature, too, and it reminds me of short, dark, cold days to come. The breeze and the loamy smell of wet leaves that greet me on my morning walks this week are replacing the ethereal waft of ripening apples. I signed up for all this, of course, in moving here, but I fear it, too.

Strange Days, Indeed

First, something lovely. Every morning, almost, I walk Pasha the puppy and sometimes Tinker (our fourteen year old border collie mix old man dog) up our road for a while. We usually end up taking forty five minutes or so to walk a couple of miles, with plenty of time for sniffing (them) and waking up (me) on the way. Our road travels up hill (our house is already at 1100 or so feet, but the road rises more than that behind us,) past an enormous gentleman's farm owned by an amazing couple who have been so welcoming and kind to us that we sometimes pinch ourselves, past another old farmhouse with a beautiful Dutch-style barn, and finally starts downhill, changes abruptly from asphalt to dirt, and wanders through an enormous stretch of land still owned and farmed by a family that's been here for generations. Early in the morning, heir cows pasture far off the road, but you can hear them lowing, which always makes Pasha perk her ears.

One neighbor, on the paved section of School House Road (and indeed, the old school house is right across the street from us,) has a couple of old, feral apple trees in his yard; they seem to have been purposefully planted, like relics from an old orchard, but they stand alone near the driveway, with no other trees around. Another apple is improbably roadside, and I've been watching its fruit all summer. When I first noticed them, the apples were tiny, crab apple size, but they're now nearly big enough for eating and starting to color. Today, the dogs stopped right beneath the roadside tree, and I instantly knew why. As soon as I inhaled, my whole body filled with a lilting summer scent, so sweet and floral that it seemed impossible.

Continuing on, I found the first colored maple leaf fallen on the ground, and later today, when we were driving across Massachusetts for our very fun field trip to the Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Dido said, "Mom! Look! The first leaves are turning color." Not many, not yet, but he was right.

***

That's the good part, not the strange part. The strange part started with lots of breakage: plates, glasses, a silver baby cup mangled in the disposal, culminating in a collapsing shower door shattered all over the H and Dido in the bathroom (they're fine.) I've written before about how things breaking always indicates or presages a period of some kind of instability, and this one was no exception.

My mother arrived in the middle of it for a nice, if somewhat too harried visit. (When am I not too harried? I'd like to know.) We were all so happy to see her, delighted to share our amazing new home with her, thrilled that she seemed to soak in the place and all the characteristics of it that make us think she'd love living here. We had our usual arguments (they are, ever and always, exactly the same--why IS that? We'd both like to know.) but it was a good visit nonetheless. Her first night here, we had a dinner party with some friends we adore and thought she would, too. One of them grew up in the same town as my mom and dad, and is around the same age, so I knew my mom would enjoy either reminiscing or dishing, depending upon how she related to L (our friend.)

Within moments of L's arrival, a bomb fell. Her aunt was my father's stepmother. We are, in some strange way, cousins. This is odd and coincidental, of course, but also thrilling. There is so much I don't know or don't remember about my dad (who died when I was seventeen, for those who don't know) and I have had dropped in my lap someone I really enjoy who knew him as a young man. I am still reeling from this news. L was very close to her first cousin, my dad's stepsister, who died when I was quite young. I don't even know how to write about this because it feels, as my mother said, like something you would scoff at in disbelief if it happened in a novel.

Stay tuned for Part II.

Stung

Sunday was a glorious day--beautiful weather, cool and clear, perfect for exploration and meandering, and, apparently, for a foul storm of moodiness for the H. The kids and I cleared out and left him to stew and work until he felt better, or at least, companionable.

We went to a local farm where the Babe got to feed a baby goat with a baby bottle, no less, and let's just say that I think we'll be going back. The place had a taco stand, and an ice cream shop, not to mention fresh produce for sale, so it was a monster hit for each of us.

Upon returning home, the H's clouds were still a little black, but we hung out outside together on the new swing set and made do. Pasha the Puppy (now nearly as big as our old dog, Tinker) was tethered on a long lead to prevent her from chasing the cat into the woods (their favorite joint activity.) The H decided she wouldn't run off (sometimes, it's true, she doesn't) and let her off lead. He went inside to get a glass of wine, while I watched her....chase the cat into the woods. I followed them a bit up the grassy bank that leads up the hill from our house to the edge of the (dense, as yet unexplored by us due to fear of deer ticks) forest. I stopped at the brush lining the larger trees, distracted by a wild blackberry bush--I picked one and it was unbelievably sweet. I wanted to share these with my family--started picking to find four perfect ones (not many were yet ripe) when I felt something prick my sandal-clad foot. I looked down to see my right foot aswarm with yellowjackets.

"Stung! Stung!" was the only thing I could say as I ran screaming down the bank, slipping and sliding and kicking off my sandal as I fell. I ran in the back door to the kitchen, clutched the counter and screamed some more. (As someone who's experienced the pain of unmedicated labor--at least for a little while--and a herniated disc, I can say with authority, this was worse.) My poor kids started to cry as I grabbed for the baking soda and a large steel bowl, poured some soda in, mixed some water and plunged my foot in. Dido got some ice for me and we added that, too, as the whole family looked on in horror. As I stood there, now whimpering, I felt something scratching my leg, inside my jeans. I haven't disrobed that fast since reuniting with my college boyfriend after a two week separation. The stalking wasp flew around the kitchen for a bit, prompting the H to chase it wildly with a flyswatter (thanks) while I continued to ice and soak.

I got off light, considering I stepped directly into a ground nest--only four stings, three on my foot, one on my leg. They hurt, a lot, for about 24 hours, and now just itch. I will never go near our woods without muck boots again.

Welcome to the country, sucka.

Lots of clever titles, come and gone

I've gotten back in the infuriating and unproductive habit of mental posting. John is in L.A. for a week, which means I'm flying solo with the kids, but I kind of like it, in spite of adventures that have included power and phone outages, a possibly broken toe (mine), a near miss with a New York State Trooper (Merry Christmas, again), several episodes of pee on the floor (child, not puppy), one mysterious animal skeleton on the mudroom floor and the joy of tax prep. I've had one glass of wine since the H left, and I think that's VERY impressive.

Meanwhile, bucolic joys continue.

Witness my chickens, my commute, and my view. Life could be much, much worse.

Sunset redux

A few weeks ago I posted a picture of one of our sunsets, proclaiming said sunsets of unending beauty and constant variation. But the picture kind of sucked. So here's another, better one.

Yesterday, unusually, showed us no sunset at all. For the first time either John or I could remember for the 4th of July, it was pouring rain. Not even lightning and thunder to stand in for the drowned-out fireworks. So we grabbed the kids and headed off to Great Barrington for dinner. With no particular plan, we decided to try a Mexican place that we'd heard was good. Unfortunately, what folks here think of us good Mexican food can be pretty awful (witness the much-extolled Mexican Radio restaurant in Hudson, which is so bad that even the kids aren't happy with their quesadillas.) Phew. This place was actually good--decent sauces, good refried beans, and margaritas better than those at the place we always went to in L.A. None of it was amazing, but all of it was good enough to help the homesick Angelenos perk up.

We have been homesick lately. We've had lots of visiting friends which is wonderful, but also a reminder of how many people we've left behind. Saying goodbye, again, is hard on all of us, even though we wouldn't ever pass up the opportunity to see our buddies or to show them why we're not insane for making this move. (It is to all of their credit that none of them have made us feel nuts, even if that is what they believed--for this, we all thank all of you.) John also went to L.A. last week for work, which seemed to make him doubly homesick, for homes old and new. (He did, however, get to eat both real sushi--definitely not abounding here--and Mexican, so no sympathy, really, for him.)

On the other hand, our new life continues to delight, at least me. We have chickens now, nearly three weeks old, pecking away in one of the stalls in the barn. Six guinea hens (apparently champion tick-eaters, which recommends them here in the Lyme Disease capitol of America), 3 Leghorns (white egg layers), 4 Rhode Island Reds--3 hens and one rooster, Jolly (or, as the Babe calls him for self-evident reasons, "Poopy Butt")--for brown eggs, and 7 Araucanas, six hens and a boy, now named Striper, for their gorgeous, Martha Stewart-endorsed pale blue and green eggs. It takes about five months for a hen to begin to lay, so it will be late fall or even early winter before ours are ready, which means that we may not see much from them until next spring. But they're sweet, and soon enough I'll have a use for the beautiful pitchfork and overalls my L.A. girlfriends gifted me with at one of my farewell parties. The kids are really into them--as though we have 20 new pets in our family, and I suppose we do, though I have been known to insist that at some point, we'll be eating some of them. I suspect I'll reverse that position, as more of them gain names. Chicken pix to come.

That New Project

It's here. Tell me what you think. And yes, Mieke, this mostly means you don't have to read recipes here any more...

Proud wife

The H's movie opens today. It's getting great reviews. Go see it.

Coming soon...

Since I can't seem to get my s&^( together to write for pay these days, I'm cooking up a new project for myself. Watch the sidebar for something new in the next day or two...

Where the hell I've been, part deux, and how to make something not at all about me...all about me

You'll all be thrilled to know I am no longer crying on the toilet. I did cry for about 1.5 seconds in the car today, because I was pissed at the H for not agreeing to help me, once and for all, resolve the hideous car registration drama--this would have required him to stop what he was doing and immediately get to the Hudson, NY DMV. I can't blame him for not wanting to go, but let's just say I've been trying to get this onerous errand off my mind and my phantasmic to-do list for some time now. The good vehicular news is that the lovely magistrate in Massachusetts dropped, all, yes ALL of the charges (speeding, driving without insurance--a criminal charge, mind you--and driving without registration) levied by the Psycho Cop. Actually, that's great news, and as the friendly, sardonic judge said to me at the time, "Merry Christmas." Couldn't agree more. But the cars still don't have their NY state plates or registrations, which makes me terrified/unwilling to drive my new car anywhere but in my own driveway. Not so efficient, except that the H has been on house arrest for two months trying to finish a script, and now has 30 pages of the next one due in two weeks. Fun times, but his incarceration means I get to drive his Prius. Ah, but wait....there's more.

It's not all gloom and doom for Mr. H-'o-mine. I'm outing us, right now, because I want all of you to go to the movie theater next weekend, and buy tickets to his first produced film. (He's been produced, beautifully, award-nominated-and-winning-ly, for television, but the holy grail for any screenwriter is a film: most screenwriters, like most actors, toil in inglorious, unseen dungeons of despair and rejection for years and years. I'm not kidding.) All that pain, suffering (his, and, let's be honest, anyone who knows us will confirm this, mine) was assuaged on Wednesday night, at the film's fancy New York premiere.

Buy tickets, please, and tell me what you think. Since the film is, as all films are, somewhat different from his original scripts, fire away with your honest criticisms.

Oh, and in case you're wondering the really important stuff, I wore this. Brown, not grey, and it's a much prettier color than the picture shows. I know, I know. In my defense, the only other times I've worn anything this expensive were 1. my wedding and 2. the Emmys, when the H was nominated. I think the occasion demanded it, and the dress is, I must say, way better than it looks in the picture.

Proud moments in parenting, part I

Item: on Tuesday, with Dido home from school puking and....running, I went down to the basement to iron rather than hang out with him and the Babe.

Item: yesterday, I sat in the bathroom crying because the Babe, who is now back in her crib after a brief vacation for no one in a big girl bed, still refused to take a nap.

Item: during said crying jag, the Babe followed me into the bathroom, saying "No cry, mommy. No cry."

Item: this morning, when I refused to find the Transformers cartoons on YouTube for him, Dido told me I was the meanest mom ever, and no one likes me very much.

Item: after that outburst, he remembered to mention that the reason he slept in our bed last night was because he peed in his.

Item: the H rolled out of bed awakened by Pasha this morning, but instead of just stumbling out with her for a morning pee, he took the time to find me (reading emails in my office at 6:30) and give her to me instead for the pee run. As I carried her down the stairs, I felt something warm cascading down my right leg.

Is it too early for a cocktail?

Wild Kingdom

That title has two connotations for me--given my advanced age, the first is, obviously, "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom", the Sunday night TV staple starring Marlon Perkins that I watched religiously throughout childhood. The other is a song by a (presumably now defunct) NYC-based band, The Second Step, with which I was fairly obsessed in the late 80s, when they used to perform at a downtown NYC Mexican joint I loved. (Can anyone remind me of the name? The Cactus Cantina or somesuch? It was awesome, as was the band, and the song, "Wild Kingdom." I have it on my iTunes, having bought their CD nearly 20 years ago, and if I can get my act together, I'll put it up on here. It totally rocks.)

Now, I have a third connotation---as my friend Marti might write, Doods, I live in the Wild Kingdom. Seriously. Today, on the way back from an antique/hardware store/ice cream run to Great Barrington, Massachusetts (20 minutes away from our own little WK) we had to stop our car in order avoid running over a foot and a half long SNAPPING TURTLE crossing the road near our house. I made the H get out of the car to ensure that it would cross safely to the other side. I thought it might be a snapper (what the hell other American turtle is that f'ing big??) so I told him to be careful, so he did a little frog march behind it which made it pick up its pace and get to the creek on the other side of the road. When we got home, I consulted my trusty field guide (thank you to my MIL--awesome Mother's Day present) and confirmed its taxonomy. Apparently, this is the time of year when the girl snappers leave their ponds for nearby rivers and creeks whereby they will lay their l'il snapper eggs. Go figure.

Bucolic pleasures, bad carma, and bedtime blues

Let's start with the glorious, shall we? The sunsets here are different, and spectacular, nearly every single tonight. Yesterday, just to make the two natural disaster-acclimated Californians feel right at home, we had a tornado warning for much of our region. Yet by the time the sun was preparing to set, the clouds were dissipating across the sky, there was a fiery ball descending toward the horizon, and the juxtaposition of blue against green was staggering. (In the interest of full disclosure, this picture, which does no justice to the sunset it depicts, is from a couple of nights ago.)

Then, there are the other wonders of nature, namely the growing ones. I cannot call anything on our property a "garden", but we do have ragged old apple trees, explosive forsythia, and, I discovered yesterday, one lovely lilac. The Babe and I set out on a flower-gathering expedition with the dogs , and returned with much astonishing loveliness. The whole is now fragranced, which is helping with a mood turned dark, thanks to a not-so-kindly encounter the other day with the Massachusetts State Police. My infraction was a driving one, but I'm not going to write too much more than that about it until after I complete my field trip this afternoon to the Great Barrington courthouse, where I must appear, to find out--something, perhaps the size of the book to be thrown at the person who dares to drive in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts carrying a California license, a semi-valid temporary registration, and claiming to live in New York. Let's just say I experienced harassment and bullying from a young officer the likes of which I've personally never seen. Welcome to the Berkshires.

Meanwhile, her loveliness (the Babe) has insisted upon moving into a Big Girl Bed. She begged, she pleaded, she picked it out, she chose the other baby upon whom she would bestow her now-obsolete crib. Until I took the crib apart and put it in the basement. Now she cries for it, and will only go to bed if she's already fallen asleep in my arms or, even better, the car. Sigh.

Of dead pigs, live frogs, circus performers and the myriad joys of motherhood

"We'll split a pig with you" are not necessarily words I associate with a door opening onto a budding friendship. But when I heard them last week from a new neighbor, I hoped, like a seventh grader with a crush, that that's exactly what they were. My young neighbor, a New York City transplant married into an longtime local farming family, couldn't be nicer or seem like more fun, her husband, too, and though they are younger and as yet without kids, they seem to like us, too. Hence the offer to split a pig from her brother-in-law's farm down the road. I can't wait. Having sampled his fresh, pastured hen's eggs (a welcome to the neighborhood gift a few days earlier--Dido pronounced them "the best eggs I've ever, ever, EVER eaten") I am confident that his equally happy (at least in life) pigs will also be delicious.

Meanwhile, the frog saga continues. Our pond is teeming, swarming, fully alive with tadpoles, side-lying columns of them buzzing through the murky water, and more to come, judging by the wormy tubes of eggs (finally identified as such after much dopey puzzling on my part) lying in the muddy banks. The frogs sing not just at night, but pretty much all day long, and Dido caught one Friday afternoon. He was completely ecstatic. After it flew out of his hands and back into the pond, it sat still in the water, head above, body and legs dangling below, and I was worried that the kid had unwittingly injured it. After a few minutes, though, he dove down and swam out of sight (not hard, in our zero visibility pond water.) But he popped right back up, and seemed to stare Dido down. Dido made a couple more attempts, but then grew delighted with the fact that Frog seemed to be connecting with him somehow--perhaps wondering what this strange, inept hunting creature that failed to eat him could possibly be.

Meanwhile, the night before, the Babe woke up, in her very first night in her "big girl bed," crying for her daddy. No surprise, the waking or the need for papa, but awaiting us was an unfortunate surprise--a big pile of puke (which sounds like the name of a Russell Crowe band, but sadly, was real.) She's been sick as a dog ever since, with a brief interlude yesterday where she seemed to be getting better, so we all, including my visiting mother in law, went to a fundraiser circus performance at a local school. It was fantastic, and made quite an impression on both kids. I'm not sure what they loved more--the 7th grade trapeze artist, the boy unicyclists, or the amazing acrobats. Both my kids fully appreciate performance, in any and every form. But by nighttime, the Babe was listless and cranky, refused to eat dinner, and then puked all over me, the dog, the deck again.

Adding to the fun, her illness (at least thus far) culminated today in a ten minute waking nightmare--she seemed to wake from her nap, but quickly was hysterical, wouldn't let me touch her, wouldn't take the ever-soothing pacifier, seemed terrified or in pain. It was horrible. I finally took her outside into the fresh air, and asked her, over and over again (although she already seemed fully awake) to wake up. When she calmed a bit, desperate, I offered her ice cream. Apparently, even when you have the stomach flu, strawberry ice cream (from a local dairy, thank you very much) is a panacea.

And they called it, Puppy Love...

I heard Donny Osmond interviewed on local radio last week while driving the kids to school. Apparently (like Jerry Lewis?) he's HUGE in Europe. He discussed his rivalry with MJ. (That's Michael Jackson, for those of you who weren't reading Tiger Beat in 1973.)

While you think about the goodness, nay greatness, that is the Osmond oeuvre (he's just released his 55th album, covers of 70s love songs, really, run, don't walk) you can also contemplate true puppy love, in the glorious form of Pasha. Enjoy the cuteness, and don't let the saccharine sweetness get you down.

7 Things You May Not Know About Me

From Mieke

Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to blog about their seven things and post the rules as well. At the end of your post, choose 7 people to tag and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog! OK, here we go....

1. I don't think I know seven people who blog, at least, not really well enough to tag them.

2. I think memes are the new chain letter, and I despise chain letters, even though when I get them (the real ones, not the email ones, which I always delete, sorry to my friends who send them) I have great intentions about completing them, especially the ones that are lists of kids to send books to...but I often fail to live up to my own good intentions. And even though I think memes are slightly evil like chain letters, I have always secretly wished that someone, anyone, might tag me. Hypocrisy-r-us?

3. I see myself as thinner than I know I really am (in other words, I know I am fatter than I look to myself) but I am totally obsessed with my weight.

4. My (now former--sob--I loved him) doctor thinks I have suffered from severe depression on and off for years.

5. I never told my old shrink that my GP put me on antidepressants. How screwed up is that? I constantly wondered if she noticed the change in me, which, to my eyes and mind, was pretty remarkable.

6. I love dishes--you know, china. I spend way too much time and bandwidth contemplating new dinnerware.

7. My first non-fish pet was a black and white Dutch rabbit named Scrambley.

Can you tell I was scraping there at the end? And I have surprised myself by getting all confessional, though unlike Mieke, I didn't reveal secret past career ambitions (electron microscope-using scientist) or details of my deflowering (not that interesting, nor traumatic.)

Ok, Alyssa, Alto, Tart, Kel, ummmm....Quinn, Fussy, ok, I'm really scraping here, not that I don't want to tag these illustrious women of the blogs, but rather that I feel particularly unworthy and really, that I am imposing upon them. Is that just WASPy weirdness emerging? Perhaps.

Looking for Mrs. Goodpark

Or, Bookstores are the New Bars

After picking Dido up at school today (have I mentioned that, since leaving the driving capital of the universe, I now drive two and a half hours per day, minimum?) and stopping for the requisite afterschool bribe snack of ice cream (chocolate cherry, an adventurous choice for two children under six, I thought, and delicious, I can assure, since I had to "help" them keep their cones from detonating all over the store like some Willie Wonka-invented IED) we made a quick trip to the post office (to pick up our mail) and then I gave in to the Babe's entreaties to take them both to the park. The weather was glorious today--the best kind of spring sun and breeze combo--and our little town park was as full as I've ever seen it with kids. The local pre-ballet class had just finished at the arts complex next door, and the place was crawling with girls in leotards and their (non-tutu'd) brothers. My companion-starved kids were in heaven.

I stood there like the fat girl waiting to be picked last for kickball, trying to look completely unphased as all around me, moms stood in tight, chatting groups. No one gawked or pointed, mind you (unlike when I actually was the girl picked last--never mind that I'm fatter now than I thought I was then.) Finally, the Babe took the fall for me. The park has one of those old fashioned merry-go-rounds--the kind you run around to spin and then leap on. I remember loving them as a kid, and at least in L.A., you never see them anymore. No doubt too many potential head injury lawsuits. I've seen three of them so far here--you go, brave and stoic parents, children and parks departments of the northeast. Dido loves these things--running, jumping, dizzyness, all in one activity. He was pushing a bunch of the post-dance class girls, and the Babe wanted in on the fun. For a while, she was content to sit on top of the wheel, but then she wanted to push with her brother and another big girl. She ran as fast as she could, but the momentum of the wheel knocked her down on her face. She was dusty and surprised, but, in her typical fashion, after two dismayed yelps, she was done with crying. Seeing my kid faceplant finally softened up a few of the other moms. In the way of all moms on all playgrounds, they offered consoling color commentary on the Babe's performance: "That was more of a roll than a fall. Nothing really hit the ground" and so on. Her biting the dust, so to speak, broke the ice for us all.

Woe to the even half-normal, half-interesting-seeming person who throws me a conversational bone these days--I am become a regular chatterbox, with so much nothing to say that I might as well be a Fox News commentator. And like my kids, I'm so anxious to feel I belong here that I will pretty much grab onto any sociable life raft. Lucky for me, the friendly woman wasn't just half-interesting, she was totally interesting, smart, cool, someone I'd really want to have as my friend, if first impressions are worth anything at all. Twenty minutes later, I had the lowdown on local summer camps (free--yes, you read that correctly, FREE to kids in our town, paid for by the town), schools public and private, and a slightly clearer picture of the social hierarchy of my low key, friendly but still small town. When this gang mentioned a first name, if I had met someone in town with that first name, chances are, it was the same Sarah or Beth or Joan. Ok, it happened twice, not three times, but still. This either means I'll find myself in a lovely, tight-knit community, or some twenty-first century Peyton Place.

Take Manhattan, Just Give Me That Countryside...

Or, the One About the Dead Animals.

Part of the attraction to exurban living, at least for my children, is bestial. As a bribe, we promised them a new puppy upon our arrival. We tantalized them with the image of our cossetted housecat being set free to sunbathe al fresco. We showed them pictures of the stables, the chicken coop, the pond, and allowed their little, fecund minds to wander to 4H-y type thoughts of all creatures great and small.

We didn't talk, or think, about the other parts of the circle of life.

Our intrepid cat, Fiammo, spent many of our first days here skulking around the property (and, by property, I mean NOT the entire fifteen acres, but rather, the boundary of the house and its porch) doing his best to appear important while chasing bugs and scooting under the porch at the slightest unexpected sound (woodpeckers, anyone?) Dido kept hopefully asking him if he'd found anything--"Did you see a mouse, little boy?" and so on. I was surprised and secretly delighted, assuming that contrary to what I suspected, not every cat is born to be a great mouser, or, even better, our barns were not, in fact, housing plague-carrying rodent colonies.

Then, two mornings ago, while Dido and the Babe were outside supervising the Puppy's morning gambol (the prelude to her satisfying pee and poop on my kitchen floor), I heard a shout of glee and Dido came barreling in through the dining room. "LOOK MAMA!! LOOK!!!" I didn't really have to look, because the glimpse of gray fur in the palm of his hand -- did I mention, IN HIS HAND???-- was enough to tell me that Fiammo was at last fulfilling his feline destiny. After some vigorous soapy hand scrubbing and a compromise burial at the root of an oak tree ("You CANNOT put him in the trash, Mom. You CAN'T.") I heard another shriek of delight.

The Puppy trotted up with something stringy, brownish gray and vaguely slimy trailing from the corners of her smiling mouth. "Look, Mom. We do have frogs."

Indeed. We do.

Our story thus far

After an epic journey--through the highways and byways of Google, mind you, merely to log in to this &*(^^%))_ blog, I am back. As per usual, I've been doing a great deal of FANTASTIC writing in my head. Not so helpful for my loyal readers. It's late, and I've had too much white wine (with a very good, if not great, shiitake mushroom risotto the H and I enjoyed for dinner, accompanied by incredible parmesan smuggled upstate in an enormous block by our dear Jerry. Up here, it's $17.99/lb., and just ok. In Little Italy, it's 30% less, and divine. God bless Jerry, and the Italian cows.) Due to the hour and the wine, this will be brief, but: we are MOVED. Not in, mind you, but moved.

Wildly unfurnished and unpacked, highly disorganized, but we are here. Dido loves his new school so much that it makes me wonder what the hell was wrong with the old one. The Babe is so lonely that every time she sees a child near her age, she stalks them through whatever public place we happen to find ourselves in, until they take pity (on me? on her?) and deign to converse. We've gotten several phone numbers this way. If I had had a lonely two year old daughter back when I was single and dating, I would likely have gotten laid a whole lot more. We are all....adjusting. The H has had several nervous breakdowns, but is now seeming to get into the groove of empty streets and pleasant service people. I'm waiting to make a friend, and remembering how truly hard that is, when you are starting from ground zero. Is it the sweet woman in the funky rug store? The mother of the boy Jordan has become smitten with at school? I don't know. I had a moment of real loneliness this weekend, but mostly, I am ok. I look out at the fields and hills and woods and sky that surround our home and I cannot believe I am allowed to live this way.

Best.Toy.Ever. Or, (Feminine) Hygiene Begins at Home.

The morning, the Babe and I left home, hair wet, clothes barely on, bleary and disheveled, to meet the lovely men of Russell's Moving and Delivery at the H's office, to move his office furnishings, computer and so on back to the house in anticipation of M-Day. Because of his back surgery, he's not allowed to drive, lift or bend, so there was no point in his coming, and he cannot be alone with the Babe--hence her participation in this whirl-o-fun.

The men had already called to tell us they were ready and waiting at the old studio lot where the H has been working these last few months--45 minutes early. I was still sitting at the kitchen table in the fuzzy grey robe the H loathes trying to mainline my caffeine when the phone rang--it was Cesar and his crew, letting us know they were there, waiting for me. Ah. But Russell told me 9 a.m. In about 8.4 minutes, I made Dido's lunch, got dressed, brushed my teeth, grabbed snack, diaper bag and Babe, and raced out the door, to get in my brand new object of lust car (the one I bashed into the Westside Range Rover Mom yesterday, yes, that one) and race off to meet them. Mind you, no one races in Los Angeles at 8:45 in the morning. Gridlock is everywhere; you drive accordingly. But I was only five minutes late, the Babe was strapped into her stroller and behaving in her most charming, flirtatious manner (and when she's on, she's on) and the security at the lot couldn't have been more helpful, or the movers more polite or careful...all was well, progressing ahead of schedule, even. Beware, oh overconfident one. After twenty minutes of watching the movers pack the H's stuff into boxes and arguing with me over whether or not my wallet, and the cash within, were appropriate playthings (you can guess the sides in that debate) lovely Babe morphed--and that word fails to do justice to the immediacy of the transmogrification--into Banshee Babe, screaming, throwing herself on the floor, kicking, beating her tiny clenched fists. Desperate to get through the next seven and a half minutes more or less mentally intact, I went fishing in my purse.

Thanks to the ugly orange bible, my purse is now scarily organized--three different zippered mesh pouches hold make up; my "office"--pens, cards, notebook, stamps, white out, and the like--; and emergency supplies (which include, of course, dark chocolate.) The make up bag is always the favorite, so I started there. Want to help mommy put on lipstick? (First of the day--what the hell, live large!) Nope. Want to look at yourself in the mirror? No way. But then, she saw it. Her eyes dilated, the corners of her mouth stopped pressing themselves down into the ground and perked up. Mascara? Lotion? Some other mess-making opportunity? No, no. Nothing so public domain. A tampon. OB Super, to be exact. Her smile like an arc light, she clutched the object of lust tampon in her hand, and proudly showed it to the moving men, who focused on the fascinating question of how to move the carpet protector under the desk. Only when she started screaming at the injustice of being strapped into her carseat a quarter of an hour later did the Babe throw it across the car floor, its obvious charms faded, its magic betrayed. Next time she throws a tantrum while the H is charge I think I'll suggest this remedy and see what he does.

Synchronicity, and the count down accelerates...

We are nearing M-Day in earnest now, not only is it impossible to turn back, but we are hurtling downhill, legs powerless against gravity or will. In 9 days, the truck with our belongings will head off to New York, and 3 days later, the kids and I will follow. The H will stay behind until his surgeon deems him fit to travel, via first class only. Thank goodness for frequent flyer miles. The only remaining big logistics are moving our cars (which basically means choosing amongst a bunch of different shipping companies) and getting my family files (you know, tax stuff and so on) in a semblance of order which will allow them to be moved and then unpacked without creating the appearance of a Staples store having exploded inside my new house. I hate filing--always have--when I was an "assistant" (that's Hollywood-speak for a secretary) at a film production company, I would let the filing pile up until the mountain was so high that I had to come in on the weekend to get it caught up. Pathetic. My home office is no better.

Meanwhile, as the H complained to me the other day, I've had about five different going away parties with different sets of friends, and I've gotten increasingly tearier at each successive event. Today, I woke up with not just the cold I caught from Dido the other day, but a full blown flu experience, body aches, fever, and so on. In the midst of this, I went to the car dealer to trade in my old minivan (yippee) for my new station wagon (yahoo.) All went fine until, having returned home with the car, I decided to run down to the market with the kids, and, as I pulled out of my (blind) driveway, a car came flying down the wrong side of our narrow street, tried to beat past me before I could pull out, and I bashed into her door. My bumper is scraped, as is her driver side door--neither too badly, really. But the Angelenos who are reading will understand when I say it was a typical Westside mom, driving a Range Rover, accessorized like a Barney's ad, dressed like a teenage guest star on The O.C., and unable to deal with the situation without immediately calling her husband on her high-end cell phone to ask him what to do. His first plan of action was that she call the police. I said, if that's what you want to do, fine. We can all go in my house, and I'll call them. I suggested that maybe we exchange insurance information, and get on with our lives, a suggestion she happily took once Husband agreed that in fact, perhaps law enforcement wasn't necessary.

The only good thing about this experience is that, like some others recently, it reminded me of exactly what I'm wanting to escape in Los Angeles--people who value affluence over competence. And, by the way, that's not true of any of the many, many people I adore who live and work here. This city is full of amazing, smart, creative, profoundly good people. But I can't take the chaos or the pace that surrounds those good people any more. I have done lots of things to create oases of community around me in this city, and I think I've been largely successful. But the larger environment is what I don't have the fortitude for any longer. I wonder if, really, I ever did. From the minute I moved here, I felt that I had moved to a foreign land, one where I might never quite speak the language well enough to pass for a native. The funny thing is that instead of going back to someplace I already know, I'm going someplace I barely know, and to a lifestyle (rural) I have never lived. My shrink's first reaction, when I announced our move, was that I was running away from internal irritations, not external ones. I suppose that remains to be seen.

Time flies, until its back goes out

Some of you may remember, from my last post, oh, nearly an entire month ago, that our happily little family has been planning a move. Rather a big move, all the way across this screwed up country of ours, away from the endless sunshine and relentlessly toothsome vanity of Lotus land to the dreary, gray, homespun humidity of nearly New England. Well, we're still moving. At least, three of us are. The fourth isn't moving so well these days. Two weeks or so ago, the H, busy readying himself for another day of typing for dollars, had the temerity to cough. Said cough has been his undoing. He has a herniated disc. He will be having surgery. We are moving in 21 days. Feel my pain, because his is too excruciating. Mine is merely existential.