June 05, 2007

Clara Jane was a Good Little Monkey, and Always Very Curious

You might recall a a tirade I wrote last summer regarding the clusterfuck a local movie megagoogleplex referred to as "Free Family Movie Day", in which I attempted to take Clara Jane to see Curious George. The long and short of it, it didn't go well, and I haven't attempted to take her to a movie since. Not so much because of the bad experience, but because there hasn't been anything I really thought she should see.

One of the main problems with last year's movie fiasco was that I'd built up the movie experience to Clara Jane, only to have things go wrong. Had I not built it up so much, it wouldn't have been such a disappointment. Not that she was terribly disappointed, but the fear of disappointing ones child has got to be one of the biggest parental motivators out there. So, you'd think I would have learned to not build things up, right?

Wrong. Today was going to be yoga class! We took a kid's yoga class a few months ago, and she loved it. After a long wait, classes finally started this week, and I started building them up to her.

How the hell was I supposed to know that it would take three calls in three days to reach someone the day before the class who would inform me that the session was already full?

Crap. Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap. Double-crap when the kiddo wakes up squealing, "Let's go to yoga! I love yoga class!"

Crap.

At 8:30 this morning, I scrounged the 'net, desperately searching for something as fun and special and awesome as yoga that I could pull out of my ass in roughly thirty minutes. Lo and behold, that movie megagoogleplex I swore to never enter again after last year's fiasco were starting the "Free Family Movie Cattle Call Trampede-a-thon" this very day at 10 AM. And what movie were they showing? Curious George, which Clara Jane still hadn't seen.

This time, I didn't tell her where we were going. Not when we had less than an hour to get ready and stake a place in the theater, instead of getting turned away with $14-worth of concession stand crap already purchased, like last year.

No ma'am. This time, we were firmly in our theater seats with $14-worth of concession stand crap (well, two bottles of water and enough popcorn to create Ethanol to fill my truck) a good twenty minutes before the movie started.

For the last few weeks, Clara Jane hasn't exactly been fond of me. In fact, our relationship has been a bit strained. But let me tell you, all it takes to get back into the good graces of a 3-year-old? Curious George and her body weight (38 pounds) of movie theater popcorn. In Clara Jane's world, I once again rule.

After the movie we went to lunch with some friends, as we tend to do more often than not, while my house packs itself for next week's move. That's right. Next week. HOLY FUCK!!! Anyway, it was at lunch that Clara Jane, a good little monkey who's always very curious, made two discoveries via her curiosity:

1) That little monkeys who remove their shoes can run their bare feet through yogurt that's spilled on the floor, then suck the yogurt off their toes, and

2) that a curious little monkey can slip her big spoon into my coffee mug, slurping up Madagascar vanilla coffee with sugar, cream and cinnamon a good three or four times before it finally registers in my tired little mind that, HOLY SHIT, CLARA JANE'S DRINKING MY COFFEE!!!

To be 100% honest, I'm surprised it took her this long to have her first slugs of coffee. Not surprisingly, she liked it. A lot.

I think I was about her age when I discovered coffee. First it was from those wonderful Brach's coffee-flavored hard candies that came in beautiful 1960s gold wrappers emblazened with a Mod red and purple coffee cup design. My God, I loved those candies. I had them damn near every time I saw Granny Viv. She always had them stashed in her purse, pockets, and in every room of her house.

It was Granny Opal, my dad's mom, who introduced me to the real thing. I was older than Clara Jane, but not by much. By my estimate, I was around six or seven. Granny Opal boiled her coffee, poured it from her cup into her saucer so it could cool enough to not set fire to the inner flesh of her mouth, and would dunk either doughnuts from Papa Jake's or oatmeal Archway Cookies into the sludge. And it was divine. The massive amounts of liquid saccharin she added only made it even more delightfully bittersweet.

I don't think it's any coincidence that I stopped growing shortly after a childhood spell in which I spent a lot of weekend nights with Granny Opal. As a child our family doctor predicted I'd be a tall adult, since I have really tall women on my dad's side of the family. The fact that I was five feet tall by age nine was a bit of a tip-off, too.

How tall am I today? 5'3". Why? Drinking Granny Opal's boiled-black coffee every other Sunday morning during my prime growing years.

Could be worse. I could have been smoking Tareyton Cigarettes with her, too, but she wouldn't let me. Granny Opal drew the line at coffee, doughnuts and Archway Cookies as being a nutritious breakfast for an elementary schooler. Besides, developing a taste for coffee was worth sacrificing a few inches.

I hope Clara Jane feels the same because if today was any indication, she's going to be very, very curious, and very, very short. And hyper. Very, very, very monkey-doing-headstands-in-the-coffeehouse hyper.

Posted by Robin at 08:06 PM | Comments (32)

February 15, 2007

Devil Baby Turns Three

Today, my sweet baby is no longer a baby. She's a big three-year-old.

If today is an example of what three is like, I'm already longing for the terrible twos.

Happy birthday, Devil Baby. I love you, even when you're chanting "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!" at the top of your lungs while marching through the house, banging on an empty rice cracker box to the beat of your negations.

I'll also love you when you spontaneously turn into a scorpion and demonstrate your butt-stinger:

But you'll always be my little baby devil.

Posted by Robin at 06:14 PM | Comments (13)

December 31, 2006

Why I'm Crazy

This is the convuluted way my brain works:

1. Yesterday, while leaving the library, B. was doing a little compare-and-contrast of how different brands of jeans fit him, and my mind immediately flashed to the music in a cheesy-ass current jeans commercial. While B.'s expounding on which brand cups his buttcheeks properly, my mind is elsewhere, trying to place the damn song in the commercial. No matter. It's just some throwaway '70s cheese song, unimportant enough that the creator saw fit to license it to sell cheap pants.

2. While listening to my iPod on shuffle this morning, "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder shuffles up. That's it! That's the jean commercial song! And it's not some lame '70s throwaway - it's prime Stevie. I proceed to rock the house until ...

3. Friday's viewing of one of my all-time favorite movies, High Fidelity comes into my mind. Particularly, the scene where Jack Black's character rants on Stevie Wonder. And I'm wondering, is it fair to judge Stevie Wonder because, although he created the greatness of "Sir Duke", he later allowed it to be used to pimp jeans?

Is it any wonder I'm mentally ill?

I had this conversation today while Clara Jane was playing with the kitchen trash can.

Me: Clara Jane, leave the trash alone, please. It's dirty.
Clara Jane: It's not dirty. It's clean.
Me: That's one of the dirtiest things in the house.
Clara Jane: It's not in the house. It's outside.
Me: You argue too much.
Clara Jane: I don't argue too much.

And then the trash can was filthy, because my brain exploded all over it, and that's why I'm yet again not writing about books. Tomorrow, maybe, if my head grows back.

Posted by Robin at 11:00 AM | Comments (3)

December 20, 2006

A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Clara Jane. She lived in a village called St. Louis, where the villagers ate their ravioli fried in boiling oil, the lights often went dark, and the baseball team was pretty good.

Actually, Clara Jane didn't live in St. Louis city proper, but in the outlying feudal land known as St. Louis County, a land of many municiaplities and rulers, and many, many speed traps. While she often drove past the beautiful buildings of downtown and marveled at the magical silver rainbow next to the deep, muddy waters, her mother was neglectful of taking the child into downtown, despite the promise she made to herself to not become one of those suburban mothers who never ventures east of I-170.

So, one cold and rainy day, Clara Jane's mother bundled them into their coats and set the coach in the direction of the St. Louis City Library's downtown branch to see the Once Upon a Time... fairytale exhibit, despite the fact that Clara Jane's mother has some serious problems with the gender issues presented in those classic tales, and would just as soon run one of those jousting stick thingies through her very core as encourage her daughter to be a princess.

While the other little girls dressed up as princesses and their mothers asked them, "Where are your princes? What are their names?", Clara Jane busied herself cleaning the Cinderella exhibit, while her mother vomited from princess overload in the cauldron.

Her mother's malady was miraculously healed when a little boy in a princess dress handed Clara Jane a broom and said, "Here. You can be the witch," and Clara Jane smiled and replied, "Great! Hey Mom! I'm a witch!"

The little witchy-poo finished her scullery chores and proceeded to her cobbler duties:

and then she joined Beauty and the Beast's dining table, where each child was required to leave a saliva sample on every single piece of plastic food:

Here's hoping that the little witch-girl can whip up a potion of cat hair and old candy bar wrappers to ward off the infestation of plastic fruit mites.

As the day wore on and Clara Jane grew more witchy, her mother wrestled her into her coat and coaxed her out the door, where an evil spell turned Clara Jane's legs to gooey red aspic, a spell only remedied by the threat of a royal time-out.

Once the spell was broken and the two stepped out of the building and onto the grand staircase overlooking the city, Clara Jane declared, "I love this city!"

And they all lived happily ever after. Well, except for when that aspic-leg spell took effect in the middle of the doorway at City Grocers, Mother's arms loaded with curried turkey salad and sesame broccoli, the spell only broken by the threat of the world's longest time-out ever if some little princess-poo didn't pick it up and move it on now.

It was only after everyone napped for three hours that they able to live happily ever after.

The end.

Posted by Robin at 10:19 PM | Comments (4)

December 03, 2006

What Every Mother Wants to Hear

Upon awakening Saturday morning Clara Jane said, "I had a dream last night. I dreamt I was playing guitar."

Just as long as it wasn't for some crappy emo band, more power to you, Kiddo.

Posted by Robin at 05:15 PM | Comments (7)

November 30, 2006

Day Thirty - Last Day! Real Content!

Ice has been falling from the sky since 8:30 this morning, minus taking off the noon hour for lunch. This is what my front porch step looks like:

So sparkly. So terrifying.

Awhile back, my Yooper mother-in-law made wise about us "southerners" closing schools when we have an inch of snow, while they function just fine with 3,847 feet of white stuff on the ground. To which my mother replied, "Ever try to drive on a two-inch sheet of ice?" or something to that effect.

We're not having a snow day today; we're having an ice day. I'd decided to keep Clara Jane home from daycare about ten minutes before her teacher called to tell me they were going to close due to weather.

Oh, how I love snow/ice day! I throw the rules out the window on snow/ice day. We can watch too much TV, eat junk food, play a little loose and free with naptime. What does it matter? We're not going anywhere!

The day started with Clara Jane asking to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas during breakfast. We piled onto the couch, she with her apple, cheddar cheese, and sippy of milk; I with my steel-cut oatmeal and coffee, for that is the snow/ice day way.

About a year ago, on a similar snow day, I made a post about making cookies and watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" with Clara Jane. Today was no different, but completely different. I had a job for us.

I've been in a bit of a quandry about our Christmas tree this year. Clara Jane loves Christmas trees with a depth that borders on idolotry. I'm cool with that. The problem is, our tree (which we haven't set up yet; I refuse to buy a tree prior to December) is always decorated in tastefully matched silver and purple glass bulbs that we got for a wedding gift. Very breakable glass bulbs. On one hand, I don't want to deny my little tree-hugger. On the other, I don't want to spend the next month with shards of glass wedged in my feet.

Solution: let's make salt dough ornaments! Better yet, let's paint the salt dough ornaments purple and silver so I'm not completely sacrificing my pretty, pretty ornaments! And even more better, making salt dough ornaments will give us something to do when we hit Hour Three of snow/ice day and I start freaking out because we're snow/icebound.

Oh, what a difference a year makes.

December, 7, 2005:

Clara Jane wears her cookie cutters as creative fashion accessories, and covers two rooms of my house with green decorator's sugar.

November 30, 2006:

Clara Jane personally cuts three baking sheet's worth of salt dough ornaments all by herself, even lifting them off the table with a spatula and placing the on the baking sheets without dropping or breaking. Unlike her professionally-trained cook mother, whose salt dough cut-outs look like the snowmen who live near the toxic waste dump.

Last year: Clara Jane kept talking to the children on the TV as if they were really there.

This year: While making ornaments and listening to the show's soundtrack, Clara Jane recites bits of dialogue she remembers from her breakfast viewing of the show, reenacting the entire Schoder and Lucy piano scene.

Last year: I'm sure there was probably a temper tantrum when all the green sugar disappeared from her grip.

This year: Clara Jane has the emotional maturity to say, "This song makes me feel happy," when "Christmastime is Here" comes on.

Last year: Clara Jane squwaked a bit about being stuck at home.

This year: "Mommy, can we make a snowman?" No, honey. I'm afraid the only thing we can make out of this stuff is a Vanilla Iceman.

Last year: Clara Jane shoved half a tube of pre-made cookie dough down her gullet.

This year: "Mommy, we don't eat Play-Doh." That's what she said when I stupidly kissed the wad of salt dough she held in her hand.

And she's right. Don't eat the dough. It'll dry out your innards. Some things are learned the hard way.

Posted by Robin at 03:37 PM | Comments (11)

November 17, 2006

Day Seventeen - Friday Shuffle - The Sick of Posting Every Damn Day Edition

Is it just me, or have all the NaBloPoMo posters and commenters hit the wall? I know I sure have. I have things to write, things to comment, and blogs I'd like to read but my brain simply won't let me.

In light of my bloggity boredom, I'm going to give you three little tidbits and the shuffle.

Tidbit #1 - Thanks to the still-downed tree lying on my fence, I've started playing a new game everytime I open the back door. It's called "Which Neighborhood Dog is in My Yard Today?" This morning, I discovered the neighborhood weiner dog running amok in my yard. When the fence in your yard can't restrain a weiner dog, it's no longer sufficiently doing its job well enough to be called a fence.

Tidbit #2 - Lately I've found myself concerned about how Clara Jane interacts with other kids. During daycare dropoffs and pickups, I never see her playing with other kids. When I ask her who she played with she tells me that she played with toys. I'm not going to make a big deal of this; if she's a loner, she's a loner. There are worse things to be.

At lunch today, any notion that she might be a loner was vanished. She noticed another little girl sitting a few tables away from us and promptly stood up, waved, and yelled, "Hello, Little Girl! How are you doing? Are you having a snack? I have an apple. I love my apple. Do you love apples? I have yogurt. Do you love yogurt? Hey! Little Girl! HEY!"

Now I'm concerned about her being The Pushy Kid.

Tidbit #3 - I can't recreate what I was writing yesterday, but I can do two things: tell you how it vanished and tell you about the $6 candy bar. It vanished because the ctrl-shift-w function in Firefox, coupled with the space bar, closes the window, particularly if your chubby little fingers are a lot faster than they look like they should be.

Now, the $6 candy bar. For years I've been fascinated with Vosges Chocolate. They're a Chicago-based high-end chocolatier that basically throws weird shit into really expensive chocolate and sells it to food nerds like me who think, "Mmmmmmmm ... white chocolate with Kalamata olives. I could go for some of that. Let's get a second mortgage on the house and eat up!"

Our local Whole Foods started selling a small selection of Vosges awhile back, but I just couldn't allow myself to part with $6 for a 3.4 ounce weirdo candy bar. But yesterday, for some reason, I decided it was time to part with my $6 in exchange for weirdo chocolate.

Alas, the weirdo chocolate I really wanted - Barcelona, which is darker milk chocolate with grey sea salt and smoked almonds - wasn't available. Which is too bad because I have a serious smoked almond monkey on my back. At some point when I was little my parents put a can of Smokehouse Almonds in my Christmas stocking, and that was all she wrote. Best flavor in the world. Ever. That was another one of those signs of adulthood: the day I realized that I could eat Smokehouse Almonds every single day for the rest of my ever-almond-loving life if I wanted. I'm eating some right now, as a matter of fact. I like strong flavors. The only thing better than smoked almonds and sea salt would have to be smoked almonds and bleu cheese. I'm surprised Vosges hasn't jumped on that idea.

Anyway, I did have some misgivings about spending $6 on a candy bar in a flavor combination that might be horrible, despite my food adventurer tendancies. So, I went with the one I knew I'd mostly like enjoy - Creole, 70% cacao (really, really dark) with espresso, cocoa nibs, and chicory. I love chicory coffee. I love mochas. I'm going to love this bar.

You know what you get when you get a $6 candy bar? You get instructions on how to eat chocolate. Those cheapos at Hershey's and Nestle, they just leave their customers to their own devices. Let 'em remain ignorant to what chocoalte is supposed to look like and smell like! Let the philistines eat their dusty-surfaced chocolate that smells like bald tires! And let them *gasp* chew it with their teeth!

For $6, I know to let the chocolate melt in my mouth, instead of cramming the whole thing down my gullet before someone can snatch it away from me, the same way my Basset hound Chloe once did with a Nestle Crunch bar.

I resisted the urge to eat the candy in the car. If I'm going to spend $6 on what should be THe Chocolate Experience of My Life, I don't want to be distracted. I also don't want to be behind the wheel in case the experience is so rapturous as to leave my vehicle unmanned on the highway.

I sat at my desk, read the instructions and did as it said: I looked at the chocolate. I sniffed the chocolate. I snapped off a piece of the chocoalte. I performed acts on the chocoalte that are only legal in the state of Nevada and France. Then I put the chocolate on my tongue and pressed it to the roof of my mouth, just like the instructions said. And sure enough, just like the package said, it slowly started melting around thirty seconds later.

The verdict?

Eh.

Tasted great, of course. The cocoa nibs were rough and irritated my tongue and the roof of my mouth. There wasn't a single point in time where my spirit left my body during the whole experience. A little naked man didn't pop out of the packaging when I opened it, either, and for $6 you'd think they'd include a special little thrill of some sort. While tasty, it did not satisfy my mind and body, as the package promised. I still had a slight backache when I was finished eating the piece.

I just popped another piece in my mouth. Yeah, good. But slightly painful and not decidedly different than a handful of chocolate-covered espresso beans. I keep encountering little pieces of hard, pod-like material. Perhaps that's what a flavanoid looks like.

Next time, maybe I'll shuffle through the display and buy a a horseradish chocolate bar. At least then my expectations will be in check.

1. Iko Iko - Dixie Cups
2. Baby Mine - Bonnie Raitt
3. East Virginia Blues - June Carter Cash (a woman who had enough good sense to not buy $6 chocolate bars, I bet)
4. Only Lie Worth Telling - Paul Westerberg
5. Tell Me That it Isn't True - Bob Dylan
6. Don't Get Me Wrong - Pretenders
7. Still Fighting It - Ben Folds
8. Close Together - Jimmy Reed
9. Rose Garden - Lynn Anderson
10. Walking the Dog - Rufus Thomas

The shuffle is filled entirely of artists who would most likely throw beer bottles at the heads of bourgeois idiots who'd spend $6 on a candy bar, and rightfully so.

Posted by Robin at 04:06 PM | Comments (12)

November 15, 2006

Day Fifteen - Schlemiel-Schlamazel

It's a crap day around here. From the hours of 3 AM until 7:15ish AM, my eyes remained open. The wee bit of sleep I eeked out afterwards barely counts for anything. I've got a massive knot in the middle of my back from three nights of trying to sleep on the couch, since conditions in my bed have been less than optimal for sleeping of late. To top it off, once again it rained all day. Normally I love chilly, rainy fall days, but we've had several in a row. Quite frankly, it's making my dogs stir-crazy, which in turn is making me a little nuts. Trust me, there are few things as pitisome as a Basset hound with cabin fever. But we've got one. At one point, she was so bored that she crammed her head under the couch cushions to do a little crumb-surfing. She and Murphy both sat at rapt attention, listening intently while I read Biscuit books to Clara Jane. When dogs take an interest in literature, you know they're mere inches away from the dreaded Death by Boredom.

I totally phoned it in today. Clara Jane and I stayed in our jammies. We ordered pizza for lunch and ate in on the couch while watching "Sesame Street". Since her sleep patterns are a bit wonky right now, too, there was no napping. We read and played, watched way too much TV, and snuggled. No new things were learned. No new experiences were had. We ate bad food and watched bad TV, but we'll get to that in a bit.

I don't know if this happens to everyone, but if I see parts of day which I normally sleep through, it really screws with my perception of time through the rest of the day. Luckily, most of the time, it makes the day fly by. That's what happened today. If feels like it should be about 3:00 and it's nearly 6:00, which means sweet, sweet sleep in the spare bedroom is just around the corner.

We watched a lot of "Laverne & Shirley" today. I know I've mentioned my lifelong adoration of Laverne & Shirley. It was my favorite show when I was a kid, and in the past few months I've rediscovered it via digital cable upper-tier reruns. You know, on the cable channels no one ever watches. As far as I can tell, this particular channel, a spin-off of Lifetime, shows nothing but reruns of decade-old made-for-Lifetime shows and Laverne & Shirley. Every afternoon from 2-4 (which is Clara Jane's naptime), it's time to go to Milwaukee and hang out with those girls.

I'm always amazed that when I'm having a bad day, this channel has a knack for showing episodes I absolutely adored back in the day that still crack me up. Maybe that's because I adored just about every episode. Today was no exception. There was a talent show episode, and let me tell you, if I was allowed only one sub-sub-sub-sub-sub genre of TV for the rest of my life, I would chose the Laverne & Shirley talent show episode sub-sub-sub-sub-sub genre, as that's just about the best TV ever made. There was also the hilarious episode where Laverne breaks a tooth and Shirley's dental student cousin offers to fix it for free. There's a scene where the girls are in the exam room, stoned on laughing gas, that I find just as funny now as I did when I was ten. "Reach for the sky!" "You wouldn't dare!"

Which means I really haven't matured much over the past 24 years.

As an adult, one who happened to be bored and exhausted while entertaining these thoughts, I've noticed that a lot of decisions in my adult life led to Laverne & Shirleyesque situations and scenarios. To whit:

• I fully believe that my obsession with all things 1950s and 1960s stems from this show. To this day I can't watch an episode without coveting an item of clothing, accessory, hairdo, or decorative object. Those chenille bathrobes? To die for, still.
• The first five years I lived away from home, I lived in basement apartments.
• My horrible taste in really stupid comedy, from "Beavis & Butthead" to "Jackass" is little more than a lifelong search for a surrogate Lenny & Squiggy.
• In my roommate days, I always longed for that L&S-style friendship, and I sort of had it with one roomie. In fact, the day we moved into our basement bedrooms in a house we shared with two others, she declared, "We're best friends in a basement! We're 'Laverne & Shirley'!" At that moment, I sort of felt like I had made all of my dreams come true. For me and you.
• Independence. Are there any women on TV right now who exhibit that kind of independence? Of two single, working-class women getting by with what they have at a time in history when most women were expected to marry young and stay home? When I was young, my dreams didn't really involve falling in love, getting married, and having babies. They involved living in a city, working, supporting myself, having friends, and perhaps keeping a convenience-boyfriend a la The Big Ragoo.

In this time-wonky "Laverne & Shirley"-filled afternoon, I caught myself thinking back to being ten years old, and how that seems to be the year that formed my personality. The things I liked when I was ten are pretty much the things I love now: "Laverne & Shirley" reruns in the afternoon, books (I read the better part of an encyclopedia set that year), writing (thanks to an encouraging third-grade teacher), music (I got my first radio that year), cooking (I learned about clipping and organizing recipes that summer. It was a decade before I set foot in a kitchen, but it was ingrained.). It was all there when I was 10.

I was obsessed with baseball when I was ten, something that's fallen by the wayside. And yet, when our power and cable were knocked out the night of the final game of the World Series, you know what I did as soon as the lights were back on? I sprinted to the nearest radio to see if the Cardinals were winning. And when they did, you better believe I cried like a little kid. The baseball thing might not be front and center anymore, but damn if it's not still lurking.

Immature sense of humor aside, maybe this is the sign of adulthood: getting past the trial and error of youth and realizing that what you liked when you were a kid, before your brain was bombarded with choices and options, is the core of who you really are.

If that's the case, pass the milk & Pepsi and smack an oversized L on my left boob.

Posted by Robin at 05:49 PM | Comments (3)

November 14, 2006

Day Fourteen - Phhhhhhhhhhhhht

I'm so not down with posting today.

Only one thing of interest has happened this week, and while I could blog about it, I won't because it would be unfair for reasons I can't divulge.

Don't you hate it when bloggers get all cryptic and shit? I know I do.

Granted, I'll take boring over last week's emotional near-trainwreck and pukefest. It makes for dull writing, though. Yeah, I could go into the archives of my brain like I did yesterday, but I was just there and don't feel like going back just yet. Instead, I'm going to blatantly copy my pal Dixie and give you fourteen dots.

• Clara Jane is having trouble accepting that Halloween is over. Today she led me to my bedroom to show me a pumpkin patch, and then to the living room to show me a coven of witches, led by stupid little Murphy.

• I've become addicted to reruns of Scrubs.

• Oh God. I'm only on my third dot and I'm out of stuff interesting enough to write about. Not because I write for my audience, but because if I'm really this boring I'm going to make myself cry.

• I finished book #26 of 2006 last night - Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Go read it. Now.

• So, um, yeah. Thanksgiving's next week. What's that all about?

• Maybe I should buy that damn Maggie Mason book of blog prompts. I'm dying here.

• I looked into a volunteer opportunity today with a group that works with new moms suffering from post-partum depression.

• I miss being able to see the top of my desk.

• Pogo, the only dog in the world stupider than Stupid Little Murphy, has been spending a lot of time in my yard. While she's pitifully stupid, she did figure out how to scale the downed tree that's still on my fucking fence. You know what's fun? Opening the back door and saying hi to the stupidest dog in the world and watching her run as fast as any animal has ever run to escape.

• Yeah, the damn tree's still on my fence. The bottom half, anyway. We had the great idea of advertising that we have free firewood, but it's BYOC - bring your own chainsaw, since the first 25 feet of the tree has already killed one chainsaw. Cut and haul yourself. Hey! Free heat! We thought we'd be beating people back with one of the many sticks in our yard. Not the case. Of course, some people view this as little more than a minor inconvenience. Spending three weeks trying to get the power, cable, and phone companies to get their shit together and fix all of the downed lines already! is a minor inconvenience, too. Replacing the chunk of the neighbor's house removed by the tree? Also, minor inconvenience, as is magically bringing the neighbor's slide back to life. And all that brush? Why, it'll just put itself through the woodchipper! It's all a cinch, really. We're just chosing to leave the tree down because we enjoy Pogo's company so.

• Also courtesy of Dixie, I just watched a video of a guy trying to remove his pubic hair with a Bic lighter. I can safely say that I haven't lost my ability to laugh my ass off at dumbasses. I've just lost my ability to say anything pithy about them.

• I just got an email from someone who's coming to town for a wedding this weekend. They gave me their schedule, about umpteen zillion phone numbers, and I'm supposed to help with flowers. Problem is, when I say "coming to town", I mean they're coming to Portland. I'm in St. Louis. And I have no idea who Mark and Cari are. Am I supposed to buy them a gift? And if so, what's the most appropriate gift for someone you first heard of five days before the nuptuals? Would a gift card be tacky? How do I go about finding their registry if I don't know their last names?

  This is the most interesting thing that's happened to me all day.

• B. and Clara Jane are at their monthly nighttime storytime at the library. I love nighttime storytime at the library, mainly because I never go.

• This has taken me exactly half an hour to write, half the time it took Dix. Boo-ya!
  

Posted by Robin at 06:28 PM | Comments (2)

October 31, 2006

Halloween in America's Most Dangerous City

Did you see the news about my city? Yep, we're the most dangerous in the country. You know how I survive my crime-riddled existance?

I'm a thug.

So, how does one go about celebrating Halloween in the country's most dangerous city? At first we thought we'd flee to the next county for some trick-or-treating in a quaint, historic downtown, but they close up shop at 5 PM, which is far too early for thugs. Then we discussed going to the mall, but I'm across-the-board opposed to corporate trick-or-treating. Well, except for Trader Joe's. I had no problem going to TJ's today and letting Clara Jane mug the cashier for a goodie bag.

By 5:30 tonight, it seemed like the mall was our only option. Considering that Clara Jane woke up from her nap and declared, "I'm a-gonna get lots of candy!", we had to do something.

I had been out during the last bit of her nap, performing heists. When I got to our neighborhood, I noticed several houses of people I somewhat know were giving treats. When B. and Clara Jane met me in the driveway, I suggested that we load up the flamethrowers for protection and do some breaking and entering on our block.

We have messages like that scrawled all over the streets of St. Louis as reminders that it's dangerous!

Call 911! Call 911! Home invaders! Home invaders! Oh, wait ... it's just a toddler, looking for free M&Ms.

Our impromptu trick-or-treating, much like most of our direct interactions with our neighbors, was seriously fun. We talked to a lot of people we only talk to when we have rummage sales. They all fawned over Clara Jane and gave her enough candy to turn her pancreas to dust. When we encountered one family from down the block, they apologized for not being home, and made their 9-year-old son dig through his treat bag and give something to Clara Jane.

In a teeny-tiny little way, I hate that we had so much fun because I've finally gotten my head wrapped around moving, and this makes it harder. But that's stupid, because we had a blast. All these years of complaining about how Halloween has changed, kids don't trick-or-treat in their neighborhoods, blah-blah-blah, it seemed like maybe I should stop bitching and do something about it. I bitch and complain about my neighborhood, and yet, I rarely make the effort to be neighborly. When I do, though, I'm reminded that even though I don't have much in common with my neighbors, and some of them are annoying and, occasionally, the reason why St. Louis is a scary, scary place, most of them are kind people.

Of course, we don't live in St. Louis City, where the most dangerous crime stats came from. We live in St. Louis County, where all is butterflies and bunny rabbits. There's a bit of a spider problem, though. The problem being, I think someone slipped some crack into her Tootsie Pops because Jesus, someone take that crossbow away from her!

Posted by Robin at 09:30 PM | Comments (7)

October 30, 2006

Hallopanic '06

Remember last Halloween, when I freaked out because I waited until the very last minute to make Clara Jane's candy corn costume? "Sewing for Dummies" my ass! It took an engineer to figure out the pattern for making the hat. Still, the gloating a few days later was fun.

This year, I spyed the perfect costume about an hour after the Halloween sewing patterns hit the store. Clara Jane's all about bugs, and she's all about tutus. The patterns? Bumblebees and ladybugs with tutus. We discussed this at length, and she was thrilled at the prospect of being a bumble bee. Or a ladybug.

Until two weeks ago, when we had this conversation:

Me: Do you want to be a ladybug for Halloween? (I kept asking her this several times a week, as I'm an idiot.)

Clara Jane: No. I want to be a spider.

Me: I thought you wanted to be a ladybug.

Clara Jane: Spider.

Me: Bumble bee?

Clara Jane: SPIDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know if you realize this, but oddly enough, there are no sewing patterns for toddler-sized spider costumes. I had to get all ingenious and shit.

If she wakes up tomorrow morning and demands a ladybug costume, I'm sending her to boarding school.

Posted by Robin at 10:17 PM | Comments (9)

October 15, 2006

Sports Medicine

Clara Jane has a raging case of athlete's foot.

No, we haven't entered her in any toddler marathons. We haven't even made her run any 5K Fun Runs.

"We usually don't see athlete's foot in kids her age unless they're already active in sports," the nurse said when I called on Thursday to tell her that I think my child has jungle rot. Now I'm wondering, who the hell puts a two and a half year-old in organized sports? Are Clara Jane's peers tackling each other on some super-secret football field I don't know about every Saturday morning? Are their feet flaking off in little chunks?

B. and I think she probably caught her little fungus at the pool. She certainly didn't catch it from B. or me because we're decidedly unathletic. I used to be somewhat athletic, when I was a kid. I played softball for years, plus a few years of tennis, volleyball, and basketball. As for B., I think he watched a football game, once.

When I was athletic, I was always injured and I took great pride in my wounds. The first year I played catcher, when I was eight, was positively stellar with injuries. I once caught a foul pop fly under my chin. I was looking up, preparing to catch it in a more traditional manner, misjudged the distnace, and it nailed me in the neck.

I put my chin down to hold the ball in place, turned around to face the umpire, dropped the ball into my glove and said, "She's out," which came out sounding more like the woeful death cry of a sea lion, seeing as I'd taken a direct blow to my voice box. I was thrilled.

At the end of that season, at the team picnic, I took a bat in the face from a teammate. The coach forgot to bring the catcher's gear, but obviously I was a tough kid and didn't need no stinking mask. But Dee Dee Burnett had a tendancy to throw bats, and that's exactly what she did, nailing me just under my right eye. Once I recovered enough to coherantly speak, all I could say was, "Wow. I feel like one of those Chinese gongs."

Several weeks later, my older cousin was in a tizz because I was supposed to be a candlelighter in her fancy-schmancy wedding and half of my face was the most awesome shade of seafoam green, which probably would have been fine had it matched the ugly dress she made me wear.

Currently, I'm sporting an injury from the most athletic task I perform these days: I have a sleeping injury. The strenuous task of staying still and unconscious for nine hours in a row has left me lame. The right side of my neck and my right shoulder have been pushed to their breaking points from the marathon task of supporting my overweight head in one place for nine hours.

How bad is my injury? Bad enough that it prevented me from competing in my preferred sport - sleeping - last night.

I almost injured myself this morning during another one of my favorite sporting activities: running my smart mouth while watching VH1 Classic. If it's Sunday morning, chances are B.'s making breakfast, Clara Jane's cruising the counters for stray pieces of bacon, and I'm watching "The Alternative" and running my smart mouth.

Today, during "Rush" by BAD II, I made my standard joke that I always make when I see Mick Jones in anything: "Hey! I didn't know that Seinfeld rocks!" Which isn't even my own joke. I stole it from Beavis. See, it's funny because Mick Jones looks a lot like Jerry Seinfeld, only not quite as suave and debonaire. Anyway, I said, "Hey, I didn't know Seinfeld..." and that's when I snorted a Smarty down my windpipe.

This is why I'm not an athlete, People! When I sustain two injuries in the course of a weekend from the basic life-sustaining acts of sleeping and eating candy, I can't be trusted with weapons of terror such as racquets and balls.

Want some Smarties? Or some fungicide? Because we've got both, we do.

My athlete days are two decades behind me, which might explain why, when I saw the video for Morrissey's "Everyday is Like Sunday", I didn't wretch like I used to in the days when I was a jock. Maybe now I'm more like Morrissey than I was back then. Or maybe I simply couldn't wretch because of the candy lodged in my throat and the lack of oxygen reaching my brain.

Posted by Robin at 11:24 AM | Comments (6)

September 11, 2006

The Luxury of Innocence

I've been thinking about this post for a week. Not surprisingly, I don't have anything unique. I don't have any truths about today that the rest of you don't already know.

I was getting ready for class that morning. To defer my big student loans while I was getting my cooking career underwy, I was taking a writing class and two literature classes at a community college. I'd just landed a job with a local foodie rag, which would eventually lead to a gig teaching culinary classes, which led to my catering business. But on that day, I'd yet to write my first article and I had no idea what I was going to do with the culinary education I'd spent the last year and a half gaining. All I knew was I was back where I'd started - English classes.

I was dawdling online instead of getting dressed. Tori Amos' website was previewing a song from her rather unimpressive cover album Strange Little Girls. That day's selection was "Happiness is a Warm Gun". I wasn't impressed. Within a few notes I knew that I preferred the cover that The Breeders. I didn't like how Tori sampled news stories about gun violence into the song. Too heavy-handed. She's dragging this shit out for ten minutes? Please. I don't need to be bashed over the head by how the song ties into modern violence. Duh.

As I listened, I hopped around the web, like I always do, alternating between my email, my web communities, and the news, like I always do. During a brief trip to Yahoo News, I noticed a headline about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I figured it was a mishap, like one that had happened a few years earlier that barely registered a blip. I surfed away, eventually getting up to brush my teeth and get on with my day.

Between brushing my teeth and getting dressed, I realized I hadn't checked the weather in my morning surfing. Not wanting to get sucked back in, I headed to the TV instead of the computer to check the local news.

I remember the spot where I was standing in the living room. When we rearranged the furniture a few months later, I was secretly thrilled that I'd never be able to stand in that exact spot again.

The first plane had hit. Maybe the second had, too. I don't recall for sure. I don't recall much.

I remember being in the hallway by the bookcase when I heard that the Pentegon had been hit. I was looking for my phone to call my mom. All I remember of that conversation was saying, "This is bad. This is bad," over and over.

I got my head together enough to try to call my teacher, but got her voice mail. At a complete loss of what to do, I left for class.

I live just south of the airport, and my class was just north of the airport. The highway connecting the two runs under the flight path of all the jets coming from the east. I knew that all planes had been ordered down at that point, and I watched their bellies, one by one, as they came over me to land.

I had never in my life been as frightened as I was, watching those planes - so many of them - landing above me. Their silence over the next three days served as a constant reminder that the world had changed, right down to the background white noise of my home several thousand miles away from the attacks.

I walked into class a few minutes late. Everyone was taking a pop quiz.

A fucking quiz?

Don't you people know that our world is ending?

I took a seat by the door because figured I'd need to run out of the room to puke at some point during the class.

Turns out, no one else in the room knew what had happened. That was the last moment in my life in which I'd be in a room of Americans who had been afforded the luxury of innocence.

Despite my news/info junkie tendancies, I couldn't watch any of the news coverage. When I got home from school, I parked the TV on Nickelodeon and proceeded to watch nothing but "Spongebob Squarepants" for the better part of a week. Occasionally I'd flip to MTV or VH1, but they kept playing Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah set to images of NYC so I stopped.

I didn't cry.

I just wanted to sleep. But I have trouble sleeping when I'm stressed, so before bed every night, I downed a handful of Tylenol PM, which kept me hazy during most of my waking hours.

I didn't listen to music. I couldn't risk bringing any emotions to the surface because I knew that when they surfaced, they would drown me.

I cooked. I made every comfort food I could find. Cuban Arroz con Pollo. Southern baked chicken and dressing. Lasagna.

I don't know how many days passed before I cried. It happened while watching an episode of Behind the Music featuring Blind Melon. I never liked them. When Shannon Hoon's widow cried about the daughter he left behind when he died of a heroin overdose, I finally heaved sobs for every child who'd been orphaned that week.

A year later, I spent the day driving around St. Louis with my camera, taking photos. I snapped shots of the American flags everywhere, from the drive-thru window at Burger King to the antenneas of every car on a used car lot. I stood on the patio of a restaurant next to the runway and took photos of planes taking flight. I took beautiful photos of the sun shining through the Gateway Arch. A series of those photos in black and white hang on my dining room wall. They've been there for so long that I don't instantly think of why I took them every time I look at them.

There are two photos I took that day that, if I ever happen to lose my copies of them, I'll still be able to envision them in my mind's eye. I'll never forget them.

This is a gas station B. goes by twice a day, since it's near his train station. Five years ago today, the owner of the station placed the words "Act of war. Nuke now." on the board. A year later, this is what remained.

It's easy to declare war when you're too fucking lazy to maintain your message and someone else is doing your fighting.

This was taken on a bench beneath the Gateway Arch. I have no idea who this woman is. She sat there with her shopping bag clutched in her hands, head bowed, the entire time I was there while her husband and young son played nearby in the grass.

I wanted to sit on the bench next to her and cry. Instead, I kept my distance, only getting as close to her as my zoom lens allowed.

Today, I once again vowed that if the TV was turned on, it would be to kids shows. Clara Jane and I stayed in our jammies. We painted and played with Play-Doh and cookie cutters. We ate chicken noodle soup for lunch. We took a warm bubble bath to clean up all the paint, Play-Doh and chicken soup. We read from her big Curious George book and watched some "Sesame Street".

Elmo's World today was about firefighters.

I folded my arms over the back of the couch, laid my head down, and sobbed.

When I looked up, Clara Jane was watching me, looking concerned. I smiled and told her everything was okay.

It's not.

She asked for her slippers. I went to her room to fetch them, taking advantage of the privacy to release the pressure valve. I gave myself 30 seconds to sob as hard as I could into the back of one of her stuffed Basset hounds before pulling my shit together. I took her on my lap and we sat on the couch, watching Elmo while I put the pink slippers on her feet.

At naptime, she did something she's never done before. She said, "I want to sleep in the big bed" as she ran into my bedroom, the soles of those slippers slapping the new floor.

We crawled into bed, and I figured she was just playing the game she calls "Uppie Uppie" where she gets on our bed, pretends to sleep, and then bounces like a monkey.

Instead, we laid there and I asked, "Do you want to snuggle?"

Clara Jane's not much of a snuggler. She's got far better things to do. I understand this, as I'm not a snuggler either. But today, she looked at me and nodded.

So we snuggled under the down comforter, resting and quiet, save for several outbursts of tickling and giggling. Eventually I moved her to her bed. She needed to sleep and I needed to have some time away from her to get my emotions in order.

Today I've seen several mentions around the web of people saying they don't understand the sadness people are feeling today. 9/11 wasn't the biggest event in history and we need to just get over it.

I can only think that these ideas were presented by people who are young enough that they didn't get to experience the luxury of innocence for as long as I did. Five years is a long time to a 20-year-old. They've spent a quarter of their lives living like this. Maybe it seems more normal to them than it does to me.

I was almost 29 five years ago. I think people in my generation, the ones who experienced the attacks somewhat near the middle of their lives, are going to be the ones who have the hardest time letting this go. Or, rather, we have a unique perspective of having half of our lives "before" and half "after". I don't know if I feel sorry for the younger ones because less of their lives will be spent not entertaining the idea of people flying planes into buildings on purpose, or if I envy them for being able to normalize it and move on.

Now I understand a little more about what Vietnam and Kennedy's assassination meant to my parents' generation. And what Pearl Harbor meant to my grandparents' generation. The events they saw weren't the biggest events in history, that's true. But they were the biggest events in their history, and that matters. A lot.

I can't change that this is the world that my child lives in. I can protect her from it for a little while, but it's there, and she'll know. But I don't want her to know now. I don't want her to feel like she has to comfort me because of what I know and what I saw.

Not yet.

Posted by Robin at 02:04 PM | Comments (11)

August 30, 2006

Absence. Heart. Fonder. And All That Crap

You know the old cliche. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Best as I can tell, that's usually because it's easier to forget the bad and irritating crap when that person's far, far away. But I digress, as this is about Clara Jane and you know that she's never bad and/or irritating. Well, that's not entirely true. She's hit the stage where she talks from the moment she wakes up until the moment she collapses in an exhausted, scratchy-throated heap, completely spent from the 12 hours of talking. That can get a wee bit tiring at times. I've been told the constant talking is my karma for having done the same to my own mother. Oh, she's laughing now. Not that I can hear her laughter, what with all the blood trickling out of my ears.

Being with my kid nearly all day, just about every day, it's easy to take for granted how fast she's growing and developing. It's far too simple to get so wrapped up in the constant talking that I don't step back and say, "Holy crap! At this time three years ago, I couldn't even feel this little person kicking inside me, and now she's telling me every single thing about the world around her and that's amazing!" But with her visiting my parents, I get the daily updates of her antics and let me tell you, they're cracking me up. And now I'm going to force you to read about them.

1. Clara Jane never answers when anyone asks how old she is. The ten times a day strangers ask her how old she is, I have to answer for her. So, I figured she just hadn't picked up on how old she is.

I have a cousin who's a social worker with a program that works with developmentally disadvantaged kids. She was hanging out at my parents' house tonight, and she told my mom about one of her clients. "She's two, like Clara Jane," my cousin said. To which Clara Jane interjected, "I'm two and a half."

2. My grandfather underwent an outpatient hernia procedure Tuesday morning. Upon arriving at the hospital, Clara Jane told my mom, "I'm glad we're at the hospital. I have a broken leg!".

Actually, she just had a broken toenail, which my mom fixed in the waiting room.

3. Speakinig of my grandfather, Clara Jane is helping him heal by reminding him, "Old Grandpa's wearing pajamas. He's got stripey pajamas."

4. For the past few weeks, Clara Jane has been attempting a bathing strike. Normal, I suppose. Most kids seem to suddenly go from loving bathtime to acting like they're being dipped in batter in preparation for a dunk in some 300-degree lard. She seems to have realized that regardless of how big a fit she throws, I'm still going to put her in the bathtub and *gasp* let soap touch her skin. Not the case where her grandmother is concerned. After an evening of rolling in the dirt, when my mom informed Clara Jane that it was bathtime, she replied, "I don't need to take a bath, Mimi. I'm all nice and clean."

Ah, the cuteness. I miss her. I could really use a snuggle. Or a wrestling match to get her into the bathtub. I've managed to get some stuff done in her absence, though:

1. I've watched B. finish laying the subflooring, and then I watched him fill in the cracks with liquid concrete. Then I watched him sand the excess concrete. And finally, I watched him call Murphy a "knob" when he caught her licking up the liquid concrete.

2. I took a leisurely stroll through the most insanely massive fabric store I've ever seen. I didn't buy anything, but I did rub against some gorgeous Amy Butler loveliness.

3. I not only won Brainbuster Trivia, but I got the highest score of the past six weeks.

4. I was able to drop everything (and by "everything" I mean, I got out of my pajamas and put on real clothes) to go have lunch with my pal PKB.

5. I made plans to accompany a minor to a tattoo parlor.

6. And, of course, I canned shit.

Here's some more white peach jam in the early stages.

And here's what I mangled it into.

How about some salsa in its infancy?

Here's what hours and hours of chopping has wrought:

Tomorrow's agenda: there isn't one.

Posted by Robin at 10:21 PM | Comments (6)

July 16, 2006

I'll Explain Why Clara Jane's Dancing in a West African/Afro-Cuban Drum Circle Later

Video removed due to bandwidth issues, but you can see it here.

Posted by Robin at 10:45 PM | Comments (9)

July 13, 2006

I Need Some More Toys

If you are sickened or roll your eyes at tales of children making funny malapropisms, don't continue reading this entry. It's sickening. Truly.

When Clara Jane was a wee tot, I bought a Dan Zanes CD for her. Well, for me. The former lead singer of '80s alternative Boston band the Del Fuegos, doing kids music with the likes of Loudon Wainwright III and Debbie Harry? Sign me up, Mister!

It's only been recently that Clara Jane's decided she likes this CD. And she likes it with a vigor usually reserved for, say, Candy Day - a day where we eat nothing but candy! Not that we've ever done that, but you get what I'm saying.

One of her favorite songs is "Malti", which is sung in Spanish:

malti, malti ya es verano
¿por qué no levantamos temprano?
nunca repetimos hoy
lleno del sol y viento soy
nunca repetimos hoy
lleno del sol y viento soy

Translation:

Malti, Malti already is summer
so that we did not raise early?
we never repeated today
plenty of the sun and wind I am
we never repeated today
plenty of the sun and wind I am

Um, sure. Thanks, Google Translate!

Now, for the cute malapropism. Avert your eyes, if necessary.

Clara Jane sings along, which in and of itself is entertaining. It's pretty much gibberish as she tries to phoenetically match the lyrics, until she gets to the "lleno del sol y viento soy" line, which she translates as "I need some more toys! I need some more toys!"

Hey. It's not much worse than Google's translation, is it?

Posted by Robin at 04:31 PM | Comments (5)

June 25, 2006

Why My Family Can't Go Out in Public Anymore

As much as I love music, I've got an embarrassing problem with it. I'm a big ol' crybaby, and nothing makes me weepy faster than music.

I bawled while watching Bruce Springsteen & the Seeger Sessions Band performing Pay Me My Money Down on Conan. Jimmy Fallon on spoons, even!

This afternoon, I got teary-eyed while thumbing through Annie Leibovitz's American Music.

My crybaby tendancies regarding country music are well-documented.

But last night ... last night I reached a new low in the musical bawl bag. I am no longer fit to go out in public if there's even a slight chance music will be played. At least, not until the new brain drugs take effect, hopefully sparing me and everyone I encounter from the burbling spring of emotions that bursts forth from every orifice of my face whenever two notes are played.

The first full day of the new anti-crazy drugs went fairly well, but the antianxiety stuff wore off somewhere around dinnertime. I was a bit of a basket case and didn't want to stay home. Clara Jane had taken a late nap, so we decided it would be okay to delay bedtime and go out for a bit.

We went to a coffeehouse, the one I was visiting the other night when I encountered the makeshift memorial service. In the past I've seen signs at this coffeehouse advertising live music on Saturdays, but I didn't see any such signs the other night. Surprise surprise, we walked in to find a cute little floppy-haired guy playing guitar with a pal on the bongos.

I wasn't happy about this. Live music, especially in such close quarters, tends to really get my bawl baggishness kicked into overdrive. Throw on the lighter fluid that is my current emotional state, and there's gonna be a crying inferno, Folks. Coffee in hand, Clara Jane and I settled into a table far from the music while B. went back to the truck to fetch a forgotten sippy cup. I don't even know what song they were playing. It wasn't sad. It's music. That's all it takes. When B. returned, I had my glasses lying on the table, face buried in my hands, weeping into a brown paper napkin.

The duo played played another song I didn't recognize, and I was able to compose myself a bit. My face slowed its leakage. But then the singer decided to be a real asshole.

"Next we're going to do Jeff Buckley's 'Hallelujah'. If you know Jeff's version, please don't get your hopes up with mine."

Do I know Jeff's version? Oh hallelujah, yes, I know Jeff's version, along with Leonard's version, Rufus' version (my favorite), and John's version.

This song? It's the atom bomb of the Make Robin Sob Like Someone Just Died genre. This song has the power to send me into a fit that could lead to health-threatening levels of dehydration, so plentiful are the tears and the snot and, yes, even the drool. This song is emotional desiccant. Do not eat.

"Oh please God, no. Not this song. No no no. Anything but this song," I muttered to B., sinking down in my chair.

Before the singer had finished talking, I was plotting my escape. Never has the fight-or-flight instinct been so strong. The door was right there, not four steps away from me. Hell, this was an emergency situation. I had enough adrenaline in my system that I'm sure I could have stood up, sprung straight into the air, lept over the table and Clara Jane, and been out the door before he'd strummed the first chord.

But the "rational" part of my brain intervened. You know, the part with my shame center. Not that it usually works worth a shit, but last night, as I prepared to take flight, it said, "Now wait just a second here. Do you really want to be 'that fat girl who inexplicably cried into her caramel macchiato, then stormed off at the mere mention of that song'? No, you want to be able to show your face here. And you don't want to be responsible for crushing that poor guitar boy's ego. Just sit your crying ass back down, put the damn napkin over your face, and deal."

Instead of being "the fat girl who inexplicably cried into her caramel macchiato, then stormed off at the mere mention of that song", I opted to be "the crying fat girl with the napkin on her face who keeps crying and crying and Jesus Christ, what the hell's the deal with all the crying? Shouldn't she be in a hospital? She should really consider laying off the espresso."

The boy did quite well with the song. Well, the parts I could hear over my sobbing sounded good.

A sidenote: if I ever invite you to attend a concert with me, you might want to put a lot of thought into how much public embarrassment you're willing to tolerate before you accept.

I should mention that this wasn't paricularly sad weeping. It wasn't. The music weeping's never really rooted in sadness. It's just ... music weeping. I could probably get emotionally touched and weepy at a Gwar concert. So please, don't feel bad for me and my weeping. I'm fine. Really.

Through all my weeping, Clara Jane was busting a move, standing on her chair, cookie in her hand, shaking her groove thing, which really, ain't easy to do to "Hallelujah". By the time the singer started on his version of Coldplay's Yellow, she was out of her chair, arms in the air, swaying from side-to-side. All she needed was a lighter in her hand. She grabbed B.'s finger, insisting that he twirl her around and around and around until she'd just about unscrewed his finger.

When they started on "Folsom Prison Blues", Clara Jane completely lost her mind. She ran to the other end of the coffeehouse, B. hot on her trail, planting herself behind the duo where everyone could see her. She then proceeded to fling her arms in the air, dress raised, stomping and shrieking to the music. The drummer played to her, egging her on. The other patrons laughed, adding more fuel to Clara Jane's Disco Inferno.

I, of course, sat there and cried.

With 2/3 of my family having completely disrupted this poor guy's otherwise decent set, we shuffled out the door, me with my tear-streaked face, B. with his gnarled dancing finger, Clara Jane exhausted from her performance, our work there, complete

Posted by Robin at 07:49 PM | Comments (15)

May 27, 2006

For your holiday weekend

If you're weekend isn't good enough to make you wanna dance like this, then you did something wrong.

C'mon! Let's all do the Baby Pizza Dance!

Posted by Robin at 09:43 AM | Comments (17)

April 25, 2006

The 26-Month Review

I know I've been quiet of late, and I've come to a realization: it's all Clara Jane's fault. This business of having a two-year-old? It's hard. Not necessarily horrible. I mean, sure, I've had to give up some stuff, like sleeping, bathing, and interacting with humans or other beings, but that's fine. It's worth the trade.

As I mentioned previously, Clara Jane had her much-belated two-year check-up on Friday, and there were hyphens everywhere! She's progressing nicely. 85th percentile for weight and 95th percentile for height, which is funny, since I'm 5'3" tall and B.'s 5'7" on a good day, when he's feeling particularly good about himself and balancing a large encyclopedia on his head.

It seems like good a time as any to assess life with 26 months of fun.

A positive: When the doc asked is Clara Jane is able to make three-word phrases, we both laughed because oh my God, the child can talk To wit: On Saturday B. took her next door to see a litter of freshly-birthed baby kittens. Today, she told me this: "Mama, I saw baby kittens. They were drinking milk from their mama. It's good milk. It's their water." To which I said, "I spent the first five months of your life with my tits attached to a breast pump because someone wasn't interested in nursing. I don't need lactation education from you, Toots."

A negative: With the talking comes other forms of verbal communication. Particularly, whining. I have nothing to say other than that. The whining, fuck.

A positive: She's discovering the arts, paricularly music. She's coming close to being able to sing "Come Together" word-for-word with no help from me, aside from repeatedly hitting the "back" button when she starts whining, "I wanna sing 'Come Together' agaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain!'" This morning she lost her mind listening to Springsteen's The Seeger Sessions. In particular, she loves to scream, "Fiddles! I love these fiddles!" at the beginning of "John Henry". Sweetie, you're one-half purebred Ozark hillbilly; of course you love those fiddles! And your my child, so of course you love Springsteen. There is order to this universe.

A negative: She's already finding forms of "art" - and I'm using that term in the loosest possible sense - that irritate the fuck out of her parents. In my child's short lifetime, she's seen maybe a grand total of 20 minutes of the childrens television abomination that is Oobi. And yet, for the past two days, that's all she's talked about. Well, that and fiddles. Oobi and fiddles. Hear that? Yeah, that's my head, being slammed through my hardwood floor.

For those of you without kids, and those of you who have the good sense to not let your kids watch TV, let me describe the show to you. All the characters are hands. As in, "We don't have a large enough production budget to make sock puppets. Sorry kids, the entire show will be performed with bare hands."

This is the look that has captured my child's imagination, People. Unblinking, vaguely reptilian, and creeping my shit out. Clara Jane has recovered from the sleep problems she had a few weeks ago. But tonight, having watched a full episode of those unflinching stares, I'm sure my sleep problems are just beginning. I'm going to see that plastic gaze in my nightmares.

Oobi's the big one. He's a kid. The little one's his sister Uma. She has a big thumb, an even bigger sword and she once overdosed by snorting heroine that she thought was cocaine, but John Travolta drove a syrenge of adrenaline into her heart and she was fine. They live with Grandpu. We know he's an adult because his entire body is covered with hair.

The worst part is, Clara Jane speaks at a much higher level than Oobi and his ilk. I don't want them bringing her down. I mean, they refer to themselves in the third person and they know nothing about feline lactation.

A positive: While she was a bit slow to walk, Clara Jane no longer has any problems in that realm. She gets some air when she jumps, boogies like a Rick James backup dancer, and can run both with and without clothing, although she prefers the latter.

A negative: This child has no fear. Couple that with a love of motivation, and we can guarantee that every single fun activity will, indeed, end in injury. Here's a glimpse at our weekend. The parenthetical notes refer to the number of years each incident removed from my life span.

1. Friday night, we had a lovely dinner at the park, which ended with Clara Jane letting go mid-swing and face-planting in the wood chips. (5)
2. Saturday afternoon, we had a little family time in the backyard, where Clara Jane poked herself in the eye with a large stick. (3)
3. Saturday night, we hit the local frozen custard stand. In her post-custard sugar buzz, Clara Jane was running wind sprints around a picnic table, and ran belly-first into the corner the bench in roughly the location of her liver. (8)
4. Sunday, she spent the day in the house, covered in a 4" protective layer of quilt batting held on with Saran-Wrap. (4)

See why I don't have time to blog? Or do anything else, for that matter?

Posted by Robin at 09:04 PM | Comments (8)

April 04, 2006

Why I'm Never Leaving the House Again

I made a decision today. From this point on, I'm never leaving my house again. Yes, I know, this is rather drastic, seeing as I've always been quite the gadabout. No more.

I'm feeling a little better, having gone to bed early last night. Still not nearly up to my usual manic standard, but I'm not sobbing because I'm exhausted, which is an improvement over my condition 24 hours ago. Even if I hadn't felt slightly improved, I intended to get Clara Jane out of the house, at least for a little bit. Best-case scenario: we would hit the new used-baby store in our neighborhood, followed by a quick run to the fabric store. At 10:30 we'd go to storytime at the library, then lunch at Moe's and lastly, a quick run to Trader Joe's.

Yeah, that's optimistic. We didn't get ready fast enough, so the fabric store was crossed off the list before we left the house. The used-baby store? Two things: 1) Large "open" signs that are visible from the street? They're cheap. Buy one. Potential customers don't like parking a block away, hauling a kid out of a car seat on a busy street, hauling kid to store, all for naught. In fact, they dislike it so much that they probably won't come back. 2) Your shop is only open from 11 AM - 3 PM? How do you make rent? I mean, I know the used-baby business is lucrative and all, but it's not that lucrative.

Have I mentioned what was happening with my bra during all of this hauling and such?

I'm in bad need of new bras. I'm down to one that's wearable, and I'm using that word in the loosest sense. This poor bra ... it's tired. It's tired and abused and so stretched beyond its limit that the strap in the back keeps trying to escape through the neckhole of my shirt. I think the reason I'm so damn tired all the time isn't because I've contracted the Black Death; it's because I spend roughly 6 hours a day in perpetual motion, trying to wrangle this renagade brassaire back onto my body. It's exhausting.

When you visualize the events in this post, don't forget that through everything, I'm constantly fiddling with my bra.

On to the library. Clara Jane's a veteran of storytime. Her last storytime experience? Two weeks ago, we piled into the county library headquarters with roughly 100 other toddlers to see a live appearance by Franklin.

Now, I implore you ... does this look like a kid who has any trouble with storytime?

That's Clara Jane on the right, shortly after she sprinted away from me shrieking, "Hey Frank-a-lin!", but before she insisted on exchanging high-fives with him. After chattering non-stop with her favorite turtle-suited person, she heaped herself on the floor with a pile of crayons - some blatantly pilfered from the gaggle of little boys next to us - to capture her Franklin experience on paper while it was fresh on her mind.

Clara Jane has no fear when it comes to costumed characters, to the degree that I'm a little concerned about her developing a fetish. But do you know what library fixture scares the fuck out of her? Crazy Old Library Lady, that's who.

Things started out just fine, as all library trips do. My kid adores the library. Or did. I'm not so sure she feels the same anymore, as her sanctuary of books has become a house of horrors. But I'm jumping ahead of myself.

Today's election day, and the library we visited today was a polling place for one of the 3,927 St. Louis-area municipalities that are electing mayors. At first I wasn't thrilled, because I was going to have to deal with pamphleting electioneers 26 feet away from the entrance, barraging me with propoganda. However, they were all quite nice and understanding when I explained that this wasn't our polling place and we had bigger fish to fry. Or read about frying.

The problem ceated by election day: the polling place was set up in the meeting room usually used for storytime. Not a problem. As Clara Jane shared an alphabet book with a little girl named Isabella, her mom told me that, when storytime's displaced, they have it in the teen area and it's great and fabulous and Miss Sandra hung the moon and stars. Wonderful.

Another little girl, accompanied by her grandmother, were sitting at a table in the teen room when we made our way to storytime. At the next table, another older woman, flipping the pages of her book with such agitation that I wondered if perhaps the characters were telling her horrible, awful things about her mother. Please don't let this be Miss Sandra, I thought. Because whatever this woman's reading, I don't think I want her reading it to my kid.

Clara Jane and the other little girl chattered, as two-year-olds do. They remained on our laps, giggling and talking. I fidgeted with my bra. Grandma smiled adoringly at the girls. Crazy Old Library Lady Who Best Not Be Miss Sandra flipped pages, turned to us and barked, "This is supposed to be a silent area. Get the kids out of here."

Both girls fell silent, inately aware that suddenly, their silence was required. Perhaps their lives depended on it.

I stopped tugging my strap so as to look at least a little reasonable. "Actually, storytime is starting in here in a few minutes."

"This isn't the storytime area! They don't hold storytime in here! This is a silent area and I came in here for peace and quiet! I need peace and quiet for what I'm doing! This is not the storytime room and you need to leave!"

I prepared to hand Clara Jane to the grandmother, whip off my bra, and use it to truss and bind the woman who was having such a screaming, flailing meltdown in her silent area that she was rapidly turning into a very loud, very slimy puddle on the floor. Just then, a plump woman with a soft salt-and-pepper pageboy entered the room, wheeling a cart filled with books, crayons, monkey puppets and an autoharp. "It's storytime!" she chirped in the general direction of the molten petrolium product that continued to shriek, "You're welcome to stay, if you'd like!"

The puddle yorped in the new woman's direction, absorbed her reading materials into her oil flow, and slithered out of her most-decidedly non-silent area.

I think she took a little of Clara Jane's spirit with her. This child - who's been social since the day she was born, who loves live music, and storytime and coloring, and being around other similarly-inclined kids - would not allow me to put her down. When I did, she sobbed as if I was going to leave her in The Bad Vibes Room to be raised by whatever crazy old person happened by next.

I spent the entire 45 minutes of storytime on my knees, Clara Jane adhered to my torso. If her feet got within three inches of the floor, she'd fire up the tears once again. Nothing assured her that everything was okay. Not the gentle melody of the autoharp and Miss Sandra's sweet voice. Not the giggles of the other kids. Not the stories about shoes and the finger puppets based on Eileen Christelow's Five Little Monkeys, who happen to be Clara Jane's favorite monkeys in the whole wide world. She would calm when she was pressed against me with both of my arms wrapped tight around her, but if my muscles fatigued and her feet came within the dreaded three inches of the floor, she'd cry, legs peddling like a frantic duck, kicking my thighs and stomach as her fingers dug into my shoulders, begging me to take her home.

It's really hard to fidget with a renegade brassaire in such a situation.

I don't expect everyone to adore my child, or to be charmed by her every chatter and shriek. Kids in public places can be irritating; I'm the first to admit that. But Jesus. What kind of person has a screaming hissy fit of such magnitude that it leaves a normally gregarious kid so terrified she can't unlatch from her mother?

I think that woman truly did need some peace and quiet, perhaps the kind provided by solitary confinement at one of the area's mental health facilities.

Maybe I should have given in to Clara Jane's pleas to leave, but what would that teach her? That it's okay to let a bully ruin something that is rightfully hers? I hate that the ire of one unhinged person has the possibility of changing how we go about our lives. My reaction - I quit. I'm sick to death of dealing with people and I just don't want to do it anymore. I'm exhausted and I don't need this. Most importantly, I don't want Clara Jane to deal with this. I want her to believe that people are good and have her best interests at heart for as long as possible. I don't want one crazy old bat at the library to steal that part of her innocence. I don't want the storytimes that she's loved so much to have any shadow of fear. But now, they might, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Clara Jane's going to learn about the meanness in this world, and I don't get to choose when or how.

I'm going to learn about the meanness in me. In the past, the sight of such a person - old and alone, miserable and angry - would have made something in my heart hurt. I would hurt for whatever horrible hurt had brought such misery into being. But today, I felt no sympathy, no "there but for the grace of God go I". All I felt was the overwhelming desire to strike this person so that she might hurt as much as she hurt my child.

Posted by Robin at 02:42 PM | Comments (10)

March 23, 2006

Everyone Loves Baby Horses!

I have nothing of import to post. You don't want to hear about my day. Trust me. You don't want to hear about the hissy fit Clara Jane threw when I refused to let her listen to Wilco's War on War for an 18th time in a row today. I mean, that's enough to put a dent in even my deep, abiding love for all things Wilco.

You also don't want to hear about the fit she threw because I had the audacity to first give her purple Play-Doh, and then orange Play-Doh, instead of the green Play-Doh she required to live.

And you really don't want to hear about the screaming that occured by multiple people when she slammed two of her fingers in one of my desk drawers.

You know what makes everything better? Pictures of baby horses.

Yeah, I ran like that a few hours after I gave birth. You know I did.

Because I'm an only child - or because my parents aren't right in the head, I'm not sure which - our pets were always referred to as being my siblings. So this baby horse is my new brother. By that accord, his parents are my sister and other brother, which means my family is far too Ozarkean for its own good. But that would explain some of the troubles they're having with this new little guy. His mother - my sister, the horse - is having nursing issues. Having been through breastfeeding hell two years ago, I find myself offering advice. To a horse.

I refuse to rent her a breast pump. I've gotta draw the line somewhere.

Also, to no one's surprise, the little guy was born on Wednesday, which means his name is supposed to be Ditzy Little Obnoxious Eighth Grader, after my cousin's child who shares the horse's birthday. I'm going to call him Obnoxy for short.

Posted by Robin at 10:31 PM | Comments (14)

March 07, 2006

Deep Thoughts and Bodily Fluids - A Little Something for Everyone

Which do you want first? Of course, the poop...

As of 6:24 PM today, Tuesday, March 7, in the year of our lord 2006, I hereby declare that no one in this house is allowed to perform any bodily functions until they learn how to do it right.

Last night, B. noticed that Clara Jane had a smidge of diaper rash, so he let her run around the house bare-assed for awhile. This is what we call Danger Baby. I think you probably know why, and I'm pretty sure you know where this is going.

"Oh my God! She's crapping on the floor!" B. yelled, jumping up and sprinting away from my desk, where Clara Jane was squatting, doing what I can only assume was her best imitation of a bear in the woods. He recovered, cleaned it up, and once again fell into shock as Clara Jane ran across the kitchen, a giant turd falling out of the hem of her shirt.

Once all the poop was removed, B. removed Clara Jane to the bath. Once out, she was standing on one of the dining room chairs, still naked. "What's all that water on the chair?" B. asked. "Did that drip off of her from the bath?"

Sure, Honey. You just keep telling yourself that while I disinfect this chair on which we sit while we consume food, for it is covered with urine.

Fast forward to bedtime. I was reading, while my cat, Romi the Motherfucking Lardass, attempted to settle her girth onto my girth, which is sort of like balancing a ping-pong ball on top of a basketball. As she settled, I noticed something. Under her tail. Oh God.

I shoved her towards B., flung a box of tissues at him and requested that he please remove the renegade dingleberry (which, size-wise, was really more of a dinglepear) from her ass.

Once the poop was out of our bed, we sat there, catching our breath, both silently pondering the horror of possibly rolling onto the renegade dinglepear in the night. Romi, in her shame, perched on the edge of B.'s nightstand, looking straight ahead, obviously trying to regain her nobility in light of having, essentially, crapped her pants in front of us. I watched her profile as she sat, unflinching, lost in the thoughts of her shame. She opened her mouth, I presumed to speak of her mortification and sorrow at the frightening end of the evening. And from her mouth, as she emitted a delicated hack, came rocketing ... what? A loogie? Projectile vomit? Jet-powered hairball? I'm not sure. All I know is I watched in what felt like slow-motion as this item came hurtling out of her gullet and across the room. Had the dogs been sleeping in their beds four feet away, they would have thought all their dreams had come true and cat vomit had started raining from the heavens.

I somehow managed to sleep, even with this animal, who had sprung leaks from both ends, slept near my pillow. Clara Jane woke me up before 7 AM. Although I wasn't thrilled with this situation, I took advantage of it. Got us dressed and out the door by 9 so we could go for coffee and chocolate milk, followed by a trip to Whole Foods. I needed probiotics, as my digestive system is still reeling from last week's flu. I won't be giving you details, because I prefer for the rest of the world to believe that I don't poop. However, I'm pretty sure Romi has posted all the details over on Live Journal.

I love Whole Foods, but I don't get there very often. Unless I go early in the morning, it's a madhouse and it makes me want to run over people in the parking lot, which doesn't quite work with Whole Foods' earth-friendly vibe. So we just don't go, unless it's a day like today, where the planets align with my ailing intestines and the child in my house who is suddenly operating on Rooster Central Time.

Two years ago, I was also going to Whole Foods for probiotics. Clara Jane was almost a month old and I was still sick. When I left the hospital, my doctor said my C-section incision looked like it wanted to get infected. She sent me home with a prescription for Keflex. Four days later, I awoke with my clothing saturated in liquid that had burst from the incision. It looked like the tail of my shirt and my underwear had been dunked four inches in a washtub.

In the weeks that followed, I was prescribed every antibiotic known to western medicine, or so it felt. Several times a day I sat on the toilet while B. alternated hot compresses and peroxide-soaked cloths on my incision, which continued to bleed and weep. I went to my doctor's office several times a week, always on the verge of being admitted to the infectious disease unit. The infection didn't budge.

Despite the infection, I was able to go out. As long as I took painkillers and wore elastic wasitbands, I could try to get on with my life, which now contained a tiny little girl and a weeping wound. That was good, I thought, because I had other health issues at hand. Whenever I was left at home with Clara Jane, I would panic. Paralyzing, life-controlling panic that left me huddled on the couch, sobbing, for hours on end. Every morning, Clara Jane and I would drive B. to the train station, then we'd go to the diner for a long breakfast. She'd sleep on the counter in her car seat while I ate my egg sandwich and drank cup after cup of coffee. Perched on a swiveling stool at the counter, my incision didn't hurt quite as much.

When we'd leave the diner, I'd have to find someplace else for us to pass a few hours, and Whole Foods was an appealing option. I'd put Clara Jane into her Baby Bjorn and we'd stroll through the store. If she was awake, she'd gaze at the colors and lights in the produce department. I'd take my time walking down the aisles, maybe buying something to drink or a snack. Lunch from the salad bar, if it was a particularly long visit, as a lot of them were. Sometimes I'd sit in the dining area with a notebook and write, if Clara Jane was willing to snooze on my chest.

When it came time to pay, I always tried to get the same cashier. I don't remember her name, but she was in her early 20s, chubby, ring through the divit between her lower lip and her chin, and hair color that varied between hot pink and burgundy from week-to-week. I could always count on her for a little small talk, and to fawn over Clara Jane. She always projected a bit of happiness, and helped ease my loneliness.

Eventually, it was a trip to Whole Foods that finally brought down the infection. My friend Jackie, a homeopathic therapist in Great Britain, suggested several formulas that tend to help surgical infections, along with an arnica ointment. Within a week, the infection was mostly gone, and I was downing probiotics, trying to get everything back in order.

As I walked through Whole Foods early this morning, I thought about those mornings two years ago, and the tiny baby who snoozed on my chest as I browsed. Today, she pointed at items in the produce department, yelling out the names of fruits and veggies. She demanded samples from the cheese and potato chip departments, and mooed at the cow artwork on the organic dairy products. While gazing into the meat case, I heard someone say, "Hey! It's you! I haven't seen you in ages! Oh my God, your baby's grown!" I looked up, and there was my cashier, this time with fading blue hair and a blood-smeared white coat, working behind the meat counter. "She's gorgeous!"

I thanked her, and we made idle chit-chat for a bit. I found myself wanting to tell her that I'm fine. I'm well. Missing some vital flora, perhaps, but otherwise, so good that an early-morning trip to the hippie store is now fun, not a lifeline.

Posted by Robin at 07:24 PM | Comments (13)

February 26, 2006

Definitely Not Mashed Potato Time

A year ago this week my dad underwent quadriple heart bypass surgery. That, along with a hard-to-diagnose form of arthritis led to his early retirement.

We were all concerned with how Dad would handle retired life, since he'd spent the previous 55.5 years of his life fulfilling the role of Crazy Workaholic Man. As I write, the Bobby Bare Jr.-Buck Owens-Jeff Tweedy-Radney Foster cover of "Take This Job and Shove It" just came on the shuffle. Because the shuffle, it knows. Anyway ...

Dad's adjusted well. He's entrenched himself in Lexi and Bubba, his quarter horses who are going to become parents in the next few weeks. He got Bubba trained to pull a cart and had a few wrecks. Nevermind that trying decapitate his dog Chiggar with a chainsaw is damn near a full-time job.

He's also discovered a new hobby. In my 33 years I don't think I've ever seen my dad read anything beyond the local newspaper and maybe the occasional horse or Nascar-related magazine. But hallelujah, my father has become a reader. At nearly 57 years of age, he recently procured his first library card. He's reading an average of two books a week. Now, I've always been a reader, but I'm lucky if I can finish one book every two weeks.

It was an odd sight when we were visiting my folks last weekend, seeing my dad in his armchair for hours, the TV silent - silent, for God's sake! That never happens! - with his nose in a book. "Hey Rob! You've gotta read this part!" he kept telling me, shoving his book at me. So I read numerous passages out of his book, things that he found funny or interesting, all while wondering, "Who are you and what have you done with my daddy?"

Yesterday afternoon I was on the phone with my mom. She told me that Dad's really enjoying his current book, Gap Creek by Robert Morgan, have I read it? No, I haven't.

I heard my dad in the background, yelling to my mom, "You've gotta read this part to her! Here! Read this page to her!" So, I had a little story time over the phone with my mom, at my dad's insistance.

I've got to say, after five minutes of my mom reading me the terrific details of a little boy vomiting great bucketsful of wriggly white worms, people reaching into his throat to pull them out until he fucking died, I came to the conclusion that I liked my dad better before he became a reader.

Fast forward to dinner tonight...

I made a lovely dinner, after a weekend of IHOP and Moe's. A spicy glazed pork tenderloin, sugar-glazed roasted carrots and mashed potatoes. We believe in the power of carbs in this house, oh yes we do. I didn't expect Clara Jane to eat any potatoes, because my child is completely unamerican and has never, ever liked mashed potatoes. I'm sure this is why I hear little clicking noises every time I'm on the phone. She's tried them a few times, but seems to have issues with the texture. Often, if she finds herself with a mouthful of mashed potatoes, she'll just sit there, mouth agape, potatoes blending with saliva under her tongue, dripping down her chin in a buttery river of drool.

But tonight, armed with a pair of chopsticks, she ate mashed potatoes. Teeny-tiny little dots on mashed potatoes on the end of her chopstick, enough to get that potatoey goodness without feeling like she has a mouthful of paste. Well, except for one bite, when she got a little carried away and found herself with the big drooly mashed potato river.

She stood there, mouth open, eyes horrified, chomping my fingers as I reached into her mouth to remove the offending potatoes, I realized you really can learn a lot from books.

Posted by Robin at 07:15 PM | Comments (2)

February 15, 2006

Happy Birthday, Clara Jane

February 15, 2004


February 15, 2005


February 15, 2006

Happy birthday, Sweet Sweet Sugar Beet.

Posted by Robin at 09:19 AM | Comments (21)

January 21, 2006

Sunny Day

A few weeks ago, while watching a commercial for "Sesame Street Live", Clara Jane made the connection that the be-costumed Baby Bear in the ad was indeed the same, real-life manifestation of the lisping Baby Bear from the show that she loves ever so much. And in that moment, in a frenzy of maternal love that completely blanketed all logic, I called B. at work. "Can you still get those discounted Sesame Street tickets? Because we so have to go."

Fifty dollars and three tickets later, I spent the next two weeks wondering what in the hell I was thinking. She's not even two. There's no way she can handle a 90-minute show, complete with lights, loud noises and about a million other screaming toddlers. We just spent fifty bucks for our kid to throw a massive hissy fit in public. Great. Just great.

Today day began with Clara Jane's first foray into public transportation. B. had been looking forward to this for a long time, being a regular traveler on St. Louis' Metrolink. Really, I'm surprised it's taken us this long to get her onto a train.

And with her first trip via public transportation, she also had her first encounter with an idiot on the train platform. Now, to be fair, he might have been very intelligent, had he not smoked his breakfast.

The entrance to one of the train platforms was barricaded with slashes of yellow tape and orange cones, but that didn't stop this fellow from crawling through the tape to the empty platform. "Hey buddy!" someone from our platform called. "That platform's closed. The trains from both directions are using this platform."

The trespasser shot him a look and kept walking down the deserted platform until a Metro employee barked, "Hey! That's closed! Get off the closed platform!"

To which the trespasser replied, "It's closed? Someone should have said something!"

And then he exited, once again climbing through the yellow tape.

That encounter aside, I do believe this was my first visit to Savvis Center where I didn't encounter so much as a passing whiff of anything being illicitly smoked. The "Sesame Street Live" crowd? Not quite as into the hallucinogens as the people at most shows I see at that venue. Maybe it was because it was the 10:30 AM show. I'll bet the hardcore fans don't come out until the 5:30 PM show.

What we did encounter - enough cotton candy and sno-cones to require Insulin Emergency Stations scattered throughout the venue.

Now, I'm going to admit something that's potentially humiliating. Angela wrote about something similar last summer in regards to seeing "The Wiggles". So at least I'm in good company.

I am such a crybaby, especially when music's invovled. Always have been. When I first started taking Prozac in 2002, one of the first changes I noticed was I no longer got weepy upon hearing jingles in Kleenex and Kodak commercials. While I was initially a little disturbed by this dulling of my emotional edge, I quickly came to embrace it. I could do things like watch TV and go to concerts with others without bursting into tears and looking like an idiot.

While I've adjusted well to life without mood stablizers over the past year, one pre-SSRI trait has returned: I'm a fucking bawl bag. I feared today's show would send me into a blubbering fit and I'm not-so-pleased to report that I was right.

During the opening number - "Somebody Come and Play", which always chokes me up on the show, even with it's the upbeat version and not Ernie's rather melancholy, lonesome version - with all the costumed Sesame Street characters parading onto the stage and my kid hollering, "Hello Bert! Hello Prairie Dawn! Hello Baby Bear!" I cried like someone had burned down my house, stolen my dogs and fed my favorite shirt to a goat all in the same day.

At least it's not choking sobs. I can limit it to the occasionally shuddery sigh, but my God, the tears! Great flooding rivers of tears! Tears that can't be passed off as allergy eyes or a reaction to the bright lights!

I eventually pulled my shit together and was doing fine. And then they had to do the "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon". The regular version gets to me, but oh my God lately they've been showing the version with Aaron Neville, and it's a song about wanting to be home, and with Aaron Neville involved it makes me think of all the people displaced by Hurricane Katrina and OH MY GOD!!! JUST STOP!!!! I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SOBBING AT FUCKING SESAME STREET LIVE!!!

I mean, seriously. You would have thought I was at an Alan Jackson concert with the amount of tearshed I displayed. I can't believe I was concerned about Clara Jane going into meltdown mode. Clara Jane was fine. She loved it. Didn't shed a tear the entire time we were out. Unlike her mother, who left a hankerchief completely sopping wet and was reduced to wiping her tear-snot on her sleeve.

Speaking of my child's exemplary behavior, she had a wonderful time. We made it through the entire show and she was enthralled. Mesmerized. Totally into it. I'm even willing to overlook how she pointed to and addressed the performers. She's a bit young to understand that this breaks Cardinal Rule of Cooldom #73 and might get your ass kicked if you do it at the wrong show. I don't know. Maybe the etiquette is different at kiddie concerts. Regardless, I let it slide, since I was in flagrant violation of Cardinal Rule of Cooldom #32: Thou shalt not sob like a motherfucking sissy when Big Bird makes his entrance.

Besides, I think I'd embarrassed her enough for one day:

Posted by Robin at 09:49 PM | Comments (5)

January 17, 2006

Clara Jane's House of Death & Mayhem

Before I had Clara Jane, I dreaded the foray into children's entertainment. Aside from the classic kids books and occasional viewings of Sesame Street, I wondered how I would stomach all that sing-songy obnoxious crap. I had grand ideas of limiting the crappy kid's stuff and launching my kid directly into real music.

I love that Clara Jane screams, "I'll dance!" whenever she hears Wilco's "War on War" or "Pot Kettle Black" come on. It tickles me to no end when she sprints through the house to get a better listen when she hears the opening riff of U2's "Vertigo". The day she first headbanged to "Blue Orchid" by the White Stripes? I wept, People. Openly wept tears of joy. Booya! That's my baby, rocking her punk ass!

But I'm starting to have some misgivings about my little plan. It started when I caught Clara Jane singing along to Walt Whitman's Niece, a tune that's always prefaced with the word "bawdy". We were in the truck at the time, and I just about drove us off the road when I heard that sweet little voice in the backseat chirping, "I'll not say which seaman".

I didn't react much better the day she was chanting, "I got high high high high!" along with Ryan Adams' To Be Young (Is to Be Sad Is to Be High).

And while it cracks me up that she runs around chanting "Lucky lucky you're so lucky!" from Franz Ferdinand's Do You Want To, I harbor no illusions about what will happen if she ever sings along with the line, "Your famous friend? Well, I blew him before you". We'll all be unlucky unlucky so unlucky because my head with motherfucking explode.

While I don't intend to limit the "grown-up" music Clara Jane listens to, maybe there's something to all this kid's crap. I'm starting to think that I might be stealing a bit of her innocence with my music choices. Besides, she needs her own music. She's got a collection of somewhat tolerable kids music from artists like Laurie Berkner and Dan Zanes.

B. recently found a CD in Clara Jane's collection. I think it was a baby shower gift. It's just one of those generic kids CDs that can be found for a few bucks at Walmart or Target. "Baby's Best Playtime Songs". Looks innocent enough, with tunes like "Baa-Baa Black Sheep", "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and such. He played it for Clara Jane a few weeks ago, and she's hooked.

As with all kids entertainment, I try to not be too disdainful. This stuff isn't made for me to like it; it's made for kids to like it. But sweet Jesus!

For starters, the kids singing on this CD ... I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure these tots spend their spare time wandering cornfields and worshipping Satan.

But that's not the worst of it. Oh no. The worst of it lies in the song "Three Little Pigs". Now, when I think of "Three Little Pigs", I think of "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down", and scalded big bad wolves and such. That, my friends, would be a delight compared to the horrors entrapped in these musical version:

Oh there once was a sow who had three little pigs
Three little pigs had she
The old sow always went oink oink oink
And the piggies went wee wee wee wee

One day one of the three little pigs
To the other two piggies said he
"Why dont' we always go oink oink oink
If they taught us to go wee wee wee wee?"

These three piggies grew skinny and lean
Skinny they well should be
For they always would try to go oink oink oink
And they woulnd't go wee wee wee wee

Now these three piggies, they up and they DIED
A very sad sight to see
So don't ever try to go oink oink oink
When you ought to go wee wee wee wee

So, what's the message in this song? You best not get above your raisin', Kid, or we'll starve you to death? Toe the line or you'll die?

While I could see how such threats might come in handy on the really bad toddler days, I'm thinking maybe it's a bit, I don't know, severe? Harsh? Fucking morbid? So much for my kid's innocence. I think we'll go back to Walt's slutty relations and her ejaculating sailor friends, thank you very much.

Don't even get me started on the "Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" doll Clara Jane got for Christmas:

She's dead, of course.

Posted by Robin at 03:47 PM | Comments (29)

January 09, 2006

You Don't Want to Hear About My Day. Trust Me.

Let me preface by saying that I have nothing to say.

I could tell you about my day, but trust me, you don't want to hear it.

You don't want to hear about the three rounds of toddler diarrhea. Really. You don't. You especially don't want to know how round #2 (literally and figuratively) left me heaving (literally and figuratively).

You also don't want to hear about her just-under-the-gums molars, or as I like to call them, "motherfucking sniper-ass sons of bitches".

You really don't want to hear about how Clara Jane and I were snuggled in bed, reading a book. And how, in the middle of laughing at one of Biscuit's antics, her giggle turned into a wail. You really, really don't want to know how she looked at me with eyes that screamed, "Yo! Mama! Cut this shit out, already! I think I'm dyin' over here!" You really, really, really don't want to know how, because I couldn't do anything but hold her and tell her that I know, it hurts and it sucks and I'm sorry, that I just cried right along with her.

But you might like to know that the worst seems to be past. Nobodys ass has exploded in over three hours. Clara Jane's taking her second nap of the day. But if you have kids, I'm positive you don't want to know that my kid sleeps when she's teething or sick, because such information will make you want to kill me. I understand. Really, I do.

There are some other things you might want to hear about:

For example, I look good all blinged out.

Another thing you might like to know: I think someone's pumping pheremones into my house because the schmoop is thick around here. I partially blame those people who showed up late Friday with all the booze, but I'm not complaining. They're not the only schmoopy ones. I'm smiling for a reason. And believe you me, it takes some good stuff to keep a girl smiling while she dry-heaves during diaper changes. The schmoop, it cures all. I'm just not quite sure at what point the schmoop turns into the smut. Enlighten me if you happen to know.

You might also enjoy knowing that, as long as my child's health is under control and the house hasn't turned into a giant drool-filled latrine, I will be taking myself to my friendly local neighborhood multinational corporate coffeehouse franchise to do some work on the book. You know, the one I'm writing. The same one that, yesterday, got the full outline treatment and is coming dangerously close to being a reality.

And I'm 100% sure you'll be ecstatic to know that I'm bringing this obnoxious list to an end.

Posted by Robin at 02:52 PM | Comments (6)

January 04, 2006

If One More Person...

...comes up to me in public, looks at my child, looks at me and utters a variation of, "Oh! Does your husband have blonde hair?" or "Oh! Is your husband really fair-skinned?", I swear to God I'm gonna snatch the hair right offa that person's head and ask, "Oh! Is your daddy a bald asshole?"

Either that or I'm going to tell them that she has that Michael Jackson disease.

Yeah, get me. I'm all swarthy and shit.

Posted by Robin at 10:05 PM | Comments (6)

December 24, 2005

How Kara & I Came to Blows: Anatomy of a Beating in Photos

Poor Clara Jane. She's a little drummer girl without a drum. All she has is a kick-ass mullet and some wooden spoons to bang on her high chair tray.

Sometimes, when she's not in her instrument-free house, Clara Jane is able to find an outlet for her musical urges, even if it means annoying an entire coffeehouse with her running scales.

If only someone would help erradicate her music-free existance! If only someone would swoop in with a big ol' box of noise! O Kara Claus! Please save Christmas!

Bring me monkey maracas!

And a jangly pandourine!

And then - then! Bring on the rattly, thumpy, bead-filled drum! Beat the turtle drum, Clara Jane!

A merry KISSmas to all! And to all an Anthrax goodnight!

(Kara's getting a box of bees for her birthday next year, mark my word.)

Posted by Robin at 12:44 PM | Comments (8)

December 22, 2005

Happy Head Injury Holiday!

I spent some time riding the short bus when I was in elementary school. However, it was the short bus to the weekly gifted program. B. was also of advanced intelligence at an early age, but if I remember correctly his school system didn't have a program for singling out and drawing attention to the smart kids like mine did. With our genes (and egos) combined, we're somewhat expecting Clara Jane to follow in our big-brained/little-bus footsteps.

However, after last night, I'm concerned that she might be on that bus for other reasons entirely.

6:45 PM - While playing in B.'s office, she walked backwards into a chair, clunking the back of her head hard enough to merit a meltdown.

7:20 PM - Clara Jane has learned the joy of standing in the middle of a room, arms flung wide, and spinning until she pukes. Well, not that she's puked yet, but you know it's just a matter of time. Anyway, she spun and squealed, then attempted to walk across the kitchen. You would have thought she'd been dipping into the pomegranate cocktails from the staggering. She made it halfway across the room before falling directly into the doorframe on her right. But she was fine! She can walk! What are you insinuating, that she's drunk? She's fine!

She righted herself, started to walk again, and promptly fell to her left, conking her head on the doorframe. Screaming commences.

7:50 PM - The previous head injuries forgotten (because, let's face it, that's the perk of head injuries; you forget them rather quickly), Clara Jane partakes in her usual post-bath activity: she sprints from the bathroom, stark naked, finds me, throws her hands in the air and screams, "I'm naked! Mama! I'm naked!" It's a delightful routine.

Last night, while announcing her nudity, Clara Jane sprinted across the kitchen and dining room, right towards my desk. I've got a little pull-out lapdesk that was not in its loaded upright position. It was sticking straight out, and my kid was headed for it, and so engrossed in her nakedness (she gets that from her father) that she showed no signs of stopping.

But stop, she did, when her forehead made contact with the lapdesk with such force and speed that it knocked her backwards onto her little naked ass. I swooped her up in my arms, snuggling her while she sobbed, trying to see if her eyes were pointing in the same direction when I felt something on my foot.

How many blows to the head does it take to literally knock the piss out of someone? Three, apparently.

None of the head injuries were severe. Otherwise, I wouldn't be writing this; I'm not that heartless. And yes, I checked on her in the night, so concerned was I about the state of her jostled little brain. But she's fine. In fact, in the time it took me to take off my urine-soaked clothing, run into the kitchen and yell, "I'm naked!", she was completely over Head Injury #3. She'd moved on to Naked Gift Unwrapping.

Nonetheless, I'm taking back all of her Christmas gifts and exchanging them for a helmet. She'll thank me someday when she's on that teeny little bus.

Posted by Robin at 11:11 AM | Comments (4)

December 21, 2005

The Bad Trip

Clara Jane has returned and, as usual, I find myself racking my brain. How do I parent, again? I can't remember. You mean I can't just let her have free reign of the Teletubbies library on our DVR and leave an open box of Cheerios on the floor for her to graze from? I'm supposed to do stuff with her? Like what? Does she like drinking espresso and beer? Because that's the kind of stuff I like to do. No? Shit.

Last Friday, when we were in the truck on our way to meet my parents, out of the blue Clara Jane said, "Butterfly House! Let's go to the Butterfly House!" When I explained that no, we weren't going to the Butterfly House, she interpreted it