Category: Parenting

Strange Geese, Space Force’s Lost and Found, and Good ol’ Whatshisname

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…Or I Could’ve Just Taken the Week Off

A few weeks ago, I picked up my daughter from sports practice at a neighboring town’s park, which is very much like our town’s park, except with different geese. This is a public park, which means the public is allowed in. That is the problem with public parks.

I had to intervene when a pack tween twerps cheered on as one kid had another kid in a headlock. The second boy’s face was red, his eyes were streaming, and he was silent, which, if you know children, is a sure sign that something isn’t fun. Oh, hello, Trouble. There you are.

It was an easy read.

My “Hey!” stopped almost all of them.

One prepubescent Cobra Kai decided to test his standing with the gods and said to me, “Bro, this is none of your business.”

“Bro” is apparently a word that activates me like some sort of verbose sleeper agent. You can imagine how things went for all of them after that.

It was over quickly, but the kid in the headlock had enough time to walk away, which was really the main thing here.

No tween twerps were harmed in this interaction.

Joke’s on me, though (when isn’t it?) because little did I know that August was warming up in the corner, waiting to see if it could take my household two falls out of three.

All of that was once a Facebook post I left up for an hour before deleting, presumably to protect national security or because I pressed the wrong button. I tried to find it later (deleted posts, archived posts, etc.) but couldn’t. Alas, it’s gone, filed somewhere in the Cloud, or the shelf in Space Force’s Lost and Found where they store embarrassing mom anecdotes. I recreated it here, with slightly more effort than the 0.2 seconds I give most Facebook posts.

I had planned a proper post this week as I’ve been trying to post weekly, but then everyone in the house got sick. Like really sick, where after a few days you think you’re okay-ish then you lie down and wake up 5 hours later feeling groggy and not much better, if not a little worse.

Then I got sick. Which was technically covered under “everyone,” but I tend to assume “everyone” means “everyone else.” I usually avoid household contagion, possibly because I move through life in the equivalent of John Travolta’s bubble in that film. Except my bubble is made of grumpiness.

Here’s how I’m doing: for 5 minutes just now, I was trying to remember that actor’s name. Couldn’t retrieve “John Travolta” but pulled up “Vinnie Babarino” like a coin from behind your ear. I had to Google “Who played Vinnie Barbarino?” to complete a joke that, in retrospect, did not warrant the effort.

Everything’s fine.

Now we’re digging out, staggering toward the end of summer with what feels like 100% potential energy, in the physics sense, like we’re all little balls in a slingshot (Google Search: “What is that v-shaped thing made with sticks you pull back and shoot a ball out of?”)

Big Moves are on my to-do list, meaning working on building community and also giving myself ample space and big chunks of time to work on my novel.

I am mildly loath to get back to it all — the hustle and/or the bustle — because “big chunks of time to work on my writing” is an idea the universe finds particularly hilarious.

Also, can one be mildly loath? MAYBE. You know who could probably pull off being “mildly loath?” John Travolta, but only in his role in Pulp Fiction (Google Search: “What was that movie where the dude who played Vinnie Barbarino played a gangster” — which, incidentally, first pulled up Gotti, and that dude was not mildly anything.)

*EXTREME CARRIE BRADSHAW VOICEOVER* And just like that, this August was much like that tween headlock situation: too hot, too loud, the geese are unfamiliar, somebody’s turning red, and the only thing you can do is yell ‘Hey!’ and hope everyone walks away in one piece with a modicum of dignity.

Bro.

Hopefully, a new piece next week.

Anyway, please accept this in lieu of structural integrity this week:

The B and Noble Men

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Title card with The B and Noble Men at the top, three cartoon lemons looking unhappy, and a small dragon.

The two men stood in the one spot conspicuously free of shelves. Open, unsacred, lifeless space, as far from books as it is possible to be in a bookstore. A no-man’s land of sorts, but there they stood in this patch of space meant for rearranging thoughts or deciding where to go next. At first glance, they seemed to be there to grab something quickly and leave, or perhaps to wait. In each other’s presence, a momentary reprieve from feeling out of place.

We, my daughter and I, were there to rearrange our thoughts, to mend our worn edges. Words might carry us someplace softer where we could escape into neatly bound pages where someone else’s problems — smaller or larger, didn’t matter — offered strange, familiar solace. The bookstore smelled of coffee and, in that section we were trying to pass through, cologne.

They were aggressively unremarkable, those men. Able to demand attention without effort, to compress the air around them into a self-satisfied density. Loud. Confident. Convinced. The kind of people who view their success as an inevitability, etched into marble, affixed in permanence rather than scribbled on the side of a red Solo cup.

Perhaps that was the cologne talking.

They stood in that bookless space, wearing athleisure wear of curated ease, possibly worn for the exertion of “watching the kids” for a bit.

Forgive me, sometimes I read too much into things. It was a bookstore, after all.

They were comfortable and loud, their presence as much volume as it was space, somehow sprawling across this nearly empty bookstore so close to closing. They were careless as they dismantled a woman one of them had encountered — socially, professionally, who knows? Didn’t matter.

“She had too much plastic surgery,” First Guy said. “Her face looked tight. Fake.” He sculpted the air with exaggerated movements. “She looked like a lemon,” he added, pleased with himself. “Which is fitting.”

Other Guy laughed. “Yeah. I totally get it.”

Encouraged, First Guy fumbled for more analogies, more ways to articulate how deeply unacceptable this woman was, what with her face and everything else about her. He pulled his features into grotesque imitations of whatever displeased him about her, which seemed to be quite a bit.

My face never keeps its mouth shut and must have betrayed me. It always does. A flicker of something, too small to name but enough to catch their attention. Disapproval, maybe. Or disgust. Some merciless and mirthless conveyance of this again?

I warranted enough attention for them to shift their bodies and pause their conversation, their gaze heavy.

What did they see? Stitches, scars, gravity, broken things, healed places of a full human?

Nah. Definitely another lemon. Or maybe a yuzu or a blood orange. I haven’t had work done on my body unless you count the pieces of bone, flesh, and pain-points removed, so they were left only the sour.

We considered each other. I’d guess they were thinking I was intruding without smiling. They would probably not guess I’d had another day of fighting tiny, bothersome dragons.

Their interest faded. Their laughter resumed, quieter now. Slick. Greasy.

I walked away to catch up with my daughter.

She stood in the Young Adult section trailing her fingers over the spines of books. She held herself carefully, her shoulders drawn inward in the way she does when she’s trying not to let disappointment show. Her fingers lingered on one book, then another. She’d had a hard day, the kind with sharp teeth and scales. The kind a mom can’t fix, except by standing between her and the world long enough to let her breathe.

We searched for books — anything, really — that offered comfort, distraction, or, failing that, instructions for building a trebuchet from empty bags of Nerds Gummy Clusters.

She didn’t notice the men. She didn’t register their voices lofting over the shelves. If she did, it was part of the din of the day.

I’d said nothing to them. Me. Lady Speak Your Mind.

Of course I didn’t. Because it wasn’t my place. Because the parking lot was dark. Because I’m not their mother. Because risk analysis. Because this is the way of things.

Strategy? Failure? Quiet calculus of motherhood?

If my daughter weren’t there. If it were daylight. If I were ferocious, less aware of what happens when certain men decide you’ve embarrassed them. Maybe I would have said something.

Probably not. But maybe.

But if I did, it would’ve been presented as a possible joke. Lemon Face clearly owes you an apology. How dare she. Big smile. Plausible deniability. Pointless.

But I didn’t. Of course I didn’t.

When we left, they were one shelf away from the self-help section. The Universe, perhaps also running on empty, only offered dad jokes.

We, my daughter and I, left without books and went home, a place where tiny, bothersome dragons give us passage and say, “We’ll catch you tomorrow.”

I Am Become Electric Blanket, Destroyer of Cheese

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December 2024 Month In Review.

Hello. Hello again.

I was going to call this “Sick, Sick, Sick” and because wordplay! But nobody wants to end their year wading through thick puddles of my half-baked cleverness. So let’s just get on with it.

I am ready to ball December 2024 up like a fitted sheet and shove it in my linen closet. Because I’m not a heathen, I’ll toss a nice sachet in there so if I ever have to pull it out for guests, wrinkled and snarling (the month, not the guests, but maybe the guests also?) it will smell like lavender.

Electric blankets are more my thing, anyway. Wrap me up. Keep me warm. Make me the human equivalent of a Pop Tart.

So, do I need to wrap up the year?

No.

Will I though?

Also no.

But if you need closure, here’s 2024 in five syllables:

Howlers abounded

Moving on.

End of December. We rest. We winter (Katherine May knows what’s up). We stretch through this dead time between Christmas and New Year’s when no one knows what day it is and our diet is mainly appetizers.

The lead-up to this moment was, of course, chaos: finals, concerts, snow, mourning, trying to be in all the places we had to be, or maybe needed to be, and probably (definitely) didn’t want to be. Getting there prepared and on time on top of it all.

Which is to say: I’m tired.
Which is to say: I got very sick this month.

Because, in this urgency culture we glorify (seriously, stop doing that), guess who was so busy her flu vaccine fell through the cracks? STOP GUESSING, IT WAS ME. Enter: Influenza A. Cue misery and disruption. The flu invited a friend to crash the party. (Seriously, stop doing that).

New, terrifying eye floaters.

Google searches. Dreaded warning: CALL A DOCTOR OR GO TO THE ER. RETINAL DETACHMENT! OR MAYBE TINY COYOTES EATING YOUR EYE GOO LIKE PUDDING. ONE OF THOSE.

I called the eye doctor. He told me — using a lot more words than I needed after he told me he couldn’t help — to go directly to a retinal specialist, who tested me in part by shining bright lines into my dilated eyeballs. He then gave me another very wordy explanation for my ocular migraine.

The flu probably triggered the migraine.

Also triggered? My face eczema. Because clearly, what I needed during all this was to feel EVEN PRETTIER. Cue lotions, ointments, and salves. I felt like Neo emerging from the Matrix — only without Keanu Reeves or any cinematic allure whatsoever.

It passed.

(This isn’t the kind of story I want attached to my legacy, but we don’t always get to choose these things. To paraphrase someone wiser than me: I don’t want you to think I’m an idiot, but I keep giving you reasons to consider it.)

(Also, why are my eye doctors so verbose?)

Anyway, this now-healthy, slow, delicious time is a symphony of sugar and flour and fats and savory brown foods reminding us who we are when the world isn’t trying to set us on fire.

We turn NOW into NO and take the W.

Sorry. I just shoved you into a thick puddle of my half-baked cleverness. Grab my hand, I’ll get you out of there.

Wonderlands don’t need to cover acres. They don’t need castles or white rabbits or maps with riddles layered in mystery. They just need time to stop. Done. Wonderland achieved.

And while I’m here and not living in a panicky immediate, let’s take a second and talk 2025.

Goals:

  1. Let my inner weirdo become my outer weirdo.
  2. Find more wonderlands: Big cushions, warm chairs, fireplaces, and someone patting the seat next to them like, “Come. Sit. Stay a while.”
  3. Work the phrase “Everything went tits up” into more conversations.
  4. Be like my dog: Long walks, bursts of speed toward nothing, naps in the sun, and flappies (scientific term) to clear my head.
  5. Read more. Write more. Read better. Write better.
  6. I used to tell stories here. Real ones. Small ones. Messy, absurd ones. Somewhere along the way, I got stuck in broad magician-off-the-strip tellings. No more. Back to real ones with all tits-up moments.
  7. Schedule my damn flu shot. (No more tiny coyotes eating my eye goo.)
  8. Play. Please join in. And if you don’t feel like playing? That’s okay. There are lots of cozy seats ‘round these parts. Feel free to plop down and exhale. Save me a spot.

Here are some splashes of marvelous from December, 2024

  • Tylenol & Ibuprofen, my MVPs of December.
  • This makes me want to stomp around the living room like a goblin with excellent rhythm.
  • These things:
  • Conclave. Power struggles? Stanley Tucci in a Vatican drama? Twist ending? I say yes, yes, and yes again.
  • I am not timely nor do I care. Sometimes, you just need a high-functioning sociopath with a penchant for good deeds to remind you that bad guys can be outsmarted. Do your research!
  • Cross. If this doesn’t catapult Aldis Hodge, Samantha Walkes, and Isaiah Mustafa into super-DUPER-stardom, I will personally riot.
  • Once a year, we dress up fancy and go out for steak and gruyere scalloped potatoes, measuring time by how few leftovers we bring home. (This year, practically none.) We laughed, we ate, and we unraveled the mysteries of life — like why a bread basket feels like pure magic, whether the Bears will ever resemble even adulterated magic, and boring things like the stock market. The evening offered glimpses through the veil of time — tiny windows into the future and brilliant flashes of the past. I hope we do this forever. How lucky I am. 
  • “We’ll float between two worlds…until everyone we love is safe.”
  • Here’s some perfection for you. 
  • Grace Paley is an author I keep promising to revisit. Coming across this gem reminds me to get to it. Life is short. 
  • The Only Emperor is a grand poem if only because author David Shapiro speaks directly to me in the first line.
  • I appreciate the NYT giving me a head start on my “what do I read next” anxiety. These looked interesting. (Here’s a link for you to make your own list.)

Thank you for being here with me. I hope 2025 is the love story you need: warm, weird, and wonderfully uncatastrophic.