Sometimes I ask Franny if I can post things, like her hula hoop video. Now that she is 9, I am very mindful of the fact that soon other little cretins friends will be on the internet, looking for evidence that their classmates are mortal and fallible. Of course I will not tell you the naughty things she does and says. She is always perfect, casual, talented, and good-looking.
So she’s not embarrassed yet.
FRANNY: “MOM TAKE A PICTURE OF US AND PUT IT ON THE INTERNET AND TELL EVERYONE WE ARE JUST HEADS AND THAT WE ARE YOUR PET HEADS OK.”
Okay.
Strudel, however, is still young enough to make a couple of mistakes.
I don’t usually feel I need to justify anything I write here, but I need to say something. I feel like I have to follow up. I have some more pieces to the puzzle that was this weekend. I have to write this down. When I went to court years ago, the fact that I wrote about the few good things, the fact that I used humor and put a positive spin on my situation was used against me. Writing about the bad times means that people see the ugly underbelly, which I was not totally ready for. It was too close–I was living it.
It also begs the question of why a person tolerates the terrible things they are writing about. Reader, I was not ready for that judgment, and I was not ready for the changes I needed to make. Not until 2003, but you know that story already.
Now I am letting it out, for good or for bad. I need to tell you. I know there is a sea of people out there who are going through this too. I need someone to hear what divorce with kids can be like, what this pointless bullshit tug of war is like. I hope you do better than I did, but I think I am doing well now. Time is healing.
So Franny walked into my house last night, having been dropped off at the appointed hour after missing a day of camp for really no good reason. This is about as corny as I get around here, but I will tell you that she walked in BEAMING, like glowing, and I saw she was so happy to be home, and it seemed like all the kermitflailing from this weekend was pretty fricking moot. She made a beeline towards me and we all squeezed her and Strudel immediately started gabbling at her.
I was so relieved when I saw she was okay and not really upset. During his long harangue on the phone Sunday night I discovered that Franny is “very unhappy at my house” and because I did not reply to his first email saying that he wanted me to pick her up in West Seattle at a party she “thought that I was injured or sick” and that he was “thinking really hard about child support and changing her living situation.” Perhaps I will think really hard about my student loans and see if they get paid off.
I will confess to you that it really, really hurt me to think that Franny was secretly unhappy here, or that she was worried about me in any way this weekend.
“Franny,” I said, tentatively, “were you worried about me when I did not reply to the email from your dad about changing your drop off time?”
“No,” she said. “I know if something was wrong, P. would call us.”
Knife turned against me. I could hear the unspoken, “You are a bad mother” in his words. I told him I heard him use that manipulative tone on dozens of people over the years, and it was not possible for him to guilt me into agreeing to anything.
Later I took her to see the new house and we had a serious talk on the way there. I felt like a shitheel asking her if she was unhappy, and would she like to talk or change anything? I felt very “I just thought you should know” and I despise being that person, but what to do? How to get to the bottom of these things? No one else will.
Franny began crying and screaming furiously in the backseat. She really flipped her Pop-Tarts for a second. Nothing makes her madder than having words put into her mouth. “When he lies about what I say, I feel so used,” she said.
Now he proposes that she move to where he lives for middle school. He is even being kind enough to not charge me child support. He is trying to backroom negotiate with me, in spite of the fact that he has already completely broken the parenting plan.
He was kind of slurring and not tracking the conversation well on Sunday (“What are you talking about? What does that mean?” he kept saying) and I assumed he was taking her to some kind of family barbecue/party thing, but I found out he was screaming at me from a grown up bash, and he probably was drunk. I kind of wish I would have recorded it and set it to music so he could have his own Bale Out moment. I had a feeling his wife was not around since he is not allowed to swear at home.
Anyway, as usual I am ha ha deflect everything with humor, but I am concerned. I am not scared, but concerned. I am afraid that since he has seen his sister recently that she has given him some of her infamous advice, but I could be very wrong. I would be shocked if his wife wanted him to throw thousands at dragging me back into court to call me a whore, dogfucker, satanist, whatever. I think this is much ado about nothing and I can forgive the drunken blowup. As P. said, “It must be hard not to have a reverse gear.”
I am sad I am going to miss the Capitol Hill Block Party due to packing, especially my BFF Atmosphere. This seems appropriate today.
LAAAAST Saturday night Ruby and I were gallivanting around and we ended up at Chop Suey, which was very very early in its evening of dance that they give on Saturday nights. So early that no one was on the floor yet. I decided that some dancing was exactly what I needed, especially since it is one of my favorite things and I was kind of a ball of nerves since I knew I was about to give notice at work, which I finally had the opportunity to do yesterday.
But this was Saturday, and I was facing a completely empty dance floor. My legs twitched involuntarily. There seemed to be some kind of gravity sucking me towards it. I decided to have a martini while I was waiting.
“Are you sure you don’t mind if I dance for a while?” I asked Ruby, who did not break the death lock the Twitter has on her to look back at me. An elephant with Elvis hair and chops could be sodomizing Jesus while an orchestra composed entirely of Arctic wildlife accompanied the act, and Ruby would be tapping away at her iPhone. “OMG there are no seats at the Holy Sodomy” TWEET.
After a few more agonizing minutes some brave early arrivals hit the floor, and I joined them. I did my usual thing that I do when I am alone, which is to get a little off the very middle and dance on my own, not too fancy, and not that sad “I am so cool I am just going to kind of apathetically shuffle around a little whatever” move–somewhere in between.
Suddenly the smell of AXE and entitlement filled the air, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I saw the mass of frat boys enter like hyenas, looking for a hottie wildebeest that was staggering and emitting its telltale call of vulnerability, “AMG YOU GUYS I AM SOOOOO DRUNK.”
Fortunately, in frat boy years I am over 9,000 years old, so I assumed I was invisible. Plus I was dressed reasonably for the weather, which is to say I was not wearing something that looked like a small triangle made of puce lamé, like some of my fellow dancing compatriots.
Regardless, some horrifying specter emerged from the crowd and attempted to woo me via dance. I hesitate to dance with people I know and like, because of my balance issues, let alone some jerkass who was gesturing at me to dance over to him like we were in some bad bad very unintentionally-gay 80’s movie. Could this really be happening?
I obliged him for a few minutes because I am like that (not nice, but curious) and he spun me around a bit and tried to make cool guy chit chat with me. I attempted to sidle away and dance by myself. I was in one of those “Hey Guy I Don’t Want Any Trouble Here Ok” moods and just wanted to get back to what I really wanted, which was that awesome feeling of solitude and bliss in a crowd of people moving with you.
Shockingly, I know, he reapproached me. There were so many things I could have done. I could have been firm and said no. I could have stomped off or pretended he didn’t exist. Maybe he wasn’t so bad the first time. “It’s my buddy’s 21st birthday, WOOOO!” he wooed at me. He pointed over at his friend. Why could I not have that one? The birthday one was cute and wearing a tie.
And then it got bad.
We danced together a bit without touching, and he was pretty out there and campy, which was kind of fun. I played along and started pulling out some moves I’m pretty sure I learned on Saved by the Bell. Was he wearing…Z. Cavariccis? What the…can you even still get those?
Then he turned around and started grinding his ass into my crotch. WHAT. Was this really happening? Do people really do this? Other than right then? That’s not a hypothetical question, okay. I think he was gesturing at me to spank him. No. Not okay.
Then he started going for broke. All I could do was back away while his friends cheered him on. Dear reader, I kid you not, he found one of the club’s structural poles and began spinning on it like a stripper.
Since the show had gone solo, I used it as an opportunity to flee back to Ruby. She was completely engrossed in reading Hemmingway on her phone. “Having fun?” she said, absorbed in the terse manly prose. Of course we go to Chop Suey on a Saturday night and read The Sun Also Rises. What was with this night?
“NO,” I said. “I AM NOT HAVING FUN. LET’S GO.”
And we went.
In Other News
This morning at breakfast I made an oblique reference to the fable of the dog that sees a reflection of itself in a pond with a bone in its mouth, goes for the phantom bone, and loses the real one in the water. Franny had never heard it and asked what I was talking about, so I told her.
“And then the dog had nothing,” I finished. “What do you think the lesson of that story is?” I asked her. Franny thought for a moment.
“Don’t look into ponds?” she said.
Once I stopped laughing hard enough to rip the seams on my pants and was able to tell her what the intended moral was, she added, with a completely straight face, “Well, I like mine better. I don’t like looking into ponds. They are slimy.”
“Uhh, okay,” I said, looking at a recipe and only half paying attention. Franny handed it over. “Hey, this is MY SHIRT.”
“I thought you gave it to me,” she said.
“What? NO. This is my tank top.”
“It was in my drawer,” Franny said. “Anyway, you can have it back because the tag is itchy.”
“Okay. WAIT, NOOO I can have it back because it’s MINE, not because the tag is itchy!”
“Uhh-huh,” Franny said.
“MINE! MINE! NOT ITCHY!”
“Jeez, Mom,” she said, backing out.
Goddommot.
I have a Strudel laying in bed whimpering because her GI said to try wheat again this summer and it is “summer” oh boy. I’m thinking the girls are not ready for wheat yet. The return of wheat played out kind of strangely here. I will tell you about it very soon. I want to go out and buy wine but it is pouring.
Yesterday Franny recited a poem about mashed potatoes in front of her class. The children were given a couple of weeks to memorize their poems, which Franny did right away, and then sort of forgot about it for a week or so, then refreshed before she went in. Strudel listened attentively and was a good audience during her sister’s practice sessions, and when Franny returned home triumphantly and announced that everything had gone splendidly, Strudel jumped in and said the poem front to back without batting an eye. Strudel has a knack for memorizing things casually as Franny grapples with learning them, then spewing them out at inopportune moments.
“YES YES you have it,” snapped Franny, cutting Strudel in the middle of the final verse of the poem.
Strudel also finds other little fissures to thrust her tiny irritation tentacles into. Franny has low moments while doing math at times. Math facts sort of slide around and get mixed up. There is a particular deer in the headlights stare that Franny gets when what she knows leaves her and her mind is a blank.
I used to get the same look on my face. I was the last child to complete the timed tests that we had to take OVER and OVER and OVER until we passed. And by last, I mean weeks after all the other children had finished. My face burned with shame every afternoon as the teacher quietly timed me while everyone else did their silent reading.
Finally, it clicked one day. I had memorized the answers in their correct order. I did not even need to look at the problems. I had learned something, but probably not what I was supposed to have learned. I am fond of saying I did not really learn how to do math until I was 27. True facts.
Franny often lays her head down on her paper and taps her pencil while she takes a break from her math homework.
“A number times zero is always ZERO,” Strudel will say cheerfully into the anguished, frustrated silence. Franny sighs.
Strudel is deviling everyone at the moment. She is a huge fan of YOU ALWAYS and YOU NEVER and she will shiv a bitch if we cut her apples the wrong way.
I tried addressing the behavior and providing negative consequences, and the kid can hang on. I think her middle name should be “Tenacity,” which would be a totally awesome Pilgrim virtue name, don’t you think? I’d take Tenacity over Prudence any day.
One morning this week I woke up and it came to me–the thing I had not tried. It was time for a good old fashioned ignoring. Now when she flips her shit she is completely dead to the tribe. If she has anything remotely constructive to say regarding how she feels I acknowledge her, but otherwise she is shunned. No reaction, no need to continue the performance.
And I feel compelled to tell you the reason this letter is so utterly dull is because I really have nothing to tell you of any real importance. I was sick for a week and a half which is long for me. I suppose I could tell you that SeaFed tried to claim Franny on his taxes, despite not paying a dime in child support or for any of her insurance or upkeep beyond feeding her and clothing her on her brief visits to his far-away house. How we laughed. I am looking into buying a new desktop. I am going to Los Campisinos next week. Work is eating me LESS, which means my powers of evil are growing and returning. Soon orcs will be spewing out of my ears again and I will drive hobbits before me and hear the lamentations of their women &etc.
There’s a lot of levels of self-delusion. I think it’s pretty much necessary for life. One that I am utterly, completely entirely over is other parents. Recently I had someone email me whose child went to school with Franny at her old school, who also works ten-hour days and lives two cities away. Invariably the exchange goes like this.
Other Parent: HI! REMEMBER US?
Me: Uhh…yeah. sigh
Other Parent: Brunhilde really misses Franny! We’d love to set up a PLAYDATE really, really soon!
Me: Okay, I guess so. How about Saturday?
Other Parent: Brunhilde has spelunking that day!
Me: Okay, Sunday, then?
Other Parent: Krav maga!
Me: All day?
Other Parent: Well, it is a special camp, and…
Me: Okay, shut up.
Other Parent: How about next weekend??
Me: Yeah, she’s at her dad’s.
Other Parent: Oh, what’s that schedule again?
Me: First and third weekend, except when he ditches her at my mother’s house, and oh, summer, let me email you the PDF diagram…
Other Parent: Err…
Me: How about November 16th?
Other Parent: We’re in Malaysia then.
Me: WELL? WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU THEN?
Other Parent: We’ll get back to you.
Me: Mmmhmm.
This time I am going to cut it off at the pass. I am tired of these email exchanges. If it was convenient to hang out, we would do it. You are experiencing some kind of weird nostalgia through your child. This time I will say, Thanks, but no.
Franny swanned around on the chair in my room. I was trying to write by stealing time that is increasingly hard to come by. She sighed, a big one. I snuck a look over my shoulder as I typed and saw her starting out the window at our street. Then she sighed again, louder. Sometimes I feel guilty that my children are not overscheduled to the teeth so they have time to sit around and think, and then I come to my senses.
“Moooom,” she said in that dreamy-yet-whiny voice that preteens often adopt. “Do you ever feel like life is disappointing? Like you are waiting for something to happen and it never does?”
I thought about it. I thought that this was probably the part where I was supposed to give her a little pep talk and tell her, “Chin up, lil Tiger, tomorrow is a new day.” And I often do remind her that tomorrow is a new day when she is teary-eyed at bedtime over the day’s frustrations. I remind her that sleep can reset a lot of what ails us. She sees it happen. She wakes up smiling, and says she feels better, and I know she means it.
I thought about disappointment. I thought about how “just two years” in Seattle has turned into ten, and about how I was not wild about coming back here in the first place. I thought about how I was supposed to be publishing papers about seeing vaginas in Rococo clouds by now, or some other hootsy-frootsy hardcore art historian business. Where was my custom leather catsuit? Where was my Oompa-Loompa? Last night I had a dream that I was having sex with all seven of the dwarves. Wait, I think this is an aside.
P. says you should grow where you are planted, which is something that I think I realized when I was at that tipping point that you get to sometimes when you are about 26 or so. I have victories. I feel victorious when I get eight hours of sleep, and I feel victorious when I stay up until three for no really good reason. Sometimes I get a little closer to where I want to be, and sometimes I stagnate. I wallow around gloriously in the filth of my complete lack of progress, and sometimes I flee from it. New things happen, like I am slightly less petty than I was a few years ago, and this is mitigated by the fact that now my gums bleed sometimes. You should probably assume this is all cryptography, it is probably better that way.
Some people say that life is a search for meaning. I don’t believe in anything. I don’t believe in signs, karma, religion, faith. Sometimes when the bus pulls right up to me and I step right on in one fluid motion I say, “This is a good sign,” but even that sounds hollow as it comes out of my mouth. I believe in the finality of death. And the finality of Darth. And Jarts.
Do I ever find life disappointing?
“Well,” I said, after thinking. “I think when you become an adult you develop coping techniques to deal with the horrifying chasm of despair you feel you are dangling over.” I went back to writing.
Obviously I am obsessed with Trololololo man right now, so I made my girls watch it this morning. UN. IM. PRESSED.
Me: What do you think, girls?
Franny: Huh.
Strudel: Why is he doing this?
Franny: Look at his weird head.
Strudel: I would not want to touch his weird head.
Me: Is this not AWESOME?
Strudel: Uhhhh….
Franny: I feel like I wish this was funny.
PLEBES.
I made them lovely yogurt parfaits this morning with layers of banana, maple syrup, a sprinkle of oats, cinnamon, and almonds. I put it LOVINGLY in a large wineglass so you could see the layers. That’s right, Tim, I even serve my children BREAKFAST out of booze vessels. Get the beer bong, children, it is time for your afternoon smoothies.
Anyway, Franny took one look at her breakfast and immediately stirred it all up until it was a gluey uniform mess.
“Uh…” I said. “Parfait. Missing the point.”
Feral Dwarf smugly took dainty bites out of her otherwise-undisturbed parfait.
“DOH!” Franny said.
WhatEVERRRR I will still take Franny to LC in May. And it looks like I am going to Norwescon at the end of the month. HOW TERRIBLY EXCITING! See you there, I will be dressed as Sexy Pikachu. Too late for the writing workshop signups though, dratters.
You guys, I don’t even know anymore. Franny had midwinter break and she spent part of it at SeaFed’s house with the new babbeh (another girl, same pumpkin head as the first one and her mother’s, apparently his babbeh gun only makes girls) and the old babbeh, who has turned into a three-and-a-half year old box of frothing howler monkeys or something. Strudel was satanic in a THOU SHALL NOT BREAKETH ME way, but this other sibling of Franny’s sounds rather mollycoddled and do not poke the bear, for it will throw a tanty and scream for sugar. Hard to say from over here, but Franny tells amusing stories anyhow.
The latest is that Franny and her BFF were at her father’s house and were desperately trying to get away from her preschool-aged sister, which caused adult-rousing shrieking. SeaFed allegedly let off an exasperated “What the HELL, girls,” which, frankly, sounds like the SeaFed I know and don’t love. Back in his day he was the king of the f-bomb.
Now SeaFed is not allowed to swear. NOT ALLOWED. He is a grown-assed man of 35 years of age and he has had his swearing rights revoked. I suspect this document resides in his wife’s purse next to his Scrabble bag. Oh yes I did.
Franny’s BFF ratted him out to her father, who presently came over and had words with SeaFed about how his outburst was Not Okay. It is like Full House over there, but no one learns anything and who is playing the part of Methface Tanner? NOT MY KID, TELL YOU WHAT.
Franny is not allowed to say “poop” or “butt,” not to mention the hard swears. When she comes back here she sounds like a parrot in a whorehouse frequented by syphilitic pirates for about 72 hours. My blog is named after a swear, I am 32 years old, I have seen some rough stuff, and she makes ME cringe. I ignore it and it passes.
