Category Archives: Franny

DEAR FRANNY

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Last night in the car.

P., to me: Are you okay?
Me: *cough cough* I’m sick.
Franny: Boo, you whore!

******************

Today, you are thirteen years old. I’m not going to lie to you, this scares the ever loving crap out of me. Of course your life is very different than mine was.

You were born at home, in a split-level rental in Shoreline. Later I was told the neighbors heard me screaming. The neighbors, presumably, were civilized people and had their children in modern hospitals. You were nine days late, and I was a little bummed when I knew you were coming right then, make way everyone, because your day was also the day of my childhood best friend’s birthday, and there were sad memories there. I never told you that. Your day superseded my thoughts of her pretty quickly, though. It’s funny how what comes after overwrites what came before so easily sometimes that you barely even notice.

Here is a secret: I felt kind of smug that my body had toted you along into my month, and out of your father’s birthday month. Yes, I was thinking thoughts like that even then.

I was very alone during my labor with you, like I was in a long, dark tunnel. I remember people kept leaving me alone in my room where time would crawl, and then crash forward. I remember voices outside the room, and the smell of coffee being made. Sometimes I would be fed and then throw up again. There would be a lot of pain, and then nothing but staring and thinking about the book I was reading that your labor interrupted and how the rain looked crawling down the window. I still never really came back around to Hardy. I kind of wished I was in a hospital, not because I was scared, but because I knew there would be people around.

It made sense to me that in the final moments I would feel alone in labor. I was alone a lot as a child, and in my marriage. Everyone saws on about how you are born alone, and how you die alone. This is dark, sorry. There’s a lot of cobwebs and bullshit in here. But when I saw you, I felt, well, confused as hell. Having a little creature come out of my body and open its eyes and start breathing was crazy! WHO THE HELL INVENTED THAT.

You were very solemn and looked around the room with your unfocused eyes. The light was dim. Your eyes would lock on my face and then flicker away again. They looked very deep grey. You were not the horrible slime goblin I was expecting at all. You were very cute. And then I felt something else: less alone. I joked that you were my 23rd birthday present.

Now you look like this [further commentary redacted]:

Fierce, girl, fierce.

When I was thirteen I was living with my mother in a terrible apartment after she had run away from my stepfather for the second or third time. I had just started high school and I was getting dark for real. I think this was my second real depression. The first one happened after I was picked up as a runaway at ten. I started collecting black clothes from thrift stores and moping endlessly. I tried to teach myself transcendental meditation from a book I got at the library. I stayed up for three days at a time because I could and there was no one to tell me not to.

Sometimes my mother wouldn’t come home, or at least I wouldn’t cross paths with her for days. Sometimes there was a sign she had been there briefly during the day while I was at school. What was she doing? I have no idea, it was none of my business. Was she avoiding me? I spent many nights in my room crying, being ignored. There is this small part of my brain that hisses, “Well, you were a real drag then and I had my own shit to deal with” and I realize that is my mother’s voice.

I try to imagine leaving you alone for days at a time and ignoring you while you cry heartbreakingly and I think I would rather pluck the veins out of the back of my hand with my teeth. It all seems so foreign to me. I am your protector. I care about you. Here is another secret: when there is love and a certain level of functionality, it’s not that hard.

I did not know I would have a daughter who was so smart and funny and who quotes Mean Girls and is easy to live with. I am a happier person for knowing you and having you in my life.

I feel like we’re on a hump now, but the land below is all foggy. On one hand, I see the floodgates opening and BOOM you’re almost a teenager now. On the other, I know you have another year or two where you will actually listen to my lectures about compound interest, the dangers of open containers at parties, why you leave a note, how teeth are not tools, and The Importance of the Correct Undergarments. Soon I will need to listen, listen, listen to you or I could push you away, or at least bore the crap out of you.

Happy birthday, Franny.

Wide Open Beavers Inside!

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”If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.”
–Charles Bukowski

It’s turnabout this weekend. My friend Laurie who I recently stayed with in San Francisco is now here with me.

It’s a gorgeous day and the tomatoes have died and so the chickens once again roam the Earth. Well, the limits of their Earth. They are happy to be out of their summer pen and they look TERRIBLE. The older ladies are molting, possibly worse than I have ever seen any of my chickens go. They look diseased, except they are just missing feathers, of course.


[Not pictured: dag chickens]

Like the chickens, I am sort of pecking away at my house. Hanging pictures and switching out things like doorbell covers, because brushed chrome is not where it’s at. Besides, you can see the little original outline in the cedar, right? When this house was built, space was the place.

There is something about places being exposed in houses that are normally not that makes me think of surgery, or of parts of the body. I see a sad vulnerability, as if I can see a place for what it really is. Sometimes I feel guilty when I have friends over when I am half through a project and you can see through the walls. Sorry, I want to say to the house, and throw a gown over it. It’s all a big metaphor, isn’t it? Nothing’s ever as together or as whole as it seems.

I think this is part of the reason I went crazy living in a three-year remodel of a very small house. There were constantly gaping wounds everywhere.

As an aside to Kurt Vonnegut and wide-open beavers, I wrote one of my high school term papers on Breakfast of Champions. I liked the idea that something could be so raw and smutty and still make me feel my feelings, all six of them. Also I think duality and insanity are some of my favorite themes, after death.

My contractor says he has obtained permits to begin construction, so what I really need to do, which terrifies me, is commit to about a billion dollars worth of tile. The purchase I am looking forward to is giant tub of doom. The upstairs tub is one of those short 50s bastards that is for kids or dogs and needs to be refinished to boot.

In Other News

Strudel was in the living room on Friday morning before school, braiding something, or sorting something with her dolls. Her favorite dolls are having a little hiatus because she broke a door on the chicken coop (long story there) so she was playing with the second stringers. Franny was at the table, attempting to memorize the capitals of the Northeast.

I walked from the kitchen, through the dining room, and towards the bathroom. I was getting ready for work. As I passed through the dining room, Strudel spoke to her sister.

“…So that’s someone ELSE added to my shitlist now.”

“What!” I interrupted. “How do you have a shitlist? You’re eight years old. What are you, Tiny Nixon?”

“Her sub sounds pretty bad, Mom,” Franny said, in Strudel’s defense.

“She’s a yeller, she yells at everyone. She’s talking to one person and yelling at them and it’s too loud. Everyone hates it.”

“Hmm, fair enough,” I said.

I don’t know what to do with this. I just needed to write it down.

P. made danishes this morning. I think I like the blackberry ones best.

Frannys Gonna Fran

I think it’s funny that she’s spending a lot of time lately trying on what teenagers are “supposed” to be. The other day she stomped off to her room shouting “NOW I’M GOING TO SLAM MY DOOR BECAUSE HORMONES” and went in and closed it with a little snick. She wasn’t even mad as far as I can tell. Though some times, it’s stormy for real.

Report From Lone Pine Mall

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It’s the first day of school. The video cuts off since my camera is still full of vacation pictures, but suffice it to say I carried on with the wakening.

As soon as Franny popped up, before she even had a glass of water, she told me about a dream she had about Kyle MacLachlan who was looking at a dead lady on a table and then she melted into cheese. Strudel has a nervous stomach ache.

I’ll see you again in 25 years

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This morning I’m leaving with my sister to go up to North Bend, where Twin Peaks was set, for the annual meetup there. It’s kind of sad, actually, that we haven’t taken a trip together in ten years, but you know. Time money babies school divorce. Life. We went camping for her sixteenth birthday. This post is a fun, cringe-inducing blast from the past. The good news is I don’t sound like a 100% moron like I do in some posts (including some from last month) but I see typos, grammar problems, and a declaration that I was done reproducing in 2003. HA! Guess what 2003 SJ? 2004 SJ is coming and her ass is going to SNAP. There followith a Strudel in 2005.

Anyway, I am excited. Twin Peaks first aired when I was in high school, and I didn’t really get the appeal of it. Other than Knots Landing, which I believe I was into solely [ahem] because it afforded the chance to stay up an hour past my bedtime on Thursdays, I didn’t get into a lot of TV when I was a kid. At least, not with my mother.

Plus I thought Nicolette Sheridan was probably the most beautiful woman anywhere, on TV or in a movie. The way her bangs would jump around, since they were so long they kind of rested on top of her eyelashes…well, that was kind of weird, actually. You don’t really see distracting hair like on TV anymore, unless it’s supposed to be distracting. I’m pretty sure I wandered off after the season when the scammy Greek guy showed up, so I didn’t see crazy Alec Baldwin on it. I still have a terrible tendency to wander off from a show during its summer break and not come back. “I’m full,” I say. There’s exceptions.

When I was a kid I thought of TV as something you did by yourself, when you were too lazy to read or move. I usually did something while I watched TV, like draw pictures of totally sweet unicorns or do the puzzle in the TV Guide. So I watched the first couple of episodes of Twin Peaks with my mother, before shit gets really weird, and I thought it just looked like a soap opera, which it was, in its way, or at least a parody of one. They did not hold my interest then because I was in the phase of my life where I was trying to make my own personal soap opera, and do actual drugs, and have actual sex with people/objects instead of just sitting in the safety of my house behind my pulled shades shouting “OH GIRL DO NOT RETURN HIS CALL” at the screen like I do now.

I worked at Tower Records and Video in college, mostly on the video side, and it was free rentals ahoy there. Every shift I would bring home my allotted two movies whether or not I would watch them. I saw White Men Can’t Hump [main actress had alarming leg bruise; when she was on her back her implants floated like biscuits, giving her chest this terraced effect], Jurranal Park [no comment], Edward Penishands [I’m guessing he never got into smartphones later], and a bunch of movies with plots and clothing and TV. The VHS porn section was prodigious, though, and I took to wearing medical gloves since you never knew how slimy a video you would fish out of the return slot bin would be.

So that was when I saw Twin Peaks on VHS, coming home to my unemployed husband counting out stacks and stacks of cash that must never be deposited. Okay, he was not constantly counting fat stacks of Benjamins, this is just how I like to frame him in my memory at that time. My life had become a soap opera I wasn’t enjoying (teen runaway becomes child bride to extremely small-time drug distributor) so I think I was happy to retreat into the cool pines of Twin Peaks then.

Franny’s gone again–I took her to the ferry terminal yesterday. She was very unhappy about leaving again after spending a month over there at the beginning of the summer. She tells me she sneaks out of her room and lurks on the roof when she gets sent there as punishment. She also told me she got into a fight with her father and threw Cheerios at him. I feel like I don’t know who she is when she’s there, but I love sweet Franny and the angry one. I know we can have many faces and behaviors for different situations, but there are some faces I don’t really see. She and I saw the first episode of Orange is the New Black so I sent the book to her after I dropped her off. The cover is subtitled “my year in a women’s prison” so I included a note that read “This seems appropriate. Love Mom.” I hope she reads it.

Everyone was on edge on the way to the terminal (such an appropriate drop off place, really. A terminal. This situation is terminal. Everything’s terminal, though. So.). This meant that Strudel was saying whatever popped into her damn head.

“I think instead of waving at your other sisters, I’m going to just flip everyone off,” Strudel said. She’s 91% nature, I’m convinced, and should thank her lucky fucking stars we haven’t died before now, because the Nice Christian Family who got their mitts on my healthy white baby would have attempted about 28 exorcisms on her by now.

“Strudel, you CAN. NOT. flip my sisters off!!” Franny’s voice rose in pitch and I could see how tense she was, clutching onto the dog in the passenger seat.

“Your sister is not going to flip anyone off,” I said, almost believing it.

“Mom! She’s not allowed, right? My sisters don’t even know what that MEANS.”

“No, she’s not allowed.”

“Mom, what will you do if I do it?” Strudel asked.

“Well. Laugh,” I answered honestly.

“MOM!” Franny was reaching middle-school girl glass-cracking levels with her pitch.

“Strudel will not flip off your other family because she is a NICE PERSON who wants to KEEP THE RESPECT OF HER BIG SISTER. Yes?” I glanced in the rear view.

“Look, it’s the motherfucking po-po,” Strudel said, changing the subject as we passed a cop car that had pulled someone over. It’s never “a cop” or “the police” with this one. Always “the motherfucking po-po.”

And she was fine at the terminal.

Strudel is spending the weekend with her dad as well. Unlike Franny, she throws Cheerios at the ones she loves the most, so probably the same scenes will be enacted by both of my daughters in their respective house, but for very different reasons. It should be a good weekend. I am happy to spend time with my sister, but I will miss my jerks.

Lazy Crazy Days of Summer

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This morning I woke up and the sun was low. I worked for a while and then it popped its head up through the trees and started eating the mist in my yard, which was swirling around. The mist and air reminds me of being in the woods foraging for mushrooms. The temperature has just been perfect–not muggy-hot, but not cold, either. Cloudy and hazy in the morning and then it burns off by the afternoon.

I took the girls out last night and P. made a fruits basket while I was out.

IN OTHER NEWS

We celebrated my sister’s birthday on Saturday. She is 26. Can you believe that? She used to guest star on this joint as a high schooler. I remember when I was 26. I was in library school! I had pink hair then and chickens. So much has changed since the…uh.

We went on a harbor cruise and then to dinner on one of the piers. The theme of the day was photobombing.

“MOM MOM WE DON’T HAVE ARMS!!”

Rilly girls. The hits just keep coming from this comedy duo.

Franny: I will wear the crab hat for five dollars.

Strudel: I will wear it for NOTHING.

SOLD!!

In today’s matinee, the part of Sally Draper will be played by Franny, who was not only wearing this dress but then promptly ordered a “Roy Rogers.” That is her grandfather all over. She spent a week with him at the beginning of the summer at sailing camp, exploring her WASP roots.

Morgan strokes the hot lemon towels.

I took a quick shower before we left to meet Morgan and her fella and when I got home I washed my face and all this dirt just sheeted off it. Holy crap! Summer pollution ahoy. Soon the rains will come back and stick the pollutions to the ground again.

Poop Diamond and a Tiny Open P.S.

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An old friend of mine said something to me a few months ago that really resonated with me. Hard. She’s good about that sort of thing. She can see truths right through to their heart. I don’t think she would be friends with me if I was constantly delusional about everything, but once in a while she can give me a really good, loving shove that I need.

Sometimes I feel sorry for my friend (in a weird way), because I think 99% of the time she sees the truth of her own life so fricking clearly. Harsh-light-of-day clearly. I’ve never seen her let a bad relationship go on, or carry on lying to herself. She is her own Cassandra. Ok, maybe that’s a bad analogy, because she listens to herself. It’s better to have self-insight, I know, than the alternative.

Anyway, I’ve been wanting to tell you what she said, but I had to shove that piece of coal up my ass for a while and see what came out. I was telling her about an unpleasant run-in I’d had with someone I used to know (I didn’t write about it–too much going on really). I was lamenting that I had let myself get into relationships in my twenties with a lot of people who were not so good for me, which, if I am being honest with myself, was a nice way of saying, “Were huge assholes who didn’t really respect or understand me.” I knew this was a pattern, and I’d had a nagging feeling there was a code I was not quite cracking there.

Some of the people I was attracted to were just not nice–one-sided relationships all the way. They would make me happy for a while. “Wow,” I’d tell myself. “They certainly have an interesting take on the world. Maybe I can learn how to be more assertive (or decisive, or less worried about what other people thought about me, or whatever) from them.” Oh, Narcissus, I could watch you watch yourself for hours! You really are the grooviest. I’d take in what they’d say and feel the little pings of red flags pop up. Then things would not go so well. That strong trait or traits they exhibited that I thought I could learn from would be turned on me once. Ouch. And then several more times. Well, we’re going to have to call it a day, then.

It made me nervous because I had seen my mother run through people like mad over the years–husbands, fiances, friends. Umm…her children. I thought maybe I didn’t really know how to be friends with people. Something was certainly wrong with me. Hadn’t I been told that over and over again growing up? And then again for years by my husband? I was “not funny.” I was “weird.” When I got up the courage to actually show my ex my writing it “did not make sense.” (Okay, that is certainly true sometimes.) Lucky for me I made some friends with people who were nice and not broken. These were also people I decided to pattern my grown-up self on as I moved through my twenties and beyond. And wow, I am still friends with most of them, in a pretty normal, mutually-accepting way.

So to get back to my friend and what she said–I was kind of lamenting the fact that this creep ex-friend had made a little pecking intrusion back into my life via an email, and why was I always so bad at relationships (present company I was moaning to excepted). Then she said it. “You know, SJ, I don’t want to pathologize you, but you really didn’t have the best examples for normal relationships growing up.”

Saying that this was a light bulb moment would be greatly oversimplifying things, but it rung, like a clear little bell, and then kept ringing and resonating. I’ve heard similar from other people, and I’ve told myself that, but that sentence was exactly what I needed to hear from that friend on that day. I kept getting into relationships with people who were like my mother: self-involved, mean, unaccepting. I tried to pull away from her multiple times in my teens and twenties only to have my ex really disapprove of that choice, because he was a mirror of her.

Reader, I married my mother.

For a long time I thought my ex was a sociopath, because of the lack of empathy and some of his interesting life and moral choices, but lately, after following one disjointed thought and coincidence and conversation scrap after another–you know that feeling where you are kind of chaining along to some kind of conclusion? Just me? I hope not. Anyway, I’ve been reading about narcissists and I think I may have a bingo there. Or the closest I’l get to a bingo, anyway. I could tell you dozens of anecdotes and how they relate to each symptom, and at some point I might, for my own entertainment.

Anyway, I tell you this because I like to say when I have realized things, even if I think I might reevaluate things later. But these feels pretty right; it feels like some information I was missing, or at least a label on things. The good news is that on my own over the years I’ve developed coping techniques that are pretty similar to what’s recommended for dealing with a narcissist. Keeping things very brief, like our last exchange before school let out, when he had to scold me one more time and I basically gave him no reaction.

His wife is now opening calling him a lazy asshole in front of the children. Girl, I am breaking the fourth wall, okay? If you can read this a) you are driving too close and b) you should probably read this. All of it. Good fuck’n luck comrade.

I do wonder how Franny’s doing over there for her month! P. sent her a care package and I’ve texted but it is silent. I’m hoping she’s tired and happy.

In Other News

“If you come in to this room without knocking I will make meatballs out of you.”

I Ran Over a Gummy Bear

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Nightmere is enjoying rolling in the girls’ chalk drawings.

First I will say I finished my next draft. It took me 32 days and in some places was barely more than a screenplay, but the story was there, bang. The first pass of editing added about 10K words. It’s hovering around 62K words now and is with my own personal Alma Hitchcock who is actually using red pen on it, which is excruciating to watch. I’m sure I mentioned it’s a murder mystery involving clones and shit. I don’t know what to do with it now. But I am going to start outlining the sequel. These characters aren’t done yet. I’m still editing my short story and am going to use it to apply for a fellowship that starts in September. I’ll keep you posted.

On Monday I left my mobile telephony device on my nightstand, as I do ocassionally. Shit happens! Usually I remember to email P. and tell him I’ve been a bubble head again. It’s no coincidence I get a lot more done on days when I’m not easily contactable though. Still, I have a duty to remain reachable because I have one that’s barf-at-any-moment age and another one who’s like Bella Swan but with a personality (read: clumsy but fun during a night on the town).

I left work at my usual time and walked up and down the street I usually park on. No car. Maybe I passed it…where was the car? I walked back and forth with the dog, who was delighted with the game and my increasing sense of urgency. Oh boy! Now we were powerwalking! How fast would we go! He watched me closely. Would we begin to…run??? HIS FAVORITE.

His hopes were dashed, though, because I went back into my office and called P. from my desk phone. I had to tell him the car had been stolen. Reception was bad wherever he was.

“Hello?” I said. “HELLO HELLO HELLO?”

Finally I heard him: “…at the hospital…”

OH GOD. The car’s been stolen AND he’s at the hospital? My brain turned off for a second. You know what white noise panic that shuts off your ears?

They clicked back on again. “…kid’s foot was run over by a rollerskate so she’s having an xray…” He didn’t even have to tell me which one it was. The small one gets scrapes and bruises, but the big one sprains, strains, jams, spindles, folds, mutilates, and pulls things. Fortunately she hasn’t actually broken anything. Yet.

Franny was okay, though, and nothing was broken. They couldn’t reach me so they called him. Or maybe they called him first, now that I think of it. I didn’t have any messages except from him. [He came and got the car since he couldn’t reach me.] I get why the school takes these things up to 11. I really do. Next time we are just going to take her home and see how she does. They try to use that pain scale on her and everything is a NINE, OMG. She’s sensitive.

Last Friday she played Lily St. Regis in Annie, Jr., which is an abridged version of Annie, not the child of the orphan and I dunno, her dog? Imagine a plucky bastard dog baby in a fro wig. That is Annie, Jr. Because I am a moron and cannot find the pictures I took of her (I believe I transferred them somewhere for processing, SIGH) all I have at the moment is this tweet from the night of. Okay, it’s way more 1940s than 30s but it worked with her evil hat and evil dress.

If you know the musical, which I didn’t, since I thought from a young age the movie looked terrible (we watched it after; it is, except for the villains), you will know the character of Rooster. Rooster was played by an adorable out lesbian who did a marvelous job. I cannot tell you how much it blows my fucking mind that my kid is in musicals with an out lesbian who is in a relationship with Miss Hannigan. Times have changed.

ANYWAY. Franny was great and is refusing to do the musical next year. What she cares about, besides loafing, eating popsicles, and reading Archie comics, is art and the Japanese language. This is okay with me. I took her out to Dilettante after and her Auntie Dave surprised us by treating. I was supposed to pay since I dragged a bunch of grown ass people out on Friday night to see my kid be in a middle school musical for ten seconds. But no!

She is about to leave for a month to go to her dad’s house after school on Friday. I promised to send her packages and bought her a bunch of books to take with, since the library where she’s going is closed, boo. Her dad came to the musical on Saturday when I was helping kid-wrangle and I looked up from my phone and saw some old guy with a bald spot in the audience next to Franny’s grandpa. And lo! it was you-know-who. Well, we are all getting older, aren’t we? Every minute.

“I just settled all my lawsuits/fuck you Debbie”

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Franny came home last night after a three day weekend. SeaFed has been dropping her off early at his convenience if he’s in Seattle, which is great with me. This is in lieu of dropping her off on Monday mornings. When she came home I was watching an episode of Mad Men, which Franny has been calling The Combed Hair Man Show for many years when she catches glimpses of it. I like this, because it’s like the bad Icelandic translation or something. I try to just let her drop back into our lives naturally when she comes back and she flopped down next to me on the couch.

SeaFed got his Yahoo! account jacked by Russians in June of last year. So, let us bear in mind that that happened nineish months ago.

When TV was over and things were winding down, I could tell Frannie wanted to talk.

“My dad said something weird this weekend,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. He was really surprised when you texted him that I was coming on Thursday night.”

“But it was a three-day weekend. When it’s his weekend he gets that extra holiday. You mean he didn’t know you were coming?”

“He said he had to scramble to get into the car and pick me up. He also told me that if you would have told him that I had Friday off, he could have taken me on a trip with his family that he came back from on Thursday.” This man who cannot afford to pay for the new GAL is taking midweek vacations now.

“But, BUT,” I sputtered.

“I KNOW,” she said. “He said that he has not given his new email to the school yet.”

“Well, not to mention the fact that the school calendar is publicly available on the website. Maybe I should suggest that he locate the calendar.”

“You can do what you want. But if you contact him about this, he will say I’m making it up. And then he’ll talk to me about it when I see him again.” The word “talk” had a thick undertone of “OH PLEASE GOD NO.” Her shoulders slumped.

“Hmm, ok.” I was quiet then. “Let me get this straight. He did not know you were coming on Thursday. He does not know what the school calendar says. The school does not have his email address. And somehow this is all my fault?”

She rolled her eyes and nodded. “He blames you every time he does something like this, Mom.”

We talked for quite a while longer. She is deeply sad about her relationship with him, and I think he has no concept of that. In keeping with my Star Trek theme above, it’s quite a paradox that such an epic bullshit peddler had a child who is basically Deanna Troi.

The real sucks part is that much like when I was younger and with him, she is trying to blame herself for the lack of intimacy and substance of their relationship. I think she thinks if they could only bridge the gap somehow she could break in to some inner sanctum, that, believe me, is not there. There are no depths to plumb. I see her shouting into the void to no avail. I spent about an hour telling her that she is an awesome person to know. She thinks his concept of her is “here is my daughter who likes art.”

“Do you think I’m a cool person?” I asked her, gesturing at myself like I was some Bob Barker showcase shit. “Not a cool mom, but a decent person? Look at all the things I have going on. I write, I cook, I’m smart, I have a sense of humor, I can hold down a job, I can take care of you and your sister.” She nodded. “Your dad found me TOTALLY UNINTERESTING. ME. You’re his kid, and you have both of our best parts. You’re probably going to grow up to be a cooler person than me. IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT.”

She took this in. “My dad has cool parts?”

“Yes, look. Imagine a gloppy lake. That is your dad.” She laughed. “There are some like, carrots and Legos and a unicorn horn floating around it. When you happened, that lake got dredged and the cool parts got pulled out. Really. Your dad had potential, which he was not able to achieve. Just because he does not use his cool parts does not mean they are not there. And they were available for you. And I am glad. I’m sorry you cannot connect with your dad. I couldn’t either.”

“Yeah. I try, I just can’t. It makes me feel like I don’t care anymore. It’s always the same and I get depressed.”

“Let me tell you a story,” I said. “When I first went to live with my mom, we got kittens. We thought they were boys, but it turns out they were brother and sister. She didn’t have them fixed…”

“Uh oh.”

“I know! So they started spraying all over the house and humping each other.”

“AUGH.”

“This is what unfixed cats do,” I said. “So she got rid of them. Then she got three more cats, and got pregnant with Auntie Morgan, and got rid of them also with the pregnancy as an excuse. And I got my own cat after that. She was very sweet. Her name was Jade…she was a tuxedo cat with green eyes. She left my stepdad for the second or third time or whatever and we had to get rid of her before we ran away. Then one time we were living in an apartment by ourselves and the girl in the downstairs apartment had to give up her cat, and my mother took the cat.”

“That’s something I really don’t like about Grandma…nothing is permanent for her,” Franny said.

“Well, nothing is permanent in life. But some people are better at stability than others. I hear you. So, this cat, let me tell you. I did not touch it, I did not look at it. I was very sad. I loved all those cats. And sure enough, that cat went away. I don’t think it was really less painful to ignore the cat than it was to love it and experience the loss of it. It was just different. And I learned something about myself.”

“What’s that?”

“I didn’t want to be the kind of person who shut myself off. I wanted to feel things. What I didn’t know then was that I needed to get to a safe environment to do that. The way I grew up was not so good for it being safe to attach to things or people. But YOU. You have me. You have us. I have you. I am not going anywhere. Nothing in this house is. Don’t cut yourself off from feeling, no matter how much it sounds like relief. If you are being blocked from the light, find a different direction to grow in.”

She nodded. She is so sad. I hid my sadness as best I could at her age because I knew no one really cared. I’m glad that recently she’s become open to the idea of therapy. I am hoping that speaking to a professional will help her find ways to cope with her pain and tease a manageable relationship out of the situation with her dad. I decided not to raise my children in the environment I was raised in, and hooray, I am not mentally ill like some people I was exposed to, but I feel like I’ve handed her a new plate of crap. I would let her lay eggs in my corpse if I could get her out of one second of feeling a lack of connection with her father. Until I can find that devil’s bargain to sign off on, BABY STEPS.

P.S. Heading down to the courthouse this morning to file a small claim. WOW I love the courthouse NOT AT ALL. I’ll let you know how that shakes out.

Humorless Mom: 0, Franny: 0, Strudel: 42?

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Franny: Mom, do you think pineapple is a “pimp” fragrance?

Me: Honey, when you get home we need to talk about your use of the word pimp.

Franny: Oh I don’t like talks.

Me: Well, I don’t like you being ignorant.

Franny: What does ignorant mean?

Me: (Spits tea back into cup.)

Strudel: I am looking up PIMP in the dictionary!

Me: You should look up “ignorant.”

Strudel: (Frowns) I know what that means.

Holiday Roundup and the Most Boring Day Ever

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Toasting Strudel welcomes you in to a POST HOLIDAY FUCKIN WONDERLAND.

Well! It is January again. I was thinking there would be Polar Bear dippery by my people again on New Year’s Day, but much to my amusement it was completely forgotten about until midday. Whoops. I was in bed before midnight, but at 12 there were fireworks and gunshots. A friend made me feel better later by gently suggesting they were firing blanks. I was refreshed on New Year’s and not at all hungover or underslept.

The same could not be said for Xmas day. I had my sister over for dinner and stayed up waaaay too late watching The Big Lebowski, which is Morgan’s favorite of all time. It’s safe to say the Dude blew Franny’s mind. “This is the coolest movie I’ve ever seen,” she said reverentially, as if some secret had finally been revealed.

Franny and I popped out after present opening on Xmas morning to see Les Miz. I saw Les Miz for the first time when I was 13. I tend to agree that you may be more vulnerable to being hooked by it if you’re a teen girl. We got to sit side by side in the theatre, crying silently and sharing a pack of tissues. By Xmas night I was really sick–my immune system’s tipping point is often when I’ve had less than 6 hours of sleep and am fighting it off.

Something funny happened on the way in to the movie. We were one of the first people in to the lobby and had come almost an hour early for the 11 a.m. showing. I figured it would be full of the die-hard since it opened on Xmas Day, and that was the first showing (other than the midnight opening the night before). We made our way up to the fourth floor of the googleplex and I said, “Let’s get seats now and snacks later.” Franny agreed with me. As I passed concessions, I could see a man and a woman standing there, waiting for popcorn. The woman turned her head towards us and a group of two other ladies and I could see her eyes pop wide in horror. Someone was going to beat her in! Our theatre was really close to concessions and I could hear her RUNNING up behind us, but would not elbow past us. Franny and I got the front and center seats on the raised tier, which I think are the best seats. I could see the shoulders of the woman behind us visibly sag as we sat down. She and her companion sat close to us and were very polite and said nothing to us. I pretended I didn’t see her silent drama, since I didn’t want to tussle over the seats, but hey, I am a superfan too.

I took a week and a half or so off through the holidays so I could hang out with the girls and bake and play with the Wii. Not much happened, which was awesome, except my lawyer finally decided to properly fire our guardian ad litem. The trial is now pushed out four months, since we will need a new one to assess us.

I did a lot of cooking for my sister’s visit. I considered making some kind of sumptuous yule log, but I got a wild hair and decided to make four kinds of dessert: apricot, blackberry, and strawberry pâtes de fruits, brandied fruit tarts, peanut brittle, and to put out my scotch truffles.

P. got involved since he wanted to make gingerbears. The recipe turned out a little oddly–they swelled and puffed more than gingerbread should, but they tasted nice.

Franny thought they looked a little pedobear. It was fun to eat their heads.

Here’s the table all set before the devouring began. I set out potted “hare” and quince jelly.

In between all this I kind of rested up and was pathetic, like everyone else in Seattle. I swear everyone got this cold. Franny left on the 26th. Then I started cooking again.

A craving for non-sucky Moroccan led me to get my own checkstub. And buy rosewater. And isn’t the bottle pretty?

P. made a pattern in parchment for cinnamon. A cinnamon snowflake.

Bastilla!

The table is laid again:

Today Franny is coming back early. Today has been deadly boring, which is pretty awesome. Her early return has been happening almost every weekend for the past little while. It’s nice–I miss my kid who will correct my middle finger from the generic old man flip off into something with flair.