I wrote this April 25, when Strudel was six weeks old and I was so tired I felt like my brain’s record kept skipping.

I am exhausted physically so I send out psychic entreaties that go unfulfilled. I will the baby to bathe herself; I will the schmutz next to the garbage can that comes from a careless four-year-old tossing out oatmeal and jammy crusts to stop stinking; I will the groceries to shop for themselves and put themselves away. Mostly, I will the baby to sleep for ten more minutes so I can have the fleeting satisfaction that comes with actually completing a task. I am fooling myself though: the tasks are all completely circular and will need to be done again in an hour, day, or week. Somewhere these brain waves are being received, perhaps. Somewhere, in Akron, Ohio, or in the middle of nowhere in China, a child has the overwhelming urge to clean her room right, the first time. Or the laundry somewhere does its goddammed self for once. Maybe a baby stops crying somewhere and smiles. Maybe my psychic brainwaves just have lousy aim.

Most of the time, despite the fatigue that comes with being a new parent, I enjoy taking care of Strudel. When I was gleefully childless, I watched other parents suffer and struggle with their children, and thought that being a parent meant joylessly proceeding from one unpleasant phase to another, beginning with being vomited on repeatedly and ending with bailing junior out of the clink for grand theft auto. I watched these parents, suffering along, victims of their horrid, self-centered children, who were spit upon one minute and turned the next to encourage other people their age to experience the wonder of spawning.

Now I can see there are other sweet rewards. Franny is smart and strong and loves me, even though I tell her that we are having rocks for dinner or that I am going to start keeping her in a cardboard box. Strudel smiles when she sees me and is getting fat and gigantic through hours of dedicated boob ranching, and snuggles into my neck on the rare occasions she is not pulling my breasts down to where she thinks they ought to be, which is around my navel.

At lunch with my sister the other day, I had the realization while we talked about family history that I had no memory of my mother taking care of me–performing mundane tasks like dressing me, bathing me, or even hugging or reading to me. When I left my grandma’s at almost six years old to go to finally live with my mother, I was independent in many ways and too big to be coddled by her. I know she took care of me when I was very small, I just don’t remember.

Taking care of your own child is like remembering or even learning for the first time how loved you were. I’m sure my grandmother loved me as much as I love my own children, and she knew how fleeting the time was. She knew that someday, sooner rather than later, my mother would come to collect me again. Time is collecting Franny away; she pushes me away when I cuddle her and call her my baby. Maybe parents want other people to have children partly so they can gain the compassion that comes from seeing the other side of parenting. Or maybe they just want someone else to talk with about the weirdness of finding rocks in your pockets or walking in on a potty-trainee painting the mirror with her own poo. I don’t know.

In Other News

Coolest thing evah…I just discovered that my blog has something called “power editing.” So I have republished all my old entries, way back to the far-out year 2001. However, they are going to be chockablock with broken links. We must take the good (Men’s Pocky) with the bad (Bertie Bott, you dickhole).

I wrote this April 18, 2005, mostly for myself.

Franny and the baby and I were cruising down I-5, listening to Atmosphere, which always raises some interesting questions from the backseat.

“Mom, what’s God?”

Shit. I guess I knew abstract concept day was coming, but I wasn’t prepared yet. I have discovered that four is all about her asking me about abstract things, and me stammering like a fool.

“Umm…well….” I said, casting around. “Some people think God is like a person who created the universe and animals and people, and lives in Heaven. Other people think God is in everything, like in every person and blade of grass.”

“And trees, Mom?”

“Yep, every thing. Some people get so worked up about God that they fight in wars. Other people don’t believe in God at all.” I decided to give her something else to consider: “Remember that book we read about Greek myths? Those people believed there were many gods, like Hera and Zeus and Hades. Most people now just believe in one.”

Franny turned this over for a moment.

“There are six gods, Mom,” she said, decisively.

“Six? Who are they?”

“There’s Ashley. There’s Building. He works in a building. There’s Flower. She watches all the flowers. When the bad guys come she turns herself into a bird egg.”

“Why does she do that?” I said.

“She turns herself into a huge egg and rolls over the bad guys. There’s Post, and Chimney. She lives in a building with lots of chimneys.”

“I see,” I said. You have to say this a lot when you have a four-year-old. “What does Ashley do?”

“Ashley’s the boss.”

I found out later what Post does; she wears many pins in her hair that she uses to “fix up people who get their arms slashed in wars.” However, I don’t know who the sixth god is, because she went on to something else. So, lo, another dogma is unleashed upon the world. If I asked her, Franny would now want everyone to go forth and be fruitful or something, because she really likes fruit, “especially watermelon.”

“Most forms of rage, after all, are only sloppy cloaks for grief.”

–Steve Almond

First, let’s have the good news. When you haven’t seen your friend for a whole year, there’s a lot to catch up on. You know, great haircut! You’re looking thin/fat/indifferent/one foot in the grave, etc.

Last time you saw me, I was trying desperately to finish my Master’s degree and my thesis. Good news: I am now officially a librarian, as of August 2004 (area of specialization: Britney Spears). It felt so weird to graduate and not post pictures here. My daughter walked across the stage with me and I did not wear a dopey gown and mortarboard hat. Can you think of a less flattering look? Maybe if you added thongs and tube socks to the ensemble. It was my first time walking at graduation…I didn’t for any of my other degrees or high school.

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“Jo began to dance a jig, by way of expressing her satisfaction, Amy nearly fell out of the window in her surprise, and Meg exclaimed, with up-lifted hands, ‘Well, I do believe the world is coming to an end.'”

-Chapter 6, Little Women

Miss Frannie stirred, and woke up at her usual time of seven-thirty. Beforehand, she stops snortling, then she begins wiggling, and finally she snaps her little mouth open and shut a few times, smacking loudly. The day begins. I peeked over the side of my bed, as always, down to her little bed at the foot of mine.

“Hey, Bunny.”

She blinks at me and gets up, clutching her dirty Patty. She doesn’t know that this is Patty II. The first went in for a washing-machine bath and never returned. Patty II doesn’t have yellow footies that smell funny, like Patty I did. Frannie was still nude from her bath last night.

She cuddled with me for a minute and then stood up unexpectedly. This was not part of her normal morning routine with me. She started shaking her butt in my face and flailing her arms around.

“Booty dance! Booty dance! Booty dance!” she yelled.

It’s always a good day when Frannie gets enough sleep.

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Today Frannie told tells three stories on my audioblog.

1. In Which Frannie Relates Something Miriam Told Her
2. In Which We Are Told About the Occurances of the Afternoon
3. In Which Frannie Has an Accident

When I went back to pink and red hair a month ago, I forgot about something that always happens when I have high-maintenance hair: the Pink Creep.

It starts the minute you get out of the shower. No, it starts when you first rinse the excess color out of your hair. Suddenly the water’s running and I’m in that scene from Carrie, except instead of starting my period in a really faucetty, axe-murder-bleeding sort of way, it’s like a head injury gone really wrong. Instead of screaming girls pelting me with Kotex, I should have screaming doctors, pelting me with the results of my CT scan. Or something.

I was a brunette when I moved into this apartment, and everything was pristine. “This time the Pink Creep will be different,” I tell myself. “The shower won’t turn pink. My neck won’t turn pink.” Lies, all of them.

After the grout and the shower curtain develop a pinkish tint, the Pink Creep spreads to other parts of my life. I use a dark old pillowcase so the pink won’t befoul the rest of my cherry-patterned sheets, but somehow the pink still gets all around the top of the bed. On that first day of the fresh redye I am always startled to discover later while peeing that my thong has turned pink…I now have a pink ass. The stems of my glasses are pink. Finally, things I touch a lot turn pink, like light switches and my wallet, which means I have pink fingers most of the time.

There is one really thing nice about having pink and red hair, aside from the fact that it satisfies the same sparkle-loving raccoon side of me that makes me obsessively wear initialed bling and giant hoop earrings, and that’s the fact that everyone loves a pinky-haired mom. People hoot at me when I’m alone, or assume that I want to buy or sell drugs or am a mean punk-rocker, but when I am the pinky-haired mom on the bus, with my pinky-haired little kid, everyone smiles at us because I am suddenly accessible, even more so than when I was a brunette. This is okay with me, because I love to talk about my kid. Who doesn’t?

My neighbor, the woman downstairs, throws up a lot. I find myself wondering what her deal is. One big “whoof” and then the toilet flushes. She sounds like a pro.

Is she a drinker? Does she have some kind of chronic illness? Does she have morning sickness, which everyone who’s been knocked up knows should be called all-day sickness? Maybe she’s bulimic, which would kind of make sense because I usually hear her puking around ten, which everyone who’s been a teenage girl with a box of Thin Mints knows is the witching hour for binge eating.

I mentioned to you earlier that she came upstairs in January to tell us to stop fucking so loudly; perhaps I could go downstairs and tell her to stop puking so loudly.

The women next door, who I assume are a mother and a daughter, have boisterous parties that I never hear unless I’m in the hallway outside their door. These apartments are queer; they have thick, thick walls, and thin floors. The women speak Spanish very loudly and kick salsa music on Sunday mornings. They ignore me, but I like them.

The couple across the hall from my downstairs neighbor has lived here for twenty years, according to my landlord. They are ancient and teeter around the halls, barely able to hold up the gallons of milk they carry sometimes. I see them in their old Skylark, waiting to back out onto Phinney, which terrifies me. I hope they don’t drive like they walk.

The other people I don’t see so much. This building is quiet and people keep to themselves. On a clear day I can see both mountain ranges from my living room windows, and my bedroom wall is nothing but windows, covered with hot pink curtains. When I wake up and the sun is shining through them, it’s like being in a pool of candy apple goo. I don’t miss old ghetto Crown Hill anymore.

My Frannie has fallen into a pit of bad habits. I think it’s in their hardwiring somewhere that they have to go through these evil and disagreeable phases because they are “testing limits” or having “cognitive growth spurts” or whatever, but really, it makes me want to “put her in a Skinner box and come back when she’s eighteen” or “get in touch with a white slaver.” The weekend went thusly:

Frannie: Water!

Me: ….

Frannie: I need some water!

Me: Really!

Frannie: Can I have some water?

Me: I don’t know, can you?

Frannie: Please!

Me: You are so close to asking me nicely.

Frannie: “Please may I have some water.”

At this point I heap praise on her. I was treating her like a little dog all weekend, in that I was trying to only give her positive reinforcement so she won’t act up to get attention. She is pushing me hard right now, and I have been cursing the rain and my small apartment, and trying to think of things to do.

In Washington State, there is this Satanic annual thing called “February Break” for school-aged kiddies. They get a whole damn week off instead of just President’s Day, which is evil, because February Break does not coincide with a college student’s schedule, or anyone else’s, really. So if you don’t have one million dollars, you can’t nick off to the Bahamas for the week, you just have to suffer through your child’s frustration and try to find childcare.

So after we spent most of the weekend together and Frannie was starting to ask nicely the first time out of the gate, she now goes back to her dad’s tonight. I don’t really know what goes on over there nowadays, but he has always been less of a hardass than me. I suspect she is less mannerly there and gets away with it. I just can’t stand a shrill, mouthy child, are you feeling me? I refuse to be the slave of someone who’s only around three feet tall and thinks that doing ballet in your underwear for whoever comes over is super off-the-hook.

New audioblog at I, Tourista.

Last night…what a scene. The girlie was in bed, the laundry was almost done (it had to be, I was out of quarters). I was alone and I felt restless, but good. One of those nights where your kid is bed and you feel like you have endless possibilities.

Possibilities: you could have a drink. You could sneak out back and set the Dumpster on fire. You realize you owe about forty people thank-you notes. You could masturbate for three hours.

Ten-thirty hits. I was doodling around, tired, about to do the dishes, when I heard it�the wet�cough? Then little feet hitting the floor. Then little hands scrabbling at the bedroom doorknob. Miss Frannie had puked yet again, while lying on her back, so it exploded out of her like a fountain. It was all over her face, in her eyes, and in her long hair. She smelled horrible and she was very unhappy.

I had her in the shower, and it was at that moment that my phone rang. It was her dad, of course, when I was at the week�s nadir.

“How are you?�” he said.

“She puked again…all over…I just realized I only own one blanket.”

I had been meaning to buy at least one extra for the couch, and hadn’t yet.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. He spoke slow and sounded like he’d been drinking. “I’m coming down that way. I can bring you some extra blankets.”

Frannie passed out on the couch, clean but damp. About a half-hour later he brought blankets and was very friendly. I expected I would want to snap him in half out of jealousy, because I thought there would be nothing more irritating than seeing him ready to go out for the evening while I was stuck with the tiny puker, with no possibility of tag-teaming like we did in the old days.

But I didn’t. I was really grateful for the blankets and really glad when he left. I was kind of sad that he didn’t call me the other night when Frannie was puking, but I realized that I didn’t want to call him when she was sick last night.

I was tired as hell and frustrated with my situation, but I knew I would feel better in the morning. I knew I would be glad that I was alone, and I knew I could deal with it. I am feeling more and more like I can deal with it.

HOWEVER, I also realized that I should get a chip implanted in my head in case I ever decide to reproduce again, so that when the urge strikes me to spawn, the chip will cause me to grab the nearest sharp object and stab myself in the eye. I just have to keep visualizing the coast of Spain and frosty drinks, and not getting any more stretchmarks, and I think I will keep my eyes on the prize. You childless geniuses have been warned, repeatedly.

As soon as I’m done throwing more quarters away tonight, attempting to eradicate the smell of sour oatmeal with raisins from my bedclothes, I am going to the damn pub to smoke, drink a beer, and look at all the admissions applications for library school next year. Yeah, remember all that overworking I was doing at school last year to avoid my situation at home? Well, I am still tied into half of those clubs and student committees. At least I will have a very sexy CV when this is over.