Monthly Archives: August 2005

Killing Her Softly With Chocolate

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Last night I did something really, really lame. I dropped a full pint of ice cream on my baby’s head, at close range. I was trying to open it while I was nursing her lying down and reading Terry Pratchett. She recovered pretty quickly (no goose egg) and promptly fell asleep, but I always wonder if I am knocking potential IQ points out of her when she klonks her head somehow.

On a related note, I have discovered that when you have small children, chocolate becomes a substitute for sex. It’s something you can do in front of them, while paying attention to them, and almost without guilt (the guilt part happens when you try to brain your child with the chocolate). Of course, you have to hide it from the older, smarter ones to prevent the whining that keeps you from enjoying your chocolate, because if I share I know there’ll be grabbing and hoarding, and the inevitable sugar crash, and that’s just me.

But I digress. Witness last night:

Companion (to frantically nursing baby at nine pm): Go to sleep, The Baby.

Me: She won’t be asleep until ten.

C.: Uuuugggh.

Me: It’s horrible, isn’t it? You find someone you love, and who you actually want to have sex with, and you have a child with them….

C.: …And you can’t have sex anymore. It’s God’s little joke.

Me: Ha ha ha.

C.: Ha ha ha. (Puts pants back on and finds keys.)

Me: I’ll have ice cream this time.

In April, when Strudel was about three weeks old, I was sleep-deprived, making me jones around for sugar like crazy. My companion had stepped out to get some groceries and I found a half-eaten bag of chocolate chips in the cupboard. GOOD chocolate chips–I think they were Guitard or Ghiridelli. We don’t keep that Hershey’s crap around here, which means that many bags of chocolate chips never fulfill their destiny and become actual cookies. I finished off the chips before he came home. It would have been the perfect crime, except that I gave myself away shortly after he came back.

Me: The baby smells so good! Mmm! Smell her.

C: She does…hey, what’s that stuff on her neck? Ugh.

Me: Oh god, it’s a melted chocolate chip that fell down her collar.

C: Busted!

From earlier this summer, there is also a big smudge of chocolate ice cream on Strudel’s bonnet from when I was out collecting job applications with my sister. Strudel was still small enough to carry in the sling and I had her big sun-blocking bonnet on her. She was whipping her head around as I was trying to eat my Hagen-Daz, and I still haven’t remembered to wash it, so it bears the telltale streak of chocolate peanut butter flavor. Every time I get the bonnet out to go for a walk I say, “Gee, I should really wash this thing.” And then it falls out of my head the minute I walk out the door, because such is the beauty of a mom’s memory. Je regrette rien!

So at any given moment, I am smearing or beating my children with chocolate. At least they smell good.

In Other News

Today my companion has yet another interview with Giant County Library System, but on the cataloguing side of things. I was going to cut his hair last night, since he is a little shaggy, but he just said, “whatever.” First not shaving against the grain, and now refusing haircuts. After a year and 15-plus interviews I would be disheartened too, but I am afraid that next time he gets called in for an interview he’s going to take a poop on the conference table or something.

NOT that I am trying to give anyone any ideas for today. Sweetie. Health benefits, sweetie.

Employee’s Only Passed This Point

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My sister came over yesterday and watched the girls while I had another job interview. I had been applying for “good” jobs (tech writing/editing, etc.) that offer telecommuting, part-time, or odd hours and got no bites, so now I am applying for anything that has an opening posted. I am now leaving my Master’s degree off of everything. I am filling out applications that say things like, “Fill in you’re availability hear.” It makes me want to stop and say, “look, can you just hire me to edit your forms?”

Yes, I will be your dog washer / chick sexer / flenser. There is no point in lamenting about whether or not the job market in Seattle sucks or if I do, the fact is that I have to get a job and have not gotten one yet. I think I have one, after yesterday’s interview, but I am not holding my breath, even after having an interview and hearing the woman say, “you’ve got the job.” (I’ve heard that one before.) Apparently my background check hasn’t come back yet, and I haven’t been scheduled for the required UA, so I suppose they could change their minds. Or, next week at this time I could have a job that “we’ve never hired a woman to do before, but we’d like to try something new.” Ay yi yi. Details will follow, I hope.

Anything would be better than working for this espresso place in the University District, Sureshot Espresso. I was a barista in college so I thought it was worth a try to apply to be a coffee jerk again. Before job hunting recently, I had gone into Sureshot twice and had been ignored by the counter help for a significant amount of time, and so had walked out again. On a desperate lark, I picked up an application there and asked if they were hiring. For once, the barista there was friendly.

“Yes, but you have to come in on a particular day, because the owners will want you to turn the application in to them personally,” he said. That’s weird, I thought.

As I started to read the application it got weirder. The first part of the application is pretty normal, but at the very top of the application is a small box where one is required to sign a declaration: “I understand that Sureshot is a non-smoking establishment.” Then you have to check a box, just like in grade school when you get one of those “Do you like me? Yes or no” notes. The applicant must declare “I certify that I am a non-smoker” or “I am a smoker, but I will not smoke during my shifts.” Can they tell you what you can do during your breaks, as long as you are engaged in a legal activity?

The second half of the application is a riot: date of birth, marital status, number of years married, number of dependents, have you had any serious illnesses in the past five years. They even want to know if you own or share a car. I imagine the interview involves them looking at your teeth, knocking on your flanks, and administering a psychological test.

I had long been told that these sorts of questions are illegal, and I wondered if it was true. I wondered if there was a watchdog organization online for employers like this. I googled around and what I discovered is that these questions are not illegal, per se, it is just deeply, deeply stupid to ask them, because a person who doesn’t get the job could feel that they were being unfairly discriminated against and sue. Applicants are not required to answer such personal questions, but who would hire someone who fills out half the app, and then starts talking about personal rights? None of the fuckasses I worked for during college and high school. And what employee would want to work in such a hostile environment?

Of course, a lawsuit less likely to happen with a single-location, hole-in-the-wall espresso joint exploiting ignorant eighteen-year-olds, as opposed to a large corporation that has millions of dollars and is hiring for jobs where an employee has a lot to gain, such as a livable wage.

In the end, though, I decided I liked Sureshot’s application very much, because most applications won’t give you that much of a red flag about the management. “Things can only get worse,” it says.

Dear MF Diary

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I have so many things to tell you! What a weekend. The weekend started with a stupid amount of cooking. My companion made this beautiful cake for no reason, for which I award him the prize of “Best Cake with My Name on It for No Reason, 2005.”

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On Friday, I conducted an experiment in which I fused together my companion and my sister to form one terrible T. Rex-like beast.

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I dub thee Companster.

Alas, the T. Rex-like beast went wild and broke up another of my discoveries, a Barbie King, which I had discovered slithering into a Seattle sewer last year and was clever enough to capture and shove into a jar. Barbie Kings are similar to Rat Kings, but they accessorize better, and leave a pink sparkly trail of effluvium, rather than a trail of rabies.

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I must pour out a Cosmopolitan for my dead Barbie King homies.

Then we force-fed the baby arugula to keep her happy during dinner on Saturday night.

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Moo.

Startlingly, I also discovered that, for good or ill, Franny is developing a bizarre sense of humor. I am relieved about this, because her father doesn’t really exhibit any sense of humor. I used to gibber around the house all the time, doing the funky chicken, making puns, and trying to engage in ordinary wordplay with the monkey robot I was stuck with. Reaction? None. I might as well have been a ghost.

Yesterday we were sitting on my bed and were joking about something while playing with the baby and Franny looked thoughtful for a moment.

“You’re really funny. Dad isn’t that funny,” she said.

“Is your dad serious?” I said.

“Yeah.”

I think he’s trying to concentrate on making sure all of his circuits are lubed, in my humble, unassuming opinion.

Later yesterday we were getting out of the car when Franny suddenly said, in front of my sister, “Can I ask you a favor?”

“Yeah,” I said, amused at the adult-like expressions that have been coming out of her mouth this weekend, such as “can I ask you a favor?” and “while you’re at it….”

“Can I pee on your head?” Franny finished.

“What?” my sister said. “WHAT?” I could only laugh.

“I’m just going with it,” I said.

Finally, Frannie and I played Lady Beauter Shop last night to a marvelous result. Then, we met Manuel for dinner at Super Bowl. Delicious!

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Sassier!

Into The Neglect-o-Matic With You

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Strudel is now in her sixth month. She is approaching the apex of baby cutedom, which I think peaks at around eight months (after this you segue into toddler cutedom). She is getting wiggly–very wiggly. Wiggly like jumping up and down in my lap like an agitated baboon, and doing tummy doughnuts in her crib when she should be napping.

My companion and I have been following the basic tenets of attachment parenting, which seems to make Strudel happy. Many people say the key to making attachment parenting work successfully is to do as much as you can without going insane. In other words, to find a balance that works.

It seems everyone who cares about it has a slightly different definition of AP. This is how we do it:

1) We hold her as much as possible.
This is now getting difficult, as she flings herself around so much that even the sling is a two-handed proposition. Plus she has hit twenty pounds, so the sling is now hell on my neck and back. I am using the strolly a lot now, which she likes.

2) I still breastfeed her.
…Even though she now has sharp little fangs on the bottom and when she is really hungry she grabs my clothes with both fists, as if she is roughing up some punk, and headbutts my boob, openmouthed and panting, until I give up the goods. Her animally fervor is a little intimidating. Once these were nice, unabused boobies; now, not so much.

3) We spend as much time with her as possible.
I am going back to work soon, but I am arranging my schedule so that my Companion or my sister will be here when I am not.

4) We sleep with her…sometimes.
We used to sleep with her every night, from birth. But about a month ago, she developed a mean donkey kick and a tendency to rip out her father’s body hair, of which there is A LOT. It turns out that nothing makes a thirty-year-old man scream like a little girl like involuntary depilation while sleeping. Who knew?

5) We respond to her quickly.
Babies often cry a lot in the first month because life goes from being pinkinsh, soothing, and liquidy, to loud, colorful, and confusing. My friend Supa refers to this as the “perpetual acid-trip stage.” The textbooks call this “overstimulation.” For that first hellacious month of howling, we could do nothing but hold her while she howled. Eventually, she got the picture that we were trying to make her feel better. So now instead of an hour of crying, we get a couple of minutes of whining until we figure out what she needs.

Something had to give, though, after a few weeks of donkey-kicking. Those fat hams we call “legs” are getting stronger and stronger as she prepares to crawl, and my back was getting sore every day from holding her as she bounced. So we got the most wonderful thing in the history of Unattachment Parenting: The Jumparoo. It’s just like those old doorway jumpers, except this comes with its own frame. Strudel loves it; one day she went up-and-down for forty-five minutes, time that would would have ordinarily been spent fussing in my lap, because I don’t have that stamina. I can now forgive Fisher-Price for making that busted-ass Tickle-Me-Elmo.

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Figure 1: Screw Attachment Parenting!

An Epistolary Vacation with S.

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My dear friend S. is out-of-town for most of the summer, visiting an old BFF from high school who has found religion, and relatives on the East Coast. She is doing this at her own peril, as she is driving around with the three girlies, aged thirteen, seven, and five. I think she and Mr. S. need another spouse, because they are outnumbered. Run, S., run!

However, a pleasant side-effect of S.’s summer vacation angst is that I keep getting these cries for help postcards in the mail.

*******

For the first one, she is still sane.

Postmarked August 8, 2005

Hey Darlin’!

We saw the Statue of Liberty yesterday, although we couldn’t go inside. Not a big deal for me, as I’ve already done that, but Mr. S. and the kids were disappointed. Now we’re in CT, with crazy Mr. S.’s grandma. It sucks here; I’ll be happy to leave. It’s in BFE, only it’s really upscale and expensive BFE. Lame-O.

Loves, S.

*******

Cracks in the facade, or is she just quoting Trent Reznor? I predict the former.

Postmarked August 9, 2005

Hey Darlin’!

I’m in the town of ____, NY in the Catskill Mountains. We’re on our way to visit A. at the Dergah. I’m very nervous…he sounds completely manic on the phone. We’ll see…. I’m so tired of trying to drive around with the kids. V. is in the “are we there yet?” phase, and I will be lucky to survive this trip, AND we still have the long drive (NY to DC) to go! HELP ME I’M IN HELL!! I love you -S.

*******

Things get worse; S. hooks up with her friend A. S. decides to redecorate Heaven and loves exclamation points as much as I do.

Postmarked August 10, 2005

(No greeting)

An Except from a real conversation 8/8:

Me: “Wow. A lot of the Dergah is green. Somebody must really like green.”

A. “Green is the color of heaven.” (With a straight face!!!)

Me: “Um, well, I might have to change that.” (Not that I’d ever go, or even believe in it, but, you know….)

BUT- HEAVEN IS GREEN!!??? WTF?? How can ANYONE take a religion seriously when it tells you what color heaven is? [Brainwashing?] Loves, S.

*******

A final card…the shortest yet. It is possible that S. has abandoned her children at this point and fled to Canada with Mr. S.. Or maybe she’ll be back this week as promised. I have been collecting her mail and watering her plants, so if she’s not coming back I’m going over there to collect all the US Weeklys. Okay, S.?

Postmarked August 12, 2005

Hey Darlin’!

Do you remember my road trip with Linda Blair around the Olympic Peninsula? [I believe S. is referring to the trip in which her seven-year-old (then six) had fits all the way home from the beach.] Well, today was another one from NEW YORK to DC!! Maybe I’ll learn not to take the girls on road trips at some point…. Hope you’re well! See you soon! Love, S.

Step Away From the Cargo Shorts

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Today I am wearing fall-type clothes (crazy-ass Seattle), as opposed to Saturday, when I was wearing a tank-top and skirt to the wading pool. On Saturday, My Companion and I were watching Frannie splash around as Strudel wobbled upright in her strolly.

“Gotta pee,” I said.

“Okay,” said my Companion, and I made my way to the bathrooms at the park.

I walked by a big birthday party going on at a picnic table in the middle of a field. Most people were standing around eating cake, but a couple broke away with baseball mitts and prepared to play catch. I got the feeling they weren’t attached to each other in any significant way; perhaps she was his cousin’s sister-in-law or something.

The woman looked a little younger than me, and was one of those auburn-redheads who had hair in such an abundant quantity that she looked like she could really wang someone with her ponytail, if she felt like it, and seemed enthusiastically delighted at the prospect of playing catch. Maybe it was just the day, which was sunny and perfect in the way that Seattle is only capable of being one month out of twelve. She was skipping and grinning and prancing around as she stretched the glove over her hand.

The man was slightly older, maybe early thirties, and in many ways, her opposite. He seemed to be taking the prospect of playing catch deadly seriously. He screwed on his baseball cap tighter, and jostled his khaki cargo shorts around, and looked somewhat uncomfortable in that bloated, twitchy way that aged frat boys manage best.

They were still at it when I was coming down the hill from the bathrooms. She had a good arm and was throwing reasonably. The man was whipping each throw back at her, and I could hear each one smack into her glove, hard. As I neared them, he spoke as he returned her last throw.

“You throw like a girl,” he sneered.

“What’s wrong with that?” she replied, and threw again. I could tell his remark caught her off guard, and her return was unsteady. The ball dropped early, bounced, and nailed the aged frat boy in the shins. He winced slightly, and looked up at me as I passed.

“Karma’s a bitch,” I said to him so that only he could hear me.

“Hur hur hur,” was his clever retort, which meant, “Fuck you, lady.”

I hate bullies.

In Other News: I Sit in Judgment, As Usual

This weekend Frannie informed us that her father’s new unborn spawn is now “this big” (snack-sized) and that That Poor Woman is giving up sugar to grow a healthy baby in spite of her last fifteen years of cigarette-smoking, which ended as recently a couple of months ago. Oh, wait, I think I said that last part, not Frannie. I almost snorfled my tonsil-nubs out of my nose when I heard this.

My Companion and I have many muted conversations after Frannie goes to bed.

Me: Did you hear what Frannie said about That Poor Woman giving up sugar?

Companion: Oh yeah. That was pretty funny.

Me: Giving up sugar…

C: …Is the least of her worries.

Me: I know!

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Exhibit A: Sing it with me: “She’ll be a SLAAAAVE to him!”

Once he has his hooks into her good and proper, and he can stop pretending to be “caring” and “interested” and “human” he will just become an albatross around her neck. Then she will have a baby, a half-time stepdaughter, and a no-job-having, beer-swilling doorstop sponging off her when she is forced to go back to work in three months. Frannie says they are thinking of getting a puppy as well. Would you like a HAIRSHIRT with that, ma’am? Jesus fuck, have all the sugar in the fucking world, because you are going to need it, lady.

I would like to do a study in which I ask women who were the “other woman” or “rebound-that-turned-into-an-unholy-alliance” at what point they snapped awake and thought to themselves, “Jesus, now I know why his first wife left him.” I’m guessing it’s two years or a child, whichever comes first.

Compensation for participating in my study will be in the form of genuine sympathy.

Over here, at Rancho Halfway-Sane, we had a nice weekend involving what Frannie calls “Lady Beauter Shop” (toenail painting) and lots of four-year-old sassiness. Because you can’t spell “four years-old” without “histrionics.”

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Exhibit B: SASSY!

Man I loves ya, Frannie. In spite of EVERYTHING.

Think About The Children

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I was lying in bed this morning and I had the saddest thought. What about zombie babies? They can’t move, so they can’t attack people. They can’t even say BRAAAINS. The best my baby could manage would be “BWAA,” which wouldn’t convey her message at all. Poor zombie babies.

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Exhibit A: No one wants to change a zombie baby’s diaper.

In Which I Recall the Only Time I Wished For Some Dangly Bits

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Scratchy called me up the other morning, ebullient with self-granted freedom.

“I’m playing hooky!” she sang. “Want to go to brunch?”

Brunch…indulgent. Leisurely. I looked down at myself and saw that I had showered and wasn’t covered with any byproducts from Mommy’s little cheeserancher. Phenomenal! She did hork on me this morning, though, as I was putting some dishes in the sink. I think I was accidentally squeezing her too hard after 45 minutes of boob nibbling.

“BLOORP! YARF!” Cheeseranched! Saliva, milk, and curds ran down my front and covered the cabinet I was standing closest to. This is glamorous, glamorous shit here, people. You should all get pregnant tomorrow. No…yesterday!

“Did you hold her over the sink?” my sister asked, later. I think my sister has good instincts. After all, we were raised by wolves by a woman who would attack you with her sock if you had a snotty backseat face-explosion, seeing-as-how there were no paper products in the car, despite the fact that we were out to fast food at least three times a week. And if that isn’t a run-on sentence, then I am the ghost of Lindsay Lohan’s missing breasts. R.I.P., dirty pillows, R.I.P.

So…brunch. “Yes!” I said. “Come on down!”

We ended up at this cafe I inexplicably love. I love it because it’s in Eastlake, the very first neighborhood in Seattle I lived in. I wasn’t even on the lease because I wasn’t 18 yet. After my first week in town I decided two things: one, to give up smoking, because cigarettes cost twice as much here, and good god, Seattle had hills on top of that, unlike most of B.F. Illinois. So I was wheezing in addition to being charged a boodle for my fix. Secondly, I decided to secure work within walking distance of my new house.

Well, the Eastlake cafe was hiring a dishwasher, and being SUPREMELY unskilled (unless you count being able to hit a bong, eat a taco, drink some Snapple, and shift into third all at the same time a skill, which frankly, I do, albeit an unmarketable one) I thought my best course of action was to apply for any crap job that would take me.

I got called for an interview at the cafe, put on some reasonable clothes, and showed up on time. The owner, who still lurks there, took me into the back and looked me over, arching her evil heavy black eyebrows at me.

“Hmm, nope,” she said. “I need someone stronger. I need someone who can lift fifty pounds. Can you lift fifty pounds?”

“My sister weighs fifty pounds,” I said. “I can lift her.” At the time, my sister was seven.

“No, this won’t work. I need a boy. Dismissed!” The interview ended.

I told Scratchy this story as we were waiting for our breakfasts.

“That’s sexist discrimination!” Scratchy said.

“It’s her,” I said, pointing to the petite, heavily-browed sexist terror swooping around her cafe.

“How’s everything?” Petite Terror asked, swooping past our table with a coffee pot.

“Fine,” we said, and smiled.

After we were finished, we paid up front. I was holding Strudel, who was snappily attired in her stretchy suit with the darker- and lighter-blue alternating stripes.

“Oh, he’s so cute,” blabbed Petite Terror. “How old is he?”

“She’s five months old,” I said, as Scratchy said as an aside, to me: “Still sexist, I see.” I ate a chortle that turned into an uncomfortable snort.

“Oh,” said Petite Terror. “The blue stripes had me fooled. Makes me think of that movie, that ‘O Where Are Thou Brother.'”

“Ah ha ha,” I managed.

We turned away and Scratchy tsked, “Sexist, and now calling your child a convict.”

“And yet I keep coming back,” I said.