unions and the cleanse

Why haven't I blogged? I did 2 more shows. One was a faboulous 3-day wholesale show. The other was a not-so-fabulous 9-day retail show. During all of this, Tim and I did a 21-day cleanse. Also, our kids are insane and exhausting, and we're addicted to The West Wing box set my brother and his wife lent us.

Why not blog during the cleanse? Instead of staying up to blog, we'd just go to sleep after putting the kids down. There was nothing to live for without alcohol and empty carbs. I'm also not very funny or interesting without alcohol, coffee, sugar, wheat, dairy, meat. We were "eating" things that looked like the above broccoli/beet/celery juice. Tim has actually kept off the 14 lb he lost during the cleanse. I, however, have been jamming empty carbs into my mouth since the day the cleanse ended. That "3" I saw in the middle of the 3 numbers of my weight is a distant memory. I've come up with a new drink, though. There's a line of alcohol products called Skinny Girl. The Skinny Girl Margarita is made with agave instead of sugar. My new drink is the "anorexic girl margarita." It's tequila, lime and soda water. I highly recommend it especially when you're going to accompany it with an entire bag of stale pretzels.

Jack Peter at school in his pajamas on Dr. Seuss' birthday. The fervor with which Ms. O'Brien celebrates Dr. Seuss is hilarious. She dresses as the cat in the hat for the entire day and makes them all fabricate and wear cat-in-the-hat hats.

The anxiety over educating our kids in the city has abated somewhat. We got him into a science-based charter school that is rumored to be great. It's going to be a bad commute, but worth it. I made the questionable decision to tell Jack Peter, and he crumpled into a pile of tears wailing that he never wants to leave Kearny. The only way I could justify the school change to him was to tell him that it's a fall-back option "in case you get the teacher you don't want" (One teacher at the school is rumored to be focussed exclusively upon breaking the little spirits of her first graders.) Jack Peter was quiet for a minute, and said, "Mom, I've seen that class, and there are only brown kids in it." So much for my color blind child. He felt better when he made a graph to tally up the opinions of everyone in his life. The majority voted for Green Woods Charter School, so it's all OK, now. Writing things down helps him cope. This was one of the 5 signs he made last night...

The above-mentioned not-so-great show was The Philadelphia International Flower Show at the Convention Center. Had my adorable friend, Stephen, not flown over from Northern Ireland and abused the American love of an Irish accent to foist pottery on unsuspecting matrons, the show would have been a complete disaster. The set up for the show involved 5 union goons surrounding us as we hastily used a drill and a ladder to put the booth together. Neither of those things is allowed. If you need to use a step ladder, then you need to pay a union carpenter to do the job. We knew this going in; Tim relishes confrontations with the unions. For him to stop drilling and laddering, the show organizer had to come and tell me she was going to kick me out and I'd be out my $4000. He finished up the booth install with a manual screw driver standing on wobbly boxes of pottery saying, "I hope I fall off these boxes, so I can sue them..."

The union guys were waiting for us when we came to take the booth down at 11:30 pm on the last day of the show. I told them I never plan to do the show again, so they couldn't tattle on me to the show organizer. Instead, they tried to box in our truck with 2 fork lifts. Our neighbors moved their truck, so getting out was easy, but I was flustered. I left the 2 boxes that had all of my large pieces in it. The union guys got the last laugh as they all have their wedding gift shopping sorted out for this summer.

Jack Peter is going to be a Broadway singer or a minister because Tim and I abhor religion and show tunes. Steel is going to be a union leader. I recently took the kids to the Please Touch Museum. Steel and Ciela, the daughter of another builder friend, took over the construction site. They were precisely stacking the foam bricks in the back of a pretend dump truck. Ciela was the mason, and Steel was standing over the pile of bricks preventing any non-union child from messing with the site.

On top of the 2 boxes of pottery I forgot to bring home, I had quite a bit of breakage. My neighbor, despite the note I'd left her to PLEASE be careful while she sets up, broke 7 pieces. Another woman stood up an bashed one of my shelves with her head. It caused an avalanche of pottery. Whenever I introduced myself to other vendors for the rest of the week, I would say, "My booth was the crash." They'd look at me with horror and pity. It's almost comforting when I lose a lot of pottery. It reminds me of how much I love to make it. If I could work out a cost-effective method for making pottery and giving it away or making it and smashing it, I'd be the happiest potter on earth.

In addition to singing great Irish songs to the kids at bedtime, (Dick Darby who drowns his humpy, lumpy wife being the favorite) Irish Stephen had a "wee holiday romance" with an adorable guy named (drumroll...) Tanner Kok. All of us fell in love with Tanner, and the Kok jokes were endless. If Steel marries him, she can be Steel Kok!! and so on. The girls are still talking about Tanner, "Where is the big boy?" Toby asks at breakfast or "When is the heart boy coming?" (She heard me say that he has a heart-shaped face.) It's nice to know I'm starting them early on the fag hag path that has served me so well.

I get to make pottery for the next 3 months for all of my wholesale accounts. I will then take the summer "off" and be a full-time mom. Tim is going to be slammed with work, so I'm hoping to spend the weeks away wherever people will have us-preferably in beachy or rural places. We'll come home for urban family weekends. I've never taken more than 8 days off in a row-even to have a baby, so this will be new for me. My daughters have been especially challenging these days, so I might lose my mind.

Wholesaling

Steel refused to participate in the Dansko photoshoot. I'm taking this opportunity to post a movie of her hula-hooping. She's been hula-hooping since way before she turned 4. It's her now-not-so-hidden talent.

I wonder about the average time a Netflix envelope spends in the bottom of a bag. For me it's about 2 days, but I had one in my bag the entire time I was in New York City. If Tim had to put Netflix envelopes into the mail, and there was no such thing as streaming video, we might have gotten some sleep in the past few years because he'd NEVER remember.

I'm good at mailing things in Philly because I have my favorite mail boxes. Out in the real world I get lost. I tried to cross Central Park one night to meet a friend on the east side. I was in the park for about 1/2 hour. When I came out the other side, I asked a cop which way to get to 82nd and Lexington, north or south? He replied, "Ummm....lady, you'll have to cross the park." It would be so great to see an aerial view of my not traversing the park while walking for thirty minutes.

Sadly, Steel got my lack-of-orientation bug on top of my crafting bug. She was recently lost on the beach in Florida for 30 minutes. I'd walked her up to the edge of the beach and pointed to where Tim, Jack Peter, and Toby were sitting in the beach-side Marriott restaurant 20 feet away. In my mind she could see her dad and would be with him in a matter of 5 seconds, and he had seen us coming. I went back to hanging out with our friends.

Imagine my surprise when I saw her holding a lifeguard's hand a half hour later coming from a completely different direction. I have 2 things to be thankful for in that situation:
1. I'd finished the rum punch I was drinking at 1 in the afternoon and had put the glass down.
The life guard was pissed that I'd not gone looking for her in a half hour. Adding a rum punch to that picture might have landed me in jail.
2. I didn't know she was lost. If I'd noticed she wasn't with her dad after, say, 15 of the 30 minutes I might have killed myself.

In addition to leaving my 12 block comfort zone, every time I do a retail event it reminds me why I wholesale my work. Exposure to the general public has me sending out mental thank yous to the galleries who sell my work for me. These gallery owners allow me to be in my studio listening to Laxshmi Singh and the rest of the NPR crew all day. I make pottery; I ship it, and I make more. At night, I hang out with my kids and then cuddle with my husband on the couch watching Netflix. I'm happy.

One woman came into my booth and gushed about my work. I asked her what brought her to Chelsea Market. She said, "Every month I have a colonic around the corner; then I come here, to all of the amazing food and fill back up again!" I know I'm the queen of "too much information," but that was challenging at 10 am even for me. If I were any good I'd have sold her a set of dishes to make her "filling up" experiences better. There is an amazing shop called The Filling Station at Chelsea Market. It has nice oil, vinegar and beer. You bring your own bottles to fill up. If Tim follows his bliss and becomes a farmer, oil, vinegar and beer is all I'll need.

Another guy came in and commented on my new vase form. I chirped, "It's flower arranging for morons! You just cut them short and shove them in. The vase does the rest!" He responded with a completely straight face, "If I give one of them to my wife, am I telling her she's a moron?" Apparently my response, "No, you'd be telling her she's fabulous and that she deserves flowers all the time!" worked. He bought two, but it was not fun for me.

There was another problem with my being in New York. I look like a hag most of the time because I'm a potter working alone in an industrial building in a crack-filled neighborhood, and when I'm not doing that, a kid is dumping milk on me. The incentives to put myself together are few. Initially, I'm both cowed and impressed by the fashion and beauty in New York, but then it starts to upset me for 2 reasons:
1. It turns into a uniform, and I worry people aren't allowing themselves to be creative or expressive.
2. I worry about the waste that is inherent in the fashion industry. In 2009 I went to New York, and every woman I saw was wearing a pair of knee-high rubber Hunter boots. I saw none this December in late 2010. I keep picturing a massive landfill overflowing with different colored pairs of Hunter boots.

I discovered last Thursday that all of the Hunter boots are in the closets of fancy Philly moms anxiously awaiting a rainy, not-too-cold day. Thursday is Dance Academy day; Jack Peter takes theater dance. All of the ballet dancer moms were wearing Hunter boots; the black nannies and I were the only ones not wearing them. I was astonished.

We had our own footwear expedition over the weekend. The Dansko outlet was having a sale. I only wear Danskos. They are those ugly clogs that nurses and cooks wear. I have a studio pair, an everyday-not-covered-in-clay pair, and a fancy pair for going out. It was time for me to restock, so we all went out. The Stieler family came too. Jack Peter saw a bright red pair, put them on immediately, and the rest of the kids followed. 4 kids in bright red, patent leather Dansko's was just too cute. When I discovered that kids clogs weren't on sale, it was too late. It was money well spent for the girls. Jack Peter has vowed not to wear his EVER again as he got teased at school for them. Hmmm...he's tiny, way-too-smart, taking theater dance and wearing bright red patent leather clogs. I can't imagine anyone giving him a hard time. Strangely, he probably will wear them again. He talks about being teased with a somewhat-believable air of nonchalance.

We got back late from the Dansko outing. Jen's husband and Tim had taken Tim's new Mini Cooper home. Jen and I had the kids in the mom-mobile. I muttered on the way home to Jen, "Wouldn't it be funny if our husbands took the one remaining parking space behind the house and left us to find another spot with 4 tired kids and a bunch of crap in the car?" As we drove past the full parking spaces behind the house, Jack Peter whined, "AWWWW! When are we going to get our parking space back?!" Jen replied, "As soon as your fathers grow vaginas!"

nacho intifada

The 4th brother took one look at this image and asked what the hell he was doing with a dead greyhound...

The 3 Philly McDonald brothers and their significant others just treated their mom to a cooking event/dinner revolving around the previously unheralded goat. We ate goat ceviche, goat milk biscuits with goat butter, goat chops, goat curry, goat kielbasa, goat cheese and goat ice cream. While we ate 3 goats that had been killed the day before at a local farm, the head chef told us how to butcher a goat using the fourth of the unfortunate goat posse.

I couldn't help picturing the goats drawing straws:
Goat 1: No Brainer! I'll take ice cream, butter, and cheese!
Goat 2: Alright then, ceviche it is
Goat 3: I guess I'll take Kielbasa. At least I'll finally get with that hot Polish pig.
Goat 4: SHIT! I'm going to be the evisceration demo?????

There was something decadent about the whole night that made me feel slightly uneasy. Maybe it was the way the chef placed his cooked goat chops on top of the meat he had just sliced off of the 4th goat carcass. He was planning to eat the chops as soon as he finished the butchering demo.

None of this stopped me from drinking at least 2 glasses of incredible wine that was offered with each course. (of course) After the ceviche, biscuits, and soup, I asked for a to-go container and deftly deposited the remaining 3 goat courses into it. On Sunday I was glad I had. We had 3 sausage eaters: Steel, Toby, Willa. Jack Peter is not fond of sausage, so he triumphantly gnawed on the goat chops.

There are 5 people in our family, and we often have guests, so it doesn't surprise me that with every meal comes one grump. Tim doesn't like my willingness to make a separate meal for the dissatisfied customer, but Tim is gone for the next 10 days, so I'm going to do as I see fit. Tonight was a New England mom triumph. The end of the pot pie went to JP and Steel. I ate all the leftover beans and broccoli for lunch and finished the super-old red sauce and pasta for dinner. Toby had the leftover peas and an omelette. This all went down with some cukes and tomatoes and, more importantly, without drama. They had the rest of the ice cream for dessert with the rest of the stale marshmallows on top. OK, no one ate the marshmallows, but I put them in the microwave, and it was fun to watch them grow, so I still got rid of them.

I have a refrigeratorial clean slate. I am fantasizing that I will make EXACTLY the right amount of food for every meal, so that I will not have to deal with left overs for 10 days. My poor husband is in Ireland reading this and saying to himself/me, "Babe! I thought you loved leftovers! I always make extra because you're so good at taking what's in the fridge and making it into something AMAZING!" Yes, honey, I was particularly proud of my "nachos" this weekend that had shredded chicken parmesean on them as well as black beans and cheese. I was expecting a nacho intifada, but they were gobbled up without complaints. I know I'm amazing at leftovers, but I really do prefer fresh food. Just because an emergency medical technician is amazing at resuscitating heart attack victims doesn't mean he/she wants more people to have heart attacks.
xo

The Craft Bug

I call this piece my "don't quit your day job" wreath. The girls and I went out to get a 44" high Christmas tree. That is the limit to what our living room can handle. To accommodate us, the Christmas tree guy had to cut a foot off of our tree. Waste not, want not! I had to make something from the off-cut boughs. The kids went into model-magic-ornament production, so we had a few to spare for my wreath. They produced about 100 ornaments on the first day. They woke up early and all three of them were hard at work at 6:30 am on day 2. Steel seems especially afflicted by the craft bug.

I've been on my own in New York City for a week attempting to sell pottery at a pop-up store in uber-hip Chelsea Market. It's right by the Highline; it's got great food. There's a fancy kitchen store and an Anthropologie. Google and some other trendy places have office space upstairs. It all seemed like a good idea, and it would have been, had I only brought large bowls and vases.

Years ago, a New York gallery came to my booth at my wholesale show. He said in his loud New York voice, "I LOVE your pottery, but you CAN'T sell pottery in New York!" and turned on his heel and left. I finally understand how pottery doesn't fit into the lives of New Yorkers. Most of them have tiny kitchens filled with cocktail glassware. They eat out or order in. Colin, my fabulous host got take-out the first night. He bundled the substantial mound of left-overs up in a bag and had a guest throw them in the trash on his way out. The horrified New Englander in me gasped, "You don't eat leftovers?!" "Yes, I do!" he replied, "That is why they are going in the trash!" Colin spends more money on skin care than I do on child care, incidentally.

Meanwhile, Toby chose last night to get the flu. On top of his usual insane schedule made more insane by his winning an RFP for a 126-unit project, Tim has been dealing with school lunches, school parties, figuring out what is and isn't nanny time, playdates and cavity bugs. Now he gets to do all of that on 3 hours of sleep while doing a couple loads of vomit-covered laundry. Meanwhile I'm walking the Highline, going out for Ramen and cocktails, and sleeping late.

Trying to have conversations with people and not talk about my children has been agony. People say they like hearing stories about kids, but they don't. I see eyes and minds wandering as I regale them with the story of Toby raiding the baby Jesus from Nanny's nativity scene and walking around all weekend holding baby Jesus to her ear and saying, "SHHHHH! Nanny! I'm talking to BABY JESUS!" Maybe this is why I like blogging. I don't have to see your minds wandering. My favorite story, thus far, from the "Daddy-cation" happened the first morning. I was still in bed, and I got a text from Tim: "Is it true that Steel doesn't have school today?" Tim, she's 4. You're 47, and she's already able to con you?????? What the hell is going to happen when she's a teenager?

I have another theory about why my New York trip hasn't been as successful as I'd hoped. I always think that good things happen to good people, and I revealed my inner crappiness recently. Right before I left, I did a craft show at a bar in Philly on a rainy Wednesday night. I drove the tiny little electric zap car. Visibility isn't great; it has a leak, so the inside of the windshield steams up, and the one windshield wiper on the outside works poorly. It's harrowing, careening down the road, revving the tiny electric engine, and peering out of a clear space in the windshield as big as my palm. I had parked a block away from the craft show, so to load my stuff after the show, I backed the truck across the street (as only a Massachusetts driver would) and into the spot in front of the bar. I was wearing cowboy boots, and I had gladly accepted both free drinks that were offered me that night. Somehow my big boot did not manage to make the transition from the accelerator to the brake, so I slammed into the front bumper of the car behind me.

Like a terrified teenager, I pulled away from the damaged car and fled into the bar from the rain. It took 3 trips to load my stuff. By trip #2, the damaged car had disappeared. I hadn't left a note or told the bar manager. I drove home and immediately confessed my sins to Tim. I couldn't sleep all night agonizing over the new knowledge that an irresponsible teenager is still alive and well in this 42-year-old shell.

The next afternoon, I answered the phone in my studio. The entire incident was ON TAPE! Of course it was; that's how I roll! I was strangely relieved and elated as I gave my insurance information to the poor guy who owns the car I hit. I didn't think it could get any more humiliating until he said, "Onion Flats???? (the car is insured by the company) Isn't that the McDonald brothers???? I'm friends with Johnny, and my wife is Tim McDonald's biggest fan!!!!"

I can hear them now at a cocktail party, "That Tim McDonald is SO TALENTED; too bad he married such a morally bankrupt potter!" My friend Karen tried to comfort me. She said, "You've got GREAT karma!!! You're generous with EVERYONE; this time you just took out a tiny withdrawal from your karma bank!" Is it my bad karma that is causing New Yorkers to be blind to the genius of my cups? Perhaps the $4 cup sale at Anthropologie has something to do with it.

I attribute Steel's long face to her knowledge that she has the 'craft bug' and will for the rest of her life, compulsively make things with her hands that people may or may not want. Aunt Lisa gave each of my children an entire tub of frosting and un-refereed access to bowls of candy. They behaved surprisingly well. I can only assume that they thought they were on tape and would have to account for their behavior later...

Smoking Gun

You know it's that time of year when you plug in the diaper wipe warmer. I got a gleeful giggle from little Toby when I used the first warmed wipe. It's nice to be appreciated.

It's also the time of year when I'm trying to get a lot of pottery made, glazed and shipped in time for Christmas. My excema is going wild. I normally have it on my hands, but for a while now, I've had it on my face. I keep wanting to scratch my eyebrows off. At a Halloween party I was complaining about my skin and all of the rest of my annoying health issues. My friend suggested that I might have a thyroid problem. Apparently, thyroid problems can be responsible for: skin issues, eyebrows fading, hair falling out, soreness, weight gain, exhaustion, depression, and fertility issues, but they are super-easy to cure. I walked into my doctor's office praying for a thyroid problem.

Sadly I'm healthy as a horse, so all of that stuff is just because I'm getting old. My kids have been telling me that my butt is jiggling which is great to hear first thing in the morning. Every time I see a Groupon for some sort of cosmetic procedure I stop and think for a few minutes whether that might be the answer, and then the phrase, "Why paint a wreck?" comes back to my head.

I guess I've slacked off a bit on my health/beauty regimen. My New Year's resolution of 2011 was to be more proactive about maintaining my dye job, but right now my roots make Brittney Spear's look good. I go to this amazing colorist. He's really precise about it, and he takes pride in his work-a virgo. That sounds glamorous, but the reality is that I bought 9 boxes of my difficult-to-find haircolor on ebay, and Tim is the colorist. After the drama of his daily life, it pains me to ask him to don the too-small gloves made of saran wrap to do my hair. What does he get in return besides a wife with a passable head of hair? I flush out the wax build-up in his ears.

It started when we were in Costa Rica in 2005. Tim’s ears were so plugged with a yearlong construction project’s residue of wax and funk. The water from snorkeling and surfing on top of it rendered him deaf. Rumors about the stuff that comes out of people’s ears had always intrigued me-a pea size ball of wax? I have a sick interest in that sort of thing. We traipsed off to the doctor’s office to sort him out. The doctor was a 34-year-old Costa Rican comedian in a surfer town. The bulk of his clientele come in to get their ears cleaned, so he’s pretty good at it.

He let me be his nurse/Vanna White. I got to look through the ear light thing; I got to take Tim’s blood pressure, and I got to hold the bermuda green u-shaped tray under Tim's ear as the doctor squirted the syringe of water in. The gunk all came out in one chunk after one shot, and it was the size, shape and color of a cigarette butt. I screamed in terror/glee as the doctor blew on the top of his syringe as if it were the tip of a smoking gun.

Speaking of a smoking gun, we had another epic journey in the RV last weekend. Tim needed to go to Syracuse to receive his "Leed Platinum" certificate for the house he designed for a low budget house competition. (He won the competition. :) We figured we could stop in Syracuse on our way to help out my mom in Massachusetts. It didn't dawn on us until we were arriving late to the ceremony that we'd gone woefully out of our way. We screeched up to the tent in Sunflower (the male RV is named Sunflower Rose McDonald which always makes me think of the surly tomcat next door named Muffin) Tim jumped out to make a little speech and receive his plaque. One of the other speakers did refer to Tim as the only architect he knew that drives a vehicle bigger than the houses he designs, but it went well. The owner of the house let us go through it. The kids ate a bunch of sweets, and then we got into the RV at 5 pm to head northeast for 7 hours. On our way out, Ted, an architect who works with Tim, suggested we put some air in the back left tire. It was not looking good.

We got onto 90 with a couple gallons of gas and a flat tire only to be told by the toll taker that the nearest gas was 15 miles the wrong direction or 33 the right direction. We limped along for 15 miles and opted to get off 90 to fill up. It took 2 gas stations for us to figure out that no gas station was going to have an air pump strong enough to pump up the massive RV tire. We pulled off in Utica to go to a Walmart tire center. It didn't service RV's. We went to BJ's, in the same massive stucco shopping jungle, and the tire center had closed an hour before, early for Veteran's day. Tim went in and convinced the kid who normally works the tire place to open for us-YAY! The tire was, in fact, completely flat, but the kid had no way to get it off.

Good thing we have RV coverage on AAA! Nope...the state of New York AAA doesn't have RV coverage, and there was a sleet storm, so everything was backed up. They said they would try to find an RV person and send them, so Tim sat waiting in Sunflower, and I took the 3 kids into BJ's to look at the toy aisle and the sleepy suit aisle. An hour with 3 kids in BJ's telling them they can't have anything after 5 hours of minding them in an RV had rendered my patience level low.

There was more AAA drama, so we resigned ourselves to eating dinner at Applebees where there was a wait to be seated. That was depressing on so many levels. My phone was about to die, and AAA only had my number. There were no outlets to be found on the floor at Applebees, and Steel needed to poop. Tim took Steel to poop, and I suggested he take my phone because there's always an outlet in the bathroom. There was some sort of wiping mishap at the exact moment AAA called to say that they will send someone, but it will cost $300. That left Tim covered in shit, screaming into the phone in the Applebees bathroom while I was trying to figure out how to order a vegetable off of the menu. Toby wass screaming because the guy behind us was eating dessert, and Jack Peter was drawing. Drawing sounds benign, but when Steel returned he'd commandeered all of the drawing paraphernalia, so a massive battle ensued.

The phone rang again, and Tim said, "OK! I'll be there!" He hung up and said to me, "They've got someone who can do it under the AAA policy, and they'll be there in 20! I'll go meet them at the RV." I insisted that I go meet the RV guy. My almost dead phone and I trudged the 1/4 mile across the 3 parking lots to get to Sunflower. The guy came, but he didn't have what he needed to get the tire off. He said he'd check the tractor supply store and come back. He returned and said he needed to give someone a tow, and then he'd go back to his garage to get what he needed, and he'd be back. It was becoming clear that our home for the night was going to be the BJ's parking lot, and we hadn't packed any bedding, and it was sleeting. I went to BJ's and spent $156 on bedding, made up the beds and went to help Tim bring the kids back. I grabbed a shopping cart and caught them 200 yd. away from Applebees. Tim looked awful, but I was rejuvenated by my shopping spree and cuddly bed making. I said, "You go to WALMART, relax, buy some beer. I've got the kids." I threw them and their balloons all into the cart and careened through the sleet to Sunflower.

The cart ride, the new cuddly blankets, and milk sorted all of them out as did the excitement of putting on clothes and sleepy suits at the same time. (I was terrified they'd freeze to death in the night) They went to sleep, and Tim and I drank beers and ate pretzels and naughty cheese until the AAA guy came back which he, incredibly, did. Tim went out to help. The next thing I knew the engine was up, and we were driving.

What the????

I was drunkenly gabbing on the phone to Sweet, so I chose not to worry about it until I'd told the whole story to Sweet.
said, "You're going WHERE?????"
"To the AAA guy's garage, so he can use a compressor to get the f-ing tire off!" I replied. "WHAT??? Turn around! He's going to kill you all! You can't trust an AAA guy in Utica, New York!"

No smoking gun-we're all still here, and we had a lovely night sleeping outside the guy's garage in our cozy Sunflower. It probably worked out better for my mom to have the chaos for 1 night, anyway.

Why do so many moms hate me?

Notice the 2 different color legs. I wanted to tell her she could grab the 2 Barbie legs that are in our utensil drawer left over from the doll cake, but Steel is still bitter that I not only used her Barbie without asking but also it was never returned...

I have an update on our friend, Josephine whose 2 moms won't let her have a Barbie. Phine went to art camp over the summer and trash-picked enough pieces to make her own Barbie with a little tape. The moms had to reward her ingenuity by letting her keep it. She carries Barbie everywhere, and she did not take to my naming her "Purple Duct Tape Barbie." I don't think she'd like White Trash Stinky Snatch Barbie II either.

I've mentioned before that October is the cruelest month: 2 daughters' birthdays, our anniversary and the tyranny of Halloween. If I were a good sister and aunt I could also count my brother's and two of his kids' birthdays, but I don't ever do anything for them, so I can't. Using that logic I can't claim my anniversary as cruel either. This year Tim gave me a new booth for my craft shows. He'd had it fabricated entirely out of steel. The shelves mount with magnets. It's pretty cool. He set it up in the middle of my studio to show it to me. I'm thrilled, but I was put out by a 10x10 steel box in the middle of my space. I don't know how I became such an ingrate.

My father called to wish us a happy anniversary. "What is it, deah, (dear) the asphalt anniversary? Youwah muthah (your mother) and I made it to the yeah (year) of the radioactive fall-out." His call was strange as I wasn't sure he knew my phone number, let alone my anniversary date. He prompted me to look online to see what material I'm supposed to give Tim. It's wood for your 5th. I wanted to get him cool wooden glasses frames, but it turned out to be fragile and expensive, so I settled for the wooden cufflinks on etsy. I also painted a pair of his work boots copper. I couldn't resist. I was painting the tails on the girls' mermaid costumes, and I ended up painting my clogs and my belt pearlescent,emerald green. I was so enthralled by the result that I needed to share it with my dear husband. He said, "Are these for my Halloween costume?" I replied, "No, they're for your life!"


Tim recently heard the story of a bad divorce. The estranged female half went into the new abode of the male half with a shop vac filled with glitter and reversed the vacuum to spew it all over his apartment. No matter how hard he tries, for the next 40 years, he's going to look like he's recently purchased a lap dance at a strip club because there will always be a few bits of glitter on his person. I've always loved glitter. There was a period when my roommate, Sharon, and I wouldn't leave the house without a little bit of glitter on our faces. That was during the same time period I helped my friend, Sweet, paint his room silver. While the paint was still tacky we took handfuls of holographic glitter and gently blew it onto the wet paint. On top of rent control, his landlord has that to deal with??? (WOW! I guess I'm starting to see things from another point of view...Republican party, here I come!)


My mom keeps reminding me that my middle daughter is exactly like me. I'm starting to get it. Steel rejected the mermaid costume I'd spent hours on because, "The boobs weren't glittery enough!" She also had a knock-down fight with her friend, Ruby over glitter. Ruby brought her glitter-filled make-up kit to Steel's birthday party and refused to let Steel play with it insisting that she do Steel's maquillage for her.

I pepped it up a little
Steel's party was the usual chaos. She wouldn't let anyone take 1 of the 50 balloons. Bobbing for apples was eschewed. I had Tim make a really great red sauce, so they'd eat pasta and cucumbers before all of the sweets. (He must really love me because picturing 25 kids eating pasta with red sauce and grated Parmesan in his house must've been giving his Virgo self hives...) The high point was when the second kid in line downed the pinata (as always precariously attached to a ceiling fan) and they all descended upon it like the Libyans on Gaddafi.

By mistake Ruby left the make-up kit, so Steel had her way with it/me the next morning. Ruby's family got their revenge. Their middle child not only left a piece of chocolate cake in Steel's bed, but he also puked down the back stairs. On top of that, he must've been making out with Toby before vomiting, so she's been puking for 2 days. Ruby's mom ignored the "no gifts necessary" and gave Steel a not-very-hearty breed of fish. Obviously she hates me. We were at their house when Bear shattered the shell of one of their turtles, and I'm sure I said, "That's why we don't have pets..."

The mom at the last party put whistles in the goody-bags; clearly she hates me too.

The "no gifts necessary" backfired entirely. Only 1 family didn't bring a gift. Steel noticed and has been insisting, "SUGAR AND SAILOR SHOULD HAVE LEFT THE PARTY!!! They DIDN'T have a GIFT for me!" I've been trying to explain that Sugar and Sailor were the only ones who followed the rules, but it's fallen on deaf ears. I've been a wreck that Steel has been confronting them about it at school. Should I consider it a coincidence that Steel came home with a thank-you card written by another girl intended for Sugar and Sailor?

Dear Sugar and Sailor,
Thank you for coming to my birthday party! Thank you for the AWESOME rock band bracelet kit!!! I love you,
IMOGEN

It's one thing to not bring a gift to a "gifts optional" party. It's quite another to let the birthday girl know what she missed. I want an awesome rock band bracelet kit! Knowingly or not, my daughter, the glitter-obsessed ingrate, is being punished by yet another mother. (who must hate me)


The best present I could have given to mini-me was the cake (which is good because it's the only present I gave her.) I allowed her to design and decorate it. Everyone knows I take birthday cakes pretty seriously. Steel insisted on fresh raspberries in the butter cream frosting, and then I had to let her and Jack Peter cover the entire cake with gum balls. I forgot that a cake covered with gum balls means a house covered with gum. During my post-party cleaning rampage I had to peel a wad of gum, the exact volume of a golf ball, off of Toby's bare back. She was screaming because it had dried onto all of her little peachy hairs. The 3 of them had pooled their gum while I was dealing with the guest bathroom and stuck it onto her. They were all laughing because it was almost the exact color of her flesh, so it looked like some fancy special effects wound.

I was cleaning so manically not only because our house was disgusting, but especially because Tim was going to fetch his friend, Tomoko, at JFK airport. The thought of a Japanese house guest after a raging 4-year-old birthday party was such a motivator. Is it true that Japanese people are all clean? All of my roommates have been; I've had 3 Japanese roommates. If she were from Australia would I have just strewn some straw around??? The New York marathon was happening, so Tim couldn't cross any of the Manhattan bridges. I ended up having 7 hours to clean and scream at the kids for uncleaning. It was a fabulous Sunday.

Jack Peter kept asking me to help him do the little origami figures that were in the new origami book Steel had received (from another mother who must hate me) I actually made a 3rd cup of coffee and sat down to try one. I toiled for 3.5 minutes, and then I said, "Jack Peter, I can't do this! You're going to have to get Tomoko to help you!" I suppose it must be confusing for him...why can I take a bowl and a piece of foam and turn it into R2D2 when I can't take a piece of paper, follow explicit instructions, and turn it into a dolphin?

So Tim and I have figured out the answer to October's cruelty. This year he apologized profusely for desperately wanting to go to a passive house conference to geek-out over insulation and energy recovery ventilators during our anniversary. This meant that we went out the Wednesday before and he missed the week-long sewing, painting, gluing-till-3 am-every-morning, Halloween costume marathon. I envy the women who can go to Walmart and spend $25 to buy the princess and super hero costumes their kids adore. I have to go to 3 different craft stores, Home Depot and God-knows-where, spend $100, turn into a monster for a week to create costumes that my children must then endure. We've decided that Tim should go away every year for our anniversary to avoid seeing this part of me, and our marriage will stay on track.


If I were not aware that I'm turning into my own mother, Halloween might make me admit some similarities. I heard myself bark, "ONLY ONE!!!!" and then "WHAT DO YOU SAY?????" at every stoop as I watched my unbelievably cute little mermaids snatch all the candy they could. They would stiffen at the sound of my bark, and return all but one to the endless trick-or-treat bowls. Toby would hand the treat up to me and say, "Open this Mama!" It all had to be eaten immediately. She's smart; those bags were relinquished at the end of the night so I can judiciously dole out the candy until Easter. Then I can throw away the dregs because we'll get a new batch.

It's almost sad that I've peaked so early in my Halloween-costume-making career. That R2D2 was the ultimate revenge on all of those moms who hate me.

the settlers

It's always hard to cook in your mom's kitchen. Last visit, she was making the meatloaf. (1/2 ground pork, 1/2 high-fat ground beef with bacon on top....YUM) I was in charge of mashed potatoes. I was in her way, digging around for a bowl to mash in, and she handed me the one in which she'd just mixed the meat, raw eggs, etc. "This one is pretty clean!" she announced. Raw pork, beef, and eggs?

The next meal was pasta. She proudly showed me her newly-rehabbed cheese grater. It had been rusting, so she sprayed it with Rustoleum and then with silver spray paint. "It looks GREAT, mom, but no cheese, thanks. I'm on a dairy-free diet; WE ALL ARE!" (My friend, Karen, just beat this. Her mom brought cheese that had expired a year previous to the visit. Karen suggested that they pitch it to which her mom replied, "I didn't think cheese expired!")

It's absurd for me to talk about hygiene and toxins. The above picture is my daughter, Toby's, naked ass on her 2nd birthday next to her potty cake-complete with brownie poops in it, and I still stir my heavy-metal-laden glazes with my hands, pregnant or not. Last week we were at my aunt's funeral. It was in the Thousand Lakes area in upstate New York. All of my cousins were there with their families. My kids would drop food on the floor and some concerned cousin would pick it up and throw it away only to hear a horrified scream, "Cousin Anne just THREW the Fruit Loop AWAY!!!!! (Fruit Loops are an uber-luxury; no sugar cereal here on Laurel street.)

"Ummmm.....Anne we let them eat off of the floor."
"Oh, the 5 seconds rule?"
"It's more like 5 days, but yes...."

Food is on my mind. I've just spent a good part of the evening stripping the meat off of 2 chicken carcasses and making stock with the bones. I can't believe people skim the fat off of their stock and gravy. Soup and gravy are socially acceptable vehicles for animal fat, as far as I'm concerned. I was downtown recently, desperate for a bowl of soup. It was one of the first chilly autumn days, and I was on my bike with too little clothing. I went into a place called, Le Pain Quotidienne. It's a chain:

What he wanted was so simple: bread, hearty and wholesome, with a firm slice and a good crust. Alain Coumont learned about bread as a small child, standing on a chair every Sunday watching his grandmother bake bread. As a young chef in Brussels, Alain could not find the right bread for his restaurant. Passionate about quality, he returned to his roots and opened a small bakery where he could knead flour, salt and water into the rustic loaves of his childhood.

The website has a tab entitled, About the Name

Yes, it's tricky. (It was so simple in Belgium!)
It sounds like this: luh paN koh-ti-dyaN and it means "the daily bread."
(No, it sounds like ALAIN is a PAIN)

I normally hate places like this, but I figured for $6.95 I'd get a good cup of soup. (For all of you Californians or New Yorkers, in Philly $6.95 is still 2 beers) I wanted something brothy, but I settled for their only offering, corn chowder. Chowder=pig fat and cream in my mind. I got my soup and it tasted like an oddly-textured liquid made from the inside of a mattress. I figured salt might help as a small shaker of their salt retailed for $11.95. Nothing happened. I went up to the coffee people and said, "Can I have some cream? I don't know what to do with this soup!" She gave me the cream and said in the soup's defense, "It's vegan...."

Then it's not f-ing chowder now is it????? Shouldn't there be some sort of disclosure on vegan things? This has no animal products in it and will, therefore, taste crappy unless it's a salad or something involving lesgumes. would suffice. I felt like someone had given me an O'Doul's when I'd ordered a 10% alcohol Belgian beer. It also reminded me that I'd made a "cognac infused harvest onion soup" for a bunch of Muslims. AND it made me wonder whether I'd made Nana's amazing clam chowder for the sort-of-kosher-keeping parents who HATED me of one of my Jewish boyfriends. (I think he's gay now....wouldn't they be glad to have me back?!)

Strangely, I didn't demand my money back. I dumped in a bunch of 1/2 and 1/2 and $12 salt, and I ate it. My daughter, incensed, that she wasn't going to be able to have her naked way with the potty cake also settled for the paltry piece she was given.

She had fabulous new animal-print leggings and some powder pink fur-lined crocs from nanny to ease her pain. I had nothing of the sort...