We Interrupt This Meme to Bring You the Message that Andrea Totally Rocks

Over time, as I've become more and more involved in the blogging community, I feel I have gotten to know so many amazing people so well despite having never met them in person. At times I have felt I've begun to form honest-to-goodness friendships with people I've never once met face-to-face-- in some cases, with people whose photographs I've never seen, who have never even told me their real names.

Since having a child, the unavoidable changes in my lifestyle have meant that I have grown apart from so many of the real-life friends I once had, who had been mostly young, single, and childless, the relationships that had depended on weekly face-to-face interaction and common experience slowly fading as I found myself unable to attend spontaneous last-minute gatherings, or answer midnight calls. And finding new friends, which has always been a difficult challenge for me as a natural introvert, has at times has felt nigh impossible now that so little of my time feels like my own. When I began blogging, I was beginning to feel desperately lonely.

Connecting with others, especially other mothers and fathers, online, finding so many people with lives and thoughts and feelings so similar to my own, has helped so much with the loneliness, isolation, confusion, and sheer inadequacy I often felt as a new parent. Blogging, in so many ways, has kept me from losing what's left of my mind.

But I still miss my old in-person friendships. At times, I have wondered whether this world I have built for myself online is really nothing more than a comforting illusion, a band-aid solution to my social problems. Was I wasting my time, forming virtual relationships, instead of trying to find "real" friends?

I have found myself wishing, often, almost daily, that some of the people I know online could come over for dinner or go out for a drink in real life.

But the idea of actually meeting a fellow blogger I'd come to think of as a friend in person also made me very nervous.

After all, we all sound so much smarter, and funnier, and kinder online, with the aid of the delete button.

What if it turned out we didn't get along in person? What if I ruined a blog friendship by failing to meet the expectations of someone I'd only ever shown my most thought-out thoughts, my best side, to?

I met Andrea, from Little Bald Doctors, today. And as I have suspected since the first time I read one of her blog entries, she totally rocks.

I just found out she's already written this amazing blog entry about us meeting, and I'm speechless. Because seriously people, she makes me sound so much more awesome than I actually am. I am such a major geek. And she makes me sound, like, totally suave, but I was just as nervous about meeting her as she was about meeting me.

But Andrea has an openness about her that is completely disarming, and she is just as witty and interesting in person as she is on her blog, and before we'd talked for an hour, I felt like I'd known her for years. Which was a weird feeling to process, because, despite knowing all sorts of details about her daily life from having read about it online for months, I'd only just met her in person.

And, gosh darn it, I think she might actually like me. EVEN WITHOUT MY DELETE BUTTON.

A Story About Summer, 1986

I lay limply on the top bunk in the bedroom I shared with my sister, my face buried in an overdue library book, trying to concentrate, to transport myself someplace else. The light of the glaring afternoon sun poured through the small room's only window. A cheap box fan whirred futilely on the windowsill, failing to move the thick, sluggish summer air.

"Do you want to play horsies with me?" My sister asked.

"No." I snapped the book shut. "Every time we play horsies, you always give your horsies special magic powers so they can escape any bad thing that happens without even trying to figure anything out, but if I try to do the same thing with my horsies, you yell at me."

"I do not!" my sister whined. "I should go tell Mom you're telling lies about me again."

"Good! Go and tell her already." I sighed.

"It's hot," my sister announced to no one in particular.

"It's hot," I agreed, and after a moment, added, "But Mom said we can't turn on the air conditioner until it gets hotter."

"I think it's already hotter," my sister mused philosophically. "I'm bored." Then she brightened. "Do you think the sno-cone man is coming today?"

The sno-cone man came to our neighborhood at least twice a week in an unmarked wood-paneled station wagon, ringing a big brass bell. The back of the wagon was fitted with two rows of flavored syrup bottles, a paper cone dispenser, and an enormous insulated bucket of shaved ice. For twenty-five cents—half the cost of a boring old bomb pop from the fancy painted ice cream truck— a kid could get a big, icy, sugary sno-cone in any color of the rainbow, with a fat gumball at the bottom of the cone. When the sno-cone man came, children flooded out of the rickety townhouses on my street in a cheering sweating tide.

I slid down the bunk bed ladder to the floor, and went to check my bank.

"I've only got ten cents, anyway," I sighed. "You?"

"I've got this quarter," she said proudly, holding up a nickel.

"That's a nickel, you dummy."

"It is not!"

"Is too. A quarter is bigger."

"I'm going to tell Mom you're lying again. MOM!"

"I'm just trying to tell you that that's not a—"

"MOM!"

"What?"

My mother appeared at the top of the stairs, and glared into our room from the hallway. "What is it?"

"She called me a dummy because I was trying to tell her the difference between a nickel and a quarter and she wouldn't believe me," my sister said. "She keeps lying. She's the dummy."

"Can you two stop fighting? And don't call each other names. It's not nice."

"She started it," we both said.

"Jinx," my sister whispered, and poked me in the arm. "Now you owe me a Pepsi."

"Quit it, you two! I'm trying to get work done. Now leave each other alone and quit fighting over that money, or maybe I'll just confiscate it."

"You can't confiscate money from my bank it if it's my money," I reasoned with pious conviction. "It's mine. I earned it doing chores for Grandma. If you took it away it wouldn't be fair."

"Life isn't fair," my mother growled, fixing me with a serious look.

"Never mind," I gulped.

"It's hot," my sister moaned. "Can't we turn on the air condition-thing?"

"Not today," my mother sighed, wiping sweat from her face, "I'm already worried about the electric bill."

"Can we go outside?" my sister asked plaintively.

"It's hot," I protested.

"It might be hotter in here than it is outside," my mother said. "Why don't we go out and see?"

My sister dashed down the stairs. My mother followed, and I tromped down sullenly after them.

Outside, it was still hot, and a cloud of gnats began to gather around me as I sat on the porch. My sister was playing in a clump of weeds next to the parking lot. Sighing, I got up to join her, hoping the gnats would stay on the porch.

"What's this?" she was asking my mother, holding up an egg-shaped chunk of asphalt from a pile that had cracked off an old section of the parking lot while it was being resurfaced.

My mother took it in her hand, squinting, and weighed it thoughtfully. Then she leaned toward us conspiratorially, an excited twinkle in her eye.

"This," she breathed in a reverent half-whisper, "Is a dragon egg."

"A dragon egg?" my sister gasped.

"A dragon egg?" I groaned.

"A dragon egg," my mother repeated. "A real, live baby dragon lives inside, waiting to be found by the right person. And if the right person finds a dragon egg, and takes it, and faithfully, solemnly promises to keep the egg and care for the dragon inside it forever and ever, and puts the egg in a nice, warm, sunny spot in her bedroom, when that person wakes up in the morning, the egg will have turned to solid gold. And that is the sign that the dragon has decided to love that person, and eventually-- sometimes it takes years-- if the person takes care of the dragon egg, then, someday, it will hatch, and out will come a baby dragon."

"Wow," my sister whispered.

"So, Mom," I said, "Where exactly did this dragon egg come from? Where are the dragons that laid it? And why did they leave it out here, by itself, instead of taking care of it like birds do?"

"There's a dragon right now," my mother said, pointing up at the sky.

"A DRAGON?" my sister squealed.

"That's an airplane," I muttered.

My mother regarded me archly. "Sometimes those are airplanes. And sometimes they are dragons. You don't really think a dragon would come to visit this world without putting on some kind of disguise, now, do you? If a dragon came here without her disguise, people would be frightened, and they would try to capture her."

"That's true," I admitted.

"And," she continued, "The dragons have to leave their eggs here, because the only way a dragon egg can hatch is if the dragon inside is loved by a human being."

"Do you think it's hard for the Mommy dragons to leave their eggs behind?" my sister asked, her eyes wide.

"Yes, I think it's very, very hard," my mother answered.

"Are there more of these supposed dragon eggs there in that pile?" I asked.

"Why, yes-- I think I see another one, right--" my mother knocked a pile of rocks aside-- "here. See? You can tell by the shape."

The asphalt chunks were almost identical.

"Why don't we take them inside, and you two can try to convince them to let you adopt them while I make some lemonade?"

Once back inside, my sister quickly busied herself making a nest for her dragon egg. I stared at mine, pensively.

That evening before bed, we placed the eggs under our bedroom window, in the fading sunlight, and our mother insisted we offer up an incantation pledging our eternal love to the dragons inside before going to sleep.

"You have to mean it, now," she said. "If you don't believe in the dragon inside that egg with all your heart, it won't turn gold in the morning, and then it will never hatch."

Aw, what the heck, I thought. What if she's right?

Doing my best to clear my mind of doubt, I tried to visualize a tiny dragon curled within the rough black egg. In my minds' eye, suddenly, iridescent scales shimmered, and a tiny golden eye winked.

In the morning, the eggs were exactly where we'd left them. And they were solid gold.

*****

(Okay, so it's not audio. It was just too long. I'm doing a whole series of these, to complete the meme. Wish me luck! I may do the last one in audio, just so you can all hear my LOVELY voice ;) ).

Not the Same

Note: I am working on that audio post idea, everyone. It is going to be long and I might have to break it up into multiple posts. We shall see. Now, to this post:

The Tuesday before last, at 9:30 a.m., Isaac turned to me and said, hopefully, "Michelle coming?"

(I was surprised. Michelle, Isaac's occupational therapist, who makes housecalls, always came Tuesday mornings, but I didn't know how he knew it was Tuesday).

"No," I said, "Michelle isn't coming today, Isaac. Michelle had a baby! It was a surprise-- the baby was born early. Now she has to stop working for a while and take care of her baby, until the baby gets big and strong, and then, when her baby is big and strong, she will come back and play with you again."

"Michelle has baby?" he whispered, his eyes wide. "Oh!" Then he smiled. "Isaac has baby, too!" And he ran to get a baby doll from his toy box, but shortly got distracted by his toy trains.

Last Tuesday, at 9:30 a.m., Isaac clasped his tiny hand around mine, and asked, "Today Michelle coming?"

"No, baby," I said, "Michelle is not coming for a long time. She has to take care of her baby. But Michelle's office said they would send one of Michelle's friends to come play with you instead until Michelle can come back."

This Tuesday, as we rushed about in the wee hours of the morning trying to get ready for me to go to an 8:00 a.m. dentist's appointment, he said, in a voice that seemed to expect disappointment, "Go see Michelle?"

"No, Isaac, I'm sorry. Michelle's still not coming. Michelle's friends are trying to find someone else who can come and play with you, but they still haven't called Mommy back."

Today, a woman named Jackie called me to say she would be Michelle's replacement.

"I know you've missed a lot of sessions while we tried to find someone," she said, "So I was thinking I should definitely come every week. Only I can't come at all this week, or the week of the Fourth of July. Oh, and I work with students in August, so I can't come at all in August. But I can come every week other than that."

"Um, isn't Michelle coming back to work at the end of August?"

"Well, yeah, I think so . . . " Jackie said.

"So, you're basically saying that you can come for three weeks in July, and that's it?"

"So, when did Michelle usually come by?" she asked.

I sighed and told her that Michelle came on Tuesday mornings at 9:45. "Isaac usually eats lunch around 11," I explained, "and so she would usually stay until right before lunch so that he would start getting a little bit hungry just as she was starting the food therapy at the end of the session."

"You're saying Michelle would stay for a whole hour?"

"Yes, usually, sometimes more. Why?"

"Oh. Hmm." Jackie paused. "Well, if eating is a problem for him, I don't want him to get stressed out by having someone new around when he's trying to eat."

"Well, actually, you see, Michelle was working on his eating because his eating is his main pro--"

"How about I come at 9 a.m. next Monday and we'll take things from there? I haven't looked at any of his charts yet or anything, and I don't know if I'll get to it this week, so we'll probably need to start from scratch. I don't know if I can stay for a whole hour on Monday, but I can try."

GRRRRR.

Your company has had eight months to prepare for this absence, and you haven't read my son's charts?

I don't like you, Jackie.

Oh, sweet, sweet Michelle. Please come back, as soon as you can, Michelle. You can bring your baby! You know can nurse her right in front of me-- I'll give you nursing tips! I'll hold her for you, and sing to her, and change her diapers, while you try to get my son to play with peanut butter. Or, hey, could we come to your place? I'll cook you lunch. I don't care if your house is messy; I know you've got a new baby. In fact, I'll wash your dishes and do your laundry and scrub your toilets.

Micheeeeeellllllllle . . ..

Testing, Testing . . .

Is this thing still on?

Okay, so, yeah, uh, my husband was out of town last week, and, because we are poor souls with no lives and therefore almost never go anywhere, this was the first time either one of us had been gone for longer than a day, and so my son was all freaking out and refusing to sleep at night and constantly asking where Daddy was, and it kinda sucked.

During this time despite the suckiness I wrote out this whole elaborate outline for an audio post based on a meme I got tagged for, and then I fought with a decidedly cranky Blogger to get my audio post account working, and then I decided my post idea sucked and I needed to do it better, and I came up with this really brilliant idea to write a series of vibrant, descriptive, touching present-tense personal narrative vignettes describing moments in my past and read them out loud, and then I didn't follow through.

(Have you noticed this theme? This theme of me working really hard on something, and then trashing it, and then trying to do it better, but not following through? Yeah. This is the story of my life. I am a perfectionist with little drive (outside of paid work, that is) and no self-confidence. These traits do not play well together. Blogging was supposed to be my lazy outlet, a playground for my mind where I could hang out and write stuff and not care if it was any good or made any sense to anyone but myself. And then I realized that, like, people, cool people, awesomely talented wonderful beautiful admirable people, ACTUALLY READ THIS SHIT. Uh. Oh . . . ).

Also, this weekend, being Father's Day weekend, was kind of booked.

Anyway, just wanted to say: I love my husband-- he's the best dad ever; I my readers-- you're the best readers ever-- and I promise promise promise I will write lots this week! And maybe even finish that post I was tagged for.

How I Know My Son Is Really Reading, Even If Our Doctor Thinks I'm Nuts

Yeah, so, at Isaac's two year check-up about a month ago, the doctor asked me, "So, what sorts of things is he doing, developmentally?"

"Well, he talks quite a bit, often in full sentences, although he still needs to work on his enuncuation, and he walks and runs just fine, although he's a bit more timid than other kids his age, and, um, he builds really tall block towers, and, let me see, he scribbles pretty well with his crayons, and oh-- Did I tell you this at our last visit? He's reading."

To which the doctor, trying very hard not to roll his eyes, responded, "Oh, you mean he remembers some of the words in some of his favorite books and pretends to read along with you?"

"No, no, I mean, he's reading, as in--"

"You mean he recognizes logos on cereal boxes? Or that he knows the titles of some of his books? That's not the same as . . ."

"No, he reads words."

"You mean, he can actually read the same word in different places? In different type styles?" The doctor looked at me with extreme skepticism.

"He read the word 'milk' at the supermarket a few months back, on a generic box of powdered milk that didn't have any pictures of milk on it. His father and I both saw him. We hardly believed it ourselves, but we've seen him read more words since then."

The doctor shook his head. I imagine he was thinking that only way to deal with this delusional woman was to humor her.

"Oh, well, that's nice," he said, and quickly changed the subject.

Well, Mister Doctor Man can go and eat his textbooks for all I care. Do you know what I caught my son saying this week while watching television?"

1.) During a Home Depot commercial, he said, "Mommy, let's go to the Home Depot again!"

He pronounced the "T."

To my knowledge no one has ever mispronounced the word "depot" in his presence. This means HE READ THE WORD. Not only did he read it, he SOUNDED IT OUT.

Don't believe me?

2.) Tonight when we turned on Comedy Central to watch the repeat of last night's Colbert Report, Isaac said, "Colbert is coming on!"

And he said Col-BerT. He pronounced the "T."

Come on, now. Stephen Colbert doesn't even pronounce the "T" in Report.

Now do you believe me?

Summer Resolutions

I resolve . . .

To make no more resolutions ;)

Mother Guilt

Saturday morning, while we waited in line at the grocery store, Isaac tugged at my hand impatiently, trying to pull me around the cart toward the candy stacked up near the checkout. "You don't need any of that, dear," I sighed. "You already have plenty of candy at home."

The well-dressed, quiet, 40-something woman buying groceries in front of us turned away from the teenaged cashier's half-hearted attempts to engage her in a conversation to watch him as he moved on to the magazine rack, pointing at the photos.

"My son had red hair," the woman said, blinking fiercely, her voice curiously flat-- studiedly neutral. "Every time I see a little boy that age with red hair, it reminds me of him."

I looked up from my son to her face. She was staring at him unabashedly, her eyes alight with such fierce longing that without even thinking I snatched him up and wrapped him tightly in my arms.

For once, he didn't protest.

He flashed the woman a quick, flirtatious grin, then turned in my arms and started waving at his father, begging Daddy to let him hold the debit card.

The woman sighed, and as she turned away to finish paying for her groceries, wiped a tear from her cheek.

***

On the way home from the store, I read a book while my husband drove. It was a fantasy novel, about a village of women who were all natural sorceresses, drawing their power from a goddess of fertility. The most powerful witch in the village could not control her magic powers, because she was unable to bear children.

***

Saturday afternoon, after my husband went off to work an evening show, a package arrived in the mail for my son. It was a birthday package, three weeks late, from my mother.

Isaac was sleeping. I woke him from his nap, which had already been too long. "You have a package from Grandma Diana!" I said.

"Package?" He popped up from his bed, immediately wide awake.

"It's a birthday present! From Grandma Diana."

He jumped down off his bed and ran into the living room. He pointed at the box.

"Presents?"

"Yes, baby. Presents!"

He paused thoughtfully.

"Grandma Lori?"

"No dear, from Grandma Diana. My Mommy. Your grandma who lives very far away."

"Grandma Tammie?"

"No, Isaac, Grandma Diana. Diana. You talk to her sometimes on the phone."

"Grandma Mary?"

"No, it's from--"

"Grandma Lori!" he declared, with confidence, and started to tear open the box.

"No! Stop! Don't open it yet. Come here first." I grabbed his hand and pulled him over to the end table, where I keep the family photo albums. I pulled out a set of photos from his first year, a set from his second, a set of wedding photos, an album of my husband's family. Isaac squirmed, looking at his unopened package of presents. Finally at the bottom of the pile I found my own old family photos.

"Look, here." I pointed to a photo of my mother at her wedding. "This is Grandma Diana." I turned the page and pointed to a picture of my mother holding me as a newborn. "This is Grandma Diana." My mother with my newborn sister. "This is Grandma Diana." My mother, thin and nervous, but strong, posing with my sister and me at her very first apartment after my parents' divorce. "This is Grandma Diana." My mother sending me off on my first day of school. "This is Grandma Diana." My mother boarding a Greyhound Bus on the way to Washington for an Equal Rights Amendment March. "This is Grandma Diana." My mother, my sister and me at the zoo. "This is Grandma Diana." My mother, pregnant with my brother. "This is Grandma Diana." My mother teaching. My mother reciting at a poetry reading. My mother dancing. My mother baking a birthday cake.

"This is Grandma Diana."

"Oh, Grandma Diana." He beamed.

"Yes, and after we open the package, we will call Grandma Diana right away and tell her thank you, won't we?"

"Yes! Call Grandma Diana!" he shouted with glee.

(We did).

Foodie Blues

Today we drove a long ways south to Imperial, MO to visit one of Isaac's grandmothers. On the way back home, we stopped at the only Whole Foods Market in town, a place we rarely get to visit since we moved to the suburbs because it's 45 minutes away from our home in traffic.

(Considering that A.) I'm a vegetarian and B.) I own 32 cookbooks, the fact that we live so far from Whole Foods is probably great for our grocery budget).

We were there to pick up some soy milk, some ginger, some veggie hot dogs, and a type of sweet potato chips Isaac likes, but on the way in I noticed that they had fresh corn in the husk on sale at eight ears for a dollar. Big ears, in crisp, bright green husks.

My husband rolled his eyes at me as I ran over to the display and began to stuff an enormous plastic bag full of corn. "I guess we'll be having corn for dinner all week?" he sighed.

My husband doesn't much care for corn.

As a matter of fact, he doesn't much care for vegetables. Period.

Standing in front of the shopping cart, all ready to push it straight to the snack aisle, my son called plaintively, "Chips? Chips?" His expression seemed to say, Get a move on already, old lady.

When we arrived home, after putting away the groceries, I cracked open one of the ears. A crisp, green, summery scent wafted through my kitchen. Beneath the husk and yellow silk, alternating white and gold kernels shone waxy and plump. As I tore away the husk, I saw that the ear was absolutely perfect-- full, smooth and straight; not a single shriveled or missing kernel. I opened a second ear: also perfect. Gorgeous.

I carried one into the living room, where my husband was futzing with his laptop while my son watched a DVD.

"Look at this!" I said to my husband. "Isn't it beautiful? There's not a blemish on it! And it smells delicious."

Glancing distractedly up from his computer, he said, "I see corn."

Sighing, I grabbed an ear that was still in the husk, and approached my son. "Look at this pretty corn, Isaac! Do you want to help mommy open this green envelope it's in? There are pretty little kernels inside!"

He glanced at me, then turned his attention back to his DVD-- a short film he'd already seen three times today.

"You could help me put the husks in the trash?" I wheedled. He loves to open and close the trash can in the kitchen-- it's one of the kinds with a lid that opens when you step on a pedal.

I could have sworn he scoffed.

I went back into the kitchen and resumed cooking dinner. I made barbeque hamburgers for my husband and son, a barbeque veggie burger for myself, an East Indian-style potato salad with red potatoes, peas, and shredded carrots in a cumin-cilantro-yogurt dressing with fresh cilantro picked from my garden (we can't have American or German-style potato salad, because my husband won't eat mayonnaise), and fresh roasted corn-on-the-cob, with organic lemonade to drink.

The burgers (as far as I could tell from looking at the meat ones) were thick and juicy. The exotic potato salad was bright and refreshing. The corn was the sweetest, juicest, most amazing corn I've tasted in ages-- it didn't even need a drop of butter.

My son, as usual, didn't touch a bite of anything, and haughtily demanded crackers, chicken nuggets, and chocolate milk, which we gave him, which he then also didn't eat.

When I asked my husband about dinner, he said, "Well, the hamburgers were pretty good."

"And the corn? Wasn't it great?" I said hopefully.

"Ummmm."

Let me tell you, coming from him, that's high praise.

*sigh*

Is it any wonder I dream longingly of people inviting themselves over for dinner?

Thanks, Julius!

International child model Isaac, in Okaidi.




At a recent photo shoot, Isaac confided to a group of photographers that from now on he will insist that all of his t-shirts be imported from Europe.





A close friend of Isaac confirms the handsome, precocious youngster remarked, "It has been my experience that European designers tend to show a much greater attention to fine detail than American designers when creating casual clothes."





But when asked if an exclusive promotion deal with Okaidi might be in the works, our secret source's lips remained sealed, reporting only: "Isaac is working on a number of exciting new projects this year."

(Thanks for sending us a birthday gift all the way from Italy, Nacken Family!)

A Week Late and Several Marbles Short

Where has The Discontented One been?

1.) Sulking, discontentedly. Hiding in a deep, dark mental cave. Basking, if you will, in a long dark teatime of the soul.

2.) Re-reading The Da Vinci Code, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything, and Borges' Ficciones. In an attempt to reorder her brain cells in such a fashion as to make them cease to wish sulking. It didn't really work.

(Yes, fellow book snobs, I know The Da Vinci Code sucks, from a literary standpoint, in terms of writing quality, but the twisted plotting is fun, and I was in a free-speechy stick-it-to-the-whiny-establishment sort of mood this week, even though I wasn't doing much talking).

Of course, like all of you other MommyBloggers out there, I thought Her Bad Mother had an excellent idea in her Mother's Day Mommy-Blogger Love-In. I found out about this whole beautiful bloglove exchange when Andrea over at Little Bald Doctors put me (*blush*) on her Mother's Day honor roll.

But did I post? No. I drafted. I dawdled. I re-drafted. I edited.

I finally got fed up with these sort of delay tactics, and turned off my computer for three days.

Now, here I am, swimming frantically in the fading wake of the Love Boat (By the by, did I mention I can't really swim?) Chasing the caboose of the meme train. Arriving at the blog party just as the DJ packs up and the waiters start collecting empty champagne bottles and ushering the last few weepy drunks out the door.

However, I am nothing if not one of the world's greatest procrastinators.

And some people need some props here, and I suppose they come better belated than never.

So, here they come, the women you've all been waiting for:

Mommybloggers who've made a difference. In my life, and I suspect, in the lives of many other women looking for the wit, wisdom and companionship of other mothers online.

I'll start with one of my earliest supporters in blogland: Andrea of Little Bald Doctors

An amazingly prolific blogger, Andrea never ceases to amaze me with the consistent beauty and coherence of her long, frequent, essay-quality posts. Despite coping with her own stressful day job and her husband's erratic work schedule on top of the trials and tribulations of mothering a two-year-old, this woman is a regular blogging machine who puts weaker blogbeings such as myself to shame.

She is also one of the most versatile bloggers I've come across. I never know when I visit whether I'll find a charming anecdote about her son's freakish obsession with Spongebob, or blistering social commentary about the state of mainstream journalism. I will not be at all surprised to see her name on the NYT Bestsellers list as soon as she finds time to finish that thriller she's working on.

Then there are Lisa, of Midwestern Mommy, and Dawn, of I Am Doing The Best I Can.

I can honestly say that finding Dawn's and Lisa's blogs really actually seriously and truly rescued me from a black pit of despair.

When I started blogging here at Blogger, I was still struggling to come to terms with my son's serious eating problems, trying to wrap my head around the fact that I was trying to mother a baby who JUST WOULDN'T EAT. My very first entry on this blog was a sort of a cry in the wilderness, searching for understanding I felt might never come. After months of healthcare professionals running invasive, often painful tests on my child, shaking their heads in befuddlement, and nearly always finally insisting that all of my son's problems must just come down to "manipulative behavioral issues" on my son's behalf which they could only attribute to "inexperienced parenting" on mine, finally, I found a group of occupational therapists who were able to give me a true diagnosis: my son had Sensory Integration Disorder, and it actually wasn't my fault.

And then, hard on the heels of this much sought-after diagnosis, who should appear almost instantly from the internet ether with words of support and wisdom but Lisa and Dawn? Women who also each had a child with this disorder. Kind strangers who showed more understanding and compassion about what my son and I were going through than I'd received even from some close friends and family members.

Lisa, a powerfully (if occasionally oddly) funny woman who seems to constantly wear her wry sense of humor as an impenetrable armor against the slings and arrows of parenting, makes me laugh out loud with almost every single post, and she handles the hurdles of raising a child with special needs with a grace and perspective I aspire to daily. Lisa radiates positive energy into the world through her computer.

And Dawn, whose daughter has learning disabilities and ADD on top of Sensory Integration Disorder. Dawn who had been a professional childcare expert before being a mother, who thought she knew how to handle any kid on the planet until her own came along. Dawn who had to wait not my measly eighteen months, but FIVE YEARS before finally getting a diagnosis for her daughter's many health and behavioral problems.

As I read her archives I discovered that nearly every difficult, scary thing I was going through with my own child, Dawn had already been through with her daughter-- in fact, that Dawn and her daughter had already both been through far worse-- and they were both still alive and kicking. Kicking serious ass, in fact. In tandem. I always imagine their house is sort of like The Matrix.

I started reading I Am Doing the Best I Can because it made me feel like my family and I weren't alone with my son's mysterious illness.

I keep reading it because it's one of the best damn blogs I've ever found.

I am sure by now that Dawn realizes I've been stalking her like a madwoman since the day she first left a comment on my site, and yet, she's much too polite to question me about my mental health. She's just classy like that. (Although I'm sure if she saw me in person wearing, say, an oversized track suit and worn-out tennis shoes from Target, she wouldn't hesitate to turn me in to the Fashion Police).

More recently, I've become positively addicted to Liz at Mom-101, who is probably one of the best writers on Earth, and most assuredly deserves whatever astronomical salary I hope to high heaven someone is actually paying her for flying between New York and L.A. weekly for her supercool advertising job, often having to leave the second most adorable baby I've ever seen behind for several days.

Liz describes her struggle to balance her home life with her career with such pathos-inspiring immediacy and such breathtaking beauty that I sometimes feel convinced if enough corporate overlords were forced to read her blog, Congress would suddenly pass a law declaring every day a Take Your Baby to Work Day.

But I'm probably giving the corporate overlords too much credit.

And my newest blog crush is Lildb over at I Obsess, a fairly new blogger whose well-composed musings remind me a lot of myself a little over a year ago, when my son was the same age her son is now. Only she writes better.

But you know, the sappy truth is, Mommybloggers, I love all of you. (And Daddybloggers, I love you too!)

One of the main reasons it's taken me a week to finish this post is that I actually wanted to write about my whole damn blogroll. And a lot of people who aren't on my blogroll. Even a couple of people whose blogs touched me months or a year ago, who sadly don't have time to write anymore.

So much in my life changed when I became a parent, and so many of my real life friends have since drifted away, unable to handle my new child-altered lifestyle. One of the hardest parts of parenting my son, for me, has been the feeling of isolation I've felt from the adult world since I quit my job and began working from home.

And yet, through the parenting blog community, I have been able to find so much amazing advice, support, and companionship. I never believed a virtual world could be so fulfilling. I am grateful to so many of you for helping me keep my own sanity, often by publicly sharing how close you've come to losing your own.

Thanks, friends.

The Birthday Party

I haven't posted about this yet because it's taken me three days to recover from it.

Also, I didn't take enough photos. I let a friend convince me to let her take photos during the party so that I could actually be in the pictures for once, but apparently in my post-party-prep stupor I didn't do a good enough job of showing her how to focus my camera, so . . .

Anyway, this was the cake I made for the party:







As you can see, it was actually two cakes. The top cake was a butter yellow cake, coated with a clear powdered-sugar-and-egg-white glaze (made with pasteurized egg whites, of course-- let's not poison the kiddies, here). I applied the glaze with a pastry brush, then added the rainbow sprinkles while the glaze was still wet so that they would stick when it dried. My European blogfriend Peter Nacken will be pleased to note that the cake was cooked, in true Extravagant American Child's Birthday Party fashion, in a $30 Nordic Ware Castle Bundt pan.

The bottom cake was a chocolate cake. The frosting was homemade vanilla-mint buttercream, made with all butter and no shortening, because I don't like shortening.

If you've never made frosting from scratch at home before, I sincerely recommend you try it. It's really not that difficult, and once you've tasted homemade buttercream frosting, you will never, ever want to go back to the kind you get in a can. Seriously. My recipe follows:

1 lb (4 sticks) unsalted butter
2 lbs (one standard package) powdered sugar
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
other flavor extracts, food coloring or cocoa optional

Let butter soften to room temperature. Put butter in a large, heavy mixing bowl, and chop it into chunks with a knife or mash it up with a spoon to make it easier to beat. Add milk and vanilla. Gradually add sugar, beating with a handheld electric beater, until sugar is fully incorporated and mixture is fluffy. Unplug beater and then hold a household auction for the privilege of licking it clean.

(Yes, folks, that was ONE POUND of butter and TWO POUNDS of sugar sitting on top of that chocolate cake. And it was worth every single calorie).

In addition to the castle cake, I also mixed, rolled, cut, baked and decorated cookies by hand in the shape of cars and train engines:





I had to make these cookies twice, actually, because half of the first batch got burned when my husband forgot to take them out of the oven for me while I put Isaac to bed. This will henceforth be known as "The Great Birthday Cookie Burning Incident."

I also made some trains and cars without icing so that Isaac would actually eat them.

I also made cookies in the shape of letters that spelled out "Happy Birthday Isaac," with the idea that I would make more train cookies and put the letters on top of the train cookies and have an edible "Happy Birthday Isaac" train going around the table. Then I realized that idea was INSANE, so I wound up laying the "Happy Birthday Isaac" cookies in a circle around the cake, but unfortunately I didn't take a photo of it.

I put up crepe paper decorations all around the dining/living room:





And arranged a cracker tray, a deli meat tray, a deli cheese tray, and a vegetable and dip tray, all by hand.

My husband was strangely absent for most of these preparations. I believe his disappearance may have had something to do with a mysterious Dell box that came for him in the mail Friday afternoon . . .





However, he managed to tear himself away from his new electric lover in time to put a folding gazebo tent, a folding table, and some folding chairs outside, so that we would have extra seating space for the party, because we live in a 900 sq ft apartment, and the TV weatherfolks had predicted that the showers the sky was threatening would hold off until the late afternoon.

Ten minutes later, it started to rain.

But it turned out okay, anyway, because half of my husband's family who'd said they were coming-- you know, some of the family I spent a week talking to on the phone trying to schedule the party with? Them? Didn't show up.* So we had lots of room.

And cake.

Speaking of cake, I made the mistake of letting my well-intentioned mother-in-law convince me to do the presents before the cake. You know, like you'd normally do at a birthday party, instead of my weird unconventional plan to do the cake before the presents.





(Do you see me there? Sullenly regarding the proceedings? Don't I look like someone who's been up since 6 a.m. decorating after baking until 2 a.m. the night before? Yeah, thought so.)





So of course, Isaac started crying piteously the moment he realized we all expected him to put his brand new toys away and let us SING to him while we stood in a circle around a BIG PILE of STICKY FOOD that happened to be ON FIRE.

He started screaming in terror midway through the second line of "Happy Birthday," which caused people to stumble to a halt mid-song, until I forced a laugh and said, "Why don't we try singing 'Sad Birthday to You' instead?" after which everyone finished the song, and my husband hurriedly blew out the candle.

Then Isaac refused any cake (I thought at least he might try the kind without frosting, but I guess the group singing bit was too traumatic), and ran off to play with his new Thomas the Tank Engine Duplos.

After the party, he promptly fell asleep, without having eaten more than two bites of food all day, and then when he woke up two hours later he screamed for two hours straight.

All in all, I would say this party went over quite a bit better with him than last year's.

*This wasn't their fault, though. Apparently there was some last minute work interference. Silly work.

All Hail the Fix-It Man

My power to whine at the general public over the internet without having to wait 45 seconds for every web page to load has been restored!

My husband, wizard and sage of all things computer, has temporarily fixed the power supply. He shook some things, jostled some things, pinched some things, unplugged and replugged some things, muttered some sort of profanity-laced incantation, and, voila, our computer turned on.

He said something or other to me that sounded vaguely like "internal breaker blown," and he is of the opinion that we will shortly have to purchase a new power supply regardless of his quick fix if we don't want our whole computer to fry the next time it rains into our electrical system.

But it's sunny out today! At least I can finish these Mother's Day presents I'm making that require Photoshop. Sweet, sweet, lovely, RAM-hogging Photoshop, that will not run worth beans on my ancient other computer.

(P.S. Don't worry, Mom-101: I was only at my secondary computer long enough yesterday to check and make sure our DSL router was still fully functional, as we've already lost one DSL router to all of the power failures and surges we get here. I posted while checking the router out. As soon as I was sure the router hadn't also been fried, I turned the computer off, and I'm happy to report that no electrocutions resulted).

(P.P.S. Andrea, a neighbor and friend of mine already threatened the apartment office with legal action once when our entire building had squirrels in the crawlspaces chewing on the wiring and insulation and they refused to hire an exterminator. They didn't seem to care . . . our complex is owned by a huge corporate conglomerate that is only concerned with the most superficial appearances, and I don't think the management staff in the office feel any sense of real loyalty to the company, or any need to protect its financial interests, let alone any sense of loyalty to the people who live here and would sort of prefer to have their homes not burn down. But it's always worth another try, I guess).

Reason # 5,236 Why I Hate Renting This Apartment

The power goes out when it rains.

Not when it storms:

When it rains.

Because the water gets into our electrical system, due to faulty wiring. And no matter how many times I complain about this, the apartment office insists they have already fixed it, and continues to pretend it's not happening.

I am writing this from the slow, crappy computer in my bedroom, because my main computer JUST HAD ITS POWER SUPPLY FRIED, despite being connected to a surge protector, by a light drizzle.

Do you suppose a computer power supply is worth a pound of a property manager's flesh?

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Happy Birthday, Big Boy

May 9, 2004

May 9, 2005

May 9, 2006

From your first smile, to your first tooth, to your first word, to your first step, to your first tower of blocks, your first drawing, your first time counting to ten, your first Knock Knock joke:

Two years have seemed both an eternity and an instant. And sometimes I think having you in my life has caused me to grow even more than you have.

I can't wait to see what you'll do next.

Things I Never Imagined I'd Say As a Parent:

"Isaac, if you finish your cookies, then you can have more marshmallows."

Of course, I never imagined I'd be pouring half and half into his whole milk, either . . .

My New Celebrity Crush Is Ballsalicious

That's Jon Stewart's word, not mine.

Over at this shiny new blog I'm digging, I Obsess, I found a link to a site called Thank You Stephen Colbert.

This site has links to the full video of Stephen Colbert's "comedic" speech at the recent White House Correspondents' Dinner. I've been meaning to link to a video for this for two days now, but I haven't had a lot of free time to do research on the web and I've had trouble finding a good link to the video in its entirety until now.

If you are a person of any political persuasion who is dissatisfied with our nation's current direction under the reigning administration, and you haven't seen this yet, WATCH IT NOW. If you just read a transcript, or get the gist from a few choice quotes in one of the few mainstream articles to mention this, you will do yourself a disservice, trust me. Seeing searing political satire such as this delivered less than TEN FEET away from its primary intended target is stunning, to say the least.

Say what you will about whether or not it's funny; the point is, it's true.


Note: Being that the Thank You site links to IFILM, and IFILM is skanky, some of the advertised videos on the side may be NSFW, but this is the best quality video I've been able to find.

When the Apocalypse Comes, You Will All Be Heading To My Place for Toothpaste and Toilet Paper

Continuing my series from yesterday, I will now enlighten you, internet, as to the contents of my linen closet.

My linen closet is actually inside my "Guest Bathroom." You know, the one that looked all clean and cute and organized?

Inside my linen closet you will, of course, find linens:




And . . . well . . . some other stuff . . .



I'm not even sure what to say here. You see, I save every free sample I get, I buy everything I can on sale, preferably in bulk, and I HATE running out of things.

I know, I'm insane.

On the upside, though, when we had some Katrina evacuees (families with small children) move into our apartment complex last year with little more than their cars and the shirts on their backs, I was on their doorstep with paper towels, toilet paper, tissues, trash bags, toothpaste, toothbrushes, childproof outlet covers, and diaper wipes, all neatly organized in re-used grocery bags, less than ten minutes after I heard they'd arrived.

Then when my husband got home, I said, "See? This is why I insist on buying tubes of toothpaste in five packs! In case of hurricanes!"

Copycat Bathroom Expose

Wow! I used to be a halfway serious photographer, but I've never realized until today how freakin' hard it is to get decent photos in a bathroom! Seriously! Especially when you have dim, crappy, cheap, circa 1980 light fixtures and enormous mirrors (which tend to screw up your flash).

So, because I totally don't have time today to mess around until I get some decent shots out of my cheap-ass digital point-and-shoot, you'll just have to deal with crappy ones! Bwa ha ha!

I am ganking this post idea from Dawn of I Am Doing the Best I Can, who ganked it from Fancypants. Each of these ladies boldly went where few bloggers have gone before by showing the internet world the contents of her bathroom. However, because we really like to go all-out here at The State of Discontent when copping other bloggers' old ideas due to lack of inspiration, I today will lead you on a guided tour through TWO-- that's right, count 'em-- TWO bathrooms!

Bathroom Number One:







Nice, isn't it? Clean? Inviting? This is what we like to call the "Guest Bathroom."

Of course, it's also where Isaac generally takes his baths. What, you say? This doesn't look like a kid's bathroom? Au contraire. Just pull back that curtain there:



Or open a drawer in the sink cabinet:



Since it's Isaac's bathroom and he spends a lot of time in there, we don't keep much in the cabinet under the sink. Just gallons of water, for use in the event of that disaster I just know is impending, a hot water bottle, and, oh. A little extra toilet paper. Also in case of disaster. You just never know, right?



All right, all right, I hear you. I know what you're saying: "But Jae, come on. You're a chick. We know you've got it. Don't be a tease. Just show us.

"Where's the PRODUCT?"


Bathroom Number Two:



What better way to pay tribute to the blogger you copped a post idea from than to do the entire photo series while showing off your "tatas" in a fashionable baby-doll T-Shirt she added to her "B-List Blogger" Cafepress collection just for you?

Hmmm. Might I be, perhaps, a lotion junkie? A connoisseur of body sprays?

Note, though, that nearly all of these products were bought on sale, at Target, or on sale at Target. Because I may be a product addict, but I am a CHEAP product addict.

Note also my penchant for re-using plastic containers. Hey, our neighborhood has no recycling service, and I have guilt. (And again, I'm cheap). Ten points to the first parent of a child under five who can identify the original contents of those three tall, stylish plastic containers with blue lids on the second shelf! They now hold cotton balls, cotton swabs, etc.




(I know you see that pregnancy test box in there, but no, people, I am NOT pregnant, nor am I currently trying to get pregnant. I am just exceedingly paranoid ;) )

Like Dawn, I apparently have a phobia of running out of "feminine hygiene" accessories. And Olay Daily Facials.

Also, if you'll look closely, you'll see that I have both a package of Clorox sanitizing wipes and a package of generic window cleaning wipes in my sink cabinet. This is so I can clean the bathroom without ever leaving it. Because if I leave the bathroom while cleaning it, someone will invariably interrupt me, and I will never finish cleaning.

There's also a little water jet thingy in there from Homedics that's supposed to turn your regular old bathtub into a relaxing "Water Spa," but considering that I've gotten to take about two tub baths in the past year, it's not seen much action . . .

So, that's the tour. Next up: The Linen/Utility/Bulk Cosmetics/Natural Disaster Preparedness Closet.

Check It Out

Just for Peter, I added some links in my sidebar related to Sensory Integration Disorder (which is also sometimes called Sensory Processing Disorder). It's not quite a PSA post, but I'll get to that, I promise :)

This Is Not a Post

Okay, so this morning, realizing that I hadn't posted in a week, and fearing that any cool kids here in blogland who've been checking me out lately to see if I might be hip enough to blogroll were probably all about to drop me like a bad habit if I didn't post something interesting TODAY, I started racking my brain for something to post about.

Should I steal Dawn's idea from many weeks back, as I've been meaning to ever since I saw it, and post photos of my bathroom, or, say, my ridiculously overstocked linen/utility closet, alongside some witty, self-deprecating commentary? Oh crap, that's right. The boy has been throwing screaming fits every time I bring out the camera lately, because he wants to play with it (and yes, he has a toy camera. In fact it's not even a toy camera-- it's a REAL, cheap film camera my husband doesn't use anymore. But he doesn't WANT that dumb old camera, because it doesn't have a nifty digital display). I don't know if I'm up for that sort of craziness before noon, thanks. We're out of milk, too, so I haven't had my coffee. Because my stomach wasn't up for black coffee today.

Should I post a long explanatory Public Service post, all about the symptoms of Sensory Integration Disorder, for those who come here and aren't quite sure what I'm talking about when I mention it? Peter Nacken asked me about this earlier today, and I've been meaning to do something like this for a while. But I want to link to all these other sites for that one, and I'm not in the mood do do research.

That post exploring the intricacies regarding teaching your American meltingpot children about their diverse racial, cultural and religious heritage I've been knocking around in my head? Aww, too heavy. How about next week?

Something on being a feminist SAHM? Am I too late to jump on this feminism meme? Is that so last week?

Argh!

Can you tell? I've been feeling so uninspired lately!

So why don't I just whine about my week, as usual?

Isaac's getting his last set of molars in, and therefore has been rockin' the premature terrible twos, and pretty much refusing to sleep when it's dark outside.

My husband has been sucked into a computer game all week, and I can't complain, because he really deserves some time to himself, and I'm actually quite glad he's been getting it, but it's sort of been cramping my internet addict style.

And yes, we have three computers in this house. But one of them is my husband's laptop, about which he is somewhat territorial, and anyway it's slow as molasses and only runs Linux. I have nothing against Linux, mind you, but it doesn't run Dreamweaver, or Photoshop, which I've been pretending to work in lately while I actually read blogs.

And the other computer only recently got reassembled after I finished refinishing the desk it lives on, and one of its speakers is broken because my husband knocked it off the monitor the other day, and I think I need to run an antivirus on it or something because Firefox keeps acting up.

I've been trying to finish a seemingly endless list of random chores that have been put off too long around the house, like spackling some nail holes, framing and hanging some photographs, fixing a door that hangs funny, reorganizing my pantry, reorganizing my study-in-the-bedroom to accommodate space for my husband's new electronic-device-building hobby, etcetera.

When my husband's not been on the good computer and I haven't been otherwise occupied, I've been messing with my new site graphics, which, after talking to this exceedingly picky and critical friend of mine who I used to do magazine layout with, I now think are HOPELESSLY AWFUL, and I feel like I might just have to scrap the whole theme.

And when not fixing up my house or sneaking onto the good computer I've been calling family member after family member trying to figure out what one day in the enitre 31 day month of May will somehow magically work out for all of them for Isaac's birthday, because apparently, not only do 50 family members expect to be invited, but they also expect us to schedule our son's birthday around ALL of their work and social schedules for the month.

My mother-in-law at one point even seriously suggested to me that we should just have the party more than three weeks after his birthday. More than. THREE WEEKS. AFTER. "He's too young to even know when his birthday is," she insisted. "You could even do it a whole month later and he wouldn't notice."

She may have been right, but this reminded me far too much of my own mother's sudden "epiphany" right around my much-younger brother's second birthday that she could really just skip all holidays outside of Christmas until my brother was in elementary school, because he "wouldn't even know the difference anyway." Not because of any religious issues, mind you, but just because she thought hiding Easter eggs and such for such a small person was "too much hassle."

(Please note that this wasn't because my mother was a bad parent. She was just burned out on kid wrangling after single-parenting two girls while working her way through school, and after her third kid turned out to have serious behavioral and health problems, well, let's just say the poor woman was sort of kicking off a decade-long nervous breakdown at the time).

But guess what? I was talking to little bro on the phone recently. He is now almost thirteen years old, and turns out he DOES remember those years.

In that, he remembers that his oldest sister painted and hid Easter eggs, made Valentine's decorations and cards for him, and made sure he went trick-or-treating every year ;) He recently made a point to thank me for this.

(What, did you honestly think I'd let the kid go without holidays? What kind of a big sister do you think I am? Pul-lease).

So, regarding Isaac's birthday, finally, I put my foot down, and . . .

Told a co-worker of John's we can't go to his wedding but might be able to make it to the reception, so I can have Isaac's birthday party on a Saturday, even though I wanted to have it on a Sunday, during the middle of the day, even though I wanted to have it in the late afternoon or early evening, so that all of Isaac's grandparents and aunts and uncles (excepting the ones on my side) can come without having to rearrange a single thing on any of their schedules.

I am such a wimp.

But at least my son's party will be in the same week as his actual birthday.

So, anyway, that's been my week. How was yours?