I go to parties, sometimes until four / It's hard to leave when you can't find the door

Nearly six years later, it still remains true: Even the most fleeting thought of this makes me lose my shit entirely. Oh bless you, internets, for in you I find my life.

"Oh, the Danburrys! Big alums!"

In my current lifestyle, I not infrequently come into contact with people who are at that next level of wealth and connection -- the one where it goes beyond just having a comfortable income and having what you need in terms of consumer goods and the like: the level where they're not the ones going to the gala charity functions, and not organizing them, but being the whales that support them or the name that gets it done in the first place. But I think this is maybe where I, personally, top out -- me with my small-town Methodist pridefully-poor background, my scholarship-supported Ivy League education, etc.; I get glimpses of what happens behind those doors, and occasionally get vaguely invited into the lobby ... but I don't know how to walk through, nor, honestly, what I would want that for. Case in point: a family party Mr. Gleemonex and the kids and I went to on Saturday night. Fun party, love the hostess, but the place was chock full of the kind of people who are on the boards of stuff (i.e., a person more adept at and desirous of making that type of connection could've had a very productive evening), and I spent fully half of my time talking to two 20-something German au pairs. Oh well! They were funny and interesting -- who cares if they can't get me on some bullshit board.

Wolves not far

My eye fell upon this, in the leveled-reading section, as I exited my kid's classroom through the library last week ... and I've been laughing about it at least once an hour ever since.

Don't lean on me, man, cause you can't afford the ticket

How come every time I go to Michael's, the place is filled with legit demented people?

I don't mean Pinterest Moms -- they're quietly demented, in a way that I can actually understand, because goddammit I do like crafts and if I had a sexually-uninteresting husband, I could see falling down that rabbit hole in a big way. No, I mean serious, genuine, criggity-craggity-cray folk, like the lady who kept trying to talk to me about whether aqua was a good color for her and whether this or that was "too much" as she tried on bead jewelry and laughed inappropriately and I tried to figure out how many of these fucking favor bags I have to buy for Kid Gleemonex's upcoming birthday party. I AM MATHING HERE. I CANNOT MATH THIS WITH THINGS FALLING OUT OF YOUR BLAB-HOLE INTO MY EAR. Or the one with no bra who followed me down the aisle of $1 wooden boxes/birdhouses/picture frames asking me what I was going to do with "all them tiny birdhouses." (In her defense, the 20 of them I bought must have seemed a lot for someone who didn't already smell of bird droppings.)* OR the lady with one fully-bandaged arm and zero shoes upon her feet, who appeared to be trying to run some sort of returning-items-for-cash scam, at absolutely glacial speed, on a teenage cashier who clearly did not have English as her first language but was trying heroically hard to be fair and pleasant.

Where did they come from, where do they go? Don't look now, it's crazy-eyed joe!

---------------------------------------------------
*If you must know, it's a birthday party craft I found on, um. Pinterest. They're fairy houses. Or will be, when they're painted and have a bunch of glittery stickers and shit all over them.

Workin' on my night cheese

Disgusting Food-Liquids That Are Supposedly Harmless: An Incomplete List

• The watery whey-milk that usually manages to crest the top of the waxed-paper inner barrier of my Fage yogurts. Pleh. 
• Tuna-can water. You can never ever not get that stuff on your hand. Everybody Loves Raymond did a bit about it that ran through an entire episode once, and throughout, I was like: Truth. 
• The gunk surrounding the weiners in a pack of turkey dogs. I mean, they're supposedly cooked and this stuff is -- what? Lube so you can get the GD dogs out of the package? 
• The oil on top of a fresh jar of Skippy Natural peanut butter. Why god why. 
• The bean-liquor that rises to the top of a can of pintos. For some reason, the same stuff in a can of black beans doesn't bother me as much, but the pintos -- uccch. 

Plus a whole bunch of New Yorkers

The summer do take a bite, don't she?

Some Books I Have Read Lately, and Brief Thoughts Thereupon

Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood: Short stories, some of which are loosely connected, all of which are goddamn ridiculously good and stick in the brain like oatmeal in a toddler's hair.

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast: Cartoon memoir, I guess? Powerful, occasionally funny, occasionally bleak, had the side effect of making me see the silver lining of my parents both dying relatively young and suddenly.

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel: Hoooooo boy. Apocalyptic/dystopian, aka right up my alley; Atwoodian, even further up my alley. Absolutely fucking compelling (I mean I for real COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN), and in parts extremely unsettling.

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel: Still not finished, but really liking this -- I'm not generally the graphic novel type (the Chast notwithstanding), but it's the perfect way of expression for this story.

Microserfs, Douglas Coupland: A re-read, at an interval of about 10 years. Still love it (although I skimmed a whole lot of the Deep Thoughts About Man and Machine). Fun to see what has and has not changed in Silicon Valley (Apple, for instance, is circling the toilet at the time of the novel -- people hoping for a buyout package so they can leave, Steve Jobs ousted, etc.). Made me ugly-cry at the end.

You can wear my clothes

Anybody wanna know what my 1993 was like?

The lengthy excerpt from Margaret Atwood's "Cat's Eye" is not even the weirdest part of all this.

I do not have time right now to go into this, because I have to go practice my bass and then go get my kids from school, but the September 1989 issue of Seventeen is making me feel as though I have not ever had an original thought in my ENTIRE LIFE, as if everything I have ever thought, or felt, or worn, or held in esteem, came from this ancient scroll which I now hold in my hands. TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE.

Cause darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream

So I am feeling very very weird right now, because it's my first full day alone since the three weeks of pre-delivery maternity leave I took in October/November 2011 -- Danger Toddler is now Danger Preschooler, three days a week. 

I keep checking my rear-view mirror as I drive, having mini-panic attacks to see the carseat empty -- but then, I'm listening to Stern, which I haven't been able to do since he was a pre-verbal baby, so that's cool. I went to get a mammogram this morning after the gym because I am officially An Old (and lol, two hours later, I just realized I still have the stickers on -- they put these stickers around your nipple and any moles, of which I have one, to distinguish them on X-ray from stuff that oughtn't to be there), and only really "got" to do the mammo because I could go to the doc alone. I have not watched a single Paw Patrol, Olivia, or Blaze and the Monster Machines episode today; instead, I have dealt with arranging a trip for my in-laws, sorted out various "estate" stuff with my siblings, made plans for a wedding we're going to in July, done some work on a pediatric cancer fundraiser, eaten a real lunch, and now am writing (without worrying that every time I move my chair an inch, the scraping sound on the tile floor will wake the kid from his nap and Productive Tyme is over). And but I am oddly bereft, verklempt even, and missing his sweet little ol' voice -- nobody's asked me for "gummy beaws" all day today, or told me that the 18-inch-tall plastic dinosaur is his "banana shooter" and is about to shoot bananas at me, so "Wook out, Mommy, or you'll get banana on you!"

So, back to eating more of those cream-cheese-filled cupcakes I made with Kid Gleemonex the other day. And also to more writing. The time has come. 

Deep Thoughts, to get a post up technically still in February

You know what from the 90s/aughts just does not hold up? Pearl Jam. I can't really figure out why -- too serious? Takes itself too seriously, more to the point? Kind of plodding, and not very hooky or melodically interesting, especially minus the visual of Earlier Eddie Vedder, which at one time, was rather compelling? All of this and more, no doubt.

"SO proud to work for a company that values its supply-chain workers!"

You know, one of the greatest things I most deeply appreciate about no longer working for my former employer (the global specialty apparel retailer, founded and headquartered in San Francisco) is that I am no longer obligated -- via the ol' unspoken expectation method -- to post this company's happenings on my own personal social media presences, as if I just thought of doing so myself, out of sheer genuine appreciation for its excellent products, good works and fine deeds. I see former co-workers putting up these posts, and I'm just like ... thank the living Shatner I ain't got to prove my loyalty like that anymore.

Now it's back to just stuff where if I give them money, I get products in return. Like from the Gap or Archie McPhee.

For an anxious person, I really am extremely good at finding the silver lining in the clouds -- or, as Ma Ingalls would put it, and I would agree: "There's no great loss without some small gain."

So what I'm thinking about the inexplicable RAIN OF REPUBLICAN SHITBURGERS that was Election Day is: At least I won't be getting an anxious, hand-wringing, chickens-running-around-with-their-heads-cut-off money-begging email every seventeen goddamn seconds from Nancy Pelosi, Act Blue, DCCC, Wendy Davis, Jim Dean, Howard Dean, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood, Organizing for Action, and/or any of the randos involved in comms for any of these people or their orgs. It's been quieter in the old in-box, which is somewhat of a relief at this point, after months of this shit.

Work-appropriate?

Every once in awhile, I wonder what in the sam hill I am doing looking at fashion-y websites. Me, who is (am?) sitting here in my kitchen, eating a scrambled-egg-with-mega-Sriracha-and-cheese on tortilla, drinkin a Safeway seltzer, wearing my Vandelay Industries t-shirt, no makeup (I ... think I own some that is still good? somewhere?) with my hair up in a clip (still sweaty from the gym -- I showered but didn't wash my hair, the better to maintain the expensive dye job). It amuses me, this habit of mine, useless and strange though it certainly be ...

ono i drobbed it my gum

yoo guys i cannt stoplauvhing


dissis my favrit

A-W-E! S-O-M-E! We're awesome! We're awesome! Like to-tal-ly!

So after Kid Gleemonex's first day of first grade yesterday (she LOVED it and is thrilled to death with her classroom, her teacher, and the one friend from last year who's in the same class, yaaaaaaaaaay!), we are driving past her future high school on the way to get some ice cream for a first-day treat. There's a large knot of San Dimas High School cheerleaders ambling up the road, in uniform (which of course is how we know what their deal is). Kid Gleemonex has a slight interest in cheerleaders, I think because she likes costumes. She says to me, "I think those are cheerleaders."

I say, "Yeah, looks like it."

She says, "Huh." Considering. "Were you a cheerleader?"

"Noooooo! My mom and sister were, though. I never wanted to -- well, no, in 6th grade, I tried out for 7th grade cheerleader [ten-minute digression on tryouts, which are like auditions, but in front of the whole school in this case] -- anyway, I tried out, mostly because everybody else seemed to be doing it, and then I didn't make the team, and I was disappointed for like that one day, but then after I was SO GLAD I didn't -- my gosh, it takes up SO MUCH TIME. And besides, it's -- at least these days, it's a legit sport, it's very very athletic, but I still don't like that it's mostly girls cheering on a bunch of boys who actually play the sports."

Kid G. nods, thoughtful. (The traffic is horrendous, we've gone like a hundred yards in 15 minutes, remind me never to go past a high school at 3:30 in the p.m.)

"I don't want to do it, either."

Me, doing what I always do, qualifying and overexplaining everything, in this instance mostly because I fear her, ten years from now, doing a thing I loathe just to rebel against me: "Well -- you know, if it's something you really, really want to do when you're older, we'll talk about it then ..."

Definitively: "No, I don't want to. It's OK."

That's my girl, y'all. That's my girl.

GILF

At the gym I go to -- which is a low-cost but perfectly adequate operation, full of parents of young children (whose children go, like mine, to the Kids' Club to watch random snippets of Frozen or else that one about the princess and the frog?) and cranky retirees who look put out that it's come this, at last -- there is a car always parked in the far end of the lot with the license plate FXYNANA. It's one of those Cube thingies, or whatever -- like a literal box on wheels, marketed as like a rolling dorm room for The Kids Today but bought exclusively by the 55-plus crowd.

And for the entire three years I've been going there, I've suffered a stupid twinge of annoyance whenever my eye falls upon this license plate (I have a longstanding problem with non-witty, non-easily-understood vanity plates). I couldn't figure it out. I thought it was something about "fixies," which apparently is some sort of annoying hipster thing about bicycles?  Or ... is it ... an acronym? Should I read it right-to-left? Goddammit.

Today -- TODAY -- I realized: it means FOXY NANA. As in, a grandma who is (still? or perhaps newly?) foxy. And right away -- well, as soon as I got over berating myself for missing it all that time -- my brain said to me, in the Seinfeld voice when he's complaining about the pirate shirt, "But I don't WANNA be a foxy nana!"



----------------------------
I'd like to be -- you know, fit and healthy, and take care of myself, and dress well and have good hair and all, and I hope Mr. Gleemonex still finds me doable forever and ever -- but I don't wanna be chasing "foxy" when I am a grandmother (or of a grandmotherly age). Is there nothing, NOTHING, that we can just let go about our youth? Have some pride! Gosh!

210, 220, whatever it takes.

Me Attempting to Explain the SAT to Kid Gleemonex, Who Is Six, In Which My Experience Was Over 20 Years and Several Major Test Iterations Ago (A Conversation Occasioned by Reading About Laura Ingalls Sitting for the County Teachers' Examinations in These Happy Golden Years)

Me: So they only give the test once a month, and you had to pay for it and sign up for it way in advance, and you could choose your testing location but it was always at like a high-school cafeteria or a junior college lecture hall --

Kid Gleemonex: Can you sit wherever you want? Are there other kids there, or just you? Are there teachers there?

Me: [Answers all Qs, with digression on what a proctor is]. Anyway, it's this big important test, and how you score on it determines the kinds of colleges you can get into --

KG: How come? Why would they make you take a test like that? What is it FOR?

Me: [deciding against going as far back as the anti-Semite stuff, opting to start with the modern-day justification] Well, the IDEA of it is that since all high schools are different -- different teachers, different books, different grading systems -- this test is supposed to be an objective measure of what students know. Well, at least in math and verbal --

KG: Verbal is words?

Me: Yes! Exactly! So -- I dunno how they do it now, but at least in my day, there were six sections, three math, three verbal, and they could be in any order -- each test booklet is different, so you can't just look at the girl's test next to you and copy her --

KG: Egor tries to copy me all the time.

Me: I know, poor old Egor, he's not quite where you are on his reading comprehension, is he? Anyway. So it's just you and your sharpened #2 pencils and what's in your head -- you can't bring any books or notes or computers in the room --

KG: [Katya] gave me a Frozen pencil!

Me: I know! It's neat isn't it? Anyway -- so it's just you in there, working your problems, and there's a time limit on each section, and when they call time, you just have to put your pencil down and stop, whether you're done or not --

KG: [several-minute digression on how she'd get through all the questions the fastest because she's a really good reader and really good at math] But Mommy, why is this for college?

Me: It's -- ahh -- colleges use it as part of the picture to figure out if you should go there or not. If you get a really good score [gross oversimplification alert!], you can get into better schools.

KG: Did YOU get a really good score?

Me: I did, yeah -- not the very very best, but a good one. I got a near-perfect score on the verbal, and a decent -- but what was for me a really good score -- on the math. [Quick! Don't be all "Tee hee, math is hard! Let's go shopping!" Come on, goddammit, impart some fucking VALUES!]. I mean -- the verbal was easy for me, it came naturally to me, you know? But the math I had to really work on, and so I did. I got special tutoring -- that's private teaching -- from my friend's mom, who was really really good at math [yes! a lady math person!], and did lots and lots of practice tests [O SHATNER HOW I HATED TUESDAY AND THURSDAY MORNINGS OF THE SUMMER OF 1991], and did my best on the test, and I was pretty happy with the result.

KG: So you went to a good college?

Me: That's not the only reason why, but yeah --

KG: Where is the college that's the Tigers? Where Aunt A. and Uncle P. went?

Me: Princeton? That's in New Jersey. It's on the East Coast, about as far from here as you can get in America.

KG, in consternation: I don't like that. [pause for consideration] What's the one with the tree?

Me: Stanford?

KG: Yes! Standiford. That's right down the road. Is it a good college?

Me: Yeah, one of the best in the country!

KG: Then I will go there.

Me, heart just about squozen out of my chest: Good choice, baby. Good choice. I think it's the best one.

A thing which has stuck in my craw for about a month now.

I am thinking that perhaps a shirt that has this on it is not the very, very bestest choice, shirtwise, to wear to pick up your first-grader at the elementary school:

I COULD USE SOME
STIMULUS
FOR MY
PACKAGE

Isn't childbirth grounds for a make-up test?

39/40

So I have a lot of friends who are teachers and even more who are parents, and they've all been going completely spastic lately about whichever standardized testing their kids and/or students are doing this time of year. Like posting on Facebook, "All prayers and good thoughts welcome as Ava Gracelynne's 8th-grade class takes the BARG test this week!" or "Double whammy -- my two are both doing the SPRAT test today and tomorrow! But I think they'll knock it out of the park! Fingers crossed!" or "Oh dear Shatner, just help my students get through DERP week!"

The thing is, though, I used to fucking LOVE standardized testing. LOVE it. It helped that I was always in like the 100th percentile, so the shit was eaaaazzzy, but also it was awesome to have the school routine broken up like that. Hours-long chunks, sometimes even whole days or several whole days, given over to the silent, orderly, deeply peaceful filling out of tiny circles with a #2 pencil. Nobody talks, you don't get more algebra homework, you take a break for some Chee-tos and Coke and then get right back to it (pencils freshly sharpened). It was heaven, or as close as you could get while you were attending public school.

Don't worry -- I've planned ahead! We're three miles from a primary target.

36/40

In these unnervingly warm, still, dry winter & spring days at the end of the anthropocene era, I find it comforting to reread all my greatest nuclear-apocalypse hits -- I just finished Alas, Babylon, and despite the casual sexism, thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a weird kind of optimism, perhaps particular to Generation X: Hey, at least there's still a chance it could all end in a millisecond of brilliant light! Yaaaaaay!