Oh, it's an exciting morning here at the Kennedy compound! I have just discovered that I am co-winner of Sarah B.'s Young Guns II Haiku Contest! I'd like to thank my co-winner, the exceedingly literary Jackie-O. (It seems we have some sort of Before and After Jack thing going, which bears further investigation.) I would also like to thank the judges, Adam and Helen Jane, whose Amazon wish lists remain untouched by yours truly, signifying an honest win on my part (for once). Hooray.

Don't forget to mail a bunch of stuff today, as postage rates are going up tomorrow. Thirty-seven cents for a stamp! And I just bought a roll of thirty-four-cent stamps! Now what the fuck am I going to do with 100 stamps from the wrong postage rate?! Hmmph. Three cent stamps. Hmmph.

It's Jackson's first birthday today. Woo! Every year on my birthday, my father still tells me the story of the night I was born (January, two weeks late, freezing rain, slipping through a stop sign, mom in labor for three hours, doctor carries me into the waiting room upside down by my ankles covered in goo, so happy to have a girl).

So it's my turn.

8:00 a.m.The morning of June 28, 2001 I try to roll over in bed and find I can no longer haul my girth from left side to right without an exasperating struggle that on this day ends in tears. The baby is eight days late. I am ready for my pregnancy to end.

10:00 a.m Jack and I watch Wimbledon, then walk the four blocks to the playground to watch kids play and not talk about how completely helpless we're going to feel in about 24 hours.

Noon We come back home, I eat a turkey sandwich, and then take a dose of castor oil. Castor oil is a disgusting excuse for a laxative, but midwife lore contends that big, crampy intestinal contractions cause the uterus, in a fit of competitive jealousy, to show the intestines they don't know shit about contractions. Thus the uterus tries to outdo its weak, stringy neighbors, and labor begins.

1:00 p.m. I shit my guts out. Labor does not begin.

3:00 p.m. Jack covers himself in bright red spandex and goes out for a bike ride. I ask him please to not get squished by a big truck.

4:00 p.m. I am reading a magazine in bed. Hmmm, is that a slight twinge?

4:05 p.m. Hmmm, is that another one?

4:10 p.m. Gee, this contraction stuff is easy!

4:30 p.m. I call Alice, the midwife on duty (think young Bea Arthur), and tell her that I think possibly I might be having contractions. She tells me to call her back when the real contractions start. How will I know? I ask. You'll know, she says.

5:00 p.m. Alice, could you come over now?

5:05 p.m. Jack comes home all sweaty. I tell him my contractions are five minutes apart and do a happy little hula dance.

5:30 p.m. Alice arrives, checks me out, says I'm 2 cm dialated, and says I ought to eat something now because I won't feel like it soon and this contraction stuff could go on indefinitely. I am giddy and try to tell Alice a joke, but have to stop halfway through because a contraction comes. Contractions last for one minute. She tells me that if you have to stop talking to deal with a contraction, you're in labor.

5:40 p.m. Jack whips up a delightful little creamy pasta vegetable dish. I take one look at it and tell him there's no way in hell I'm going to eat that. He goes back to the kitchen and blends a bunch of fruit and dairy products and calls it a smoothie. I have a sip and push it away. Jack sits next to me and puts his arm around me. I tell him to quit looking at me.

6:00 p.m. Alice packs up and says she'll be back in a few hours. She tells me that a warm shower would be soothing right now, but not to start filling the birthing tub until I'm about 6 cm dialated.

6:10 p.m. I take a shower and lie down on the bed. Jack kind of hovers, wondering how to help. I tell him to get out. The next four hours are a blur of breathing and affirmation mantras ("You're okay, you're okay" and "Just relax, just relax" are two popular selections.) Most contractions I can deal with; they're building in intensity, but I'm handling it. However, there are ten or twelve sprinkled in there that have me thinking, "God damn it, why aren't I in the hospital right now! I want drugs!" Fortunately, as previously mentioned, contractions only last one minute, and I am in such an endorphin fog that I don't know whether it's day or night.

9:50 p.m. Myrrh, the apprentice midwife, shows up and checks me. I'm 6 cm dialated, and I'm going through a sweats-and-chills thing. Someone gives me a bathrobe that was stolen from the Ritz-Carlton to stay warm, and a cold, wet washcloth to cool off. She gives Jack the go-ahead to start filling the birthing tub in the living room.

10:00 p.m. My water breaks in a big disgusting gush, ruining my stolen bathrobe. Moving from a prone position takes superhuman effort, but I make it to the toilet and find that sitting upright is the most fantastic thing in the world. Filling the birthing tub takes a while and the hot water heater is quickly emptied. Jack happily begins to boil water, just like in the movies.

10:50 p.m. All of a sudden I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster -- I literally start saying "Whooooaaaahh!" as though I'm dropping from a great height at high speed. Myrrh says it sounds like I'm pushing. I tell her that I have nothing to compare the experience to, so if she says I'm pushing, that's what I'm doing. She calls Alice and tells her to get her ass over to our apartment. She tells Jack to quit filling the tub and he joins us in the bathroom.

11:15 p.m. Jack hears something in the hall and finds Alice stumbling up the stairs with an oxygen tank. The baby's head is crowning, my coochie is stretching, and it burns like shit. (In midwifery, this is known as "the ring of fire.") Myrrh pours olive oil all over my crotch and the top of the baby's head, and I am deeply grateful for the wisdom of all midwives everywhere, as I'm pretty sure hospital procedure would prohibit the use of Mediterranean cooking oils in the delivery room.

11:20 p.m. Myrrh yells at me to stand up -- I am still sitting on the toilet, and no one wants the baby to be delivered into the toilet itself. So I stand up, push once more, and a baby slithers out of my body. The endorphin fog lifts instantly. I sit back down and Myrrh yells, "Hold your baby in your lap! Hold your baby in your lap!" Myrrh is amped. She tells us it's a boy. He is crying. He has the required number of fingers and toes. He looks pink and healthy. Stunned, I look at Jack like,"Can you fuckin' believe this?"

11:30 p.m. With the help of Alice and Myrrh, umbilical cord dangling from between my legs and looping up to Jackson's belly, I carry my little baby to bed with me. Jack starts making phone calls, waking up relatives from coast to coast.

2:00 a.m. Alice and Myrrh pack up and leave after cleaning up, putting the placenta in the freezer (er, thanks), weaving a little heart shape with the umbilical cord (uh, okay), putting a stitch in me (if you must), weighing the baby (8 pounds 11 ounces), and tucking us in for the night. We all sleep together with the lights on. I am a mom, Jack is a dad, and Jackson doesn't make a peep all night.

Happy birthday, Jackson. We couldn't have done it without you.

Today was Unenthusiastic Dad Day in the park.

The scene: I am pushing Jackson in the swing as Unenthusiastic Dad (who looks vaguely like Gary Sinise) places Cute Blond Son in the next swing.

Me: (smile at newcomers)
subtext of smile: "Hi! I'm willing to chat about babies."

Cute Blond Son: (gives me huge smile back)
subtext of smile: "Wow! You're a Woman! My mom's a Woman, too! Women are incredible!"

Me (encouraged by big reaction): "Hey! Look at all those teeth!"
subtext of statement: Talking about a child's teeth is a way to roughly guess his or her age, leading to further conversation about babies.

Unenthusiastic Dad: (bends slightly to look at son's teeth, straightens up, does not reply)
possible subtext of silence: (a) "Yup, he's got teeth all right"; (b) "How dare you fucking look at my son's teeth! I am so furious at you right now that I can't speak"; or (c) "Quč?"

Me: (silent smiling, swing pushing)
subtext of silence: "Okay, fuck you, too."

Yes, I am about to get my period, why do you ask?

Last Night at Dinner

The Cast
Me (Ms. Fussypants)
Jack (Le Chef Fantastique)
Jack's Mom (Grandma Barbara, Babs, Babzilla, Babarella, The Old Broad)

The Menu
Rocky Free-range Chicken Breasts Marinated in Fresh Rosemary, Olive Oil, and Other Secret Ingredients
Green Beans with Butter and Almond Slivers
Farfalle with Butter, Salt, Pepper, and Italian Parsley
Mezzocorona Pinot Grigio (2001)
and
Lots of Vodka Martinis (and a Gimlet for Me)

Le Chef Fantastique: "How's the marinade?"

Grandma Barbara: "This chicken is incredible."

Me: "It's free-range, it always tastes better."

Babs: "It's just so tender."

Me: "It's worth the extra you pay. It's not that much, a couple of dollars."

Le Chef Formidable: "Hold the fuckin' phone. I cooked the shit, how 'bout a little credit for that?"

Me: "Yeah, well, I bought it."

Le Chef Irate*: "No, I bought it."

Me: "Well, I shopped for it."

Babzilla (ignoring us both): "It's very good."

Le Chef Fortified by Ketel One: "I could make cat shit taste like filet mignon!"

Babarella: "Where is your cat, by the way?"

Le Chef Amused With Himself: "If she was up your ass you'd know it."

The Old Broad: "Oh, Jack, get over yourself."

*Subtly alluding to the fact that my unemployment benefits have run out.

Twelve years ago I was living in Brooklyn with Eric and Joe. They were ex-lovers. When Eric was getting evicted from his place, Joe and I let him take the extra room in our ground-floor brownstone apartment. It was supposed to be temporary until our other roommate came back from New Zealand, but Joe and I were both so smitten with Eric that when our other roommate came back we told her Eric was staying and she'd have to find some other place to live.

We loved Eric for a hundred reasons. He was tall with dark, chin-length, blunt-cut Sting hair. He had a rack full of sturdy Buffalo China diner ware. He cooked lavish dinners for attractive friends. He always did the dishes, no matter who made the mess. He hung art for a living. He traveled to Italy to hang the Venice Biennale and came back with stories about Peggy Guggenheim and about how nothing was better than having sex with a man who was whispering Italian in your ear. He anchored our Christmas tree to the floor so well that we practically had to cut it down to get it out of the living room. He unclogged the shower drain with real tools.

When Eric told me he was HIV-positive, Joe was surprised that I didn't move out. It didn't occur to me. Eric was healthy otherwise, and he was the best roommate I'd ever had, so what was the problem?

The problem was that Eric decided to go on a macrobiotic diet to cleanse his system and he lost so much weight you could see his skull under his skin. He joined a group called The Waters of Life that advocated drinking your own urine to boost the immune system, so he had big jars of his own pee sitting on a shelf in his room. He got so weak that I finally had to drive him in to Beth Israel hospital, where he stayed for seven days. When he asked his mom if he could then come recuperate at home, she said not if you're drinking pee. So he came back to Brooklyn with us.

Exactly twelve years ago today I was in our kitchen in Brooklyn making myself a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich to take to work. Eric shuffled in -- he was twenty-eight years old and he could barely walk. I tried to laugh off the fact that I was going to eat a chocolate sandwich -- embarrassing, when he was living on miso paste and seaweed. He gave me two-fifths of a smile and started rummaging around in the silverware drawer. Joe was still asleep. I headed for the subway.

I went to the movies after work, and when I got back to our apartment the door was open, all the lights were on, and a cop was standing on the stoop. Joe came running down the hall, put his hands on my shoulders, and told me Eric had killed himself. I burst into tears, and was secretly glad that I could cry, instead of just standing there blankly and saying, "What?" In the kitchen were three of our friends, all gay men, all wearing white, sitting around the table. Steve said, "We were just talking about how we all woke up this morning and just felt like wearing white." I had put on black that day. If you put it in a novel everyone would think you were trying too hard.

Joe had been looking in on Eric from time to time during the day, thinking he was just napping, but around six o'clock he tried to give him a little shake to wake him up and Eric was stone cold. Joe screamed. There was a huge blood stain on the futon underneath him. Eric had taken a knife from the silverware drawer, wrapped himself in a white sheet, lay down, and stabbed himself twice in the chest.

We sat on the stoop until nearly two in the morning before the coroner's van came to pick up Eric; the cop stayed in the living room, respectfully declining offers of iced tea. The driver of the body pick-up van, a black man in a white shirt, explained to us that they had priorities about picking up bodies. "You get the ones in public places first." I forget what came second; private homes were third, which is why we waited so long. It was a nice night, though, and I think everyone was glad for a reason to stay together and talk.

There are a million more things I could describe, from the way I cried when I met Eric's brother, who looked just like him, to the memorial service in Prospect Park where Steve poured all of Eric's pee out into the grass, to me going back to my parents' house wearing a "Men: Use Condoms or Beat It" button and being dumbfounded when, after telling my righteous, religious brother that Eric had died, he said, "Good."

The other day I went to a gallery opening wearing a pair of Eric's shoes. They're the most comfortable shoes I own, just beat-up black oxfords, but they're so well made that the shoe repair guys always compliment me on them. At the gallery opening a nice gay man said, "I like your Annie Hall shoes." I thought about saying, "Oh, they're my dead roommate Eric's shoes." I've done that once or twice, I'm sorry to say. Instead I just said, "Thank you," and I thought about Eric again, how he was learning to speak Italian, how we wouldn't let his mother take his Buffalo China away, and how I never mind doing the dishes anymore, no matter who made the mess.

I always do a little dance when my site hits make it into double digits before noon. (Ah, low-end blogging.) Was the Canadian person who Googled "maids discipline husbands" scared off by my admission of low libido due to prolonged breastfeeding, or did she stick around to read a nice poem and think about babies for awhile?

I'll never know, but I can always add her request (along with "torture + needles + nipples + mom") to the list at Disturbing Search Requests.

The wish list is growing, grandma.

As we round the corner into Birthday Week, I realize that one year ago today was Jackson's due date and I looked like this:


This is a picture of a woman who finally has eaten her weight in Haagen-Dazs ice cream.

Almost every mother I know with a nearly-one-year-old child has her thong in a twist about planning a birthday party for a child who absolutely could not give a shit what day it is. I know how sexist this is, but it finally took a man -- one who works in the building trades, no less (i.e., a manly man) -- to straighten the whole first birthday concept out for us.
It boils down to this:
(1) Get cake
(2) Place cake in front of baby
(3) Take pictures of baby flinging cake around room
Optional: Funny hats
Not optional: Margaritas for mom. And dad, I guess, since he's paying.

Today was overenthusiastic father day at the park!!

Overenthusiastic Dad (to Jackson): "Hi!! What's your name??"
Me (reluctant to get too familiar): "His name's Jackson."
O.D.: "Jason?!"
Me (even more reluctantly): "Jack-son."
O.D.: "Well, hello, Jassen!! This is Coral!!" (indicates sprightly daughter with ringlets in red gingham sundress) "Say hello to Justin, Coral!!"
Coral: (well-trained, smiles politely and waves before skipping off to the swings like a perfect little princess)
Jackson: (stares)
Me (haven't seen the likes of her since my trip to see the Nutcracker in fourth grade): "Wow."
O.D. (obviously expected more from us): "Uh, well . . . bye-bye, Janson!"

What can we conclude from this episode?
A. I have a highly sensitive twit meter.
B. I have no friends.
C. All of my dialogue was actually performed in sign language.
D. None of the above.
E. None of your goddamn business.

One of the cruise lines is using Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" in its commercial. You heard it first in that inland epic, Trainspotting, but you've grown since then, you're a citizen under pressure and you need to let off a little punk rock steam by driving golf balls off the Fiesta Deck. "Here comes Johhny Yen again" the commercial begins, but clever sound editing cuts right to the chorus: "I've got a lust for life! Lust for life!"

As I'm sure you recall, however, the song really goes

"Here comes Johhny Yen again / with liquor and drugs / and the flesh machine / he's gonna do another striptease / hey man, where'd ya get that lotion?" etc.

Hmmm, which cruise would I rather go on, one full of smug young marrieds who used to own a B-52s album, or one where a reckless, tattooed man from the East Village encourages me to take my clothes off and roll around on broken glass? Just because he asks you to doesn't mean . . .

It's the spirit of Mr. Pop that ought to be on hand on these occasions, is all I'm saying.

Jesus H. Jump Up in a Peach Tree Christ *
the links page is finally up.

*Actual quote from my father.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
 
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away 
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may  
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, 
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone 
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green 
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen 
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, 
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W. H. Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts" (1940)



"Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" by Peter Breughel, the Elder (1525-1569)
Oil-tempera, 29 inches x 44 inches, Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels.

We were at the park this afternoon just swinging around and having a mellow eleven-and-a-half-month-old time, when about fifty ten-year-olds on some sort of day camp trip invaded our scene and started playing tag. Fifty people playing tag! Pandemonium! The Nut sat on my lap and clung to me. All these kids were screaming their guts out for twenty minutes or so before the head supervisor blew a whistle and started herding them toward their buses. One of the sub-supervisors was wandering around looking like Ron Jeremy and he came up to me.

Ron Jeremy: "I seem to have lost some of my children."
Me: "Well, don't look at me, I don't have them."
R.J., considering my tits (and believe me, they looked a lot better before I gave them over to nine months of breastfeeding): "That's okay, I didn't really like them anyway."

Remind me not to send the Nut to this day camp.

Don't you just love viola jokes? I know I do!

[via mimi smartypants]

My old school has Giant Relay Day at the end of every year. Classes are over the day before, so it's sort of an optional day with activities and a picnic and a band, and at the end of it all you have the Giant Relay race. Each grade races alone, starting with sixth and moving up through faculty and alumni. Instead of just running and passing a baton (really, how tedious!), for the first leg of the relay the person walks on stilts (almost everybody blew it); then he slaps the hands of the next people, who do a wheelbarrow, then the next people do a three-legged hobble, then the next person has to run ten yards while blowing up a balloon and then pop it before he can slap the hand of the next racer. About ten more ridiculous things happen, then the last six people have to form a human pyramid and hold it. Needless to say, much hoo-ha ensues.

I sat in the bleachers above the field with the Nut and a bunch of parents and students realizing that I was actually watching the Giant Relay for the first time. When I was a student I always just skipped the whole day, school was over so I just fucked off. And Lance, the alumni organizer, had asked me not ten minutes earlier if I'd race on the alumni team and I said NO because I thought I'd just have to run, I didn't know I'd get to do something anxiety-inducing like fill a bucket by carrying water in a spoon.

Anyway, some kids were sitting in front of me signing each others' yearbooks, and I noticed that one girl was drawing an intricate Boris Vallejo-type dragon for one of her friends. When she finished, another kid came by and she started on another dragon for her. She was drawing quite well and she was totally into it, with her little flourishes and such, but I couldn't help thinking, Aren't dragons kind of passe? Like, aren't they so seventies? But then I realized that dragons are just part of growing up, like reading science fiction, smoking Shermans, throwing toast at Rocky Horror, and writing essays for English with references to Harold and Maude. Or whatever it is you did that made you feel smart and cool.

May I just say: LAAAAYY-KERS.

My father's a real pack-rat. When I asked him if he wanted help moving some of his old stuff into the garbage, he looked kind of helpless and told me how he's heard that some people whose houses burn down feel relieved that they're freed from their possessions.

When we flew out of Denver last Sunday, the sky was filled with smoke. Even though the fires were hundreds of miles away in the mountains, announcements on both TV and radio asked people to quit calling 911 to report a fire in their neighborhood, it all seemed that close. Breathing was hard so we stayed inside until we absolutely had to get in the car to leave for the airport.

Then we got back to California and I kind of forgot about it, thinking that it would all be under control by the end of the day. But it's not -- it's worse now, it was on the cover of the New York Times, which, for me, makes it "real." I called my dad this morning after I heard that residents on the border of Jefferson County, the county where my parents have lived for the last forty years, were starting to evacuate. I expected him to say something reassuring like, "Oh, it's shifting direction and the firefighters are getting it all under control." Instead he sighed and said, "It's a real bearcat."

I'm worried now that he'll never get the chance to go through all his stuff piece by piece and remember how it came into his life and think about what it means to him now and decide what to throw out and what to pass on to us; that a lifetime's accumulated trashes and treasures will all go up in flames. But maybe that's what he wants.

This is a link to the National Fire Information Center.

Reunion Round-up
My high school buds, twenty years after the fact!

Steve
Then: Pleasant, stoned expression
Now: Still looks baked
Amy
Then: Hated Cami because she stole Patrick away
Now: Didn't invite Cami to the reunion; still in love with Patrick
Patrick
Then: Sold me film canister full of speed senior year
Now: Swears that it was really Dexatrim; still not in love with Amy
Bob
Then: Played guitar, studied
Now: Became a Muslim; sense of humor submerged below surface of placid wisdom
Sherry
Then: Charmingly bubbleheaded
Now: Changed name to Sophie
Ned
Then: Goofy, gangly, bad skin
Now: Sweet, paunchy, good skin
Reid
Then: Had some sort of preppy yachtmaster/private jet aesthetic
Now: Out of the closet
Cherice
Then: Quoted Earth Wind & Fire in the yearbook
Now: Works for insurance company, has a cute husband
Marla
Then: Rumored to have had mature but inappropriate relationship with geology teacher
Now: Did not talk to me about group sex in suggestive manner
Alan
Then: Duuuuude!
Now: Duuuuude!
Mark
Then: Unnervingly matter-of-fact
Now: Exactly the same; divorced from "psycho bitch from hell"; John Denver glasses
Jan
Then: Nice, but never really had much to say to her
Now: Looks the same, still nothing to say to her
Tamara
Then: My best friend; funny; loyal despite (or perhaps because of) my flagrantly immature behavior
Now: Is herself, only moreso, which is just fine with me
John
Then: Charmingly befuddled
Now: Made Ned apologize to Mark for calling him "Lupus" in ninth grade
Me
Then: Either happy or suicidal; read pretentious books without understanding them
Now: Surprisingly happy, never suicidal; reading confined to take-out menus and TV schedule

Jack to my brother Tim as Tim was refilling his Super Soaker water gun and eight-year-olds screamed and ran from him during my nephew's birthday party last Saturday: "When you throw a party, it stays thrown."

We're back. Apartment full of funny smells. Just threw out three loaves of green bread.