the pieces of my life

My son wants, more than anything else these days, to help me clean. “Mommy, can I clean? Can we clean something?” It’s a sweet thought. Only I have no idea where it comes from because I have never, ever cleaned anything.

Seriously.

We had a bunch of people from the synagogue over for brunch on Sunday. I don’t know them all very well so I thought it was time to maybe attempt a little cleaning. So I pulled out the vacuum cleaner.

Pie looked at it and asked, “What’s that?”

I explained, “It’s a vacuum cleaner. You can use it to clean the floor.”

Doodles asked, “Can I help?” Doodles comes up and holds onto the handle. I put one hand over his.

Then I turned it on. Wails from the little one. “No like! No like!” Pie doesn’t know what to do. She wants to hold my hand, but maintain as much distance between herself and the vacuum cleaner as she can.

So I’m trying to vacuum–something I don’t know really how to do well anyway–with one child in each hand.

I finish. I take a look. There are still crumbs everywhere. So, if I may quote my daughter, “All done vacuuming! All done!” Housecleaning. Isn’t that why God created men? Because God knows, I’m not going anywhere near it again.

The Pie, she’s a screamer. She was a screamer as a baby when she wanted to feed three times a night. Dr. Ferber cured her of that. For about a month. Now, at almost 2 and 1/4, she’s still a screamer. Only now she has a litany of requests.

Anyone who’s read this blog long enough (which I think is just my dad), remembers BATNA. It’s the Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement (we used it when car shopping in the years pre-Doodle). BATNA is a concept I had a little difficulty grasping at first, but as Adam pointed out, when it comes to sleep, Pie understands BATNA better than anybody.

First thing you need to understand is how many things Pie has in her crib. Every night there’s an inventory. This is a typical night:

7:30 p.m.
Pie: Where’s hippo?
Adam: Hippo’s right here. Pumpkin bear is here. Pumpkin is here. And look, here’s Hello Kitty.
Pie: Trains! I need trains!
Adam goes to get two trains that for some unfathomable reason were actually returned to the train table.
Adam: Here you go. Two trains.
Pie: Water!!
Adam: Your sippy is right here.
Pie: Where my books?
Adam: Here’s your animal book. And here’s your truck book.
Satisfied, Pie lays down and yells to Adam: Blanket!
He places the blanket on her and can leave.

7:40 p.m.
Pie: Daddy! Daddy! Daddy, I need potty! Daddy, I need potty.
Adam looks at me: Do I fall for it?
I shrug. Pie is still in diapers, but she’s been going on the potty about twice a day.
Adam sighs, gives in and gets her. Pie sits on the potty, pleased as punch. After a minute, she pees.
Pie: I peed on potty! [She starts singing the potty song to herself, sung to the tune of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”]: Pie peed on the potty, Pie peed on the potty, Pie peed on the potty ’cause she’s a great big girl.
Pie goes back to bed.

7:47 p.m.
Pie: Daddy! Daddy! Poop on potty! I need poop on potty.
I look at Adam and shake my head.
Me: Don’t fall for this one. That never happens at night.
After 15 minutes Pie falls back to sleep.

12:45 a.m.
Pie: Daddy! Daddy! Put blanket on, Daddy! Daddy!
Adam enters and puts on her blanket. Leaves. Closes door.
Pie: Daddy! Close door! Close door!
Adam opens the door.
Adam: Sweetie, the door is closed.
Pie: Okay

2:45
Pie: Daddy! Daddy! Daddy, I need Daddy!
Adam: What is it, Pie?
Pie: Shma! Say Shma! [The Shma is Pie’s bedtime prayer, which is said, surprisingly, at bedtime]
Adam: I already said the Shma. Go to sleep, Pie.
Pie: Daddy, change diaper!
Adam: Your diaper is fine. Good night, Pie.
Adam leaves and closes door.
Pie: Daddy! Close door! Close door!
Adam opens the door.
Adam: Sweetie, the door is closed.
Pie: Okay

These nights aren’t great. But they are better than the nights when we have these conversations:

12:45 a.m.
Pie: Daddy! Daddy! Put blanket on, Daddy! Daddy!
Adam enters and puts on her blanket.
Pie kicks off blanket, becomes more hysterical and makes the same demand.
Pie: Daddy! Daddy! Put blanket on, Daddy! Daddy!
Lather, rinse, repeat until Pie is standing in her crib, jumping up and down inconsolable. We go through stages where this kind of thing lasts for a day or two and then we go back to reasonable Pie. During the unreasonable Pie stage, there’s absolutely nothing you can do for her but let her cry. Going in just exacerbates the situation.

During these stages, we just hope she doesn’t wake up her brother (who often sleeps through it). If he does wake up, he just comes into our bed, which is somewhat of a relief because then I can stop worrying that she’ll wake him up. Backward thinking, I know, but it’s the way my mind works.

Okay, so fast forward to last night. Adam is in Orlando for work, which means I’m on kid duty 24/7. For what it’s worth, she said her mouth hurt in the back and when I stuck a finger in, sure enough I felt a little molar starting to poke through. Before bed, I give her some Motrin. She actually goes down with no complaints, which I find odd, but choose not to question. When Adam’s out of town, I just put Doodles in our bed by default. It makes bedtime easier all around and he’s willing to go to bed on the earlyish side when he’s in our bed.

Now, Adam and I have different nighttime philosophies. My philosophy is that she who cries, will eventually stop crying and go back to sleep. So when Pie started crying at 2:45 a.m., I did the only reasonable thing–I partially closed my door and stuck my head under the pillow. She just hollered for her father. By 3:05 she stopped. By 3:20 she was crying again. By 3:43 she had stopped. By 3:53 she was crying again. I took my head out from under the pillow but couldn’t understand what she was saying.

At close to 4:30 a.m. I went into her room cautiously. She immediately sat up and stopped crying. I heard a rather odd noise. In a most reasonable voice, she said, “Train!”

As I got closer I noticed that one of the trains she had was a motorized one. And it was on. And it was stuck in her hair. The wheels had been set into motion and had wound it’s way around her hair and was now stuck. It wasn’t painful–no pulling involved–but Pie definitely had a train stuck to her head. I tried to remove it, but couldn’t.

Me: Hold on, Pie. I need to get a scissors.
Got the scissors, cut it out.
Me: Lay down, Pie.
She complies.
Pie: Blanket! Blanket! Blanket!
I put the blanket on, but she pushes it off.
Pie: Need train! Need train!
Me: That train has your hair in it.
Pie, beginning to get hysterical: Need train!!
I get her another train. She lies back down.
Pie: Blanket!!!
I put her blanket on, I leave, and close the door.
Pie: Close door! Close door!
I open the door.
Me: Sweetie, the door is closed.
Pie: Okay

She falls back asleep till 7 a.m.

The next morning we’re talking to Adam in Orlando and I tell him a train got stuck in Pie’s hair. He said, in his biggest duh voice: We’ll I never giver her motorized trains in bed.

Gee, thanks. You think you could have told me this before you left town?

Day 13 of Nanowrimo (challenge: use “”It was hardly my fault that the kippers were yellow”):

When I got onto the set that afternoon, the star of the film, Trenton, was arguing with craft services.

“They were absolute rubbish! The color was off and they smelled funky,” he said in a clipped British accent. Even when he was talking about old fish, the accent reminded me of Masterpiece Theater and Jane Austen. Which is probably no coincidence, given that he had starred in plenty of Masterpiece Theater. And a few Jane Austen adaptations at that.

The craft services guy was arranging raw vegetables on a plate trying to ignore Trenton. I didn’t envy the guy. Weird British foods for Trenton. Vegan only for Trenton’s costar, Felicity. Chips and cookies for everyone else.

Trenton ran his hands through his short dark curly hair. He was dressed for his part, and was absolutely stunning in his Bermuda shorts. His chest was perfectly developed and his abs nicely rippled. When he smiled—which he certainly wasn’t doing right now—deep dimples pocketed his cheeks. I suddenly became aware that I was staring, so I looked back down at my script to check my notes.

“Well?” Trenton asked impatiently.

The craft services guy looked up. “What do you expect from me here, your highness? It was hardly my fault that the kippers were yellow. This is breakfast in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. Not high tea at Buckingham Palace. ‘Kipper snacks’ were all that was available.”

Trenton huffed loudly and turned. He caught my eye as I looked up from the script, and gave me a little wink, as if it were all good fun, as if he weren’t such a prima donna as to care whether or not he had proper kippers. I wasn’t fooled. But I was still mildly turned on.

Day 10 of Nanowrimo (challenge: use the phrase “Has anyone seen my turtle?”):

I relaxed in my JetBlue seat—I guess indie financing meant indie travel accommodations; no first class on this trip—and tried to distract myself from Port St. Lucie. In July.

Of course, I didn’t need to distract myself. A few moments had passed when I suddenly felt something poking at my feet. “Hey!” I said, pulling my feet up into my seat.
A boy no more than seven years old poked his head up. “Have you seen my turtle?” he asked.

“There are turtles on this plane?” I asked, unsure whether or not to be disgusted. I’m not so much an animal person. Oh, I’m happy to pet the occasional dog in the park and I’ll tolerate friends’ cats, but animals are not creatures with whom I’d choose to spend my time. The idea of a rodent reptile (for all animals basically struck me as rodent like) nosing around my carry-on bag kind of turned my stomach a little.

“Just my turtle. He’s—”

Before he could finish his thought, a tall, severe flight attendant with a bun tightly pulled across her blond hair, dashed down the aisle. She towered over him and a shadow must have cast over the floor he was scouring because he looked up.

“Hey!” he yelled out. “Be careful. Don’t step on my turtle!”

She merely scowled and pointed at the fasten seat belt sign. He began, “I’m just—” but she jabbed her finger in the air menacingly, sending him scurrying him back to his seat three rows up. Straddling the line between sexy and scary, she was the type of woman who in six years could easily appear in his nightmares—or perhaps his dreams, depending which way he floated—dressed in a school uniform or a nun’s outfit, brandishing a ruler.

As soon as the fasten seat belts sign chimed off, the boy hopped back up and began scanning the aisles, attempting to crawl his way up for a turtle eye view.
I decided to take a nap and try to forget about everything. Forget about the film shoot. Forget about Gary in Paris, the most romantic of cities, with me in Port St. Lucie, the most sweltering of cities. Forget about my brother. Forget, forget, forget. I attempted a nap for about three nanoseconds when a the boy got near my row again, calling out, “Have you seen my turtle? Has anyone seen my turtle?” I propped open a slit of an eye to see him eyeball to eyeball with me. “Have you seen my turtle? He’s small and green and he answers to the name Kermit.”

“Isn’t Kermit a frog?” I asked him.

The boy scoffed. “Clearly you have no imagination.”

I tried to go back to sleep but there was just enough turbulence to ensure I stayed awake. I bought a lunch, settled into my seat to watch a couple hours of Cartoon Network, and mindlessly twirled a strand of hair around my finger.

Finally, we landed. I stood up and reached up to grab my suitcase. As I swung it down, I took a step forward, and out sounded a crack that was loud enough if might have been the shot heard ‘round the world. The silence immediately quieted as everyone turned to stare at me,

I was afraid to look down. I wanted to just walk off that plane, with my head held high, and go and work on a movie set, a job that was probably the envy of most of the folks on the plane, folks who are fooled into thinking it’s all fun and games and that we really just sit around and laugh all the time. But instead, I need to know what I had crunched beneath my Doc Marten. Looking down, sure enough, there he was: Kermit. Who knew a shell could be flattened like that?

I leaned down to look at him. “Get up,” I hissed at the turtle. “Get up!” Needless to say, there was no movement.

“What did you do?” scolded an older woman behind me. In front of me was an older man who pretended the whole thing never happened.
Next to me was a college aged boy who commented, “Whoa! The totally weird thing is, I was just debating with my roommates if a turtle shell would crunch or not. We all agreed it wouldn’t because it’s shell is so hard. It’d be like crushing your tooth! But, dude! Empirical evidence! They do crunch!”

I quickly used my foot to scoot the evidence out of the aisle and beneath a seat. I stand uncomfortably, not saying anything, waiting for the line of bodies to move out of the plane. When I do finally disembark, at the end of the gangplank is the boy with a senior-looking airline official. The boys parents are behind him and even they look distraught. The boy has tear tracks on his cheeks and the official has an arm around his shoulder. I can clearly hear him saying, “Don’t worry. As soon as everyone’s off the plane, we can go look for Kermit. We’ll find him.”

I say nothing and just head for baggage claim. Good thing I don’t believe in omens. I don’t believe in them. Right?

Day 9 of Nanowrimo (challenge: use the phrase “I have some personal issues that need to be taken care of which are related to my court appointment last Wednesday”):

So there I was, working on Mazo’s first big film. Of course, I knew I was in trouble the minute I showed up on set, and Mazo was nowhere to be found. He showed three days late, mumbling something about some personal issues he had, not to worry, everything was going to be taken care of in Wednesday’s court appointment. I never learned all the details, but it didn’t matter, because he was shooting a feature film and I was in. A feature. A Mazo feature. A feature he’d decided to finance himself, because really, who else would finance a Mazo idea. And that big idea? The million dollar shot? It truly was the money shot: Mazo was making “porno for the intelligentsia.” Meaning he had a real script, with actual plot, but it still all led to a group orgy scene that had me taking notes such as, “String of anal beads has eight balls on it” and “In scene 32a, Male One has his middle finger inserted into Female Two’s vagina.” It wasn’t till much later that Mazo discovered that porn distributors don’t actually care about continuity and there were only about five other guys out there who even cared if there was a plot or not. But by then, it was too late. I was hooked. Not on porn. On continuity.

Day 8 of Nanowrimo (challenge, use the word “extuitive”):
Let me step back and describe Mazo: I met him my first week at Tulane. I had just gotten back from yet another keg party after yet another orientation. This was pre-anyone caring how old you were to drink and drinking was pretty much what we did. I was tired. I was slightly drunk. I wanted a warm shower and bed. At just after 2 a.m., I walked into the women’s room with my cheerful green plastic tub of shampoos and soaps and found this student of the male persuasion, standing naked at the sink, shaving. His chest.

“Aloha, amiga!” he called out, waving his electric razor before returning to himself in the mirror. He seemed to be making some sort of design in his chest hairs. On his arm was a large tattoo that I’d later discover was supposed to be the Chinese characters for potent, but turned out to be total gibberish.

“Um, you know there’s a men’s room down the hall,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s always gunked up,” he replied. “Women are so much neater.”

I couldn’t help but glance at the mess he was making in the sink with the tiny hairs scattering everywhere.

“See what I mean?” he said. “I’m a total slob.”

“I’m way too buzzed to pick apart the gender generalizations you’re making, but could you get out so I can shower?”

He shrugged. “I’m almost done.”

All I wanted was sleep. “What the hell,” I muttered to myself, and went ahead and turned on the hot water. When he made no moves to leave, I just undressed and began to shower.

“I like you,” he said.

“You like me or my boobs?” I asked from inside the shower. The water was making me drowsier and I just wanted to melt down right there and take a nap.

“I like you,” he answered. “Your boobs are a little small for my tastes.”

“You don’t know me.” I picked up the soap and started lathering.

“I can just tell these things. I’m extuitive like that.”

“Extuitive? That isn’t even a real word.”

“Sure it is. It’s the opposite of intuitive. It’s so clear we’re going to be friends, no intuition involved. It’s extuitive.”

“And it’s clear because…?”

“You weren’t the least bit fazed when you walked in here.”

“No,” I answered, rinsing off and letting the water run down my head. “For me to be fazed, you’d have to have a much bigger dick.”

He laughed. “Touche. Now I know we’re going to be best friends.”

And damn, if he wasn’t right.

I have two articles, a book review, and two copyedits due this month. I’m hosting Thanksgiving. Hanukkah is super early this year (December 4th). Oh, and I’ve got two kids to raise. And Adam has an almost-week long business trip. So what does that mean? It means it’s time to get my Nanowrimo on! Yep, it’s been a couple of years and my writing juices have felt a little stale, so I’m going for 50,000 words or bust. (Pie, that means “break down,” it does not mean “Ming Ming” so get that glimmer of lust out of your eye.)

Now it’s your turn. I really have no idea what my novel is about or where it’s going (even though I’m 10,501 words into it). Please, please, please leave me a comment with a random word, phrase, sentence, or random idea. I promise to incorporate each and every one into my novel and I’ll post the resulting paragraph with it in there (and you won’t have to wait till Wednesday for me to post it). So help me Nano my way to 50,000!

We started the day with my charming son poking my stomach and declaring, “Hey, Mommy? You’ve got a squishy stomach!” It only improved from there…

Me: Hey Adam, didn’t you say Johnny Damon wasn’t the brightest guy?
Adam: Yeah.
Me: So did you see these reading ads he’s doing? [I show him an ad in Runners World that has Johnny Damon in his Yankee uniform reading a biography of Ben Franklin]. He’s probably not really reading a biography on Ben Franklin, huh?
Adam: [laughing] No, I would think not. He’s also probably not going to be a Yankee soon.
Me: Why?
Adam: For the same reason the Sox didn’t re-sign him: because he’s getting old and declining and slow.
Me [to Doodles]: That’s not nice! Does that mean you’re going to trade me? What do you think, Doodles, do you want to trade me for a mommy who’s younger and faster?
Doodles: Yes!
Adam: Tell Mommy we’re looking for someone who can hit for average.
Doodles: I want a mommy who can hit for average.
Adam: And with a little bit of power, too.
Doodles: And with a little power, too. [pause, thinking] And nicer!

And all before seven in the morning…

In Pie’s classroom, they had color week last week. Monday was red day, Wednesday was blue day, and Friday was green day.

You know of course that Friday morning, I was blaring Green Day. I couldn’t get it out of my head. And this, my friends, is where we see the inherent differences in my children’s personalities.

Me: Wow, listen to those drums, Doodles!
Doodles: I don’t like those drums.
Doodles puts his hands over his ears, walks into the playroom, shuts the door. I discover later that he’s doing puzzles in there. Pie runs up to me.
Pie: I love Green Day! Dance, Mommy, dance!!
Pie immediately begins shaking her tush and spinning around.

Can you say lonely guy working in his science lab on Saturday nights? Can you say Mom and Dad getting calls at 3 a.m. to pick up their daughter from jail? Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking, too.