the pieces of my life

Every morning, I yell at the boy, “Can you please move it? Why are you so slow? Can you please walk with us?”

Today he skipped to school. A full block ahead of us. Skipped. Literally. Looked the crossing guard in the eye. Said, “Hi!” Ran to his side of the building before I could even give him a smooch good-bye.

Ah. The last day of school.

On Wednesday we had the end-of-year performances and the class slide shows. When Doodles class sang, “Take me out of the second grade/ It has been a good year… For it’s one, two, three months and/ Then we’ll be in third grade!” I just melted into a mess.

And the girl. Oh that girl:

Our after-school plans involved swimming and sand play. Our after-school reality included cold and rain. So instead we invited a handful of friends over for an after-school make-your-own-sundae and mojito party (the idea, of course, was to make sure the kids got drunk enough to let us moms have our ice cream in peace).

A fitting end to a crazy year.

Welcome, Summer. We’ve been waiting for you.

My writing group rocks! My co-writing group buddy, Sheryl Carpenter, is a 2011 Golden Heart YA finalist. Read an interview with her at Luv YA. (YA is Young Adult, for those not in the know.)

Today is the end-of-year celebrations in both the kids’ classrooms even though the last day of school is Friday. I turned on Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out for Summer,” saying, “I’ll play it again for you on Friday.”

Me: Would you like me to bring a boombox on Friday to pick up and blast this song for you as you leave school.

Pie: Boombox? What’s a boombox?

****

As a final reward for filling the marble jar, Doodles has a beach day at school. He was told to bring flip flops, a tank top and shorts, and a beach towel.

Me: Which beach towel do you want? We have an Amazon.com towel, a TripAdvisor towel, and a South Park towel.

Doodles: What’s South Park?

Me: It’s a cartoon with little boys who curse a lot. [I bring down the towel] See?

Doodles: Oh yeah! I know them! I saw the cartoon at School of Rock.

Me: Oh my God! They killed my kid’s innocence! [Okay, not really, but I thought it.]

[And yes I need to get the kids to school and I’m standing here watching the “Beefcake” episode. “Follow your dreams. You can meet your goals. I’m living proof. Beefcake. BEEFCAKE!” Okay, maybe you had to be there.]

The lifeguards at our local pool terrify me. Seriously. This one woman is so whistle happy, I’m hearing the shrieks hours after the fact. I’m dreading going to sleep because I know those whistle blows will echo in my dreams.

Unlike the rest of you reading this blog—or at least 99% of you—we are not yet done with school. Thanks to the wicked bad Nor’easters (who says I can’t talk like a local?), we had six—count ’em, six!—snow days this year. One snow day was burned off by taking away a teacher’s professional development day. But we are paying for those other five snow days now, and our last day of school is this coming Friday.

But it’s the first day of summer and, school be damned!, we were going to make it be summer! Our Y membership gives us access to an outdoor pool, so we headed there today. I meant it to be a quick half hour swim, but two and a half hours later I was dragging the kids from the water. Doodles especially as this year he passed the deep-end test and now he can frolic in the long coveted deep end. Pie dolphins about in the shallow end, but we’re finally at a point where I can sit on the edge and watch her instead of feeling like I need to keep her at arm’s length. Not that the whistle-blowing lifeguard would let her do much.

Lucky we got this one day of summer in, because per the weather reports, it’s the last one we’ll be getting for a while. Tomorrow after school we’ll head to Barnes and Noble. I said to my kids this weekend, “There’s no need to get workbooks this summer, right? You guys don’t need them.” They’re at a point where they read and do math for fun and love writing letters that I in no way feel compelled to make them do pages of workbooks. But clearly I’ve forgotten who I’m dealing with.

“Mom! I want a math workbook!” the boy said.

“I want to do a workbook this summer!” the girl complained.

Yes, my children. The ones who do workbook pages for fun. I see lots of exciting blog posts for the summer. “Pie did four more pages in her workbook! Doodles completed a whole page of math!”

At least they’ll always be able to look back at today’s one day of summer.

I’m not sure which is worse: How much fried food I ate today at Woodman’s (fried lobster tails, fried shrimp, fried clams, French fries, and onion rings, washed down by a cone of ice cream) or the fact that I’m wondering what’s for dinner….

The day started bright and early. First I had my 5:30 a.m. run, because who am I to miss a run. Then we were on the road to Gloucester (or should that be Glosta?) by 6:45 a.m. In second grade, the kids do a unit on whales so one of the parents arranged for a group rate on a whale watching trip. I loaded us up with Bonine and seabands and we were rarin’ to go.

As a surprise for the kids who went, one of the second grade teachers came (Doodles’s teacher, in fact). I took a fabulous group photo… that my boy ruined by being the only child to make horrible goofy faces in every photo. Yep, that’s my boy.

The trip went well. Lots of whales.

Everything was hunky dory… Right up until the girl started feeling woozy. But a Coke revived her. Of course, she decided she was much happier sitting alone on the bench eating popcorn while all the other passengers went to the other side to—shocker!—actually look at whales.

Not so much the boy. He got seasick and nothing revived him…

…till we got to the fried food.

And then all was right with the world again.

P.S. The kids are half asleep. I’m making them eat vegetables for dinner to make up for everything they ate today. And the girl asks, “Are we going out for dinner for Father’s Day? Daddy really likes Legal Seafood.” So full, it hurts to think about.

This piece on Flavorwire on “How to Drink Like Your Favorite Author” was illuminating. At the moment, I drink mostly like Hemingway. In the winter, I’m more of an Anne Sexton drinker, which disappoints because I’ve always considered myself a Dorothy Parker kind of gal (without the suicide though). But I’m not sure I’m a Whiskey Sour person. Then again, I’m not sure I’ve had a Whiskey Sour. I think I see a weekend project in my future. Anyone have a good Whiskey Sour recipe they love?

“Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.”
—Dorothy Parker

Mojitos. Martinis. Lemon Drops. I think I better narrow down that drink of mine so when this list is made twenty years from now, my one drink will be obvious.

The pressure! How do I follow up my blog posts about NYC and still keep all of you guys interested? I have to say, when I blogged about drinking, all-night bars, and general debauchery, my page hits went up. Not that I care about page hits. Definitely not. But I am curious about who is out there thinking I’m a total lush who deserts her kids for the wild life. I don’t do it often, I swear. No more than once a week. Seriously. (Better?)

So what can I tell you now that will keep you on the edge of your seat? I thought of live Tweeting the PTO meeting tonight—It was captivating! It was enchanting! I complained about the lack of booze! (well, one of those statements is true)—but under the fierce eye of the principal, I caved and put my phone away.

I just e-mailed my revised manuscript to my agent. That’s really the excitement of my day. It’s been weighing on me for so long that I finally said, “Damn it! Just send it off!” I think there’s a process one goes through when getting those revisions. It goes something like:

1. Denial: What? You want changes? On my perfect, incredibly manuscript?
2. Anger: Ugh! I hate revising! Revising sucks! No way!
3. Bargaining: Okay, I’ll make a couple of these changes. A few of the changes make sense. But no way am I making those other changes!
4. Depression: Oy, she is so right. Her changes make so much sense. I’m a terrible writer. I’ve made all her changes and now I see there are so many more changes that should be made. Ohmygod, how many times do I use the word “very”? Everyone knows that “very” should be banned from the English vocabulary! What is that other word? How many times does it appear? Okay, let’s read through this one more time…. What a hack I am!
5. Acceptance: You know, with these changes, this thing isn’t half bad. It’s actually pretty okay. Hey, I like my novel again! It rocks!

(Does that list of stages look familiar? No, I didn’t think so either.)

Seriously, my agent’s suggestions were dead on, even if at first I felt resistant. But as I sat with them, I realized they made total sense. But the thing is, I made changes she suggested. And I thought of more. And more. Revising can go on forever if you don’t at some point say, “Enough!” Words can always be tweaked and sentences restructured. So I just sent it off and I feel light and airy… and ready to rework my marketing plan. Sigh.

I’m sorry, is this post too wholesome for you? I’ll throw in: martini! cute boys! ignoring the children!

There. Now do you feel back at home?

Pancakes. Pancakes is where this story is going to end. (Every blog post reminds me of a song. This time, I’m humming the Sunday’s “Here’s Where the Story Ends.” I should figure out how to post a playlist on this blog so you can get the same damn tunes stuck in your head.)

Pancakes. But it’s not really about pancakes, of course. Leaving Sophie’s heading toward a major avenue to catch a cab, Sunrise declares that she really wants pancakes. Okay. I know a diner. Right around the corner. Open 24 hours. Let’s go take a look at the menu!

The diner is attached to a bar of the same name, and both have menus up. So I pause at the first menu. Attached to the bar. That’s closed. Shut up for the night. Because, by law, bars must serving alcohol at 4 a.m. It’s the law right? Except at just after 4 a.m., the door to this bar opens, and out walks one of the bartenders who says, “Come on it. First round is on us. You can get the next round.”

“There will be no ‘next round’ for us. One more is about all we have left in us.”

“Eh, come on in anyway,” he says.

What’s a gaggle of haus fraus to do, but go in for a round of beers? (Although by this point, both Sunrise and Scooby—proving that they don’t have the fortitude of us old time NYU girls—have switched to soda.)

It’s pretty much the two bartenders—whom we’ll call Chavez and Garfield—and a guy at the bar who will call Bullfrog. We perch on bar stools, and resume drinking. Well, I resume drinking. Scooby and Sunrise silently fret that this is all the beginning of some New York Post headline that reads, “Boston Haus Fraus Look for Beer, Find Death.” (At this point, when I told the story to Tweeds, she said, “Really? They gave you a beer after closing? At [name of bar]? That’s so illegal!” So out of respect for the so-illegal bar and the great time we had, I’ll skip naming it).

Chavez tried to pick up Scooby. Garfield and I discovered that we both moved into the city in 1986, so he let me dictate the songs on the iPod from that era of my early NYC years, starting of course with The Smiths’ Louder Than Bombs. The Bullfrog and I start up a conversation and he seems like a pretty cool guy, plays in a band with the kind of music I actually like, so I made him promise me, as soon as he’s over his ex, he’ll let me know so I can fix him up with yet another single friend in New York (I’ve got a bunch of them!).

Sunrise is still hungry, so Chavez kindly runs next door and buys her a plate of Fried Oreos. Seriously. Beer. Fried Oreos. After hours. I don’t know which is the most exciting for me.

Fried Oreos. Mmmmm....

5 a.m. My beer is done. My memories at this point are turning a little hazy. I think we finally have had enough adventures that I can tell Sunrise’s husband to take his “pedestrian tweets” and shove them up his….

We say our good-byes. We head out to the street. And we finally catch that cab back to the apartment. Daylight is starting to shine through the buildings.

See that sliver of bright sky through the buildings?

We’re back. (Later Beetle tells us she was mildly horrified when she looked at her watch when we came in, and she realized it was bright enough that she didn’t have to turn on the light to see it.)

Sleep for five hours. Bagel run to Murray’s. And then back home again. Needless to say, Sunrise, Scooby, and I all passed on doing any of the driving.

It took me a full week to catch up on my sleep. But it was well worth it. And the best part? We’ll do it again. Next year. Same time. New adventures. I’ll be sure to tell you all about them.

Max Fish. Site of many post-college nights that, frankly, they all blur into one drunken night. But Max Fish is where I spent much of my time, and I was eager to go with Scooby and Sunrise. So we walk down to Ludlow Street only to find…

… a line. A line? At Max Fish? Whaaaat? “Should we get in the line?” Sunrise asks. Um, no! No, we do not do lines and we certainly don’t do lines at Max Fish. That is wrong on too many levels to even think about.

Okay, so what to do next. It’s about 2:20 a.m. And, apparently, someone has to go to the bathroom (I saw someone because it was either Scooby or Sunrise, but I was too busy thinking about where to go next to pay any attention). “Fine,” I say. “We’ll go to Tweeds apartment and you can pee and we can figure out where to go next.”

“We can’t go to your sister’s apartment!” Sunrise says. “It’s 2:30 in the morning!”

“Yeah? So? She’s not far. Let’s go.”

We walk over to the Tweedle Twins’ apartment. “You’re not really going to buzz her, right?” Sunrise asks, looking for reassurance, I think, that on some level I’m a person respectful of my sister’s right to a peaceful night at home. “I mean, she’s probably asleep by now.”

I don’t bother answering. Instead, I hit the buzzer. “She’s never going to answer,” Sunrise said.

“Yes, she will,” I said, and sure enough, the buzz came.

Sunrise shook her head in shock the whole way up. “I cannot believe she let you in.”

Upstairs we were greeted by the Tweedle Twirp, who not only let us use her bathroom, but also gave us some of the Tweedle Twin’s birthday cake.

Sunrise & the Tweedle Twirp

At about 3 a.m., we were fortified to continue our bar crawl. “Sophie’s it is,” I said, Sophie’s being the bar I spent the absolute most time in during my underaged college years.

Sophie’s is exactly the same as it was in the late 1980s. The only difference is that someone is standing at the door, carding everyone. Including me! I was so happy, I about kissed the guy. He was so pleased that I was pleased that he let me card him. Yeah, writing that, it doesn’t make must sense, but in the moment, it was fabulous.

We got our beers (by this point, Scooby was drinking Sprites), and sat at the back table, where an artist who was going to be as famous as Jackson Pollack (or maybe he said painted like Jackson Pollack? I really wasn’t paying that close attention) started hitting on Sunrise. Sunrise was quite pleased. He offered us all weed, but then rescinded the offer when he heard we all had children. Never mind that he looked young enough to be one of our children. Somewhere in my Twitter feed it says that Sunrise spanked a man. Must have happened at Sophie’s. I really don’t remember it.

At about 3:40, I was ready to go, but both Scooby and Sunrise mentioned they had never made it to last call. So we stayed. And we had last call. And they were happy. And then they said that they had never been kicked out of a bar at closing. So we stayed. And we got kicked out after Sunrise tried planking on the bar stools (yeah, I had never heard of planking, either, but this is what real suburban haus fraus apparently do for fun). And they were happy.

It’s 4 a.m. The bars in NYC are now closed. Time for everyone to crawl drunkenly into bed and pray that the hangover doesn’t hit. Except. Except. Except this is NYC. The city that doesn’t sleep. The city where anything can happen. And so our night yet continues on….

My friend, Angela, thought I was going to give you the finale (I’m not sure if anyone other than Angela is reading this, but I’m happy writing just for you, Angela!). Little does she understand that one blog post cannot contain the hours of 1 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. adequately. So we’ll call this Finale, Part 1.

Continuing right along…

Just to set the tone for our night, a group of kids was trying to buy tickets for Bridesmaids. “But I am 17!” the girl was protesting.

“Doesn’t matter,” the ticket seller said. “Your friends aren’t and they need someone 25 or older to accompany them.”

What’s a heroine to do?

Villain: “You can’t buy the tickets!”
Minor in Distress: “I must buy the tickets!”
Villain: “You can’t buy the tickets!”
Minor in Distress: “I must buy the tickets!”
Me: “I’ll buy the tickets!”
Minor in Distress: “My heroine!”
Villain: “Curses! Foiled again!”

Look, it was a freakin’ R-rated movie, not a bottle of vodka. I hope someday someone does the same for my children.

Anyway, the five of us very tired haus fraus went yawning into Bridesmaids. And we loved it. I woke us up, rejuvenated us, and made me ready to take on Sunrise’s husband. Pedestrian tweets, did he say? Oh, I’ll give him some tweets!

Sunrise and Scooby took no convincing. Beetle and Keaton weren’t up for a wild night so they went back to the apartment. I immediately began texting my sister. “Where should we go? Where are you going to meet us?”

She called me within minutes. “I just put my pajamas on! I’m in for the night.”

“I don’t think so,” I told her. “You are a late night person. I’m not allowed to call you before noon. It’s 1 a.m. These are your prime hours.”

Scooby wanted a fruity drink. Sunrise wanted a non-naked bar. I remembered the sign I had seen at the Howl Festival (the one I told you to keep in mind?). “Let’s hop a cab,” I said. “First Street and Second Avenue.” I texted Tweeds: “Meet us at Mars Bar.”

Ah, Mars Bar. Mars Bar is a bar from my wanton youth, a stretch of counter, cheap drinks, and a questionable—in the best of ways—clientele. I didn’t get any good pics, except for Sunrise looking boozy (and out of respect for her suburban haus frau ways, I won’t post it here), but others have (here’s a photo of a n*aked man at the bar). New York magazine wrote of Mars Bar, “This dark, scarred hall full of stiff drinks and crazy regulars is great because it’s legitimately terrifying. If you care to look up from your drink, the glass-brick walls facing Second Avenue provide decent people-watching.”

This, my friends, is where I took my haus frau friends. And, dear readers, I don’t need to tell you, that Sunrise and Scooby loved it (or at least they got boozy enough to pretend they loved it). Mars Bar is going to be knocked down (for condos, I think?) in July, so I felt it was my duty to expose my friends to a piece of New York history.

At first, when we were accosted by a bald man who drunkenly hit on Sunrise, they were wary. But once we got inside… well, they were still wary, but they at least they were game. I ordered a screwdriver for Scooby (because that’s as “fruity drink” as Mars Bar gets) and Rolling Rocks for me and Sunrise, because I was feeling nostalgic. Of course, the beers arrived and Sunrise said, “What? Beer? Aren’t we going to do tequila shots or something?” Cue tequila shots. Sunrise had never actually done one before, so I had to get the salt (no cute shakers here–I was handed a canister of Morton’s) and show Sunrise how it was done. The bald guy from outside offered to buy us another round, but we demurred. Another bald guy—let’s call him J1—struck up with a conversation with us, but as he was nice and he didn’t smell, we went with it. In fact, the yenta in me came out, and I ended up giving him the e-mail of a beautiful, single New York friend of mine. I love that I can still pick up men… even if I’m doing it for someone else.

Meanwhile, I’m harassing Tweeds. I’m phoning her every five minutes.
Call 1:
Me: I don’t see you here!
Tweeds: You’re not looking hard enough. I’m there.

Call 2:
Me: Why aren’t you here?
Tweeds: The Tweedle Twin has already brushed his teeth.
Me: He can brush again!
The Tweedle Twin, heard in the distance: No! No, I can’t!

Call 3:
Me: Get your a*ss down here.
Tweeds: Sure, I’ll be right there.

Call 4:
Me: If you don’t come here, we’re going to come to you!
Tweeds: That’s fine! I just don’t want to get out of my pajamas.

Around 2:30 a.m., we decided it was time to say good-bye to J1. After all, one of my favorite other college haunts, Max Fish, is also scheduled to be closed.

Call 5:
Me: We’re moving to Max Fish. Meet us there.
Tweeds: Yep, no problem.

Time to move on to Ludlow Street…