the pieces of my life

Pie is hooked on the “watch every Hannah ever made!” on Disney, so every evening we tune into Hannah Montana. I often sit with her, and it makes me feel… dirty. But I feel slightly redeemed because tonight’s episode, from 2007, has Larry David in it. Larry David! On Hannah Montana. Somehow, Larry David makes it all better.

I was feeling so nice and relaxed yesterday. Adam had a meeting in Cambridge in the morning, so he took the afternoon off and came to relieve me with the kids. I got sent to a massage, and luxuriated for a whole glorious hour and fifteen minutes. (Side note: In the morning, I realized I should shower before the massage. I was a little low on time, so I decided to just run a three-miler. I was a mile and a half in when it occurred to me, “Hey, I don’t have to run to take a shower. One can just shower.” But by then I was too far into my run for it to make a difference.)

All that nice and relaxed went away today. As I sat. And sat. And sat at Pie’s dance recital rehearsal. Time just slooooooooows right down in there.  26 classes. Pie’s class? 25th on the program. Joy! Oh, and we started 45 minutes late.  Which enabled us to head home right smack in the middle of rush hour. But Pie (and Jasmine) loved it and they can’t wait for the actual recital tomorrow and they were just so cute, it was all worth it. And since we got home too late to make any kind of meal, I just threw food at the kids and decided to make my dinner a Zinfandel.  They go to bed for their naps (at least that’s what the seem like–the boy doesn’t sleep anymore. He stays up reading till about 9 p.m. and then wakes himself up and heads downstairs around 5 a.m. When I asked him why he doesn’t sleep anymore he told me, “Sleeping is what us kids call boring… or lame”). And I’m going to catch up on a week’s worth of TV.

No more Hannah, though. Not unless Larry David becomes a regular.

My friend, D., has twin girls who are about three months older than Doodles. We met when Doodles was about 13 months old and they were 16 months, so I’ve known them awhile.

The girls are, let’s call them, Mimi and Nevada, because the first initial thing just gets old.  Mimi has been in Doodles’s class at school for two years now. But the thing is, Mimi is a girly girl. Which means Doodles isn’t that into her. But Pie is nuts about her. Her sister, Nevada, is more Doodles’s type, and while he professes to “not like girls,” whenever he’s with her, he has fun.

I don’t think it was long after meeting the girls that I pegged them. I do that to people. Are you reading this? Do I know you? Then I have you pigeonholed in some little corner of my mind. I like to do that, to make sense of all you people. And, yes, I do mean you. Anyway, in my pigeonholing, I decided that Nevada is destined for Yale, and that Mimi is going to be an NYU kind of girl. And it wasn’t too long after that that I decided not only is Mimi going to be an NYU girl, but Pie will be her roommate. Because those two are peas in a pod and they are going to rage in the City. Mark my words, those two will be hanging out till 2 a.m. at the 2023 equivalent of Sophie’s or Horseshoe Bar, allowing those poor boys to buy them drinks and then letting those same poor  boys suffer, getting stoned in the whatever the equivalent of 1987 Tompkins Square Park is, before heading to the after-hour haunts, all the while doing amazingly cool and artistic things in their daylight hours. I’m just guessing of course. Because I, of course, never did anything like this myself. Sure I may have attended film school at NYU, but I can only make these assumptions based on other people, because I am a long-suffering suburban haus frau who had no existence before that of my children. That’s my story. And I’m sticking to it.

I’m all the more sure of it today. D.’s husband is in a band. But I never get to hear that band. Because they always play at band-ish hours, like 11 p.m. 11 p.m.=sleep. Or dealing with a child. Or sleeping. Or ignoring a child. Or sleeping. Something like that. Whatever it is, 11 p.m. is right out.

But today, the band was playing at 3 p.m. 3 p.m.! That’s like merely getting-ready-for-bed time! I can push back my pajama and toothbrushing for some music. Doodles had T ball, so it was a no-brainer: Pie and I would go to see the band. They were playing in Cambridge, at a club I hadn’t been to since Adam was in grad school and I actually went to places like clubs (well, at least for the three months he was in grad school before he knocked me up).

We walked in. Pie shyly clung to me. For 2.4 minutes. At which point Nevada came up to her and said, “Do you want to go up front with me?” and Pie nodded. She took Nevada’s hand and disappeared into the crowd. The next I saw her, Mimi had her arm around her and they were shaking their hips. And I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t given those junior high school boys a good glare, they would have been offering to buy Pie and Mimi some seltzers. I had to stop that. Those poor boys don’t deserve to have their hearts broken so young. Because you know Pie and Mimi would destroy them.

The volume was ridiculous. Pie refused ear plugs. She just stood at the front of the stage mesmerized, Mimi watching over her. Pie had a blue hair extension in her hair, her frilly homemade summer dress on, and a knitted necklace that Doodles had made for her. And oddly enough she fit right in, except for the fact that she was about two and a half feet too short. We had to leave right after the band’s set. Pie would have happily stayed.

You know what’s going to happen right? My NYU-going Pie is going to come home some spring break. And a friend from high school, some boy, will say, “Hey, wanna go see a show at the Middle East?” And Pie is going to look down her nose at him and scoff, “The Middle East? Please. I’ve been going there since I was like four.”

Don’t call. No really. Don’t call. Because my iPhone is hanging out in a bag of rice. I think it just got hungry. It’s not because I’m angling for the new iPhone and so I dropped it in a sink of water and had to dry it out in rice. And it’s definitely not because it fell in a toilet. That would be gross. Totally gross. So it’s not that. Stop thinking it’s that.

My kids have been on fire lately. The boy’s been a pain in the butt, with attitude up the wazzo0, willfully ignoring me, basically looking me in the eye as he does exactly what he’s not supposed to do. And the girl is just explosive. One minute she’s gazing into my eyes, telling me how much she loves me, the next she’s full of spit and vinegar. I finally said to her, “What goes on in that brain of yours?”

Pie: I don’t know.

Me: Can I get in there and find out?

Pie laughed and she said: You can try!

I will say–and I know none of you will believe this–but Pie has been sleeping in her own room. Truly. Or at least she starts out there. Which I can live with. But lately she’s been a tough sell on bedtime. She wants to be able to stay up late “reading” like her brother does, but her brother will then go to sleep on his own whereas she’ll call one of us to stay with her. And that don’t fly. So she has a fit. And we have an argument. And she’s not allowed to read before going to sleep.

Me: Why do you give us such grief when you go to bed?

Pie: I don’t know. Just sometimes I give grief, and sometimes I don’t.

Me: Are you going to give us grief tonight?

Pie: I don’t know. I never know ahead of time if I’m going to give grief or not.

Want to know if she’s going to give us grief tonight? You can’t call to find out. Because my iPhone is hangin’ with the rice. And it’s still not because it fell in a toilet. Gross.

Doodles had computer time while Pie had her show.

Me: What do you want to watch?

Pie: Um, do we have Sonny with a Chance?

Me: Uh, no.

Pie: Can you check and see if it’s on live TV?

I check.

Me: It’s not.

Pie, sighing: Okay, then I guess I’ll watch Hannah Montana.

Me: When did you start wanting to watch such big kid shows?

Doodles calls from the next room: Mom! She is a big kid!

Me: She is?

Doodles: Yeah! She’s almost five, you know!

I truly that being Jewish meant that I would be able to avoid unpleasant conversations about whether Santa or the Easter Bunny was real. Yes, we have the Tooth Fairy to contend with, but she seems so benign. And I do hedge it, never actually committing to her existence, but following Doodles lead on it.

But that girl. And her Eloise. Oh, does she love her Eloise. Last trip to New York, Pie demanded we visit Eloise. It went well. The doorman apologized that Eloise was out with Nanny, but he invited us into the Plaza to see Eloise’s painting and he gave Pie a postcard from Eloise.

So, of course, this trip back, Pie wanted to return to see if Eloise is around. My parents live in Chelsea. The Plaza is on Central Park South. Not too far, but really a pain in the ass and not near most of where we go. But the girl wants her Eloise. “Let’s go see Eloise! She’s near Central Park! Let’s go see Eloise before Central Park!” How many times can we have Eloise out shopping with her Nanny? But this time I got clever.

“Adam,” I suggested, “why don’t you phone Eloise and see if she’s in today before we go all the way over there?”

“Great idea.” He took his phone and “called” the Plaza. We heard. “Hi, is Eloise available for a visit? Oh! Uh huh. Uh huh. Paris, huh? And when will she be back? Oh, okay. Thanks, we’ll try again then.”

And then, reporting back to Pie, “I’m sorry, honey, but she’s in Paris. Paris in the springtime. She won’t be back till late summer.”

Such disappointment! “But we’ll come back late summer, right?”

So I have till late summer to get her off of Eloise. Or else Eloise might end spending summer in Moscow. And since we haven’t planned our summer vacation yet, I can easily hear requests for a summer in Russia…..

Dear Readers. Having fun. Wish you were here. Love, Jenny

No seriously, I know I haven’t been posting as much lately. It’s just with the beautiful weather and the holiday and all the other good stuff, I’ve been out doing instead of home computering. I need to do some construction on this site (and by “me,” I mean “Adam” and by “construction” I mean, “I have no idea what I mean”). For the past 8 1/2 years (gasp!) that I’ve kept this blog, I’ve FTP’d it to Blogger. No biggie. Although they’re now doing away with FTP support, which means… well, something. Apparently my main choice is to go to WordPress, if I want to keep my own domain, and it’s these gorgeous, beautiful weeks that make me wonder if I really will. Maybe it’s time to let the blog die a natural death before my son, who can now read everything I write figures out what I’m up to and starts to protest his innermost quirks being broadcast to the world at large. Something to think about…

Anywhos… What have I been busy with? Well, there’s Pesach (and I love how every time Pie says, “Pesach,” to my father, she quickly adds, “That’s Passover,” as if my father has no idea what Pesach is. Which he does. And he doesn’t. So she’s not completely off). We hosted a seder for 18, which was lovely, but a little busy. As she’s at a Jewish preschool, Pie had off last Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for the holiday. And then Doodles had off Friday for Good Friday (and I tried explaining Good Friday and Easter to him, but boy did I mangle it. I tried to end on a joke–“Do you know, Doodles, how we’ll know who’s right?” “How?” “Well, when the Messiah comes, if he says, ‘Nice to meet you,’ we’ll know that we [the Jews] were right. If he says, ‘Hi. Good to see you again,’ we’ll know the Christians had it right.”–but somehow that only made it more confusing). And then Pie had off again this past Monday and Tuesday for the end of Passover. And yet I survived. Did I mention that Adam’s in London? Still surviving. And having fun.

So first night seder was at our house. We did seder bingo. Kids did the four questions beautifully. Ate too many desserts. Done by about 8. The second night we had seder at our rabbi’s house. Now that’s a seder. The kids loved it, although Pie petered out at 8:30. Doodles and I made it till the midnight end and he was enthralled by it. So the next day I let him play hooky, and Doodles, Pie, and I went to see the Egypt Tomb 10A exhibit at the MFA. (Get it? It was Passover? So we went to see about Egypt? Clever, no?)

I had to fit all of my week into Thursday and then on Friday, Doodles and I rode bikes, went to see How to Train Your Dragon, and then hung out outside. It was truly a perfect day.

The beginning of this week, Pie wanted playdates so I used the time to clean. I mean really clean. I finally got my office organized, and over the weekend, Adam had built these lovely shelves in our closet’s closet (yes, you read that right: our closet has a closet), so I moved all our CDs in there and then repurposed the original shelves in my office and the house is so lovely and beautiful! The house was fully cleaned today and I feel this urge to put police tape all over the door and make a huge sign that reads, “No Medroses Allowed” because the instant one of them comes in this house, there goes all my beautiful clean house. Sigh.

There’s more I’ve done. And more going on. But I don’t feel like writing about it. Children want to be let in. So I need to go guard my beautiful house. Because I can see the gleam in their eyes. The gleam of destruction. Sigh.

Every week we get a delivery from Boston Organics, which delivers a big box of organic fruits and veggies to our door. Now, I’ve never doubted the organic creds of the company, but a big fat green preying mantis/grasshopper/green thingy that appeared with our veggies definitely speak to the pesticide-free nature of our produce (and made me reconsider my avoidance of all things Monsanto).

Now, I understand it’s important not to telegraph our fears and dislikes to our children. I can look any spider in the eye. I can check under dark beds and peer into dark closets without nary a shudder. I can show my kids the baby mice at our local Audubon without throwing up.

But this was a bug I could not face. It’s not that the bug was so bad; it’s that it was sitting in the kitchen. Pie is screaming. Doodles refuses to go near it. I’m frozen.

“I’ll just throw a bowl over it and then we can figure it out,” I say.

“Okay,” says Doodles.

“Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!” says Pie.

I take a bowl. I approach the bug. I back up from the bug. I approach the bug again. I back up from the bug. I approach the bug again. No can do. What if it jumps away when I put the bowl down?

“You do it!” I say to Doodles.

“No way!” he says and he escapes to the family room to play his Didj.

I call Adam. He’s not in. I text him: BUG! Bug emergency! We’re trapped in the kitchen!

I call my neighbor Beetle on her cell phone, because I know she’s due home from the library any minute. But it turns out her daughter’s class there goes longer than she thought, but she’ll be by when they’re done.

In desperation, I even call my sister. In New York. She was always so good about letting herself into my NYC apartment, while I hid out in the loft bed, to retrieve the dead mice on my floor that my cat would try to turn into lunch. Tweedle Twirp, unfortunately, is unavailable. Or at least screening my calls. One can never be sure.

I put Pie on the counter, because she’s too scared to be on the floor, and we watch the bug to make sure it doesn’t hop away anywhere.

Finally Adam calls. “Are you kidding me?” he asks.

“It’s a big bug. Don’t you have a meeting?” I ask.

“It’s at five.” It was 4:10 at the time.

“Great. You have time to come home, get rid of the bug, and then get back to your meeting.”

You’ll be shocked by this, but he declines.

“Just smash it with a broom!” he says.

“That will kill it!”

“You want to rescue it??” he asks.

“I don’t want to kill it!”

“Here’s what you do,” he offers as his last suggestion. “Grab a sheet of newspaper. Throw it over the bug. And then have the kids jump on it. Make it a game and see who can stomp on it first.”

Yeah, that was helpful.

Luckily, it was only minutes later that Beetle and Tab show up. Of course they ring the front door bell. And we can’t get to the front door. Because, you know, there’s a bug there.

We open the kitchen door and yell to them to come around.

All I can say is thank goodness for Beetle. She took that bug and scooped it up and took it outside. The bug was rescued. And then it promptly died. Seriously. Right outside. It keeled over. Dead.

You just can’t win. And now, I’m going to eat some pesticide-free apples. And try to ignore the fact that my daughter will forever be freaked out by preying mantises/grasshoppers/green thingies. Because of me. Because, you know, you just can’t win.

If there’s a greater torture to mankind than Wow Wow Wubzy, I have no idea what it is. This has got to be the most vacuous, vapid, piece of TV crap ever created. But Pie loves it. And Doodles is off at the Cub Scouts, weighing in his car for the Pinewood Derby, and little Pie wanted to go along too, but can’t because it goes past her bedtime, so here I am watching Wow Wow Shoot Me.

I’ve been pretty focused lately (which is why you haven’t seen as much of me here). I’m not really happy with where my novel is at the moment, but I’m probably within days of a complete first draft, at which point my poor beleaguered readers will have to help me parse what I can do to revive it. But it’s a good feeling, knowing that I’ll at least have the beginning-middle-end all in one piece,albeit one that will need to be dissected and rebuilt. But the body is there.

The crafty world has also sucked me in. For Purim I baked mounds of hamentashen (the ones with Fluff came out fabulously! I highly recommend. They come out tasting like toasted marshmallow and were a huge hit with the under-10 crowd). I’ve been baking my own bread. I’ve made turtles and homemade gummies. I’ve been knitting (see those hand warmers on Pie?) and crocheting (I made that penguin for Doodles when his class was studying penguins). My photo albums are slowly becoming organized. Waiting through dance classes and gymnastics classes and Hebrew school is much easier when I have something to do with my hands.

The final thing I have right now is running. I’ve signed up to do the Chicago Marathon in the fall with my friend Fish. I’m a little worried about him backing out, and I’m not going to go to Chicago on my own for a race, but I’ll have a back up marathon, just in case. But I’d like to get my marathon closer to 4 hours (from 4:13:46). It’s already giving me the motivation to run and I’m antsy to get out there. The hint of spring we’ve had is helping a lot.

So for now, it’s Groovy Girls (Pie received a mother load of them as hand-me-downs from Tab, and she wants to spend all afternoon with my playing Groovy Girls with her) and Wow Wow Wubzy. If you were doing this, you’d be anxious to run, too. Far far away.

I’ve been suckered. It’s 7:59 p.m. and I’ve got two incredibly sleepy children next to me. But I made the mistake earlier of saying, “Hey, the Olympic opening ceremonies are on at 7:30. If you guys want to stay up late, you can watch it.” They, of course, took me up on the offer, and we started watching.

Before we began, I said to Adam, “Did you hear about the luger?” “No,” he said. “Look it up. But don’t say anything. I don’t want it a topic of discussion.” What was I thinking? Doodles and I had a huge battle when I turned off the TV when Tom Brokaw said, “The footage you are about to see about the death of Georgian luge slider Nodar Kumaritashvili is graphic.” We had no choice but to explain to them about the accident. Pie keeps asking over and over, “So he went off the quarters?” “The course.” “So he died?” “Yes, he died.” “How did he die?”

Let me move on by saying the (male) sportscaster is interviewing snowboarder Shaun White. Me: “Man, I wish I had a head of hair like him.”
Pie: “Him? That’s a guy?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Pie: “How do you know?”
Me: “I just know.”
Pie: “Are those two people [Sean and the sportscaster] married?”
Me: “No.”

So all this is happening, and I finally say to Adam, “What time, exactly, do these opening ceremonies start? I thought it was 7:30.”

He does a little zing zing on his computer and then laughs at me. “Coverage of the opening ceremonies start at 7:30. But the opening ceremonies don’t start till 9.”

Try telling my kids, “Nevermind! I was wrong!” So instead I have two already tired kids trying their best to make it up till 9. It’s not going to happen. But they’re giving it their all, although I predict Pie will be out in about 2.73 minutes.

5. 4. 3. 2. 1. No, the ceremonies haven’t started. But Pie wins the gold medal in sleep. One down, one to go!

Lots of times when I run, my mind is focused on something specific: a problem I’m trying to work out in my novel, working out a school situation for Doodles, thinking about ways to get Pie over her tantrum stage. I frequently make and go over my to-do lists when I’m out there. Running is the best method I have for de-stressing and working things out. But occasionally, I’ll just crank up the iPod and my mind will float where it may. This past Monday, as I kept up a nice tempo and ABC (the band, not the kid song) was playing, my mind wandered and I started thinking about the kids. But oddly, I realized, that when I think about the kids, I think about them about two years behind. When I picture the kids, I think of Pie as a toddler, speaking in halting sentences, and Doodles, as this little kid bopping around and tripping on himself with his uncoordinated walk. When I see them in real life, it’s almost shocking.

Who are these big kids? I sign Pie up for kindergarten today and, oh, the things she can do! She can go to the computer, turn it on, load up her phonics game, and play. She can add and subtract and write the names of everyone in the family. She’s the best Go Fish player I’ve met. She’s adept at using my iPhone and knows the words to Selena Gomez’s and Hannah Montana’s most popular songs. She oozes attitude like a teenager.

My boy is not just reading, he’s reading. We’ve moved way beyond Minnie and Moo and Biscuit and his new “just right books” include my childhood favorites, like Judy Blume. We’re reading Freckle Juice together and last night, as we went to bed, he said, “Yea! Another chapter of Freckle Juice!” He absorbs information and can spew out things he gleaned from books or school or by looking it up on the computer. Adam and I are no longer the ultimate sources of knowledge–he can find things out himself.

I’ve noticed of late that my kids simply take up more space. Pie’s outgrown her car seat and we’re going to be a booster-only family. Doodles laughs every time I mock-cry, “My baby boy! Stop getting so big!” and he tells me, “Mom, I can’t help it! It’s what I’m supposed to do!”

What’s a mama to do?