1

Dear Ozzy,

Here we are, little man. 1. Honestly, this year has been a blur of you and my very large boobs, buying a house, moving, working on the house, working on work, my very large boobs shrinking, you, and you and you. You with your funny little teeth and big hazel eyes. Just who are you anyway? My boy who pushes his fingers deep inside my mouth to run his fingers over my gums as if I were speaking in Braille. You do not know yet where you begin and I end, or maybe it is that you know that there is no ending at all. Silly me, why would I think--?

This is the year that we called you El Guapo. For you are handsome and talk of things I cannot yet understand. I can already see that you will teach me much, of the customary slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails, sure, but there is more. You're fearless, for one, how you crawl to the edge of everything. I watch as you open doors and drawers and lids and life, just to see, just because, just that. So? You with the mommy who stops at yellow lights. Already you have taught me about joy, noodles stuck to skin, the moment split wide and ripe. More than anything, you are a really funny guy (my very favorite kind).

What I will remember of this first year is Scrunchy Face, how one day you discovered that it made us laugh so now you do it all the time. My class clown in the making, how you make us stop and look. Playing peekaboo, only you stay under the napkin a beat too long, already seeming to understand the genius of good comic timing.

But I will also remember this, your hands. How they stick to my skin like tentacles, fat fingers gripping at my breasts, my neck, the thin skin on the underside of my arms like a kitten. You smell of warm bread and sheets, your blonde hair wispy soft and spiky. You don't know how to kiss yet so you try to eat my mouth instead, and I offer it to you, whisper secrets in your mouth that you swallow whole. Sweet boy, if one day when you are 4 you ask me to marry you? I will say yes. Yes. Yes. Please, thank you, yes.

Happy Birthday, to my great and powerful Oz.
I love you,
Mommy

May 29, 2012

Dear Future,

I am dead. But that is neither here nor there but then. I hope this letter finds you well, that you have found an answer to plastic. Because my times were fantastic. We stared at screens and sat. And sat and sat. Most everyone was lazy (but we meant well).

I write letters to my children. More small screens but I do print them out and bundle them in boxes. In homage to your dear friend Time I asked family to write Zoey a letter for her first birthday, not to be opened until ages 13 through 21. I assigned them like homework and they arrived sealed. Advice for Zoey when she turns 15 from her grandmother, what her uncle wants her to know at 19, maybe. I don't know what's inside each letter because I did not open them, so they sit in a box, thoughts from 2007 to be read on a day that will make that seem like silly ago. Tomorrow Ozzy turns 1 and we are doing the same for him. For their first birthday I give my children time machines and invite them to travel somewhere ineffable.

Dear Future, thinking about you is like contemplating the size of the universe or the meaning of anything: it’s disturbing and too abstract to comprehend. How entropy only increases. Time and space are much the same, not to mention love. Because tomorrow is like Mars and the year 2030 is Andromeda dressed in a bonnet.

So I wonder. Are they happy? Did I raise my children to know they are loved? Deserve love? To love? Do they remember my voice when I sang, the sound of me saying their names? The feel of my hand rubbing circles on their backs, and do they trace those exact same circles around the silken staccato spines of their own children? How bad does climate change get anyway?

Sorry about that, by the way.

Why can we remember the past but not the future? Who said the arrow in the space-time continuum can only point in one direction? I mean, check me out: yesterday I wrote to the future and here we are! Dear Future, how you scare the shit out of me. I drop these letters like bread crumbs so that I can find my way back, though we have already established that I am dead, so fat lot that does me.

Another thought, another stab at bending the mesh of this manifold: each year I write a letter to my children to be opened on the year that I am. Was. See? That is, this year I turn 40, so I will write a letter to Zoey to be opened on her 40th birthday, to Ozzy on his 40th. Me to my children, mano a mano, if you will, sans reference to combat. One 40 year old to another, despite the fact that I will really be 73 then 78, the numbers adding up to me falling through the years to say hello. How are you?

I was here. This is why I write, I think. More than anything else to just say this:

Love,
S

One Step Closer (But Too Lazy to Walk)

If I could just get off my ass and walk the 5 blocks from work to the nearest Aldo I could buy these rad $12 peacock earrings that would match perfectly with my cheap peacock ring which I love to wear with my leopard print coat which I sometimes wear with my leopard ballet flats although even I know that's a no-no. Then my transformation into crazy old lady would be complete.

So if you're going out for coffee would you be a lamb and pick these up for me? I'll also take a venti nonfat, no water 6-pump, extra hot chai. Thanks, dearie.

Bonus points simply because they're called Camero Earrings.
Bitchin.'
xo,
S

Gordon Gartrelle

Dear Old Navy, Target and Forever 21,

No doubt you will say it is my fault. The Endless Summer t-shirt I thought was cute but didn't try on because Ozzy was crumbling, the striped sweater cropped beyond what was acceptable even back when my stomach was flat, the pink and orange color block dress that has never been worn, the fabric so thin you can make out the curve of my belly button. But you seduce me here from the glow of my laptop late at night, and I drop things into my cart because you have my credit card stored from last time anyway. Plink! I'm easy like that. So yes, maybe it is my fault, but the other day I looked in my closet at what I have bought from you simply because it was only $12 and realized that $12 x often = too much. Too much money spent on too much crap that I will never wear because it is poorly made or the fabric is cheap, or both. I mean, did we not learn from The Fable of Gordon Gartrelle? Oh, sweet Old Navy, Target and Forever 21, you are too young to remember, but back in the day when 8:00 o'clock on a Thursday night meant everything good and right and prime time, Gordon Gartrelle was an expensive designer shirt that Theo wanted to wear to impress a girl but his parents wouldn't pay for it so Denise made a copy for him and blah blah blah, don't you get it? You are not a Gordon Gartrelle.

Which is why I am breaking up with you. Sure, we can still be friends. You can borrow a few bucks from me here or there in exchange for a pair of chenille sleep socks, but let's not make it a habit. Because I want to see other people, people who don't make themselves so readily available, maybe, but then again their medium probably won't range from XS to XL and if I order online and don't like it I won't be so lazy to return if the cost is higher. That's all I'm saying. I deserve more, I guess. So while I can't afford a real Gordon Gartrelle as often as I've been hanging out with you, maybe that's ok. Better even. Maybe that's right. To have less of what I really wanted in the first place.

Don't bother calling. I've already changed my (credit card) number.

S

Our House

She holds her brother now tight beneath his arms, hands clasped across his chest with the rest of his body falling away as if she were saving him from drowning, and he laughs and she laughs, so I laugh. This is how they dance each night. Girl party! Zoey says, but Ozzy's allowed even though he has a penis. Because there are rules, such as this: How we stand and hold hands, curl toward each other and then unfurl apart quickly shouting Hollywood. I don't know why, this rule not one to be broken. We would have such a very good time, such a fine time. Such a happy time. Lately we have been dancing to this.
When daddy and I were little, I tell her, although to her 8th grade would be old, he always wore a gray trench coat with a Madness iron-on patch, and one for The Specials. He had a crew cut and bleached the tips white. God, he was so cute, I say, although she is dancing with her brother who is scrunching up his nose to make her laugh hard, harder, until she puts him down saying Hollywood for him. Then we'd say nothing would come between us, two dreamers...

The Queen of Magical Thinking

I can think things into happening. Or not. More often not. I do not want it to rain this weekend, so I think it will rain, I worry it will rain, I obsess over rain and it does not rain. Of course it has never been about rain but about health or luck, life--who am I kidding? Mostly it's about health. And even more a matter of course is that a + b does not, never has and never will = c, though that does not stop me from thinking about b. B. Be. You can see how I keep myself awake at night?

I am happy. There. I said it. Wrote it, looking over my shoulder for what comes next. Because everyone knows that the minute you say you are happy something comes along to snatch it away. And so I play the game, think no, things aren't that good, I mean, we owe lots of taxes, and Bryan's been working so hard lately, too hard...my fingers pulling at the strings of the fabric of a make-believe mechanism that unravels the days into happening just so. See? I'm not that happy. And then someone says something in a way that tightens my tongue and pulls me sideways so that everything is right again in that it is wrong. I am unhappy. I am safe.

What is it about happiness that embarrasses me so? The unconscious possibly-puritanical belief that it is somehow better to shun the pleasure of being at peace? When did annoyance become my go-to, fall-back state of being?

Because I am happy.

I watch my kids and feel full of time. Full of hyperbole, the palm of my hand flat across rounded bellies. Lucky, although luck, too, hints at something undeserved or limited. No, what I feel is absolute unabashed joy. Yes, silly, chicken, tickle, stupid words that make them smile and so I say them even when they don't make sense. Because I have to remind myself that being unhappy doesn't keep me safe just as living my happiness doesn't make it any more likely that this weekend it will rain.

Ozzy at the beach, heading straight for the riptide with absolute glee. This kid's going to teach me a lot, I can tell.

Aack!

I have been having a Cathy cartoon kind of day. Make that week. Weak. I mean, one minute I'm floating on the magic of fairies, feeling like the awesomest mom outside of a pearl choker, the next minute I feel like whatever the opposite of gluten-free would be. Globby? Thick. Stupidly viscous and a little bit mean, to be honest. PMS, yes. Ok? No. Hint: I identify with the lady on the left, only my hair is way frizzier.

For instance: I am been growing increasingly annoyed with my houseplants. Anthuriam, Maidenhair fern, Bromeliads. They're all so goddamn needy, what with the watering and the watering. So I might have ignored them for a bit, and now? They're dead. I sure showed them, didn't I?

Then today I came home to find Bubbles Bubbmax--the Betta fish Zoey got for her birthday--desperately trying to swim in one inch of water, the counter beneath him soaked. Apparently the brand new fish tank we bought cracked at some point today, and now Bubbles is living in an acrylic water pitcher until I have time to get another fish tank.

I mean, really?

For breakfast I had an english muffin with nutella. For lunch a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a handful of Trader Joe's cat cookies. For dinner, McDonald's. Dude. I know. See pic above.

Off to research tasty, cheap, pre-made juice cleanses and chia seeds...
xo,
S

Very Fairy Birthday Party

A few months ago I talked Zoey off the ledge of an Addams Family-themed birthday party. I just couldn't wrap my head around a bunch of 6 year olds moshing to the music of The Cramps, so I steered her a bit more toward Gary Glitter and we settled on A Very Fairy Birthday Party. Done and done.

First things first, we set up a fairy crown making station. Easy peasy me-so-pleasey, I bought wire floral garlands, butterflies and faux cherry blossoms, then cut and molded the garlands into halos and snipped the flowers into 1" blooms beforehand. Then I set out the blooms and butterflies in terracotta pots along with some pre-cut wire, along with the deer from Zoey's room just because.

Here's Zoey showing her friends what to do, with my friend Rosalie photobombing through a pair of tinsel wings.

The resulting fairy crowns made my inner 6 year old burn with jealousy. I totally would've tossed a kitten if I hadn't already made myself one at home. p.s. "toss a kitten" is my new go-to phrase for throw a conniption. It's all kinds of marvelous.

Anyhoo, here is the just because deer modeling Zoey's fairy crown:

The girls then started decorating sticks they found to make fairy wands, and once again my head nearly fell off with the sheer creativity of kids. 6 years olds are simply Gen. I. Us.

I love this shot, like a few fairies copped a squat to chit chat.

Once? When I was 6ish, I made my family a cake and put the whole egg in, shell and all, and for some reason my family likes to tell this story whenever I bake. Incidentally, I had a made-up restaurant when I was little called Zuzu's. The only thing on my menu was grilled cheese which my mom actually made, but I bring it up only because I was thinking the other day how strangely close the name Zuzu's is to Zoey and Ozzy. Clearly my penchant for z's began at an early age. All that to say I made cupcakes and decorated them with butterflies so no one would suspect they were Duncan Hines.

Mandatory photo of the birthday girl blowing out her candle:

It didn't hurt that we had the party in an actual fairy ring, a grove of old growth redwoods in a perfect circle. Something about the center redwood either rotting out or burning down a thousand years ago, then a bunch of shoots grew in a perfect circle. Either that or magic, hard to say.

In case you've ever wondered what a gang of fairies looks like, it's pretty menacing...

This pic pretty much sums up the day, though. Lots of shrieking, which is the way one should start year 6.

Gratuitous shot of the party favors. Zoey and I made each girl a fairy terrarium complete with fairy, moss, cherry blossoms and plenty of pixie dust. Special shout out to the few days I spent on Pinterest before I lost...interest. What? I just pin shit--cute dresses and rings, shoes, art--and nothing shows up at my door in 5 to 7 business days? Hmph.

And just because I have noticed the slippery slope slide this blog has been taking with regards to a certain someone's second child syndrome, here's a shot of Ozzy, wingless and glitter-free but somehow just as magical.

Don't worry, little man. We're staring down the barrel of 1, t-minus 30 days and counting. Pretty sure your dad's already noodling on a Dukes of Hazzard-theme...

xo,
S

6.

Dear Zoey,

The next day you were 6.
Which is how it happens, I know. Not surprising or terribly complicated, but unbelievable all the same. You are 6. April 24, 2012. 1234567891011121314151617, you count up to anything now, 6 not even a catch-your-breath number to take pause. Numbers a game played with in tangerine cuties. What's 10 minus 4, you say, only I am not supposed to know the answer as you arrange the cuties on the table. 6, you say, triumphant, a little boastful even as you pretend to juggle though you close your eyes to catch. The next day you eat bruised tangerines for lunch.

The last photo of 5.

6 has brought swagger, and if I could bottle that swagger, I would. Spoon a bit of swagger to you each night before bed as preventative medicine, doubling the dosage in a few years. You wear glitter with stripes, zebra print, rainbow, shorts over pants because it is your "signature look." I admit, there are days when I try to talk you out of wearing your bathrobe belt as a scarf, though I know I should stop. Let you own yourself. Celebrate your spirit because soon enough there will be people who try to crush it, or at the very least poke at it with toothpicks. I will do everything in my power not to let them, but even more importantly, I will not let myself be one of them.

You found an old Ice Cube CD the other night and put it on your karaoke machine. Said that you knew it had the bad f word, but you wanted to dance to it. So you did. So you did.



The next night you asked me if I knew what the b word was. I cocked my head, curious, but you told me it was bunny.

6. Caught between bunny and fuck when all you want to do is dance. Look at yourself in the reflection of the window as you pop your head and arms and jump, feeling bad-ass krumping in a Rapunzel shirt.

When I grow up I want to be just like you.

You are magic, Zoey, your huge hazel eyes fringed with impossibly long eyelashes and I see you watching the world around you, amused. And I see the world watching right back, entranced with the girl who feels bad for the trees when we make her eat salad, who calls her brother baby potato and still thinks it's pronounced earthquick.

And so I will put you to bed tomorrow night, your first day of 6, after telling you the story of when you were born. How they pulled you out of me, a pressure released, how I looked at you and fell smack hard deeply in love with breathing, turned my head and puked, and then turned back to stare into those big, big eyes. And I will tell you again that when they pulled you out of me slick, your tiny baby fingers tore a piece of my heart and took it with you, how no matter where you are, no matter how old or how far, you will always have a piece of me, my sweet, sweet girl. My Zo.

Happy birthday.
Love,
Mommy

Apparently I was too cranky to write 5. But here's 4. 3. 2. (1 was before I started the blog.)

How High?

I get an A+. Like, I totally aced this part of the Motherhood Test (and you just know we're all being graded, right?). Gold star, smiley face, good job! Because I think I taught Zoey how to read. Slash, not in a way that has both of us in tears.

It's like this: I took a pile of notecards with words and taped them all over the house. Then I made it a game. Can you find the word jump? Zoey scampers off to find the word, somehow not realizing she is also learning. And here's where I get extra credit...the cards each have a simple sentence on the back using the word on the front of the card. Jump over the log! I am sure there is something somatic going on what with her thinking this is a game so her cerebral cortex is open, synapses zapping happily along, but she is actually reading these sentences. Jump for joy! Yay! Chest bump, Van Halen Jump! Whatever. More often than not we mothers berate ourselves for what we're doing wrong...working, not working, snapping, not sleeping, sucking at playing with Barbies (I really do hate playing Barbie), so I think it's equally important to focus on what we are doing well. And right now I am excelling at teaching Zoey to read.

Though I did just notice that the title I gave in homage to the card I have pictured is also a play on the fact that it's 4/20. Dude. Baby steps. Better motherhood one flash card at a time.

xo,
S

Cone of Shame

Apologies for the lack of posts but I have had pink eye. And I know what you're thinking, that pink eye does not necessarily preclude one from writing or the internet. If anything, the www is positively made for those with communicable diseases. Yet if I put my ear up to my computer screen I can hear you there like the ocean spiraled inside a seashell...whhhhhhnnuuu all hollow-like, the rhythmic recoiling with the mere mention of pink eye. I mean, you can feel it right now, can't you? Your eye? It itches a little bit? How good it would feel to rub the inside corner hard. But don't touch it! Whatever you do. Don't touch your eye while reading this post.So yes. Pink eye. It is not cancer or flesh-eating; it does not permanently disfigure. But for a few days you can see how it might be maybe, a sliver. The way people look at you either too hard or away, annoyed, disgusted, curious. Cautious. The way your presence leaves imprints. This is where your wrist touched the counter, fingertips on a pen.

Talking about beauty can be ugly. I am not saying I am beautiful. But I don't disappear either. Normally I am me and I am good, people smile my way, sometimes more. And then my eye crusts over and I am gone. Like that! In public, I look down. At home I avoid the mirror. The only way I exist is inside, what I think, how I feel, which is fine when I forget, if a little itchy. Then at night when I go to bed I wonder what it would be like to never have a mirror again, to never have seen a mirror at all. How might self-esteem change without the concept of reflection? Who would I be if I were only my insides?

Can you see me here again? My ear against the screen? Don't worry--I am not contagious anymore. Wwwwwhhhnn...did you know that if you put your ear up to a stranger's head you can actually hear them say what the fuck? Because I wonder what you think, who you would be if no one saw you.

I am in love with the color in this photo from Frida Kahlo's own personal collection. Through her countless self-portraits, she seemed fascinated with the play between physical and self.

You Dig? I Dig.

I was totally dorking out on Don Draper today, thinking about how this season is supposed to be 1966, how he just turned 40. Which means that if Don Draper were still alive today he would be 86, that is if he didn't die of emphysema first and wasn't a fictional character on the teevee.Anyway, I saw this article titled The Story Behind Don Draper's New Digs, and even though I despise the term "new digs" I quickly got past it when I saw the pics.
Maybe it's because my house was built in 1979, has a butterfly roof and the stone facade around the fireplace reaches the ceiling, but I am "digging" this look. I guess I'm a little grateful that my seriously outdated house might kinda' sorta (but not really) be thought of as cool. Question mark? Yeah, not so much, but I did have that fridge in avocado green and burnt orange shag carpeting when I was little.
So that's that then. Dollars to donuts Don Draper lives in a retirement community in Palm Springs now.
xo,
S

Another One for the Baby Book

Monday, April 9th, 2012. Zoey is officially way cooler than I am.Please no one tell her this until she is 19 years old. Although let's be honest: look at that picture. She totally already knows it.
And yes, she picked out the entire outfit. When I tried to tell her that maybe zebra print didn't go with the pattern on her skirt or the illustration on her shirt, or perhaps it clashed with the sequin tie (?!) and cardigan plus the glitter gladiator sandals, she told me that I don't know modern. Only she pronounces it with 3 syllables: ma-der-ehn. Excuse me whilst I take leave in my comely horse and buggy, verily young sprite.
And yes, I covet her sandals. Target. And no, they don't come in grown up sizes. I checked.

Remind Me Of This Come August 30th

Zoey has discovered my old photo albums. Alternative first sentence of this post: I have slowly been watching my friends turn 40. Which came first, the memory or the fear? Chicken or egg, I turn 40 in 5 months, a fact that has turned me into a liar as I tell everyone I am going to face it without shame. 40, you guys. At least with 30 there was thirtysomething, hanging on to a thread of hip with Hope and Michael Steadman. Remember them? But 40. 40 is clunky, orthopedic, the something now just the story of what has happened.
What happened in this picture? Zoey asks, and so I tell her. This was my birthday. A place called Beauty Bar. 27 or 28, I think, though I don't tell her that one of the guys with us that night died years later in a car accident, or that another of the guys later became addicted to heroin. We ate Moroccan food and belly-danced. It was a great night. I tell her, and it was.
Did you used to have curly hair? she asks me, and I say no, this was Halloween, I think. I hope, the eyebrows as questionable as the wig. This was a Halloween spent with the only couple we knew at the time who were actually married. We were 24, and the couple later divorced, the guy married the girl with whom he had been having an affair, though whom seems too proper in that sentence. They later split up, too, another story of what has happened since.And then this. Kinda hard to explain to Zoey what is happening here. We were 18, our first summer back home after college. A get together with high school friends, probably one of the last times we all hung out seeing as how it had all already started to turn strained, the car accident of my two best friends lurking in the shadows. Fault and blame, guilt, all of us too young to know how to deal with anything but tongues and tight shoulders, the sour taste of beer. I look at this photo and wonder what I am thinking, me with my Stussy hat. God, I loved that stupid hat.Another hat. This time in Costa Rica. I remember the heat of the black sand, how sweet the Fanta tasted, how fat I felt as I sat there which kills me. I was 27. Bryan and I were playing gin rummy. My bikini was pink and red, reversible, and later I accidentally left it at this little place we stayed at with tons of hot Brazilian surfers. I loved that bathing suit, but I felt fat and scared, had panic attacks walking down the street of a small Costa Rican town. I called my mom from a payphone in Playa Hermosa and I wish more than anything I could tell this girl to relax, she's fine. You're fine. I'm fine.
Oh, how we had fun. And if the photo albums are to be trusted, all we ever did was smiled. Laughed. Drank. Ate tapas and smooshed our faces together for pictures. I have made a point of not posting photos of any of my friends (you're welcome, friends), but god, we were all so freaking pretty. Close-ups with no wrinkles, no pores, smooth skin, shiny hair. Blonde, even. Mommy, why do you have blonde hair? And really I have no answer. Because I could, I guess. I shouldn't have--lord knows there was a year or two of blonde I wish I could take back, but there it is. Because I could.
We all could. 18 and 26, 27, 30. Photos of Italy, Greece, Mexico, night after night after night out in the city getting drunk. I am glad we did it, all of it, the stupid hair and mistakes. Not knowing much but most of all not knowing what we had, probably the reason we look so free. Which is why I guess I am reaffirming my lie about turning 40 without shame.* Because this is all I have now, and someday I am sure I will look back at photos of me with my 5 year old girl and 10 month old boy and marvel at how young I was. Am. Now.

*Fine print: I do not turn 40 for 5 months. No shame, but also no sense in speeding this up.

Boo-Yah Motherfuckers! You Had the Chance to Kill Me, But Now It's Gone!

And as much as I'd like to be the kind of person who says Boo-Yah Motherfuckers without an apology or disclaimer, I'm not. So let me just say that I love the feel of saying that. Come on now: say it. Under your breath if you have to, whisper...boo-yah motherfuckers! Feels fantastic, doesn't it?
I'm also not one for exclamation points, but this. ! Bryan has been gone for the past week sailing a regatta in the Caribbean. !!! Dude, I know. I was invited to go but felt that Ozzy was too young to leave, so I stayed here and single-mom'ed it. Can I just say hats off to the single moms? Holy shoosh, people. That shizz is hard. I only showered at night after the kids went to sleep but kept my head outside the shower door almost the whole time so I could hear...I don't know. Have you checked the children? "When a Stranger Calls" apparently played a big role in my formative years along with Bloody Mary and The Patchwork Monkey. I have not allowed myself to mention Bryan's absence either on my blog or on Facebook lest someone terrible comes to kill me, but tonight Bryan is back and Boo-to-the-mother-effin-Yah.
The male pin-ups? Well, they're just rad. Titled Men-Ups by photographer Rion Sabean--I believe the photographer is actually the hunk with the power drill. I am sure there is something to be said here regarding the social commentary of men in Vargas girl pin-up poses and my rather traditional gender role of feeling safer when my husband is home, but I'm too tired/excited/want to eat a bowl of cereal to explore that train of thought. Plus, I have to watch my tivo'ed episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County before Bryan gets here...

xo,
S

THE GOLD CHAIR

Zoey really wants to read in The Gold Chair. Or maybe it should be all uppercase like this: THE GOLD CHAIR. Because apparently THE GOLD CHAIR is THE SHIT in kindergarten, except of course that is potty talk and we don't use that kind of language BUT HOLY FUCK, SHE REALLY WANTS TO READ IN THE GOLD CHAIR.

Truth be told, I would like her to read in THE GOLD CHAIR, too. And yes, I am finding all this willy nilly uppercase annoying, too, but you see, THE GOLD CHAIR is tufted, mustard-gold, stained, but most important of all, it is where you get to sit and read a book to the entire kindergarten class when you are ready.

And Zoey is not ready.

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind...

This is the book Zoey has chosen, so every night we practice. T-hh-ee, she says. What sound does 'th' make, I say. Ch, she says. No, I say. Look at the letters. T-atch-ee, she says. His? No, I say, THE, the the cackling and popping in my throat like this:
The. So we've got the. And then we get to night. She starts to sound it out, enn, iih, guh hhu-? Night, I say, it's night, fast and dark, I don't know how or why but it's night, damnit. ThenightMaxworehiswolfsuitandmademischiefofonekind turn page andanother turn page hismothercalledhim"WILDTHING!"andMaxsaid"I'LLEATYOUUP!"sohewassenttobedwithouteatinganything.. Every page like this, plodding through words feeling tight in the chest and eyes quick, peering through the wrong end of our binoculars at THE GOLD CHAIR so that it looks as if it's even farther away.

Because I suck at teaching my daughter how to read. Night! I say, mischief! Rumpus! And then when she pauses too long, concentrate! A tiger mom who lost her stripes because I honestly don't understand how anyone learns to read when ghoti spells fish. Stay with me here: gh, pronounced /f/ as in tough /tʌf/; o, pronounced /ɪ/ as in women /ˈwɪmɪn/; and ti, pronounced /ʃ/ as in nation /ˈne͡ɪʃən/. Letters, words, sentences, all of it a mystery I don't care much to unravel, the beauty of it almost in its ineffability, itself an illogical thing to say.

When Zoey was a baby she hated the sand. Would curl up her feet like a newt if we so much as tried to sit her down at the beach, and Bryan was in a way almost hurt by this. So what? I said, the sand is kind of dirty if you think about it, but he is a water-man, a surfer and sailor with salt in his veins and sand in his cracks, and now I get it.

I love words. a, e, i, o, u, and all the time y. I want Zoey to love to read, and I know that she won't with me yelling at her night! So I told her I was sorry, that we were both learning here because I have never taught anyone how to read, the words pawing angrily at my teeth. LET THE WILD RUMPUS START! I am going to have to find a way to swallow the words, those wild things. Anyone know why night spells night? Because I don't, and as much as I'd like this post to end with a triumphant seat in THE GOLD CHAIR, it's not. Not yet anyway. It ends with the same thing tomorrow night. Night! Night.

Crawl Fish (Good With Butter and a Bit of Cayenne Pepper)

Is it horrible that I like to put something shiny on one side of the room and Ozzy on the other, only so I can watch him pull himself across the floor like a very determined paraplegic?

Yes, noted. It is horrible and delicious and I only have t-minus a very short time until I will no longer be allowed to relax ever again because he will be walking into doorknobs and off cliffs and onto paths where all I will get to see is his back as he totters and then walks and runs toward a life without me.
Is it just me, or is everything happening fasterfasterlikethis lately?

xo,
S