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Category: ms. malaprop

guilty pleasure monday: all for leyna (billy joel)

Posted on August 24, 2009June 13, 2013 by wrekehavoc

apparently not inspired by her.

whenever i think of billy joel’s song all for leyna, i think of two things. the first and foremost memory is of the summer of JAP Camp. one summer, my mom and dad thought i would enjoy a sleepaway camp experience. my mom’s friend would work at camp as the art teacher while her son went to camp; as misery loves company, my mom’s friend suggested that my mom work at camp so that i might have fun in the jewish alps, too.

so in the summer of 1980, off we triapsed to camp lokanda. i was situated in a large bunkhouse (with carpet!) with a gaggle of some of the Jappiest girls LawnGuyland could offer. we had electronics (well, what passed for them in 1980; now i suspect the place is riddled with DSs, iphones, ipods, and so on.). we had neon pink fingernail polish. we had bloomies on tushes. we had girls who did not want to do anything remotely athletic for fear of breaking a nail.

in short, we had some of the nastiest bitches i have encountered before or since.

these girls were horrible. they were catty; they were demeaning; they were demanding. and i, of course, was the child of hired help, so i was the lowest of the low (strike one). i was also from new jersey. (strike two.) in an effort to stay the hell away from them, i decided to take advantage of what the camp had to offer. because i wasn’t afraid of boys seeing me without full makeup (which i didn’t wear at the time) or perfect hair (which i never would achieve in my lifetime), i was willing to wake up at the veryvery early hour of 6 am in order to learn to waterski. i hung with the boys when i could to play softball or soccer or anything remotely athletic. some of the boys were ridiculous princes as well, but there were a few who were worthwhile.

and hell, all the foreign counselors liked me. they invited me to hang out with them after lights out.

anyway, the fact that i had made friends with the boys (strike three) (HELLO? i have two older brothers and a lot of my friends, especially at that point in my life, were boys) combined with the fact that my mommy and daddy were not wealthy scions of the Five Towns pretty much sealed my fate.

however, peace would come whenever this one girl in my room would break out her tape recorder and play the billy joel glass houses album. they would all shut up or sing. they wouldn’t pick on me. it was nirvana.

i will love billy joel forever, if only for that.

deus ex machina came when my mother and i had to leave camp early because she had this pesky lump. the next month, we would realize it was cancerous, and a whole different part of my life would start. but at the time, before i know what really was happening, i was just happy beyond belief to get the hell out of there.

the second memory is a bit shorter and slightly bittersweet. an old boyfriend (who shall remain nameless) told me once about this girl named stephanie. she was apparently just the very coolest girl on the planet. or maybe she put out. i don’t remember. anyway, i had to endure him and his desperate talk about this girl: she gave him a night, that’s all it was. what would it take for him to stop kidding himself, wasting his — and my– time?

obviously, that one didn’t work out.

but to this day, whenever i hear this song, i always sing it as all for stephanie.

p.s. he didn’t end up with her, either.

guilty pleasure monday: if you were here (thompson twins)

Posted on July 20, 2009February 10, 2010 by wrekehavoc

because jake ryan is a bohunk.

my dear friend from college, suzanne has been visiting this weekend. we had fun on saturday when we took BC to the mall to just shop and cruise around, much like we did in our younger days. BC really loved hitting the mall with us older ladies; she gave great feedback as i was trying things on. for example:

mom, that dress looks like the one i tried on when we visited colonial williamsburg.

and

mom, this dress is all wrong for you. it makes your butt look bigger.

and

mom, you need to wear your pants lower, like i do.

yep. in one hop, skip, and jump, we will be landing in that scaryland known as puberty.

(i’ve seen the future. i can’t afford it.)

one of the funniest things suz, BC, and i realized was that the merchants at the mall were all piping in 80’s music. we heard yaz, we heard depeche mode (or that peshy thing, as my mom used to call them). hell, even BC looked up at me, puzzled, when she was spraying her tenth bottle of whatever at bath and body works — mom, they’re playing lips like sugar!?

yes, virginia, i am now the targeted demographic.

now that i’m a targeted demographic, i am feeling just a tad bit maudlin. i am looking back. and little screams 80s more than the collected works of john hughes. in fact, i really still wish i could host a john hughes film festival — at least, of the three or four flicks of his that i can stand to see multiple times.

one of them, of course, is the classic sixteen candles. molly ringwald was hughes’ muse (heh — say hughes’ muse ten times fast!), and this movie is probably the very best of the entire bunch. no movie captures the awkward teen years better than this — or at least, funnier than this one. the writing is top-notch.

and my favorite part, of course, is the end, when jake ryan is helping samantha baker blow out her birthday candles. i’m not entirely sure why hughes chose if you were here for that moment; the lyrics don’t exactly work. but musically, when you hear the swells behind this innocent scene, it just hits you in the gut.

and you can no longer hear this song without getting a little wistful. which is where i am at the moment.

wistful for a time when i was a different sort of demographic.

american girl

Posted on July 8, 2009February 10, 2010 by wrekehavoc

oy gevult! there’s a new american girl.

and she’s a nice jewish goil, to boot.

at least the book illustrations make her look a little jewish. or italian.

recently, an american girl catalog made it’s way into my mailbox. for those of you who do not have a girl between the ages of 7-10 in your home, let me school you.

american girl is the wildly-successful doll/book franchise now owned by mattel. they sell you a doll from a specific period in american history for about $100. then, you’re free to buy the ultra-expensive accessories as well as books that tell the story of said doll. if you’re REALLY insane fanatical up for spoiling your child beyond the realm of what is okay excited by the series, you can take your child to have a special tea at one of the american girl doll stores, located in a few major US cities. to the tune of several hundred dollars. (that must be one hell of a cup of tea.) for the record, we’ve never bought any of the dolls, but we have read plenty of the books thanks to our local public library. we couldn’t get through the hispanic girl’s saga, but we especially enjoyed spunky kit kittredge‘s tale as well as that of the revolutionary war era doll, felicity merriman.

while rebecca rubin, the newest addition to the american girl family is not actually the first jewish girl doll offered (there was once, for a split second, a jewish girl doll offered as part of some sort of calendar doll thingy about 20 years ago), she is the first here-to-stay jewish girl doll, with a full backstory and tons of expensive props. (i can’t wait to hear about little cornfed midwestern girls begging their moms and dads (and santa) to bring them rebecca’s sideboard and sabbath set, complete with challah and candlesticks. does it come complete with brachot (blessings/prayers for the non-tribal set)?)

anyway, in truth, i have a warm spot in my heart for this little doll and for this effort already. rebecca lives in new york city in 1914, the child of jewish immigrants from russia. i haven’t read the stories (yet), but i suspect they involve the pull jewish immigrants of the time felt between staying true to their cultural roots while immersing themselves in their new american identities. my grandmothers, also NYC dwellers back in that day, would have either been a trifle bit older or a trifle bit younger than rebecca, so i can smile to myself a bit, thinking about what their lives must have been like back then.

i know their families worked their tails off, that’s for sure.

i wonder, in fact, whether there’s any mention of things such as the horrible working conditions these immigrants (and their italian, polish, irish, and other internationally-born brethren) endured back then — i suspect a mention of the triangle shirtwaist factory fire would be something i would want to talk about with my kids. if there is, i’m sure it’s like a whisper that won’t be noticed except by parents like me, who will pounce on it as a teachable moment.

anyway.

mattel took several years to get this one right. and while the actual face of the doll is exactly like every other american girl doll (let’s all join hands and sing we are the world. we all look alike, you know! seriously, don’t you think people would have shrieked if they gave the jewish girl a beak to remember? so i guess i understand that move.), there’s something kind of wonderful to finally be recognized, even in this small way, as american. my ancestors wanted so much to be accepted as american. they were sometimes greeted with signs like this:

even when it seemed that jews were a bit more accepted in american society, there are still holdouts, people who think we can’t be americans if we also have a warm spot in our hearts for israel. i still remember when i, a high school rising senior, was being interviewed as a candidate for new jersey girls’ state. the craggy-faced american legion men asked me a question that infuriates me to this day:

if america went to war with israel, whose side would you be on?

no one asked any of the other interviewees whether they would side with america or ireland, or america or italy, or america or england. people seem to think that you can’t be an american and a jew, which is an idea that is unfathomable to me.

my grandparents and their parents worked incredibly hard to experience the american dream. they had their struggles, and then, my parents probably had their own challenges growing up jewish in america. jews are not the only people who struggle here; but because it is our ethnicity as well as our religious and cultural background, it has been harder to gain acceptance. you can be irish or italian or polish, but you can still share a sausage and a smile. for us, it’s a little more of a difficult proposition. not insurmountable, though.

i am an american jew. being jewish infuses everything there is about my americanism. and being american pervades every aspect of my judaism.

and when i see mattel bringing forth an american girl doll like rebecca rubin, i know that the struggles of my ancestors to be american have not been in vain.

somewhere, my grandmas are kvelling*.

*Kvell: (Yiddish) to take great pride and pleasure; a peculiarly Jewish joy most often associated with the accomplishments of one’s family members

guilty pleasure monday: homosapien (pete shelley)

Posted on June 22, 2009February 11, 2010 by wrekehavoc

oh, naughty pete shelley. call a song homosapien and think you can pull a fast one, huh? no. one. fools. the. BBC!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3KzwpihR_U

i often wonder who at the Beeb is responsible for banning music. what his/her day must be like:

hmmm, let’s ban this one because of its political overtones. let’s ban this one because it sounds like an advertisement. let’s ban this one because he drops the f-bomb.

being the modern-day bowdler must be wildly rewarding.

[i laugh, especially since the aforementioned example dinged for political overtones (thanks to the falklands conflict) was eventually covered by aussie kiddy group the wiggles:]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey55AEW3muA

(i’m a mom. that’s how i know.)

so pete shelley, esteemed founder of hugely influential punk band the buzzcocks, pretty much trips through the BBC’s wires with this little dance gem. was this your coming out song, pete? i imagine it was, though there was certainly an element of sexual intrigue in lots of the buzzcock classics: ever fallen in love (with someone you shouldn’t’ve) took on a whole new meaning after i first contemplated shelley’s world.

so i often wonder: did the Beeb ban homosapien because of it’s overt sexual references — or did it ban homosapien because of it’s overt references to gay sex?

who cares. banning a song almost guarantees that people will clamor to hear it. and gay, straight, or otherwise gendered, anyone can dance to this song.

(and some can copy it, too — tell me this doesn’t remind you of shelley’s song!)

guilty pleasure monday: ain't wasting time no more (allman brothers)

Posted on May 4, 2009February 11, 2010 by wrekehavoc

what’s a nice jewish girl like me doing with a bunch of rednecks? getting inspiration, that’s what.

i think i had a mid-life crisis when i was 28. (i know, i know. i had it a lot earlier than i was supposed to. i’m an overachiever.) all my life, i had worked toward a goal, a goal which turned out to be someone else’s goal for me. i’d become a lawyer, i’d go into politics, i’d help to save the world.

after a month in a law school where people stole the books you needed to do your work, i decided that law school was really not for me. i had argued endlessly with the torts professor; and while i’m sure he knew his stuff cold and i was misguided, in my little bear brain, i knew that if what he was saying was correct, i didn’t want to be a part of it. i quit (and it became perhaps the most expensive lesson of my life), worked awhile, and earned a fellowship to graduate school. i loved my graduate school experience, especially the fact that my school’s mission was to prepare us not for a life of contemplating our respective navels but rather to get tools to actually make change in the real world.

however, washington probably hardly qualifies as the real world.

after stints in government relations, which is the non profit way of saying lobbyist, i realized that i didn’t care for the people who did the work i was doing; further, i didn’t want to become one of them. (case in point: one asked me where i went to school. when i told her rutgers, she literally turned away from me as if i had poisoned the air by my very being. sorry honey, i wanted to say to her back, but not all of us have a keen desire to carry student loans into the next millenium. especially since i was still carrying that one loan for my ill-fated law career.)

so i went into the world of government work.

i loved the people i met in government work. my original boss is still my mentor; he still considers me one of his daughters (along with the other two ladies with whom i started.) i would be honored to be a government employee again in my career. however, at 28, i realized that i was not even close to a life i had envisioned. (i was going to already be in congress by 28, doncha know.) i was not satisfied, and i didn’t even know what the hell i wanted.

You don’t need no gypsy to tell you why
You can’t let one precious day slip by
Look inside yourself
And if you don’t see what you want
Maybe sometimes then you don’t

this was around the time i started listening to the allman brothers album eat a peach. i was quite sure i would one day have a daughter i would name after the song melissa; and i listened incessantly to ain’t wasting time no more as if it were a call to action. sometimes, i would listen to it on my little walkman on my way to work and wonder what the hell the song was saying to me. was there a message in there somewhere? (duh.)

there was. and one day, i got off my ass and took action. i saw a career counselor who told me i was in the wrong line of work in terms of what i actually enjoy doing: you need to be doing more creative work.

and that’s just what i ended up doing.

We’ll raise our children
In the peaceful way we can
It’s up to you and me brother
To try and try again
Well, hear us now, we ain’t wastin’ time no more
‘Cause time goes by like hurricanes
Runnin’ after subway trains
Don’t forget the pouring rain

high flying bird

Posted on April 28, 2009February 11, 2010 by wrekehavoc

in a word, oops.

somebody apparently forgot to tell people in manhattan and jersey city that the defense department was flying some big-ass birds for a photo op yesterday. two f-16 fighters flew the low circuit around parts of new york and new jersey and scared the bejesus out of thousands, who feared a repeat of 9/11. the birds had flown in the grand canyon for a photo-op; now, some brilliant person wanted them filmed in the famous cavern of hell.

and no, i’m not making this up.

i can identify with these terrified people. see, i live in the flight path of national airport. i also live near both the pentagon AND, for the terrifying trifecta win, arlington national cemetary (our county motto: welcome to arlington: america’s graveyard!) we lived through our own local installment of terror on 9/11; and while we didn’t experience the twin towers’ scope of damage, ye olde pentagon certainly had seen much better days.

(by the way, i write with only a microscopic scintilla of sadly-twinged gest: a friend’s wife was on the plane that hit the pentagon. so yes, it’s real. really, r e a l l y, real.)

and now, whenever some muckety-muck dies and wants to be buried among the gazillion, the proud, the dead military people, arlington cemetary presses the big guns into service. over my neighborhood, we get fighter planes, we get scary planes — hell, one day, a B52 bomber shook my house’s foundations as it flew over to honor some very important soldier. (i wonder sometimes whether the raccoons in the nearby woods have some sort of post traumatic stress disorder because of it.) when we’re lucky, we get notice from the county that there will be some aircraft overhead that aren’t the usual jumbo jets winging to DCA.

and then, there are days like last thursday. i was out on a run (which should probably more accurately be termed as a run-walk, now that i’m the mom with the bionic knee… if only i could get the sound effects that go along with it!) when suddenly, there, in the sky… it’s a bird… it’s a plane… its THREE FIGHTER JETS IN FORMATION OVER MY STREET!

no one sent me the memo. my email, my cell phone, all devoid of info. shit! are we under attack??? well, nothing gets my ass zipping like the thought of the impending apocalypse. (if the four horsemen are going to be riding by, you bet my last moments won’t be spent jogging for my cardio enjoyment.) i flew, speedy-quick, into my house. i didn’t see anything on the computer monitor. so i did the next best thing:

i called BS.

(because, of course, my beloved spouse is the font of all information.)

honey, i cried, sweat pouring into the tiny holes of the cordless phone, i just saw… huff puff… three fighter jets over the neighborhood… puff huff… is there anything on the net about this? :breath breath breath breath: (because, of course, BS is always online; and when the revolution comes, it will be televised, but not after it’s been Facebooked, Tweeted, and probably even Flickr’d as well.)

i was still panting when i heard my beloved spouse’s annoyed tone. you know, if we’re under attack, they won’t be flying in formation.

uh. yeah. i knew that.

but apparently, what we had here was a failure to communicate. the DoD. forgetting to get the word out.

talk about your shock and awe.

rocky raccoon

Posted on April 16, 2009February 11, 2010 by wrekehavoc

today, on stupid animal tricks…

seriously. i’m beginning to feel like the bill murray character in caddyshack. i mean, yes, i know there are bigger issues to tackle: the economy, world peace, and why phil spector’s hair is so, so…er…lustrous and distracting.

but this is so all-consuming.

we live right by a park that is filled with wonderful fox, possums, raccoons, deer, and other furry friends. i love my furry friends as much as the next grrl, but i don’t love them in my giant county trash can. there’s a possum in particular who i have actually seen waddling away smugly after lunching in my bin. yesterday was the last straw. we had just discarded the zillion tons of halloween candy my kids had collected. (the standing rule in my house: when easter comes, the halloween candy goes and is replaced by… you guessed it: easter candy.) trash was due to be picked up on wednesday. and the night prior, my furry friends came by (their muddy paw prints are all over the plastic can), opened up the bin, and apparently had a sugarfest so wild, i bet they ended up in little diabetic comas. (for those interested, the animals apparently like reeses’ peanut butter cups and little chocolate bars over warheads.)

besides the obvious point that i don’t like the thought of wild animals eating things that could make them ill, i simply want to get these guys out of my trash bin. (usually, they just feast inside the bin; but tuesday night, they literally left a congo-line trail of candy wrappers in the street, down the driveway, and probably in my neighbor’s yard.)

i have tried attaching bungee cords around the bin. they get in. i have put a seriously heavy concrete block on top of the bin; they topple it. i don’t know what the heck these critters do in their spare time (pump iron?) but they are s t r o n g. i don’t in truth have the ability to store the trash in my garage; and i would prefer not to keep the trash inside the house.

i’m channelling the spirit of bill murray’s character these days:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv87T1CQF8E

my enemy is a varmint. and a varmint will never quit.

roll with it

Posted on March 26, 2009 by wrekehavoc

i voted for barack obama. and i’m still okay with him. except for one little thing.

online ticketing for the annual white house egg roll.

the egalitarian in me appreciates the idea that anyone should be able to have a chance to get tickets. i appreciate the sentiment behind this idea. but i wonder whether obama consuted with some pointy-headed wonk when this decision was made and not with someone actually familiar with a) the experience of online tickets and b) the experience of the overnight party campout that has been, for many years, the cornerstone of the white house egg roll experience.

is the white house the only group of people unaware of the scandals in online event ticketing? do they not realize that there are outfits in the world who harness the power of banks and banks of bots whose goal in life is only to call in persistently and in a lightning speed manner to snag tickets? this has been worse than trying to snag springsteen tickets. at least when you do that online, you get a message telling you that tickets are all sold out. this method prolongs the agony — when you can get through. and people who get through have been reporting that they get mucked about and sometimes, after waiting or even getting numbers, the server tells them that the tickets are then gone.

this is not a way to run a circus.

and then, there are the unhappy campers. there are people who have taken lemons and made lemonade, and now, they’re back to lemons again. these people took spending a night on concrete in the District and have made it into an all-night family party. people take the days off, for crying out loud, to do this. yes, i know – not everyone lives here.

but do i really think that patti in paducah should be compensated for this by having the tickets go online?

hell, no.

you know what? i don’t get to go surfing in san diego. i don’t get to swim with dolphins in key west. i don’t get to rub elbows with celebrities in LA or NY. i don’t get to enjoy all sorts of wonders in this country because i don’t live in those places. there are plenty of exciting events that happen in places and i have no shot of doing them because i am here, not there.

well, guess what. i live here. i put up with all the crap i have to put up with precisely because there are events and experiences i deem important enough to make this wonderland of angst my home. and by gum, i get so tired of everyone in this bloody country assuming that where i live belongs to them. i know, i know. nation’s capitol. la la la. but you know what? maybe if tourists treated this place and the people with a little more sense, maybe people like me wouldn’t be so bitter about it.

i mean, it has hit the point where locals can’t do certain things at certain times of year because so many blessed people from podunk get on their donkeys and ride the herd in to town. they are obnoxious because, of course, this is THEIR nation’s capitol. nevermind that they throw trash on the ground, behave like drunk morons in the streets and on the metro, and are often plain rude. their bodies crowd out other people’s bodies, people who might have classes in the museums or camps at the zoo or whatever.

and the best part about this? people on a message board in chicago were applauding this new system. now, “normal” families can attend. what? unlike the families who live in the washington metro area? unlike all the families who were sitting out in the cold and in the rain because they wanted to do something together? we’re not normal? our kids play t-ball and attend girl scout meetings, too, people. just because we didn’t vote for Dubya for the past 8 years doesn’t mean we’re aliens from another planet. it just means we’re more educated than you are. (which we are, by the way. go look it up in the surveys.)

anyway, i’m tired. four hours of trying, and i have nothing to show for it. this year, i’m not rolling eggs.

i’m throwing them.

skateaway

Posted on March 19, 2009 by wrekehavoc

my right pinky is currently attempting to sever its ties with the rest of my right hand. it is assuming the hitchhiking position, a position that only my thumb should know how to do but generally fails (if only it hadn’t been pulled completely backward in a ninth grade game of kill the guy with the ball.) in short, my pinky — tiny, nearly useless appendage — aches and aches. the little bastard is currently punishing me for doing something i shouldn’t have done.

i went ice skating with the kids on saturday.

ah yes. last weekend, when it was get the kids the hell out of the house while the husband does income taxes weekend. i remember it well. usually, when this weekend in march rolls around, i escape to NJ with the kids. unfortunately, the three-day-weekend prior was chock-a-block filled with plans (mostly abandoned), so i was left with this past two-day weekend. and who really wants to drive 200 miles on saturday and then 200 more sleep-deprived miles on sunday with two kids in tow?

exactly.

so of course i figured that i might just plan a fun-filled weekend for the three of us. the three of us turned into the four of us when BC’s pal J — a lovely, lovely girl who could move in with us as far as i’m concerned, as i think she’s very sweet, well-mannered, and, most importantly, doesn’t treat jools like he’s something that someone scraped off her shoe — joined us in our exploits on saturday. my plan: take the kids ice skating. then a movie. drop off BC’s pal. take jools to his first-ever playdate with his pal h, which was going to be at the school playground during h’s older brother’s baseball game. simple, right?

those of you who’ve been here for awhile remember the ice skating debacle of 2007 and know that i get a little gunshy about ice skating. nevermind that preteen wreke went skating most fridays and saturday nights at our town’s ice rink. nevermind that i really DO know how to ice skate, though stopping is still a challenge. but our hero learned that when you fall at age…21 and a half, you don’t necessarily bounce back the way you did at 13. yes, i did get back in the saddle again after that. but i think that was the last time i was on skates.

until saturday.

so off we went, BC, jools, J, and me. J and BC are competent skaters; i truthfully don’t have to hover anywhere near them. jools…i wouldn’t call him a skater as much as i call him an ice runner. and damn, he’s fast. LL Cool j (because deep down, even these two ladies love cool jools) spent his time chasing the two girls, who had made friends with two other girls and were mostly ignoring him. i pretended i was a speed skater (pretended being the operative word. i’m about as fast as a glacier) and was in hot pursuit of all. not an easy task considering all the potential landmines there.

let’s see:

there’s the middle of the rink, where people are taking private lessons and doing all sorts of advanced tricks. somehow, my kids, as well as others, didn’t grasp the need to stay outside the cones. there were girly figure skaters there; there were burly hockey boys there; and there was a grey-haired, brittle-boned woman who looked to be nearing 60 with knee braces on doing little leaps. every time jools went near those people, he was nearly taken out. that boy is constantly flirtin’ with disaster.

then, there was the idiot father and son tag team who were literally racing around the rink playing — wait for it — tag. the son, who had to be about 15 and who was the size of a burgeoning linebacker, was zipping in and out of clumps of people, chasing his dad, who was doing the same. and when they tagged each other, they actually knocked each other down. oh, the hilarity. i was waiting for someone to skate over the dad .

dorothy hamill and dick button had decided that the middle of the rink was too crowded for their jumping and skating practice; the two, middle aged ice mavens took over the entire goal area of the arena for their training exploits. at one point, mr. button nearly took out my daughter as she actually skated where she was actually supposed to be skating. (silly girl.) and. he. scowled. BC, being 10, was completely oblivious to the situation. i, being 21 and a half (as previously mentioned) was not. hey kids, i said to the four, let’s leave the kennel to lassie and skate further away. if i had only known that the two grownups who actually owned the ice arena were hard at work, preparing for the olympics, i would been more careful with my children.

and of course, lest we forget the clumps of people who decide to stop dead in their tracks in the middle of the skating path. there was the line of teen girls, stretched almost completely across the entire path, all holding hands and stopped. (i lied. there was one who was texting, right near the sign that said no cameras or phones on the ice.) there was the happy loving couple twenty-something foursome, taking turns taking pictures of themselves on the ice because gee, we’re fun people wearing fun, inappropriately fashionable clothes in a fun skating rink. we’re just. TOO. FUN!

and, of course, my favorite: the clump of dads just standing and talking about hockey. every time i passed them, slowly manoeuvering myself around and just barely avoiding contact, i learned a little bit more about the washington capitals and their success while on the road. [note to the men: there’s a snack bar where you can buy BEER and have that conversation. (yes, i said beer. now shoo!)]

in short, for 90 minutes, i lived in utter fear.

every now and again, jools would randomly skate across traffic and smack himself into the glass. i’d say a little prayer as he cut off countless skaters, all of whom were much larger than he and possibly not terribly adept at stopping. he always looked pained, so i would magically skate across traffic as safely as possible and get over to him. usually, he complained his back hurt him (what, are you my age already, little boy?); i’d tell him to come sit down; and he’d skate away.

one of these times, i essentially body checked myself. bashed my pinky. all 98 pounds of me barrelled down on my tiny little finger.

we survived our skating. we went out to lunch. we never made the movie, though we did end up meeting one of BC favorite authors and got her autograph at a local bookstore. it rained and rained and rained, so i couldn’t take the kids to a playground. that rain also doomed jools’ playdate later. oh, i saw my future, and it wasn’t looking very pretty. thus, i did what any desperate self-respecting mom would do: i took them to dunkin donuts, got them sugared up, and drank myself a cup.

and lucky me. it’s thursday, and i still have a happy little black and blue remembrance of the day.

gah.

mamma mia

Posted on March 17, 2009 by wrekehavoc

a woman on my favorite list, DC Urban Moms, had the gall to share a well-written article from The Atlantic. (kudos to you, girlfriend.) she asked not to be flamed, which of course incited some serious flames among the well-thought-out posts. (and i don’t mean well-thought-out in the sense that i agree with all of the posters’ points; i just thought they made some interesting and useful ideas known, as opposed to the ones who think that anyone who isn’t comfortable breastfeeding requires professional help. to which i’d reply, yes: cleaning, cooking, and other domestic professional help.)

anyway, i thought i’d share my response for those of you not lucky enough to be among the group. i got a little upset, to say the least.

as always, your mileage may vary.

~wreke

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this article resonated with me. VERY deeply. i’m not being my usual politic self. apologies in advance.

i was unable to nurse my babies; and Dog knows i tried. with baby#1, i read everything known to humankind about nursing. a week postpartum, my DD was losing more than her normal share of weight (to the point where she may have been in danger) and i was freaking out. i was determined to make nursing work, even though my pediatrician — who is incredibly supportive of nursing, btw — strongly recommended i supplement my DD with formula for her own sake. i pumped. i tried to feed her (though we were imperfect nursing partners.) i called la leche.

the la leche representative Brought. Me. To. Tears. this woman seemed far more concerned with carrying the torch for nursing than she was for the well-being of my child and myself. hello? yelling at an engorged, wildly-hormonal, first-time mother because she is considering feeding her starving child with formula is not the way to go.this was not the case of the expected one-week weight loss. this was a crisis in the making.

no one wanted to make this work more than i did. i was in an endless cycle: nurse the baby as best as i could, then supplement with formula, then pump. (oh, and i worked full-time and had to pump *in the bathroom* during the day.) for those of you who got the hang of nursing easily, it’s quite simple to turn your noses up at people like me and think we didn’t try hard enough. that we need professional help if we’re stressed because we can’t get the hang of the balance right with work and child and feeding. you simply have no idea of the pressure you feel when you fail. (or, as the author did (after nursing her first two) when you decide that you’re done.)

the AHA! moment came from an unexpected source: my husband. he had seen me in my round-the-clock-dance of nurse-feed-pump one too many times. and there i was, in pump mode, sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor. 3 AM. crying. “honey,” my husband said, “our daughter needs a sane mom more than she needs breastmilk.”

yes. exactly.

i understand that fewer women breastfeed in the US than in other nations. i get that people want to promote nursing. i’m on board with it as being a completely natural thing to do and get equally upset when women are told to hide or leave the premises rather than to nurse babies. i will admit — and i don’t care if people flame me, btw — that i don’t actually understand why moms still nurse kids who are in kindergarten; but at the end of the day, it is their choice — not mine — to make, and so i respect that choice and stand ready to defend it if necessary.

but what i don’t get, and what i hear in this article, is the pressure that people in the breastfeeding camp have placed upon a whole generation of women. listen, sister la leche: those first five months with my baby? they’re gone, and they’re not. coming. back. Ever. and while they weren’t completely unhappy, they consist greatly of a blur of inadequate feelings Because I Could Not Nurse. And. My. Baby. Suffered. For. It. needlessly, i’d add. the pressure was THAT intense. my baby could have been happy AND HEALTHY with formula — what’s more, her mom could have been happy and healthy *with her*. but the message i received throughout my pregnancy and thereafter was that i was somehow failing my daughter in my very first task as a mom. that message is especially crushing for a first-time mother. i wanted to do what i understood was best for her. thankfully, when i grew mom-balls and started trusting my own judgement on what is best for my child (in this case, by giving her formula), life inched its way toward the quasi-nirvana we enjoy to this very day.

sometimes, i think that breastfeeding advocates, as well as rank-and-file moms on the upper/middle class milieu, often lose sight of the forest for the trees. shouldn’t we be supportive of WOMEN? some women are uncomfortable with the idea of nursing for reasons that might be more personal than you or i can fathom. some women, like me, simply are not able to nurse (and yes, i have receipts somewhere from the lactation consultantS i saw — for both babies, btw — i tried, and failed, again with baby#2.) whatever: it’s not for me or you to decide whether they should or should not be nursing. if they want to nurse, let’s give them information and help them along. if not, let’s support them, too, and not treat them like they are amoral, child-abusing, pariahs. the best thing we can all do for each other is to give each other the courage and support to make the best decisions for our children. and not just about breastmilk, either.

after all, there is so more to being a mother than whether or not you serve up lunch from your mammaries.