Thank You.

One time long ago (who the hell knows when), I was very much looking forward to writing 48 thank you notes for Ari's birthday gifts. "Why, why would anyone want to write thank you notes?" you wonder. Because it is a rest--you have to sit down to do it. I had actually tried to write them while unloading the dishwasher, going for a little jog, folding laundry, and washing Ari's hair. Mixed results. Finally, I had to stop. Multi-tasking is a Slippery Slope! If you aren't careful, you will soon be texting while driving, eating spaghetti in the bath tub, texting House-guests while gardening, and losing your phone in the soil! Many unfortunate things might occur. Plus! You don't get your thank you notes written.

It had been five weeks, and I needed to focus. So, I begged B to do something with Ari and sat down with my thank you notes. By the time my butt hit the chair I realized she had the list of who'd given what in her phone, so I texted her to send it.

While I waited for the list, I noticed the cat in the corner, performing her catly function of repeatedly barfing. I considered getting up to clean it, but then thought it best to wait for another round because there is nothing worse than cleaning up the cat barf and then having to do it all again once you realize she wasn't finished. 

The list arrived, and I decided to print it so that I wouldn't have to scroll and delete and could just scratch out names with a pen as I finished notes. Here is what happened next:

Printer: The printer is out of order. (Prints)

Self: Huh?

Printer: Please replace toner cartridge. (Spews toner out front)

Self: (Covered in toner) But. . .

Printer: Please load paper in tray 2. Please load paper in tray 1. (Starts pushing many sheets of paper out very quickly, each with one character on a random location of page, so cannot be used again)

Self: You never print this fast when I want you to.

Printer: Memory failure. (Lights flashing)

Self: I don't understand. I didn't even touch you!

Printer clunks and wheezes pitifully, then turns off. Self leaves room and decides it is better to scroll through list on phone than print it.

As I left the room, I stepped in cat barf and noticed that, down the hall, the cat (white) was performing her second catly function of rolling all over B's suit jacket (black). I yelled at her, and she leapt into the closet, using her claws to rip little holes in the suit jacket. Then she went to the far back of the closet and started puking there. I would like to say I was heroic and got her out, cleaned all the puke, and took B's jacket to be mended. Instead I just shut the damn door. What do you want, people? Mother Theresa? 

I decided to go out on the balcony to write my thank you notes, where the cat wasn't allowed. Of course, she was shut in the closet, but I felt I needed a double barrier. The minute I stepped outside this dude who rides a Harley with no muffler started doing laps around the little neighborhood square I live on. I do not know why a Hell's Angel would want to live in a suburban neighborhood full of perfect, pansy-assed landscaping and straight-laced, suv-driving dorks, but he lives here. Maybe he moved in because he hates us and took out his muffler to piss us off. I think it is an illegal level of noise, but I don't call the police because I don't want to have my fingers chopped off. Anyway, his laps around the little square were deafening, and as usual he didn't seem to be going anywhere, but instead was just doing laps, like exercise or something. 

I thought I would put on some music to drown out the motorcycle. This only led to more headache because I couldn't get my speaker to pair with my phone. It loves to pair--pairs indiscriminately. But it doesn't like to be faithful. It had unpaired with my phone to pair with B's laptop, Kris' phone, the downstairs neighbor's iPad. Anything but my phone! Please note--it had been a week since Kris had his phone anywhere near my speaker, and yet it was still pining away for his dumb phone. Why couldn't it remember my phone like that? Because my speaker is a slut, and not of the ethical variety.

I couldn't deal and went back inside, where I spied six more piles of cat barf, considered a brief drug excursion, and realized I hadn't enough time. By then, B was walking in the door with Ari, asking how the thank you notes were coming. I think I may have burst into tears or something because the next thing I know, Ari and I were cuddling in front of the tv eating chips, and B had fixed the printer, appropriately paired my speaker, cleaned up all the barf, gotten the dude on the Harley to leave (She negotiates for a living.), and was writing thank you notes. She finished in one hour and didn't even dare to say "what was so hard about this?" Because she just got lucky, and she knows it.

 

After Party

I went to a barbecue recently, and it was nice, but the fun really started when B, our house-guest, Aram, and I came back and put Ari to bed. When I say that Aram was our house-guest, I mean simply that he was staying overnight in our house. He does not play ping pong. Well, I mean, I think he plays Ping Pong. I certainly hope he plays Ping Pong. We all need Ping Pong! But Aram doesn't play Ping Pong with me. Of course we talk about Ping Pong, in the way all good friends do. But we don't play Ping Pong with each other because that would just be weird.

Now that that's cleared up: we had a barbecue after party, which, like all the best after parties, included guests who did not attend the original party. It did not include Ping Pong. Nevertheless, it was fantastic. Ari was put to bed. Casey (House-guest who does play Ping Pong with me, but did not, on this particular evening, do so) and her husband Kris came over. We drank and talked and stood and sat on the beautiful porch in the beautiful night and listened to beautiful music. I related several stories about squirrels, pigeons, and other pests. Other people told other stories. And then sometimes we were silent, gazing drunkenly into the night, thinking, most likely, about Ping Pong. I told Aram to leave me his shirt when he left in the morning, because I liked it very much, and he did! 

What (H)house-guest did this?

When he got up the next morning, Ari noticed the light was dangling from the ceiling in a rather unusual way. He said, "Mommy, look! What happened?" What happened, indeed. Here is what happened, bitches: I had A Throw Down After Party. I then got up at 7:00 am with my child and managed to be civil to him and feed him breakfast. And then! I fixed the light, washed Aram's shirt, and wore it--well. All without coffee, before 9:00 am, on the morning after My Throw Down After Party. Because I'm a damn superstar, thank you very much.

The end.

Knocking Shit Over

There is a special kind of hate one saves for oneself. Mine starts like this: I go into the bathroom to apply a product to self -- hair gel or something. This should be simple enough, for someone who's pretty graceful and not even drunk. But I reach down toward the gel bottle and miss because I'm not paying attention or because I'm so tired I close my eyes for a second and am like, sleep-primping. My hand has suddenly grown into an enormous, mallet-like appendage, and I knock over the big bottle of mouth wash, which I don't know why we own, since no one ever uses it. It's so big it takes up almost the entire home--extending beyond the bathroom somehow, at least in concept. The mouthwash falls and knocks over the perfume bottle and 29 other things, since it is so gargantuan. Then, as I try to pick these up, I knock over the 38 small samples B and I keep because we're product whores. Our WHOLE ENTIRE Sephora stockpile goes skittering all over the counter and floor, making a shit-ass bunch of noise, and knocking other stuff over, too. By now I have a headache, so I open the medicine cabinet, and when I grab the Tylenol my pinkie grazes the shelf, and because medicine cabinet manufacturers are masters of Precarious Shelf Creation, everything on all three shelves tumbles out.

The counter is now an empty plain where once there was bounty, and each item has landed in the worst possible place. The mascara managed to open itself (how? how??) and smear black on the white towels, even though they're on the other side of the room. The bleach pen has burst a hole in its container and is leaking onto the blue bath mat and also my shirt. Somehow both toothbrushes end up in the unflushed-to-conserve-water toilet, even though I swear to god the lid was closed, the tweezers are embedded in my thigh, and the Toxic, Poison mildew remover has exploded and splashed me in the face. (I don't know why the bleach pen is on the bathroom counter instead of, say, the laundry room. Sigh. A mystery.)

A product minefield

"Excuse me," I say to the stuff I've knocked over, because in addition to being a clumsy oaf, I somehow don't recall that beauty products do not understand English. So I continue talking. What can I say? I'm a communicator. "Stop. Falling. Over!" I tell the stuff as the clatter dies down. I am furious but whispering, since of course this type of thing only ever happens when we have people over -- normal ones who don't engage in such fool behavior as talking to products. And why am I sleep-primping in the middle of our social time? That, people, is another question, for another day.

After everything has fallen, I usually take a moment of stillness. Silence. Breathe. Etc. Also, must be still because there's broken glass all over the floor, and I'm barefoot. I decide the gel isn't worth it -- my hair is a wreck by now anyway, and it really doesn't matter, what with the tweezers stuck in my thigh, blood dripping down my leg, and the skin of my face smoking under the mildew remover. ER staff doesn't care about my hair--only tetanus shots. The best I can do is hope the side effect of this whole interlude will be my looking cutely disarrayed. After my little bathroom meditation, I bend over to pick up one item which I drop on the way up. Why? Momentary paralysis? Arthritis? Epileptic seizure? No. No reason at all. You know, like, just because. Then I attempt to shuffle toward the door, thinking I'll leave this whole mess while I'm still alive. I slip on a tube of lipstick and go hurtling, headfirst, into the toilet bowl. This does not help my headache at all!

By this time I'm not mad at the products anymore. I'm mad at self. So I do this thing I think everyone does. I start saying "moshum fetter shonish vu!" and that kind of thing. You may think I'm trying to speak to the products in their native language. However! I am attempting to say "#!!*%" which, loosely translated, means "omg, it's fucking unbelievable how much I suck!" I'm attempting to say this in English. Which products don't speak. Because I am a communicator. 

Do you hate me yet? I do. I mean, not only have I knocked enough shit over to frighten myself with the noise, but now I am talking to products and seem unable to pick up something and lift it two and a half feet without dropping it. I am concussed and bleeding and need a tetanus shot. And did I mention I'm not even drunk?

Hate, hate, hate.
The end.

Sleep Over

Ari attended his first sleep over the other day, and I MISSED HIM SO MUCH!!!!! I don't normally see him in the night. We're sleeping! And I've spent many nights away from him since he was born, of course, but this was different somehow. He got home the next morning, and I couldn't stop kissing him. Meanwhile, he was happy to see me, too. He began to tell me all about his experiences, and I had trouble keeping up. Maybe you people can translate? Here is some approximation of what he said:

"Mommy, we watched the Star Wars movie, but just the part with the tie fighters. R2D2 and Darth Vader were in it together. Their tie fighter was the strongest!" (Darth Vader and R2D2 in the same ship made no sense to me, but I am no Star Wars expert.) "The tie fighters look like this." (Pause for demonstration.) "They fly like this!" (Demonstration #2) "And we ate pa-corn, but then we didn't eat it all. There were pancakes this morning for breakfast, and the grey one likes you to touch her, but the black one will claw you if you bother her." (Apparently we've moved on to cats?) "Ryan was sleeping, and I didn't spill too many on the floor." (Popcorn?) "I watched because I was in his room. I didn't sleep any at all!" (This is some kind of accomplishment, I guess.) "I wanted to go in the sprinkler again but it was too dark, so in the morning we were gonna go, but then the movie was scary, and I stayed awake all night and thought about tie fighters, and it was raining, so we couldn't. I wanted to go in the sprinkler. Darth Vader and R2D2's tie fighter was the best one. I wanted to go in the sprinkler, but I didn't wanna go alone in the dark. It was black!" (Black tie fighter? Do they have those? Black sprinkler? Black night? Black as metaphor? What is black here, little dude?) "I remembered to bring black puppy home, but I didn't like the pancakes." (Wait--what? I hope he wasn't rude about it!) "May I please have a g-anola bar? And, oh, mommy, I missed you so much!" (Pause for five year old body hurtling at me, arms outstretched, trusting me to provide a soft landing.)

Yes, child, you may have a granola bar. You may have everything I have to give you.

Best Party in World

Ok so this happened:

And I'm not talking about the towels. (Though don't you love how she takes the opportunity to critique my towel description?) I'm talking abt the "K!" If you are a parent, you know that when one half of the team sits in a hammock for even six seconds it is time to call the authorities and sue for child abandonment. And my beautiful wife just said "K!" Is she a hero, or what? But, for your information, these towels are so freaking white. I've never seen more white-ass towels than these. Look:

And! Does she forget I am a Bad Ass? Do I seem like someone you'd wanna pick a fight about towels with? Answer: no. Please--somebody, tell my wife what a Bad Ass I am. Tell her to look the fuck out.

This party is all about my falling in love with the North Fork of Long Island. My kind of party: Perfect day. Unfathomable quantities of Appropriately Chilled Veuve Clicquot. Plenty of five-year-olds to entertain my son. Queer tenth wedding anniversary. Private beach. A Hammock Of My Own. And the best part of all, which I can't show you: 70s disco funk-->Madonna-->dance-->hip-hop-->wonderful I don't know what because have had too much champagne.

Also! I have completed a photo essay, which is the perfect introvert/exhibitionist activity at a large party. (Introvert/exhibitionists represent!)

Hello.

Silly. (1/2 silly, to be precise.)

Emo. (Both halves.)

Happy love. 

Arghh! No light! Wir sind vampires!

The view.

Obvs, Ari is a way, way better actor than I am. And no, I do not know why I slipped into German there for a sec. Just seemed to fit.

Also: my first live blog. Happy anniversary, dudes.

Thanks for a fantastic day.

The end.

Adorable/annoying (aka marriage)

From my friend Ev, who is way funnier than I am.

This seems like a good time to share B's many simultaneously adorable and annoying qualities. Here is a list:

1) She sleeps rough. As in--she takes the fitted sheet off the bed when she sleeps. Sometimes she removes the pillow cases from the pillows. In her sleep! Further adorable/annoyingness is shown when she does not notice the bed has no sheet on her side. I mean, how does a person not notice a naked mattress? It is blue!

2) She does not take kindly to suggestions. Never ever. At. All. I have learned the fine art of suggesting without suggesting, and I credit her for teaching me, with tough love, this Highly Useful social skill.

3) She makes piles. Big ones. Of all sorts of shit.

4) She usually thinks she has a deadly disease for some reason or other, but is capable of remaining extremely calm when Ari is sick, even when he is puking in the double digits or having a fever of 105.

5) She is an excellent speller. (Ok, you caught me--this one is only adorable and not annoying at all.)

6) When she is grumpy, there is no ungrumping her. Just leave and come back later, if you dare.

7) She is the biggest Myriad of Contradiction I have ever met. 

       a) She seems all logical and cerebral, but she understands my feelings better than anyone. 

       b) She walks like a badass, talks like a badass, and dresses like a badass. But she is the most authentically humble person I know, and has taught me how hot that can be.

      c) She's totes funny, but only rarely, and is never silly. 

      d) She cares about other people more than any of us, but she doesn't show it, or, more precisely, she doesn't show it off.

      e) She's a super introvert, and she's totally under the radar at social events, but by the end of them she's charmed everyone by taking an interest in them. If you poll a hundred people leaving a party, they will all say they enjoyed talking to B the most, but it would seem to you that she wasn't even there.

8) When she has to get up early, she sets her alarm for an hour before she needs to get up and then snoozes many times, so that I'm woken every ten minutes. If I tell her to stop, she turns off the alarm but doesn't get up, of course necessitating me to lie awake and worry that she'll miss her run or whatever. (Caught again: this is only annoying, not adorable.)

9) She demands I leave her alone so she can work and then pouts because I haven't spent enough time talking to her.

Happy gay marriage, people. But mine is still queer, thank you very much. 

"You don't love me: please confirm!"

We've all been depressed, right? Even if not clinically, we all have gloom and despair, pms and annoying relatives, or dead relatives, or something. My wife's BFF, Cindy, said once that when you're depressed you wait for your spouse to come home so that you can tell him/her, "you don't love me: please confirm!" I thought that was pretty funny, but then I realized it was true. Only the object changes. Sometimes it is B, or sometimes it is some long-suffering friend of mine, or a house-guest, new or old. Recently I have been trying to self-soothe in these moments, rather than engage with my loved one. It's pretty hard. For some reason, when I'm down, I just want to call every one I know and accuse them of never having liked me at all ever in their entire lives and try to make them admit it because that sure would cheer me up!

Anyway, so one of the things I do when tempted to engage my loved one in a "you don't love me: please confirm!" conversation is start a project. This distracts me until the YDLMPC moment passes and I feel normal again. For one recent project, I built a square foot garden. This is because I want to grow lettuces. I have lettuce envy. This friend (semi-houseguest?) of mine is an organic landscaper. We had dinner at her place, which is on five acres, and she grows most of her food. I wouldn't normally care to eat things that grow in the ground because they aren't steak or donuts or Twinkies, but she made this salad, see. She went outside and plucked some lettuces out of the ground, tossed them in a bowl with some tomatoes and salt and oil and vinegar, and created, in approximately eight seconds, The Most Delicious Salad I Have Ever Eaten. Let me explain: this salad contained neither meat nor ice cream. I do not like things that contain no meat or ice cream. And yet! These salad-making people lately are confusing me.

Exhibit B: my friend Mara, who may be the best cook I know (Further data required to confirm.) went to the Alabama Shakes concert with me, and when I picked her up she had lunch for us. It was some kind of salad with lettuce and cabbage (yuck, right?) and other stuff I didn't think I liked and peanut sauce, which I know I don't like. However! Mara put some very lovely, rare steak in it. To get to the meat, I had to eat some salad. It was delicious -- would have been yummy even without the meat! So now I have lettuce envy and peanut sauce envy. And then! Mara told me all about how to get my lettuces to thrive. I forgot already, but you get the idea. These people know everything--my friends/house guests. Am lucky to have them.

Especially since my square foot gardening project has been so fraught with challenges. First, I am allergic to Homo Depot. No, I mean literally. As in: it makes me sneeze and sneeze. Eyes water. The whole bit. Further, I do not understand The Rules Of Homo Depot. Did you know that before you take a cart that has been sitting empty and alone for 20 minutes, you have to ask every single person in the store? Insanity. If you don't ask, then you risk the Homo Depot lumber crew's anger. They may even try to refuse to cut your lumber. (Of course this did not happen to me because I am far too mannerly to steal somebody's cart. Just I wanted to warn you people.)

Then there was an incident with the local wild life. As in: a crow came and cawed so loudly I heard him over the blaring, macho heavy metal I was playing to encourage my drilling prowess. I leapt up in fright, nearly plummeting over the edge of my balcony, but luckily landed on a spade instead, which injured my shin, causing me to spill my beer. In all this ruckus, my phone somehow forgot its device (speaker), so I didn't even have a soundtrack to my pain gesticulations. (Which I prefer to think of as an interpretive dance, thank you very much.) The crow would not leave, was completely unintimidated by anything I did, including the hurling of projectiles, wild swinging of long objects, shouting and cursing, spraying water from Ari's super soaker, and pretending to call the police and/or my (imaginary) flying pit bull, Butch. My interpretive dancing didn't scare him either. Finally he left because a neighbor three flights below the balcony where he was harassing me shut the door, and it made a little noise. That terrified the stupid bird. Who hadn't been afraid of deafening ACDC, my pain yowls, being hit with a wall of water, etc. I suppose expecting a bird to make sense about as rational as having a YDLMPC conversation.

      Framing, looking tough. (Pre-crow)

Here is my finished garden:

Here are some things I learned making it:

-manure stinks!

-drill slowly, or you will break your bit

-screw hard and slow, or you will strip your screw

-size is irrelevant, but leverage matters

-crows are assholes

-the neighbors love ACDC

-want a four minute workout? Build something!

The end.