infestation

This morning I woke to Ever and Lola laying low and folded in clean white sheets and blankets and beautiful light falling in glowing white envelopes from the shutters, and then, with my eyes closed, I heard Ever's tiny bebe voice squealing flea! flea! I rolled over and squeezed open my eyes to watch Lola pinch a tiny bebe flea off of Ever's fatty arm. We have fleas. We don't have money for Advantage. What we do have is a venti Starbucks cup with soapy water and about a million dead fleas lying at the bottom. At night I lay my Fifth Witness down and place my swollen feet on the carpet. I wiggle my toes. They are bait. The fleas jump and twitch and bip and make me sick. They congregate. Last night I was sitting in my thong in my close on the floor, eating chocolate pop tarts and reading Anne Lamott's  Traveling Mercies and and I looked down to see four fleas closing in on my vagina. I don't know if this has ever happened to you but I highly recommend against it. It's the closest thing to action my vagina has gotten in a while though. My life feels very random and scary right now so controlling the flea population of my bedroom does have some satisfaction. When I put on the lamp and lay a blanket over it to dim the light, the fleas wiggle butt upward out of the beige carpet fibers and begin doing their ticky dance around the heat of the bulb. It's like pulling crops from the fields. And then drowning them. I washed the dogs last week and the amount of fleas on them was staggering. I don't know how life as we know it will end but when all is desolate and still, I expect tiny black flecks of fleas to begin popping up from the scorched earth. I feel like Mrs. Hannigan- kill! kill! kill! That woman knew how to be depressed. I need a gin bath, red lipstick, a scratchy record player and a penchant for rich bald men with muscular necks. And in the end I'll be good enough anyway, and everyone will sing around a large fountain and give me free liquor and my lipstick will be red but not smeared and I won't ever put little girls in closets again, or drown fleas in suburban Starbucks cups.

i still take pictures

Put the Camera Down and Look At Me

Ever is seventeen months old and I am obsessed with her. I am not as much an infant mommy as  I am a toddler mommy- my love and adoration turns into full blown goo goo ga ga ridiculous, dopey, stars over my head love. Everything she does or is charms and delights me. Her belly button smells wonderful, like a cookie, her earwax ( waxsacks as Lola calls it, which makes me laugh every time. say it out loud. you'll see. ), the bottoms of her stinky feet. Her expressions strike me as particularly and UNUSUALLY charming, impish, intelligent, delightful. I'm in love, and it's just as disgusting and ridiculous and irrational as romantic love- maybe even more, because adult partners don't throw tantrums in the grocery store over being unable to once again, chew straight through the plastic bag AND the avocados. Or if they do, that's over pretty quick. I hope. 

Whatever it is she is doing, I want to document it. Ever look over here, I squeal at her while she's pulling off the petals of a flower. Ever look at mommmyyyy! I cajole while she kisses the dog on his big wet stinky nose. Ever see me? See me? See me? I repeat like a crazy ape, jumping up and down waggling my arms in an attempt to crack a smile out of my daughter, who is minding her own business concentrating on her puzzle. She looks up at me slightly irritated and wary. I think it's SO CUTE and have to immediately get a photo!!!

After the third time my entire group of children had left a room, disgusted with my photographic insistence and hauling the baby on their shoulders, I slowly began to accept that I had a serious problem. Like most writers I've always documented life in my mind as it went along, and having children has taken a natural inclination and turned it into something else- a fixation.

So much of my adult life has been about erecting barriers between myself and the people or experiences I love, and then working my ass off to dismantle those barriers once I realize what I'm doing. Photographing my children became one of those barriers. Instead of sitting on the hot concrete, feeling the sticky pull of dried soda on my arm, hearing the dog two doors over bark his deep, throaty complaint, and watching my baby girl explore each grass blade with the meticulous, absorbed intention of a neurosurgeon, I placed a camera in between myself and my consciousness, and let the camera be the focus. clickclickclick A photo can be a beautiful window into an experience you want to remember, and it can also be a momento of an experience you barely remember because you were so busy documenting. Instead of being a memory keeper at all times, I want to simply be Ever's mommy. 

  

(and get some good photos, sometimes.)

People In Your Neighborhood

take a seat and read

At Huffington Post > Kristen writes about the day she went against her rule and let her son play with guns. I totally relate to the underlying premise of this piece- that flexibility, the willingness to see what is most important to our kids- is just as important as following 'rules'

At Vodkamom> A hilarious tale of warning

At Boston Mommas> Great weekend moving tips from a pro

At Sassafrass> Jessica writes about her 'ninja squad' ie the people you need on your side during a divorce

At Sweetney> Tracey shares some Pema Chodron quotes- a Buddhist monk who eases the mind and spirit

Even Assholes Were Babies Once

This morning I woke up and put the girls in the car and drove Lola to school, per usual. And as usual, at some point, someone was an asshat on the road. This particular someone happened to be driving a large jacked up truck, Hispanic, wearing sunglasses and a white sleeveless tee and had a handlebar mustache. I looked at him as he took my turn at the four way stop and suddenly, there he was, a big bobbling, crying baby head with a handlebar mustache, driving a truck! 

I decided that for the rest of the day, everyone who annoys or insults or otherwise displeases me is going to instantly- a la Ally McBeal- be changed into the bobble-headed crying baby version of themselves. 

What are you doing today?

The Internet Just Erased My Memory

I changed comments to Disqus, as you all know, and it seems to be working, yay! BUT. It also has erased every single comment ever left on my blog. I actually feel like crying. Some of the pieces I wrote that were extremely personal had an amazing number of comments that were packed with some of the best encouragement and advice I've ever been lucky enough to receive.

Does anyone know of any way to get them back?

I'm going to try to contact someone at Disqus.

wedding by the lake part 2

-these last two pictures are not mine, a friend of taymar's took them xo

a wedding by a lake part 1

Sleeping In The Dark

Over the weekend we were gone to the mountains and the lake and the place where the wild things go and the humans follow, where there are trees dripping into the shores of the shimmering lake and thick husks of rope hanging to swing into the water and splash next to the orange and yellow fishes. One of my dearest friends got married there, and I will soon regale you with that story, and the gorgeous pictures of really the most magical wedding I've ever attended. Clue: the invitation said Dress: Forest Elegant.  I'll have to also tell you what kind of person this woman is- the kind who when planning her wedding thought about how expensive it would be for everyone to drive or fly in and do the normal wedding tromp, and so planned a wedding where literally our only expense was the gas to drive there and back. Lola was a fairy flower girl and not only was her dress made and ready for her, so was a crazy gorgeous flower wreath for her head. My friend is a mad fairy masquerading as a regular human, and I'm so blessed to know her.

We made our way up toward the mountain and then up more and in, driving through the fog of a long mountain night to reach the log cabins settled right up against the lakeside. It was 1am and the baby had slept, cried, nursed at the side of the road and repeat for most of the drive. We were exhausted. Mr. Curry drove for six hours at the end of a long day of work and after hauling our things into the cabin, dropped heavily into bed. I let Lola lay with us for a handful of minutes, acclimating. After lots of snuggling I shooed her to the top bunkbed, over Ian, and we switched off the vintage table lamp.

Darkness.

It has been a long, long time since I have experienced that kind of dark. It lays across your face like a blanket and presses into your eyes like, I couldn't help feeling, the very hand of God telling you to sleep. It is the entire Universe collaborating to tell its children to sleep. And so we did. We fell asleep, all five of us, in five minutes. One minute per person. And the next night, the same. Lights out, and darkness, and no whining, moaning, complaining, water drinking, potty breaking, teary eyed complaints- just sleep. Blissful, heavy sleep. Ever slept better than she does at home.

Which made me wonder: Are we sleeping with too much light? 

The night sky of Nature can have it's brilliant light- but it is of stars shining from hundreds of years away, the light of time. Our lights are man made and piercing and demanding and remind us of waking life. They are not lights of spirit but lights of obligation. 

The Alarm Clock Light- Your going to have to wake up and take your kids to school at the crack of dawn!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

The Computer Light- Your novel is unfinished, you didn't answer your email, oh my God look how long it's been since you Tweeted, they probably think you are TOTALLY IRRELEVANT 

The Cable Box Light- I'm green and pointless and tiny and super mega annoying. You forgot to record Girls, by the way. 

Our master bedroom is the hub of the house at night. Everyone is in and out of here, showering, bathing, watching the freakishly enormous and so outdated we couldn't sell it on Craigslist TV of ours, or browing online next to the fan, or playing with the baby on the floor, or rolling around on one of our two beds. At bedtime, everyone disperses but often the computer is still on, left that way in case I can make myself get back up and work- which I do, 80% of the time- and the alarm clock is set and facing us, and the cable box is glowing, and oftentimes the closet light is on just to help me stay awake and get things done.  Ever sleeps in here and mostly so does Lola, on the little bed next to our bed. On top of all this light, our windows- we have three in here- are closed with gorgeous white shutters which still let in light from the streetlamps. That's a lot of light.

So tonite, I've draped a shirt over the alarm, Ever's pants over the cable box, and a small towel over the computer box. Melatonin, the hormone our bodies produce to make us tired, is created only in the absence of light, and I know that people who sit in front of glowing computer screens (ahem) quite a bit can have problems with sleep, and I'm sure our hormone production has much to do with that, along with the way our brains work. 

Part of the problem for me is that I don't have any light to read by. I can't just lie down, barely tired, in a dark room and go to sleep, because ANXIETY. So to wind down, I'm often watching TV right before bed, or online, and although this feels relaxing, I don't think my brain agrees. If I had a reading lamp, I would read every night, which is what I've done most of my life until... I didn't have a reading lamp! I'm going to buy one, and add that to my sleep arsenal. I also like the influence it has on my kids to see me reading every night, especially since I read less right now because of Ever. 

Maybe we will sleep more, and better.  I'll let you know.



*couldn't find source for image