For the love of cards and grandmas

When we were in Hawaii, sans computers and such, Jeff and I played cards. Who plays cards anymore? Certainly not my husband, who spends every spare minute in front of one of his seventeen computers/gadgets/musical instruments. And me? I'm not much better now that I have this blogging habit. But in Hawaii we got so, like, 1970s, and played cards a few nights. And we giggled a ton. It was great.

The whole card game thing reminds me of my paternal grandma, with whom I played cards until she died. Lest you start to picture a sweet little pie-baking old lady, well, don't do that. She was a single academic smarty pants type, who had travelled the world (I know she taught English to nuns in Tibet for awhile, for example). She raised four kids with a man who was a terrible father, and then he left her anyway. She really wasn't much for children or anything domestic. At her house in Indiana I first learned about takeout Chinese food, being a country girl where there was no takeout anything (not even scrapple). And she taught me to make Jello (what, you say? She wasn't domestic? I know.) In the matter of fact way that one could imagine a worldly woman of a certain age teaching her granddaughter to make Jello: of course you can do it, Nora. Here's how. This does not define you. This is just so we can have some Jello. And here's a trick about ice cubes so it sets faster because my artist friend Arty McArtypoet is coming over for tea later. Yes, of course you can listen to our charming banter. There now, we made Jello. On to the next thing.

And in this same peer-to-peer style, she taught me how to play cards. Just about every card game I know, actually, came from her. Peanuts, casino, kings in the corner, rummy, hearts. And I loved her hands, not because they were beautiful, in fact the opposite. Because she was the only person I have ever known to have the stubby broad thumbs that I have, with nails wider than they are long and the rest perfectly, upsettingly straight unlike NORMAL PEOPLE who have at least a little curve to their thumbs. Really most unattractive things. So yes, genetics, they were passed down from her to me, et cetera. But my dad? My genetic link to her? Hitchhiker's thumbs. Amazing in their oppositeness to mine and his mother's. She and I must have looked quite the pair playing cards together with our special thumbs out for the world to see.

In a glowing example of my blogging naivete, I thought it would be cute and charming and family-oriented to post the rules to the game we played most (casino). It turns out this would actually be frightfully boring. And I can never learn a game from the directions anyway, just by playing, so come on over to my place and I'll teach you the rules and we'll have a giggle. Or, you can find the rules of casino here, by some nice folks who clearly have more patience than me in writing out rules.

Just another working mom daydreaming of staying home

I can hardly believe it, but it is so. Maybe because of all the love and bubba time we had in Hawaii and the holidays. Maybe because I have just scheduled my dissertation defense for the end of April. This April. Holy smokes, Batman! I have a lot of work to do. Thus I procrastinate. Thus I bake. Thus I dream of baking all the time. Which conflicts somewhat with having to go to work in a research office.

I hate bubba's daycare days. Hate labeling all his food and wondering which lucky underpaid staff person who is NOT ME gets to rock him to sleep. Hate getting home tired and cranky just in time to put him to bed. Hate all the colds and ear infections. I used to love his daycare days, going to my office, talking with adults, getting a break. On his mommy days, I would at the beginning of each one sometime, just for a moment, have a flash of dread--how am I going to fill up these hours? I don't have those any more. Now the mommy days are the ones I live for. Bubba is just so darn fun.

The work I do, it's interesting. I'd be happy to do this work for the rest of my career. But it is work. And all of my training is training me to know, for sure and real life, that my brain is MINE and I will be smart wherever I go and whatever I do. Thus I realize now that I would be just as smart as a housewife or as a fancy dancy researcher. (Aren't I smart? Took me 34 years to get that one.)

Where do you go, after experiencing the certainty that you would jump in front of a train for another person? Do you make a million small sacrifices for them instead because there is no train to jump in front of and you want to do something, some small gesture in the general spirit of train-jumping? Or do you go about your business, just knowing in your mind about the train?

And Seattle? The real estate market sucks here. I know it's worse other places, yes, yes. And to live how and where we would like--not that fancy, trust me, just a touch more space than we have now--I will have to work. And I get the uh-oh feeling about that. (Hope all yall with daughters teach them about the uh-oh feeling.)

Ah, and then there's when I'm 50. The empty nest. The needy mother who hounds her adult child because she has nothing to do herself, nothing to call her own. That's been one of my arguments for working now, to have something to do When He Leaves Home. There may actually be something to this. Sigh.

Sigh.

Sigh.

Because it's my blog and I think it's cute he sleeps with his butt in the air

Things I said I would never do as a parent that I have now taken back completely

I will never I repeat never have a house full of trucks. I said this when I found out I was having a boy. Ha! Thirteen months in, and you have no idea. I've got singing ones, woo-woo-wooing ones. Wooden ones and metal ones. I could write a children's book about trucks, if there was any corner of the truck-book market left and if my shelves weren't full of them. But, I have benefited. I know what a skid steer is now. I'm like smart and stuff.

I will never have a house full of plastic toys. I can hear you laughing. Don't think I can't. Know what I've learned? Pigs are bigger than dinosaurs and cars. Duh.


I will never put my baby in one of those infantilizing winter hats. See, I did not plan on a baby that would rip his hat off at the first available opportunity/dexterity.

I won't need a high chair because my baby will sit still and eat like a grownup ALL THE TIME. Wait, is that a giggle I hear? I can't hear right what with my own hysterical sobs of laughter. Milk just came out of my nose.

I won't need a stroller because I will wear my baby until he is in fourth grade forever amen. Did not count on having a 27 pound baby at 12 months. Did this kid not get my memo? Totally have two strollers. (I do still wear him, of course. To the fridge or so before I can feel the cartilage in my hips crunching.)

While I prance around with the stroller I will never own, I will never carry a latte. Yup, that one was one of the first to go.

Nah, I don't make many statements that begin with I will never any more.

Seattle city lights

The days are pretty short 'round these parts these days, so I, like many an enterprising Northwesterner, look for light where I can get it. I need not go far and I am rewarded! Light everywhere. These from a recent walk around the neighborhood, all taken before 5pm. While we are waiting for the days to get gloriously long again, we can get:

(yes please)

Or something a little stronger:




To go with our:


or


Which we may want before we take in a:


...to get out of the:


And lest we forget personal grooming, there is light to show us the way to

...which we may want before going to the:


...for the ummm seasonally affected among us.

And my most deliciousest pleasure of early darkness: peeking in other people's windows as I stroll by. Honestly it's not about the people. In fact I look away if there are people. More about the decor, the warmth, the appearance of simplicity and harmony. A peek into life's next phases since just about any house I pass is nicer/bigger/remodeled/older children than ours. A peek into my own house from the outside:

Here's to an abundance of light, light, light. It's everywhere, even in Seattle in January.

Reason #529 why my thirties are better than my twenties

New Year's is way better.

I spent last night with my man, drinking beer and eating popcorn and watching the Da Vinci Code (which incidentally stars one of my celebrity boyfriends).

Bubba slept through the evening, and I was asleep by 12:03 am. Perfect.

All the more perfect because, in the tradition of reflecting on the past at year's end, I was reminded of my roaring twenties, when I did some things that were dumb.

After college, as we all tried desperately to figure out how to be grownups, I went to a New Year's party with my college friends, and everything had changed without college life to guide us. To my horror, the women collected in the kitchen and talked about cooking and decorating. I've blocked out a lot of that night, but I do remember green bean casserole. The men gathered on the deck in the cold smoking cigars and drinking whiskey. Although now I would be much happier puttering in the kitchen, at the time the kitchen felt like a prison and the deck felt like freedom. I was all, this is it? Life? Really? Cleaning up after these guys we used to do homework with?

So I started branching out. And by branching out I mean I fled. One year in the mid-to-late-90s I went to Times Square in NYC. We drank a lot before we left, not realizing there were no bathrooms in Manhattan, not a single one, and it was about 15 degrees out. We got there around 9pm and were lucky to get a spot two blocks down but with an okay view of Times Square. We had no radio and were too far to hear Dick Clark. So pretty much stood there freezing (and by freezing I mean freezing), having to pee, and chatting with the AWESOME policemen doing crowd control. Eventually people started to think that maybe it was getting to be time for the ball to drop. We did a countdown that was a few seconds off from the one in the Square, and watched the ball drop two blocks away. It was a nice moment, but was it worth standing in the freezing cold with a full bladder for three hours? Maybe not.

There was the 1999-to-2000 New Year's Eve, when I was living the single life in Washington DC. I went down to the National Mall with friends, watched the "America's Milllenium" show (was it Barry Manilow? someone like that). Again, the countdown was exciting, but then it was time to join the herd waiting for the Metro train home. Always a date-buster.

Don't even get me started on the year I bought cheap tickets to the Bahamas on 12/31 for a 1/1 departure, with nary a thought that accommodation is hardly cheap in the Bahamas and that we missed the famous Bahamian New Year's Eve bash and arrived to a country full of hungover people with very little cash to spend on a hotel so ended up in a decidedly "seedy" establishment. Don't even get me started on that.

Thankfully I met Jeff in my late twenties and, bathed in unconditional acceptance and love, confronting new urges to go into the kitchen and cook casseroles, started approaching New Year's a bit more calmly.

A couple years ago Jeff and I went to Manhattan again on New Year's Eve, but this time we had the good sense to come home in the late afternoon and watch the ball drop on TV. That was much smarter.

Then last year, I had a newborn. I think I was awake feeding him at midnight. Or maybe I just thought, it's new year's, I'll probably be awake at midnight. It's all a blur.

This year? The popcorn and some Tom Hanks. It just keeps getting better and better.

Happy 2008!