It's not ironic.

If you’d ever like to be reminded just how old you really are, and I can’t think why you would want to do that, but IF YOU DID, then I suggest you wander into an Urban Outfitters. Urban Outfitters was around when I was a teenager, and my 14-year old self spent plenty of Saturday afternoons poking around the M Street store, looking for ways to waste my allowance. Twenty-five years later the store is pretty much the same, which is to say that it sells some reasonably cute, hipster clothes and a lot of ironic t-shirts and ironic posters and ironic furniture and pretentious classics for the young, urban readers among us. Of course, the hipster element is belied by the fact that the store has an outpost in almost any urban shopping mall, which lets me know it was probably the same level of cool when I was 14, too.

My point, though, and I did have one, was that when I walked into the store the other day I felt like I had been hit over the head with my own irrelevance. The doughy young clerk folding t-shirts near the door struck the tone for me with a decidedly unimpressed sneer. Even her pimples regarded me mulishly. I was tempted to moo at her. Instead, I walked through the store, eyeing the various displays of clothes too tight, too short or made of material too unforgiving for a frame that has been stretched out from providing a crash pad for two separate human beings. I didn’t even touch anything; what was the point? If I ever have occasion to wear a tiny, ironic t-shirt again, I have several in a bin in my basement. I guess I need to give up the ghost and donate them to some overprivileged 15-year old they were designed for in the first place.

It’s hard to make peace with bidding adieu to one’s youth. But when my personal trainer says perkily, “I thought you were 35!” not realizing her marketing plan doesn’t have quite the ring it was probably supposed to, I have to face the facts. And the facts include the requirement that I stay out of stores for our up and coming young citizens. I’m sure I’ll be back in them soon enough anyway, shopping for the next generation.

Huh?

Pretty soon you’re going to drop me from your list of work time-wasters, if you haven’t already. I have an excuse, although it’s not one I’m happy about. My head is in a fog. Any energy I have for thinking goes into my job, and the rest of the time you’d be forgiven for wondering if maybe I’d been in a car accident or something since the last time you saw me. I just don’t feel that right in my head.

I hope it’s all simply attributable to the now 8 months of horribly interrupted sleep, and not to the anti-crazy pills I am on. Because while the bone-tiredness hopefully one day will be gone, I really, really don’t want to give up my happy candy. However, if it means exchanges like the following also go away, then maybe OK:

Kate, in an email: “They were supposedly happiedly married. I can't remember how to spell happiedly. Is that a word?”

Kate’s Friend: “Uh, do you mean “happily’”?

Kate: “Mmm. Perhaps.”

And everything about my head is like that now. When I drive to work and hear an interesting story on NPR, I think I should write about it that day. By the time I am at the office I have very little memory of what I heard or what sort of opinion I should have about it. My mind is like the floating tentacles of a jellyfish, pale and ephemeral and sort of prehistorically unchanging below the ocean’s surface. Shit, that doesn’t work, because with jellyfish you’re expecting that diaphanous, billowing creature to suddenly tense up and sting the crap out of you. There’s no caffeinated spark behind the marshmallow fluff that passes for my brain these days.

Although, the more I write here the more I feel reassured it’s just the exhaustion and not the potentially lobotomizing antidepressants. I can almost feel my brain tuning up below the fog; like a pencil sharpened with one of those old-fashioned, hand-cranked sharpeners.

I sound nuts, but for somebody who considers herself pretty sharp normally, it feels so strange. I don’t think about the future anymore, and I rarely think about the past. Everything is very much “now” – as in, “now” we are going to the park, and “now” I will be feeding you dinner and “now” I will be cleaning the kitchen for the 4th time today and “now” I will be tucking you in and reading you stories and giving you the requested “up-hug.” Part of that is not so bad; I have wasted way too much time in my life not living in the moment and instead obsessing about what should be different that would make me happy. Well, now I actually am happy, and I know it because when Ian asks me every day, “Mommy, are you happy?” I am able to honestly reply to him that I am. Even when I see myself in the mirror and I see that I am finally starting to look my age; that all this is taking a physical toll on me, I’m still happy. Just a little concerned about when I am going to get an important part of my brain back.

The ends of the spectrum.

Try not to look at my granny hand as you revel in this cuteness:





















Although, honestly, what is up with that hand!? I’m 40, not 85. I remember when I was a kid, and I’d look at my mom’s veiny, 30-year old hands from behind my smooth, youthful eyes and see it as a reflection of the great chasm between our ages (23 whopping years). I couldn’t even imagine being old enough to have age reflected on my body, and 30 was OOOOLLLLLD. Of course, I had no idea that having veiny hands wasn’t even an issue of age; it’s just a genetic trait and one which I inherited.

The other day I was looking at my own children’s perfect skin, still so fresh from creation as to be plump and unblemished. I wondered how old they will be when they start criticizing me for my age: Mom, you are so old and so out of touch and your clothes are horrible and please don’t make me be seen with you, gross gross gross gross gross. Not yet, at least, although I do get plenty of giggles from Ian when he drives a little fist into the doughy non-resistance of my tummy. Ha.

I wonder if boys are as casually cutting as girls are, or if they just view their mothers more as fossils to be ignored. I’m sure there will be plenty of snide comments on a wide range of comments, but I don’t know whether boys waste time remarking on a parent’s physicality. Or, whether it’s more of a same-sex thing, and R. will be the target of the boys’ sartorial disdain. Ooh, I can hardly wait to find out; to endure the good time I put my own mom through.

Here’s another picture; rest assured that they don’t share a bed. No, Ian is pretending to like Alex for ten seconds because it means he can enjoy a relaxing hit on a pacifier. Ian isn’t allowed to have a binky unless he’s taking a nap or down for the night, so he likes to climb into Alex’s crib and pretend it’s his naptime, too.

Hanging by a thread.

As I started my file for “October 2009” this morning I realized it’s been four years since I started this blog. Four years of spouting off to the world about the silliest or most distracting things going on in my mind, which according to what I glanced over this morning has rarely carried a lot of intellectual weight.

October 2005 found me trying to make the best of being somewhat lonely through music, alcohol, cigarettes and lame interactions with lame guys, all described in my tough-chick persona that clearly belonged to someone who came of age in the Breakfast Club years. I think it’s fair to say that the way my life has evolved since then has mellowed me a lot, and thank God for that. I think all that bravado would have aged poorly. It’s not like I didn’t have the gooey center even then that would allow me to cry at Disney movies and Hallmark commercials, but now I don’t have the energy to keep up the hard candy shell. My kids would just hit it and eat the pieces.

On another topic, another thing about me that is apparently dissolving is my cornea. I know, that’s a nice segue, isn’t it? Today my eye was bothering me enough that I dragged myself into my opthamologist, only to learn that the little corneal scratch I had a couple of months ago has morphed into another abrasion. How can that happen? Well, apparently it’s not uncommon for the cornea not to heal properly in the first place, and if you have dry eyes then when you sleep your eyelid can attach to your slightly roughened cornea and when you wake and blink, pull off corneal cells. Yuck. Now I have to apply a greasy ointment to my eyeball every night until the tube runs out, followed by nightly gel drops until I die:

Doctor: “Use this until it runs out, then you’ll need to use these gel drops for the rest of your life.”

Kate: “Forever!? You mean, IN PERPETUITY!!??”

Doctor: “Uh, yes, Kate, if that's how you'd like to phrase it.”

Tonight my husband and I and my ragged eyeball are going to see the movie “Paris” at our favorite movie theater – the one where they sell you glasses of decent wine in real glasses that you can take into the theater. Since we last saw a movie there, the thought of seeing a movie in one of those big ol’ movieplexes teeming with wretched, pimply-faced teenagers (or, in the one near our house, teens with guns shoved into their britches) just hasn’t held the same appeal. Popcorn goes just as well with chardonnay as it does with diet Pepsi, my friends – maybe better.

Blind in one eye.

I’m falling apart. I’ve lost count of how many weird lumps and bumps and pains have turned up in different spots on my head in the last couple of weeks. Today my right eye hurts again, and the vision in it is a bit blurry. Since that’s my “bad” eye, if I hadn’t been through this a couple of months ago I would be panicking. When my vision suddenly got very blurry then, I ran to my retinal doctor to have it checked out – only to discover I had an eyelash growing inward that was acting like a dirty windshield wiper on my cornea, scratching it up. They plucked it with tweezers – very advanced science.

Anyway, it turns out months without sleep will send a person into early decrepitude. I can only pray that the last two nights, during which both children have slept reasonably well all night long, are not a fluke. This has been a LONG road. We tried Ferberizing Alex, only to discover that the supposedly gentler method of coming in at increasing intervals did nothing but enrage him. Every time I came in to let him know I hadn’t completely disappeared, his furious screams would ratchet up another few notches, he’d shake his clenched little fists, and generally make himself incredibly unappealing. After a few nights of that unsuccessful tack, we said, “Fuck it.” Who was it helping for us to keep getting up to reassure him that Mommy and Daddy were there for him when it only served to make him madder? So R. reverted to his earplugs, and I just stopped waking up. I don’t want to jinx things by saying that maybe we’ve crossed the bridge, but… please let it be so.

So what do you think about this Roman Polanski thing? I have to say, I am amazed that he has so many “supporters” who think it’s terrible that he was arrested after all this time; people who think that 30 years of making films somehow eradicates the fact that he repeatedly "had sex with" a 13-year old girl after plying her with drugs and alcohol. As if his “art” cleans up the filth of rape, like so much Lysol. What about the fact that he’s basically been on the lam for 30 years, specifically to avoid incarceration for his crime?

Apparently there was some question about the objectivity of the judge in his original case, and whether he was about to renege on a plea bargain agreement that had been reached. I suppose that could explain Polanski’s feeling the need to flee, wondering if he was about to have to do hard time. However, it doesn’t excuse the original act, and it doesn’t make the act of his fleeing legal. It seems to me that at this point he should just face the music; after all, he is a celebrity of sorts, with some incomprehensible wellspring of sympathy from the film community on his side – how much time would he have do anyway?

It's me, already.

Hello, my friends. This is called "lousy parenting."

Everyone knows you don't just leave a baby with a propped bottle. How can you bond when you're not holding them? How can he drink when the bottle is pointed the wrong way? Ah, he can stand to lose a few pounds anyway, and denying kids human touch toughens them up. Plus, who would even want to hug a kid who looked like that?

So, yeah, it's been awhile. But given the state of my last couple of weeks, which includes a full family bout of the swine flu (or some other flu with exactly the same symptoms) and busy, busy work, well, I've been lucky to even think any words much less put them to paper.

I had been waiting to write about this, because it was supposed to be a surprise for R's birthday, but then he guessed it and it's a little spoiled from that perspective but will still be fun in the end:

We're going to New York for a couple of days in December. Yes, we're leaving our darling children with their extended family in Charlotte while we jet up to that chic gateway that is the Newark airport and get cracking on 50+ hours of solid fun and romance. I snark, but in reality I am terribly excited. How long has it been since I have traveled anywhere at all other than to the hospital? Granted, those little 4-day "vacations" were pretty awesome, what with the blood and the painkillers and the unfamiliar babies, but they weren't quite a trip to New York.

I can't believe I am getting so crazy for a two-day vacation, but I'm betting that if you too have or have had small children you know exactly of what I speak. Love 'em - but I also love my husband, and man could we use a little break (I'm still hopeful for a trip to the Caribbean in March, but we'll probably need to spring that proposal on Grandma after she's had a chance to deal with this one). It seems like forever since we were alone together, and in fact it's been about 16 months. So this will be nice.

If things had gone according to plan, this Friday I would have been giving R. a birthday card with a copy of a reservation for Saturday night at the Ritz in Beaver Creek. Since I had been going on and on about how much he would like his present, a night at the Ritz would have been nice but likely a bit of a letdown since we've been there several times before. Then, as we were seated alone at some bar in Vail on Saturday night, I would have handed him another card - this time with the tickets to NYC and a copy of our hotel reservation. I was very pleased with my plan, which now that I think about it benefited me awfully nicely as well.

But alas. I was so stupid as to leave a copy of Lucky magazine open on the table, foolishly opened to a page of New York boutiques. Now, I don't think most men, seeing a copy of some random fashion mag opened to a page of stores would have automatically leapt to the conclusion that their wife was taking them to NY, but that's my darling!

"Is my birthday present a trip to New York?" he asked as he came into the room. I could feel my jaw clench and my eyes glass over.

"No," I said.

"Yes," I said.

"God damn it," I finished.

I suppose I could have stuck with "no" and he would have believed me, but then when I gave it to him, he would have just been like, "I guessed that." So I just went ahead and told him, and even though I had pictured we would chatter about it excitedly every day from now until December, we've barely mentioned it since. He hasn't had time to even think about it (again, with the swine flu), but hopefully soon we'll start to figure out what to pack into our short adventure.

Here's the hotel where we're staying: Ink48. It's in Hell's Kitchen, which I'm told is an area of town much improved in the last few years. I got a great deal at this place because it's only opening this month, which means it could be a total cluster when we're there, but it looked pretty nice. It's a Kimpton hotel, which usually means I'll like it.

Uh-oh. I just looked it up for the website and now it's opening November 1. Hmm.

Lack of sleep breeds discontent and profligate spending.

Rue La La strikes again. My credit just gets larger as I impetuously buy things and return them. This is what I fell for today:

Yes, I know. Kind of cute, kind of tacky, kind of instantly dated. But hey, they only cost $40 after applying my credit, so why not, right? At this rate I’ll soon be able to use my credit to buy a Gucci handbag.

Meanwhile, my smallest child is the devil. Last night he screamed non-stop from 2 am until 5 am, at which time I finally fell down on the Ferberizing job and plugged his pie hole with a bottle. He promptly fell asleep, which means I, too, could have promptly fallen asleep at 2 am if I had only cut out the nonsense in the middle. To make matters worse, he has developed a hideous new pitch to his screaming that I’m surprised didn’t have the neighbors calling 911 on us. Needless to say, this development in the sleep-taming wars sucks – particularly when it’s inflicted on two parents still suffering from the Swine Flu or a cold or whatever.

I’m getting the sense that whatever rewards there are to being a parent could be quickly squashed by all the complete and total shit you’re expected to endure, unless you put some serious Pollyanna-power-of-positive-thinking strategies to work:

“Just think - if I hadn't stepped in this steaming pile of horse crap, I would never have found this little gold nugget! We’re going to be rich!”

Oh, and I forgot to mention I got this girl's haircut:

Inmates running the asylum.

Um, ew. So Nicole Richie had another kid, which she gave another completely frightful name: Sparrow James Midnight Madden.

What is it with these celebrities and their bizarre naming conventions? Where do they even come up with these things? SPARROW? This is a little boy's name? Thank God they at least threw a "James" in there for him to fall back on when he is old enough to reclaim his own identity.

It seems to be a requirement now that even the most normal-seeming parents have to pick sucky non-names; see, e.g., Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner's choice for their daughter "Serafina." OK, it's not the worst of what's out there (Apple and Moses' mommy, I'm talking to you), but it's still silly. Do they consult with each other before landing on their chosen moniker ("Jada, Tom and I are thinking about "Suri" for our baby's name. You haven't heard that anywhere else, have you? It means something in Jewish, I think."), or do they get drunk and write nonsense words on little scraps of paper that they take turns pulling out of each others' asses?

Anyway.

Things have been pretty grim in our house full of normal-named people. We were all bed-ridden this holiday weekend, and because I have contracted such delights as West Nile Virus in the past, I'm inclined to think we were all touched by the piggy flu. There were varying degrees of symptoms among us, but there were plenty of bodily fluids to go around. Which is always nice. What was nice, in a sad little way, was curling up on the couch with Eeyore to watch marathon episodes of Elmo's World. He was happy as a sick little clam and I got a little rest. Unfortunately, Alex is already a teevee fanatic, and even if I face his bouncy seat away from the screen he contorts himself to look back at it. So I just choose sometimes to suck as a parent and face him more conveniently so he doesn't strain his neck. I mean, he's going to watch it either way, right?

Now we are recovering and there will be less TV and more normal activities. Ian's latest phrase, which gets me every time, is, "I LOVE that, Mommy!" It can be about anything, from a song such as Ring Around the Rosy ("I LOVE that song!") to last night's turkey burgers ("I LOVE that hamburger, Mommy!"), so it behooves me to offer up a variety of delightful experiences such as those rather than to stifle him with incessant viewings of that scraggly red monster.

Yum yum globalization.

This is just bizarre to me:












That, my friends, is a Whole Foods store in my old neighborhood in London. I knew there was the big outpost in the Barkers building on Kensington High Street, but I didn’t know that American Corporate Organic had started to reach its pebbly Twiglet-tentacles out into Zone 2. That’s just surreal.

I remember when I was a kid living in Paris and the excitement I felt when a lone store opened that sold (at exorbitant prices) American staples such as Kraft macaroni and cheese, Oreos, and Nestle chocolate chips. Before that my mother had let me load up my suitcase with such culinary delights whenever we took a trip back to the States. Otherwise, I would have had to make do with snacking on my Parisian concoction of potato chips in a dip I fashioned from mayonnaise, mustard and some paprika, or with the giant bars of Milka chocolate I would devour in an hour of sitting on the couch after school watching French music videos or playing Atari.

By the time I was an adult and living out in my neighborhood of Battersea known as “Between the Commons,” there was plenty of processed American kids’ food you could buy at specialty shops in central London, but not too much out in my neck of the woods. That was OK with me; by then my love for UK supermarket fare had long surpassed any desire for the chemically created “food” I’d learned to crave from a childhood full of Saturday mornings in front of the TV. I could dither in a Marks and Spencer food shop for hours, loading my basket with chicken tikka masala, jacket potatoes with tuna and sweetcorn, and other such exotic ready-made fare.

Organic food wasn’t really on the radar as a big marketing tool in London in 2001. There was one sort of “health-food” shop in Notting Hill that had a grotty ambience I associated with dreadlocks, B.O. and bedsits, even though it sold expensive meat and produce and probably had quite a wealthy and “enlightened” clientele that spent its winters on yachts in the Balearic islands.

Now, however, it appears the push to market the expensively healthful, whole-grain lifestyle has arrived in England full force. Ain’t globalization grand! Now I just need an unadulterated version of my favorite Prêt-à-manger right here in Cowtown.

Busy bees.

Oh, dear, but things have been busy around our house. Exciting goings-on:

1. Eeyore turned 2.

We opted to have an “end-of-summer barbecue” for our friends with kids rather than a strictly child-oriented birthday party, and ended up with a kind of limp mish-mash. It was successful enough for the kids, who ran around the yard chasing balls and blowing bubbles and smearing Elmo cake on their faces, but it wasn’t quite the adult party I had imagined. In retrospect that probably ought to have been apparent; making sure nobody loses a tooth (which one girl did while trying to pry the plastic plug out of a water pistol with said tooth) doesn’t lend itself to drinking with abandon. And I’m not used to the vibe of a backyard party not fueled by alcohol – Mormons must have very dull parties indeed.

2. Ferberizing Baby.

We started this last night, since at 6 months Baby has become ruler of the household with his need for firm butt-pats, liquid refreshment and pacifier-reinsertion upon waking in the night. R. and I have created this monster while trying to keep him from waking up his brother when he wakes during the night (they share a room), but while we have managed to preserve Eeyore's sleep we have totally ruined both Baby’s and our own. So last night began the whole “progressive waiting” thing where you let the baby wail his miserable head off and you visit him at intervals of increasing length until he passes out from despair over the fruitlessness of his attempts to summon parental love and affection.

He cried for about an hour last night, but what would have been comical were it not 3:30 in the morning was the sheer fury in his screams. He wasn’t whimpering with sadness or fear; he was PISSED OFF that there was nobody there to stick that binky back in his mouth for him, or peel his grapes, or whatever it was that he wanted. It’s our own fault for getting him used to having slaves, but it’s time to nip it in the bud. We’re having to conduct this operation by moving him into a crib in the living room when he wakes, which probably makes him even more out of sorts. The whole thing blows, frankly, but we can’t back down because we need sleep desperately. I bet I could drop 10 pounds just by sleeping through the night for a week. And avoiding the malted milk balls at the shop near my office, but that’s another issue altogether.

3. Happy Anniversary.

Today is my wedding anniversary; 3 years ago today R. and I got married in an outdoor square in Savannah. That evening we drank pink champagne, celebrated with our families, and later sat alone together in our crowded hotel bar, still gussied up in our wedding togs. What happened next is a gigantic blur, but it involved a trip to London, getting knocked up, and then that’s pretty much all I remember until this:

Autumn.

It is cool and gray and a little rainy outside and I love it. The cooler, damp air is soothing after hot, dry days that leach all the water out of my hair and skin and make my eyes ache from the brightness. The weather today is like a cozy, dewy cloud all around me, and excites me with the prospect of the upcoming season of day after day of snuggly gray sweaters.

I ducked into Peet’s at lunch, and the smell of freshly brewed coffee was warm in the air. People were clustered around the few small tables, huddled over their coffee cups and talking animatedly about subjects of apparent great interest. You know me – not content to take in the scene on its face, I was instead transported back to the perpetual autumn of London and the pleasure of ducking into its coffee shops, pubs, wine bars and tea rooms for a little bit of cheer to brace oneself against the bite of yet another gray day. Perhaps because it is so often cold and rainy there, the British seem to have gotten coziness down to a science. It’s largely as simple as the use of warm lighting that spills out of picture windows into the chill of the street, but there is also something about the décor. For example, this is a picture of the bar in my favorite hotel in London, the Cadogan.














In the winter, by 5:00 pm it is solidly dark outside, and this room glows with the warmth of the lamplight on the polished wood and the small, silver dishes of nuts and crisps. My mother and I settle back against our cushions, usually with various shopping bags at our feet: Waterstone’s, Cath Kidston, Selfridges… always a good day. The bartender brings my mother her whisky and ginger ale; the small pleasures factor amplified by the use of Schweppes American ginger ale – a ginger ale with less sugar and a stronger tang of ginger than one would ever find Stateside. A champagne cocktail for me; a rough sugar cube dissolving under its iodine splash of bitters, merrily spinning thin ropes of the tiniest bubbles towards the surface. Really, that is my idea of heaven.

Do you ever just completely disappear into your mind? Writing that, I was practically there, ready for a fun conversation with my mom. I’m sure we’d be discussing the books we bought and whether we wanted to keep our reservation at whatever happening new restaurant I had painstakingly researched from the comfort of my office or just walk over to the Enterprise.

But then I snapped out of it, and guess what: here I am at work and the sun is back out and I have a conference call in 30 minutes and then it’s home to a teething baby and another sleepless night. But that is what vacations are for, right? To give you memories to trot out when you need them most.

Mom Jeans (and Everything Else.)

Have I mentioned to you that I am doing “Body for Life”? Probably not, because it’s queer that I’m doing it at all, plus I’m only doing a sort of half-assed version that handily avoids the dietary deprivation and focuses instead on the weight-lifting and cardio program. Which undoubtedly means that I will continue to sit here 20 pounds above my desired weight for another 5 months, but at least I will have rippling muscles underneath the flab, the wrinkled belly skin, and the map of spider veins across my legs. Sweet!

(Yes, yes, I am feminine beauty incarnate and amazed at “what my body is capable of” bearing two gorgeous, healthy children; hear me roar, blah blah blah. Give me back my perky boobs.)

The Body for Life book includes lots of pictures that are supposedly taken at the beginning and the end of the 12-week journey. The sad-faced, lank-haired couples limply holding hands between their rolling hips and doughy bellies are replaced with dynamic, muscle-bound specimens with big grins and small swimsuits. The floppy skate wings and hairy ham hocks that were their arms are replaced with sleek, toned triceps and stringy biceps; the Pillsbury Dough Boy tummies with rock-hard abs. One can only assume they are now having loads of athletic sex. Twelve weeks to this kind of change seems exceedingly unrealistic, but the book makes the claim that it IS possible (if you only believe, Virginia).

I haven’t taken a “before” picture of myself because I feel a little too much like those sad sacks in the book, and I don’t really care to have that memorialized. If by the end of my own cookie-popping 12-week journey to physical perfection I have that kind of miraculous transformation, I will, however, don my skimpiest bikini and flaunt it for you. I can say this because I know there is no chance in hell that’s going to happen. I don’t have the will power to swing serious exercise AND a diet. Oh, let’s just face facts; I can NEVER swing a diet. The moment I tell myself I have to eat a certain way, I rebel against myself and start loading the sweets onto the conveyor belt to my stomach. I can’t stand this ornery, self-defeating quirk about myself, but try as I might I have yet to find a way to outwit myself.

I don’t really want to have to start hosting Denver Fashion Week for Moms, though, so maybe I need to figure this one out.

While I am away.

Downbeat in America.

Is there really any good news in the world right now? All the headlines are such a downer, from the state of our economy to the Taliban to the typhoons in Taiwan. Bob Herbert of the New York Times writes an especially upsetting editorial today: American unemployment is an even bigger issue than is being reported, and will ultimately lead to an unraveling of the domestic fabric. Apparently the unemployment statistics for young people are even higher than for older workers, meaning that

“When joblessness reaches these kinds of extremes, it doesn’t just damage individual families; it corrodes entire communities, fosters a sense of hopelessness and leads to disorder.”

How on earth can all of this be solved? What’s going to happen to the large number of young people who are losing traction in the job market? How are they going to establish careers or even steady jobs? Are people who do manage to get good jobs or even cling to crummy ones going to pass them by for the long term? How will they feed their families? How can this not result in higher levels of depression, of crime, of suicide?

God knows I don’t have an answer to any of this. It’s frightening. I know if I lost my job I’d be in a very scary place indeed, even though I tell myself that as a well-educated lawyer I’d certainly find something somewhere, sometime: “Hi, can I get you started with a venti sugar-free, fat-free, no-foam, extra-dry, extra-hot caramel latte?”

When we drove to Aspen a couple of weeks ago for our misguided stay in a lovely condo just off the slopes in Snowmass, we stopped for lunch in a little town called Fairplay. Fairplay is like lots of other rural towns across the country that haven’t been able to capitalize on any kind of charm; there’s not a lot of money there and it shows in the landscape and on the faces of the people who live there. The only place we could find to eat was a Pizza Hut, so in we went. The room was pretty dumpy, and there was only one young waitress tending to the two or three families who had stopped on their way to somewhere else.

Our waitress could not have been nicer, and she fawned over Ian and Alex. It turned out she had two children at home the same ages as they are. Once I learned that it was all I could think about even as I ordered diet Coke for me and milk for Ian; as I cut the tasteless, cardboard pizza into Ian-sized bites. Here we were, blowing through town on our way to Aspen, of all places, and here she was working for what couldn’t have been more than $50 a day in tips. We both had the same mouths to feed and needy, soft-skinned little bodies to clothe. Not for the first time, I marveled at how the luck of the draw affects us all. I had the good fortune to be born into a well-educated, reasonably financially secure family, which gave me the ability to create the same thing for myself (you know, until the downward spiral of the economy whips me into its vortex), and now hopefully to provide that same foundation for my own children.

If you start at an educational and financial disadvantage from birth, what are the odds you’re going to end up fulfilling your potential? Obviously, some people do, and conservatives like to make much of pulling one’s self up by the bootstraps, but overall I think it’s fair to say the deck is pretty well stacked.

Travelogue: Saturday night in Denver.

I reread my last post last night and I actually cringed. Talk about overuse of foul language! I’ve long been someone who swears like a sailor, but maybe having to temper that around small children has finally had a positive effect on me. When I was younger, my mother (at whose knee I gained all I know about language, foul and otherwise) told me once that the danger of swearing too much is that it can limit your ability to come up with other, more apt or creative words when called upon to do so. She was right, not that I stopped cursing. It’s probably better for the world that I am not a broadcast journalist. I would be the one pursing my lips and rolling my eyes when I disagreed with someone, crying about all the highway accidents and abused kittens, and of course, tossing in frequent instances of “fuck that.”

But unlike the Kate of yore, who had no such compunction, now seeing “shit” and “fuck” over and over again in one paragraph just looks like kind of cheap. Perhaps, at 40, I am becoming a lay-dee.

As if. I even hate the word “lady.”

How was your weekend? I have little recollection of mine, other than I had an actual date with my husband on Saturday night. First we went to the Mayan for a movie, (500) Days of Summer, which was delightful not only for the movie but because they treat you like a grown-up and sell you wine in a real glass that you can take into the theater! They even had reasonable selections; it wasn’t all Corbett Canyon or some other dross I wouldn’t even cast a glance toward at the wine store. [See, normally I would have said “shit” or at least “crap” there – dross is instead a delightful 50 cent word; baby steps.] After the movie, which wasn’t as good as I had expected but was still pretty cute, we walked down the block for a drink at a quirky place, Beatrice and Woodsley. It’s sort of fairy tale woodchopper meets girly cottage in the forest. Finally, we moved on to Sushi Den, which as I’ve mentioned before has the best sushi I have had in the U.S. It’s odd that should be true in a totally landlocked cow town, but the owner’s brother has another restaurant back in Japan and so twice a week chooses fish from the markets there and has it flown here. I assume they have another good source somewhere since otherwise by day 4 they wouldn’t be a very popular restaurant. Then it was back home to pass out from lack of sleep. So romantic!!

Self-indulgence.

So I tried again today with the Rue La La – I had a nice credit for my return of the misguided Marc Jacobs bag. Today was Vera Wang Lavender, and I bought these 2 delightfully discounted pieces:




















I really wanted this:




















But where is a 40 year old mother of two with a pretty non-existent social life going to wear it? That could make me a little sad in concept, but for the fact that I’m not sure I ever had a social life that would have given me occasion to wear this more than once a year anyway.

R. and I have halfway decided (okay, 7/8) that next March or April we are going to dump our kids with his mom and sister in North Carolina and jet on down to the Caribbean for a few days. Just saying “jet” sets me off in my fantasy world where I choose an overly expensive resort and justify it because (1) it’s only 4 nights, not the usual 7, and (2) we’re so tired and in need of romance that we deserve it. Sure, “deserve it.” Why not? People starving in Africa and a few blocks away from us, but we deserve a luxurious trip to Anguilla or some such. Putting liberal guilt aside for a mo, a pampered beach vacation sounds fabulous.

Now for the trouble of figuring out where to go. It takes a long time to research those pesky islands, trying to find the magic combo of fabulous beach and reasonable airfare. Why does it cost so much to fly to the Caribbean? Once you factor in the last 10 miles of sea plane or speedboat or whatevs, it’s really quite prohibitive. That’s presumably why those of us in this half of the nation who have to consider budget usually just go to Puerto Vallarta. The one time I went to the Caribbean on a budget (aka the only time I’ve ever been to the Caribbean), I ended up at a semi-dump in Negril, and I’ll just say it wasn’t to my liking. White plastic pool chairs and non-stop requests that I either buy pot or give up my watch because I’m a rich American = less than satisfying experience. This time, I’d like to experience the plantation shutters and 4-inch thick chaise cushions of my fantasies.

OK, back to reality, or at least to August. There was a piece on Colorado Public Radio this morning about a conservative group that is demonstrating against the “stupid” proposed health care changes espoused by our president. Many of the comments were made by old people already receiving government assistance who think that benefits should not be extended to others: “it’s not an entitlement.” OK, so, give it up, then, you old bat, is what I have to say about that…. I especially enjoyed this comment from one younger woman: “To think that we can make these kinds of changes to health care is a fantasy… like global warming.” Ah yes, that old saw. I swear to god; do these people know how greedy and/or ignorant they sound?

Which reminds me, on CNN last night they were showing the results of some poll that says Americans give Obama about a C for his first 200 days in office. Are you fucking kidding me!? The man has been working non-stop since his first day in office to make significant changes in government policies and programs to better Americans’ lives, and is measurably improving the way in which we are perceived by the rest of the world. I’m kind of dumbfounded that the populace thinks that somehow a new president is supposed to be a Superman who can eradicate overnight all the shit perpetrated on this country in the last 8 years. There is a LOT to clean up. And then there’s the pooh-poohing of his actual governance; Christ! Not only do I support a lot of the choices he has made, I also give him a lot of credit for daring to forge ahead with politically difficult issues like revamping health care. I just appreciate so much having a thoughtful, measured person in office; someone who I genuinely believe can make this country better. I wish the frigging Republicans in Congress would sit down and shut their goddamned, showboating mouths and let some shit get done.

Home sweet home.

Mmmm. I just scarfed down a satisfying lunch of cottage cheese and blueberries. I’m trying to think of it more as a kind of prototypical 1970’s country club luncheon menu selection than as the dietetic soul-destroyer it really is. Yes, that’s me with my kelly green, knit shirt dress, hair caught back in a brightly patterned, pink Pucci scarf, daintily forking tiny morsels of the pale, blobby mess from betwixt the folds of the watery iceberg leaf on which it was served. It’s really all I need, darling, as long as you pour me a gin and tonic to wash it down.

Meanwhile, it seems like quite a few bloggers are on hiatus here in the dog days of summer. It’s vacation time, or at least it used to be before I had kids. Around this time every summer, I’d be gearing up for the annual trip to Hilton Head – planning what novels I would take, making sure I had a thick Dell book of variety puzzles and a blue ball-point pen, adding another bikini to my collection. Oh, how times have changed. Vacation this summer was a long weekend at my mom’s (which was fabulous – no kids meant I slept and read and drank wine before 8 pm) followed by a nonsensical three-day trip to Aspen with R. and the kids.

I say three day; that means an entire day to make the 4 hour drive to get there, one day there, and another day to make the drive home. And could I really tell you much about Aspen now? I could tell you there’s a nice playground a few blocks away from the main downtown area, and that there is a pizza place in the Highlands area that has NO customers in the evenings, which sadly made it perfect for us. I think that pretty much sums it up. It turns out that when you have 2 kids under 2, it’s really better to just stay at home and save your shekels. At least at home one has all the paraphernalia necessary to deal with the constancy that is small children; on the road there is inevitably something missing. In our case it was both a crib and a pack-n-play, meaning that Ian slept in the king sized bed with Daddy and Mommy, until Mommy had to move to a twin bed in the guest room around 4 am to feed and snooze with Alex.

It was too bad; our condo was really nice and Aspen looked like it would have been lots of fun if R. and I had been on our own. I could happily have filled my day with perusing the blandly extravagant shops and hanging out at any of the cute restaurants with outdoor patios; as it was, we just wheeled our land yacht of a double stroller right by them and sighed.

Now we are home and today some good news – the Zoning Board granted our appeal for a variance. Our house can be built as R. designed it! Now comes getting the plans finalized for the actual building permit, getting financing, finding a place to rent, packing up and moving out for 6 – 9 months, and finally moving back in to our fabulous, modern home. The fireplace in our room will make up for not seeing Aspen again for at least 5 years, right?

No appetite.

One summer evening a few years ago I was at a rooftop bar in DC; maybe Perry’s in Adams Morgan. I was talking with some guy who had a pretty good appreciation for himself. After some idle chat, he asked me what I did for a living. I asked him to guess.

Guy: “I’m pretty sure I can tell what you do.”

Kate: “You can? What’s that?”

Guy: “You’re a teacher.”

Kate: “Huh! A teacher! Why do you say that?”

Guy: “You’ve got that hungry look.”

Kate: “Hungry; wow. Hungry… And what do you do?”

Guy: “I’m a lawyer.”

Kate: “Right…”

Guy: “I’m right, right?”

Kate: “No.”

*Update: apaprently I have posted this before, which means I am running out of memories. Hmm.

Sporadic memory lane.

When I was sitting on the couch at 2:30 this morning, feeding Alex, my mind drifted back to my high school days in Palo Alto. It seems like a lifetime ago, and … ugh, it was. I’m more than twice as old as I was when my mother and I moved out there the summer before my junior year in high school.

In some ways it was an unfortunate couple of years. I had been very happy back at my small, private school in Washington, D.C., and it was a big change to suddenly be at a huge public high school in California, with all the typical cliques you might imagine. I spent my two years there wishing I had been able to better infiltrate the “in” crowd, which a little surprisingly consisted of the kids who would all be heading off to Stanford, Berkeley and the Ivy League schools. Those were the same people I had been friends with in D.C. (although at my school by 11th grade we were pretty much done with the “popular” group nonsense as everyone had known each other for so long), but here I only managed to sort of hover around the periphery. Instead, my high school fate was sealed the first day of class, when I walked into the administrative offices and met another new girl.

Stephanie came from a background pretty different from my own. Her mother had hair like Brigitte Nielsen’s, sported inch-long fake nails, and supported herself by sharing an apartment with her overweight, pasty boyfriend who sold Amway products and wore a lot of brown polyester. In contrast, my mother had been a model in New York before later practicing law in Paris and then joining what would become the most renowned law firm in Silicon Valley. Nonetheless, we were both new to town and had not made any other friends yet, and so we latched on to each other.

Stephanie had an elaborate makeup routine that I found fascinating to watch. She wore foundation and powder, and she curled both her eyelashes and her bleached blonde hair. She and her mother had moved to Palo Alto from Texas, and she told me that’s just what girls did down there. I, on the other hand, wore nothing unless it was for our Saturday night sorties to underage, underground clubs in San Jose, when I obscured myself behind the palest ivory foundation, black-rimmed eyes, red lips and half a can of Aqua Net.

I’m not sure why, but I can’t really remember the ins and outs of our two years together; only a few snippets here and there. For example, we:

1. Bought vodka by my waving wanly at the liquor store clerk from the car while Stephanie told him her mom was sick in the car but had sent her in to buy booze;

2. Worked together at the bakery across the street from our high school. Sometimes she wouldn’t ring up what she sold and would pocket the money instead.

3. Went to a bonfire out on the beach at Half Moon Bay one night in summer. She drove as usual, since for some reason I didn’t get my license until I was 18. That night, I thought it was the coolest thing ever to be a teenager in California.
4. Went with our friends to our prom at some place called Cocoanut Grove in Santa Cruz, with an after party at the illustrious Glass Slipper Motel on El Camino.

You know, it’s not that there was anything that bad about my time in Palo Alto, or that Stephanie and I got up to anything worse than I would have with anyone else. It’s more that I wish I had made friends I would have liked to have kept in touch with. The friends I ended up making there were ones I made more through her than on my own; at least those I hung out with most. Now, when I go home to visit my mother, I have nobody to call.

Awww.