Blog Mama

Friday, May 31, 2002

In my imagination, I am standing on my new front porch. It is painted pretty blue and white. I say “pretty” because it is a fairly new paint job and most would say it was nice. Personally, I can think of a lot better colors to paint a house than blue and white, but this is what we got. And it doesn’t need repainting and I couldn’t afford it if it did right now. Also, I’m not so much about painting the exterior myself. Even just the porch. But, in my brain I sit on my alleged porch and fantasize about the colors I would paint. Sometimes I paint the house a warm medium gray with white and hot yellow trim. Sometimes I leave it white and do the trim in orange and purple (the current favorite). Sometimes I leave it the same but obsess about it for the next thirty years.

There are things I never imagine for my new house. I never imagine doing the Animal House skull and crossbones thing to it. I never imagine stenciling any part of it, inside or out. I never imagine putting in a bright red roof like those fuckers down the street. I never imagine valances. I never imagine putting up wallpaper anywhere but the kitchen (where I don’t actually intend to put up wallpaper, but sometimes I imagine it). And I almost never imagine my house being besieged by a group of zombie French impressionist painters.

Now, you are asking yourself, as I would if I were you, does she mean French impressionist painters who are also zombies, or does she mean French impressionist painters OF zombies. Why, the latter of course, silly. Why didn’t I say French impressionist zombie painters? Because it wouldn’t have mattered. The question would still be begged. What did I actually mean?

So, today, I imagine my pretty new (alleged) house being besieged by guys with skinny overwaxed moustaches (yes, you too Berthe Morisot, as electrolysis was sadly before your time) with paintbrushes who want to decorate with splotchy spotty ephemeral zombie art that would have been all the rage when my house was originally built (1880). So, you ask, as I would too, what will she do? What will she doooooo? How will she defend herself and her manse against the painters of the zombies?

First, I know I can easily take out Claude “Hellcat” Monet just by shining a heavy duty flashlight in his eyes - the jackass can’t do anything without precisely right lighting conditions. So, modification #1: install floodlights (the sexy kind).

But, of course, here comes P. A. Renoir, or Pete, as I have come to call him - Pedro when I’m drunk. Pete likes pretty things. Once I point out to Pete that zombies are many things, but none of them are pretty, he pretty much gouges out his own eyes and runs away crying like a little girl. From his no-eyes. No modifications needed.

Pissarro and Morisot found each other on the way over and only wanted to make the zombie with two backs if you know what I mean. All I had to do was to kill them softly with my song. Pussies. They don’t deserve to be zombie painters.

And Sisley, poor bastard, his obsession with zombies became an obsession with dead smelly things the likes of which this town has never seen. I tried for awhile just to take away his toys and lock him in my attic, but when he started calling me Baby Jen, or, alternatively, “Thunder Thighs” it just pissed me off. Finally, I found that the only way to get rid of him was to mirror every surface in the house, inside and out. You see, being an “impressionist,” all that reflection was too much for him. He couldn’t put out without everything coming back in on him. Let’s just say, he couldn’t handle the introspection. It wasn’t just that the mirrors didn’t allow him to ignore contrast, as was his way, but he was forced to acknowledge that his zombies, they just weren’t truly the message of his soul. He had fallen in with the others at the café and a bit too much ‘vin’ later, he was just zombie-ing along like he’d been doing it his whole life. I tried to tell him it wasn’t a popularity contest, but he realized his life’s work was a sham. And this realization was echoed from every surface, shiny and bright. Realizing that the only way to give his life meaning was to become one with his work, he commits hari kari, with the intent to become a zombie himself. It fails. His work wasn’t very good to begin with and art imitates life, so. All he made was a mess. I invited Eddie Manet in to splotch the blood and guts around a bit, do what he could with it. But impressionism she is a bitch goddess and on the fourth day of Eddie’s ‘mood’ (which he claimed would inspire him but which I didn’t see doing anything but decimating his poor-to-begin-with hygiene) I couldn’t take it anymore, took a mop to the project, and that is how I defended my little piece of the planet against the zombies and the French all in one week.
posted by Jenifer 10:39 AM

Friday, May 10, 2002

I want to make it very clear that I do not, repeat, do not, believe in private property. We don't own the earth, we are the stewards of the earth, we are of the earth, the earth is not of us, blah blah blah namaste, etc. So, in recognition of my given-from-the-world-but-not-the-earth right to steward a lil' ol' patch of the Mater Terra, I am buying a house. This is so stressful and so emotional and I already really love this house even though it's not actually mine, yet. Even though everyone told me not to romanticize or get attached to a house until someone presses the keys into my sweaty anxious palms, I find it hard to believe that anyone with a brain would spend six figures of actual money on something that they were not attached to. Okay, I didn't set this page up right, so I have to post this and then continue. Hold on.
posted by Jenifer 3:26 PM

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

When Isadora started preschool in September, I knew that this year would be as much about me learning how to have a child in school, how to trust her little soul and body and mind to the care of others, how to let go a little even while I held on a little tighter, as it would be about her learning how to be in school. I fretted when she wanted to play with the older, five year old girls. I worried when they ignored her and excluded her, left her chasing after them unnoticed. I was glad, even in my worry, that she seemed truly oblivious to the shunning. She still called them her best friends. She said she loved them. While I worried that she was developing a potentially damaging image of friendship, I reassured her of how wonderful she was, how lucky those girls were to have her as a friend, all of the things that I meant and that also, you should say to your kids. Then slowly, she learned to be okay when I dropped her off in the morning. Slowly, she developed friendships with kids at her school, with kids her age and the older kids. I knew she felt safe with her teachers and at her school. I knew she liked it and I liked it. And then she developed a couple of really good connections and friendships with kids in her class. She played with Katie and adored Katie. Every day she would greet Katie with a hug and run away from me giggling and holding her friend's hand to go explore her little world. She was happy. I was happy. Katie is a sweet and quiet kid. They are very different but obviously very crazy about each other, these two girls. So, today, I do not understand when she won't talk to Katie, won't play with Katie, won't leave my side when I try to drop her off. Then her teacher tells me that yesterday, Katie and another little boy they spend a lot of time playing with, Richard, hurt my little girl's feelings very badly yesterday. They made a 'school' in a little enclosed corner of the room and screamed at her to get out of their school. The teacher found my little girl slumped over, near tears, unwilling to talk about it. She was so hurt. So angry. She wouldn't even attempt a reconciliation with the kids that day. Katie's dad tells me today that Katie feels embarassed, and Katie obviously feels bad and wishes that Isadora would play with her. I want to just wrap my child up in my arms and take her away from that place, that person, who hurt her. My heart is breaking for my child who didn't even tell me about what happened. I don't know if she feels like it wasn't a big event, or if she doesn't really understand that I don't know what happens to her at school unless she tells me. I just know that I trusted this tiny little piece of the world, this friendship between my daughter and Katie, and this tiny little piece of the world hurt her. I can't forgive myself the trust. I can't forgive this other little girl, obviously as hurt and confused by all of this as my child. I can't forgive her father for not begging my forgiveness. I can't forgive her teacher who didn't tell Jeff yesterday so we could talk about it with Isadora and offer her any extra reassurance or comfort that she needed. I mean, it is not a question of forgiveness. I can forgive them, and move on. I will not communicate this searing anger to my child. I will tell her, for the millionth time, how amazing and wonderful she is. I will tell her that she deserves not to be treated poorly. I will help her learn to stand up for her right not to be mistreated. I will help her assert herself and help her to learn to communicate what she wants and needs, and deserves. Of course I will. But how do you fight the injustice of the playground? You don't. You can't. You teach her to survive it, to live through it, maybe to grow from it. But it is still unfair. It still hurt. I can't unfeel the sting and humiliation of rejection for her. Would that I could. There had to be a first time for this to happen, a first heartbreak, a first rejection. There will be more. So many more. At least for this one I can still pull her tiny body close to me and pretend that I can protect her. At least for this one, she still wants me to.
posted by Jenifer 11:21 AM

Sunday, April 14, 2002

I spent seven hours yesterday cleaning the bathroom and kitchen. Seven hours with nary a break. Well, little breaks to snarf some chips and salsa and coffee, but pretty much it was me and my sponge-o. It is fair to say that prior to yesterday I had no real concept of the magnitude of my own grossness. Of the filth that my family can produce. I suppose it would have helped to have done this cleaning bit before now, because it had really been far too long since the place was really cleaned. I mean scrub the front of the nasty cupboards, remove the thick layer of dust from the appliances, scrub the little metal things that go around the flames on the stove, soak the teapot in degreaser, risk losing my hand to whatever lives there by sticking it behind the stove with a sponge, get the rust stains out of the tub, re-organize the bathroom drawers, actually empty the refrigerator and the freezer, throw out anything living there more than six months, dump the bag of ice from last June's barbecue that had become a berg, actually empty the shelves instead of wiping around them kind of cleaning. I never do that. Well, not never never but pretty much never. It felt oddly empowering and refreshing to breathe the air not so much ridden with mold spores. Now, the rest of my house looks even nastier than usual by comparison to my shiny kitchen. The kids keep slipping on the kitchen floor because it is so much cleaner than they are used to. That is embarassing actually and I'm not sure everyone needs to know that. Well, it's written down now.

Oh God, I just this second realized, as I was about to type "Hey, and it's spring" that this whole blogamabooch is a cliche. I am not the Wonder Woman of the dishpan set after all. I just did some spring cleaning. I am now deeply embarassed and will go quietly to my tidy corner to sulk.
posted by Jenifer 10:12 AM

Monday, April 08, 2002

Despite my previous commitment (made only to myself inside my own head) not to turn my blog into a little bitchy posty place, I give you this:

Please don't read this if you don't want to hear a self-absorbed whiney rant about nothing anyone cares about excpet me. Okay, you have been amply warned. Amply, I say. So, move on. Nothing to see here. Just a short girl with some big hair carrying on.

I am feeling old and ugly. Actually, not really ugly, just plain. Well, not really any uglier than I have always felt (just like everyone else has) since the age of 12 or 13 or whenever it was that my face and body stopped working out the way you want them to or expect them to. So now, I feel plain. And old. And did I mention plain? And old? This, despite the fact that I have been having three really good hair days so I can't blame my hair. I have good hair. It refuses to be plain or old despite its surroundings. It needs a trim, as it does not refuse to be dry and split-endy, but since I have good hair, I can get away with this a little. Hold on, just adding "schedule hair trim" to my voluminous to do list. I seriously just did that, on a post-it. You're welcome for that little window into my life. I stopped wearing makeup as an everyday thing because I don't want my daughters to think that women need makeup or that women "feel better" with makeup and with that kind of thing, it doesn't matter what you say if you insist on putting makeup on every day, or so I tend to believe and since I tend to believe that everything I believe is pretty much ultimate truth, there you go. So, no makeup for me except for when I 'dress up' or 'meet' people in an adult-type environment, or for dinner or drinks or something. This happens very few times a year - four or five at best, so you know, I don't wear much makeup anymore. The last time I wore makeup was for a retirement party for a friend that had bagpipes. That was in January. The time before that was, I think, in July when I went to a wedding. So, you know, not a whole hell of a lot of makeup being worn. Perhaps I could find yet another fascinating way to say that.

Did I mention I am feeling old? Plain? Boring???????? BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING.

Also, I pretty much stopped wearing jewelry. I wear my wedding and engagement rings which are extremely simple and not flashy (we went arty with the design of our rings, not flashy or diamondy biggy). I stopped wearing earrings pretty much when my oldest got old enough to pull on them and/or swallow the backs. So, no earrings in years, except on very rare occasions. I wear a small gold chain that has those little balls, like a keychain chain, instead of links. Only tiny tiny tiny little balls. It was a gift for my first mother's day. And a watch that is almost exactly like the one Jeff picked out for me last year for Valentine's Day but is, in fact, the one I exchanged it for which has a rectangular face instead of a circle and I like it better. That's it. No jewel-related excitement in my life.

And every time I look in the mirror I think that maybe if I could just sleep for like 10 straight days and put on makeup I would actually not look so old. And plain. And boring. But, I can't do any of that. I can't stop being old anyway. Not that 35 is OLD old, but, you know, I'm not used to it. And I just look different and feel different. I am not even bored with my life. I like my life. I just feel boring. If you want cute kid stories, I have a trunkful. I just feel like no one does. That the things that are interesting in my life are interesting to me, and maybe Jeff and maybe even my Mom sometimes. But they have to be interested in me. That's what I pay them for.

I also had a really wild sex dream last night involving me, an old friend, Kathy Griffin and an imaginary woman. Usually my sex dreams end at kissing and innuendo. Not always, but usually. That's fine. This one was just out of control wild and included lots of sexual things and also spooning. And it was definitely not boring and I was definitely a hot number in this dream. We should all say things like 'hot number' more often.
posted by Jenifer 10:09 AM

Friday, March 29, 2002

I didn't write about Lola being sick. Again. Her little fever gets so high so fast. I am starting to be able to distinguish between 103 and 105 with my fingertips.
posted by Jenifer 8:41 PM

I still haven't thought of anything better to put on the top of this page than my name. Jenifer.Jen.if.errrrr. Jenifer. I used to hate my name so much. Now, I don't, actually. There are not so many new Jennifers or Jenifers or Jenniffers or whatever. I was always one of about fifty in elementar school, but now, not so much. Now I'm usually Jen. Or, if I am about to encounter someone who knew me when I wore braces I am "Oh my God, is that Jeni?" Sometimes I'm Jenifer. Sometimes, to my dad, I was Jen Jen but not anymore. My dad, when I was about four and bitching about my name, told me that he and my mother picked it because it flowed like music "Jenifer Jenifer Jenifer" he would say, waving his hand around in what I imagine was supposed to be a musical fashion. So, for a couple of years, I bought it and liked my name. Then, I realized it would always be misspelled because my parents thought that Jenifer, with my maiden name, would have two many Ns if spelled conventionally. So, I felt entitled to a feeling of being burdened by my name. I prefer feelings to which I can attach a sense of entitlement, generally. It's all like "I am bitter about my name! Take that world!" My daughter knows my first name. I don't think I knew my parents' names at three. Anyway, I don't know what else to write up there. So, for now, it's Jenifer. Jeniferblog. A theme park of words.
posted by Jenifer 8:40 PM

Tuesday, March 26, 2002

In other news, I hate being 35. I hate getting older. I am not feeling graceful.
posted by Jenifer 9:48 AM

So, I did live through sinus surgery, thanks be to the Xanax that got me in the door of the hospital. The kids amused themselves ordering Grandma around the waiting room. And, a couple of hours post-op, when the fog of anesthesia and head pain (due to more to the lack of caffeine in my system than the excision of any tissue) lifted, I finally discovered what all the panic and fear was about. Now, I am all for drama, but this didn't hit me like a ton of bricks, or like a safe or piano dangling over me by a precariously dainty rope. It was more like it just occurred to me, finally, what I was so ding dong scared of. To back up, for about two weeks before surgery I was having panic attacks which manifested themselves in a completely irrational - yet paralyzing - fear that I would die under general anesthesia and leave my children without a mother. So, it's not that this doesn't scare me, but I knew that the fear was way out of proportion to the risk, well, actually, I knew the fear was not grounded in reality. I knew I would not die and it would have been okay with me to say "I know I won't die, but it's a scary idea," or something. Here, however, it was more like "I know I won't die but still I can't breathe or eat or sleep and gimme that Vitamin X so I can just live my life." I can see this is now CRYSTAL CLEAR so I'll move on. Anyway, there I am in my recovery chair (they swooshed me off the cot and into a blue vinyl recliner pretty quick if you ask me), producing bloody nose gauze by the handful, and I knew what had me freaked out. For the first time since becoming a mother I was going to be incapacitated in such a way that I could not protect my children from harm. For the two hours I was in surgery, I would be powerless to take care of them. That's what it was. Fear of not being able to protect my children. Of course, they were with their father and grandmother, but I am the mama tigress, the fierce protectress, the line beyond which no one can cross over to reach my babies. And the tigress, she was knocked out cold. That's what was so terrifying.
posted by Jenifer 9:23 AM