Julia

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

Steve and Patrick and I went out for dinner tonight. Patrick was mostly obnoxious but he's not quite two yet and he mellowed after a pound of honeydew melon. During dinner I got a little kittenish and I asked Steve to tell me five things he loved about me.

Ready?

"Your wit. Your looks." Gratifyingly quick, but followed by a slight pause.
"Patrick." A much longer pause.

"Five things, my angel dream rabbit," I prompted, although- Patrick? And you wonder why I am in crisis here, people.

"The rare occasion when you say something nice about me," he continued with a put-upon expression that made me want to smack him.

He started eating again. "FIVE!" I hissed between clenched teeth.

He looked at me: "All of your talents."

The bastard.

Totally Trivial

Yesterday I took Patrick to the Mall of America. You probably saw me there- I had my hair in a ponytail and I went into the Gap six times as I tried to decide whether or not I could actually buy that pair of low-rise, boot cut jeans with the funny fade marks. On the 19-year-old limbs for which they were designed those lightened thighs and ass look sexy, kind of like she was ridden in them and put away damp. On me they look as if someone tried to mop-bleach a bathroom floor while dragging my jean-clad body face-down by my hair. Still, I have only recently discovered that pants that fall below my natural waist do deliciously kind things for me. But the color, the color and the slight ankle flare... tsk tsk. Are they matronly enough, I asked myself? Do I look silly? The Gap sales associate (shuh) said no no, but you know what? She looked silly, so how would she know? Anyway, like the cat i' the adage about pants shopping, I let I dare not wait upon I would and left with nothing. You know what I need, I need some low-rise Guess jeans with those never-out-of-style ankle zippers, that's what I need.

The point of going to Mall of America was not for me to torture myself with these sartorially questions of denim and maturity. No, the point was that I was going to take Patrick to the world's largest (oh please) underground aquarium. When it is March and it is five degrees (FIVE. Go ahead. Count 'em, I'll wait) and winter has lasted so long that it feels like the Bradbury story and I'm the little girl in the closet, I get a trifle desperate. This is the second time in as many weeks I have driven the thirty minutes to the MOA (wow, it is practically the MOMA - to think this is only the third time in six years I have been there at all) to take Packy to see the sharks and it was the second time I failed to do so. First, we had the jeans uncertainty. Then, Patrick and I lunched. Then we just stopped into the book store really quickly to see if they had anything readable (I bought presents for everybody: Steve got nautical fiction, Patrick got Spot's Big Lift-the-Flap Book and I went completely crazy and bought a just-written novel [me! I never buy anything after Cheever] about a woman who meets her long-lost True Love-college boyfriend- soulmate at their college reunion and, after a passionate weekend, gets engaged to him. The problem? Why, she's ALREADY MARRIED. Hilarity ensues, according to the blurbs. I could not resist, for some strange reason. I'll let you know if it is any good.)

New paragraph.

After the book store I went to Nordstrom Rack, just for a second. After 15 years of carrying slightly modified versions of the same black purse (have I ever told you that every pair of shoes I own are black except one pair of white Keds for summer?) my sister-in-law gave me a purse she got in Tokyo for Christmas (um, sort through this one for me: Tokyo, Christmas, me, purse, sister-in-law.) I love this purse. But it has tiny little straps and stroller-baby-handbag < stroller-baby-shoulderbag. So I thought something daring, something nouveau, something wild, something Tokyo... but with longer straps, you know? Nordstrom Rack, in case you were wondering, does not have that niche filled. Once started on that purse quest though (yes, yes, Patrick, aquarium, right, we are going) I found myself in the Coach store. They sell bags, right? I was just relating this story, so I feel like I am repeating myself, but as the nice sales associate explained that they have this one in pink (really? pink!) Patrick licked his hands and grabbed every purse in reach. Repeatedly. I tried to imagine their enforcement of a you-lick-it-you-bought-it policy and my triumphant return home with several thousand dollars in sticky bags (Here Steve, just toss that dirty diaper in this Soho Twill Butterfly Extra Large Hobo- nice huh?)

By the time we reached the aquarium Patrick was trying to pull his bottom lip over his head. He was tired and bored and most likely a little dazed from the leather fumes and he didn't want to see the damn sharks. So we went home and Patrick slept like an ottoman and I thought about those jeans some more.

I try not to do a disservice to the Amazons like myself who spend their days tending the wee bairns. I would hate for people to think I am perpetuating the myth that suburban housewives do nothing more productive with their days than drive SUVs around in order to shop for things they don’t need. So you’ll be happy to know that I was the only woman at the Mall of America yesterday morning. Everyone else was meeting with her literary agent (I know, I know! Four months early, but Sheridan started taking longer naps and once I got the breakfast dishes done I just couldn’t seem to stop writing) while the baby studied his Cyrillic flashcards at her feet.

Four Be The Things

I am distracted today. Namely by:

1) The contents of Patrick's bowels, which have remained regrettably in situ for days and days. He is now more prune than kid and still... nothing. I like to think that I am a woman of the world, able to talk knowledgeably and well upon many subjects fearing none, but I confess that anything south of the navel and around the back leaves me pale and trembly. Imagine my discomfort, then, as I called the pediatrician's office (TWICE) today for a consult. The whispered words I was forced to repeat. The struggle for the mot juste as the demand was made for descriptions of quantity and viscosity. The lump that arose after I swooned from the exertion and struck my temple on the corner of the fainting couch. Of course, imagine Patrick's discomfort under the same circumstances. Why is it always about me? Poor little prune-boy. We’re taking him to the pediatrician tomorrow.

2) My new lipstick. Once upon a time I found the perfect lipstick shade and life was a slow sweet song. For four glorious years I triumphantly rode that color into battle until I lost the last tube in a pair of pants (if only I could have remembered whose) and subsequently discovered that they had discontinued it. Today, while searching the Walgreen's shelves for glycerin suppositories, size Wee (see above,) I swung into the make-up section and voila. Joy cometh in the morning. Now the only thing is, I don't really wear lipstick anymore, so the cranberry resurgence is about a decade too late for me. Still, at this moment I am awash in the stuff and I am planning on invading Steve’s office in a minute to ask if he thinks I look prettier today than yesterday.

3) A cooking vacation. No, not a vacation from cooking. A vacation in which one attends a cooking school for a week. Don't laugh, I think it sounds deevy. There are lots of them in France and Spain and Italy, but I don't particularly feel like going to France or Spain or Italy just this second. Not to mention the fact that Steve would laugh, rudely, in my face if I suggested such a thing. I currently have my school choices narrowed down to the few in Santa Fe, Montreal, Napa, New Orleans and (oh! hey! look at that) San Francisco. When I proffered this, my latest manic suggestion, over last night’s dinner (crab cakes that would have been better perhaps if I had had some professional training) Steve said, "So- you want to go to camp?" Yeah, I guess so. And, just for reference, before you start muttering about the decadence of it all (didn't she JUST go to San Francisco for a weekend?) Steve has taken a two-week solo vacation to the Rockies every year since we met AND he travels for tournaments from August through November. So, um, anyway, he owes me. That's my platform at any rate. Steve said fine. I kinda like him, sometimes.

4) My attempts to reconcile myself to having only one child. This has been occupying the background for the last month and will no doubt continue to clutter up the landscape for some time to come. Right now I am just sort of trying it on and seeing if I have any shoes to match. I wish I had realized before the last pregnancy that I was not going to be willing to do it again. I don't know what I would have done differently, but maybe it would not have been such a shock to everyone, myself included. The thing is, though, it is hard to know ahead of time that you are done. I can no more picture myself during that last pregnancy saying "OK, but if this doesn't work I am outta here" than I can now picture myself saying, "What's another miscarriage? What the hell. I feel lucky." I don't feel lucky. I feel most particularly unlucky and I simply cannot face another miscarriage. Cannot do it.

By pregnancy I am referring to the genetic roulette at which Steve and I suck (Mesdames and messieurs, faites vos jeux! Noir! Noir! Noir! Noir!) We will see the RE in April and talk about other options. Maybe IVF. Maybe I just need a break and will be able to face the odds again when summer’s in the meadow. Or when the valley’s hush and white with snow. Tis I’LL BE TH-E-R-E… damn it, I still cannot hit that note in Danny Boy. But just get me in my range and... yeah, you know it... I am sensational.

Pass the Lidocaine

Ouch. Seriously, ouch.

My mouth is torn up like summertime asphalt.

My tooth hurts like Donovan McNabb.

I don't know if I have ever mentioned this, but I get canker sores. NOT cold sores, as Steve once told a friend with whom we were dining (not that there is anything wrong with cold sores, other than the fact that they are, you know, herpes and therefore stigmatized like genital warts and pubic lice et al. I'm not saying that I have never had a venereal disease but I am asserting that there is a difference between cold sores and canker sores and Steve shouldn't have been talking about it anyway.) So canker sores are these horrible little mouth ulcers that generally crop up out of nowhere and make life a total misery for ten days. It never ceases to amaze me that every time I mention these things the dentist or internist to whom I am addressing my pitiful lament just nods. If they are an asshole they say, "Yeah" and if they are concerned they say, "Ooooh, ye-e-ah," with an accompanying moue but that's it. Not once has some young firebrand, some nouveau Kildare who remembers just why he took the hippopotamus oath in the first place, responded with the impassioned reply, "MY GOD! How you must suffer! I am resigning my practice in order to help the downtrodden canker-ridden peoples of the earth. I shall never rest until this scourge is abolished for all time!"

I just think we need a ribbon or something. Maybe puce.

I mention this because the surest way for me to start a canker sore is with a nice cut in the mouth. A slip of the toothbrush, a misplaced tortilla chip, three rounds of girl-on-girl boxing- all good ways. A dental visit involving lots of gouging works too. I count no fewer than five cuts right now. FIVE.

I was tooling around online last night and, after taking yet another IQ test in which I incredibly tested even smarter than last time (with age comes wisdom I tell you), I took the following Inkblot Test. We all know I have been in a bit of a funk recently, but should I be concerned that I saw scary bugs, scary aliens or scary demons in each and every one of those things? Oh, and a butterfly. A SCARY butterfly with ghostly wings and a menacing proboscis.

And of course I couldn't get any feedback about all these negative images from my online quiz therapist. It was all, how do you feel about the scary butterfly, Julia, and give us $12.95 for your full report, Julia.

If you do decide to take the Inkblot test let me know if you were able to find happy elves dancing with moonbeams, because I sure as hell wasn't.

Queen Me, Fangless

In other news I am being fitted for a crown tomorrow. For my mouth, I mean, not my head although wouldn't that be delightful? Julia, you seem like a nice enough person and you obviously crave attention... the sovereign nation of Finland would like to back your claim to the Swedish throne.

I am dreading this dental visit for two reasons:

1. They are going to remove my tooth, you know, and then file what is left down to a little tooth nub. That has to be worse than an icy slice of watermelon on a warm summer's day. And speaking of icy, the first and last crown I had installed rendered me unable to put anything into my mouth for two months unless it was conveyed by straw.

2. I originally postponed this crown because I was pregnant. Generally I keep my pregnancies secret from everybody but you, but then most people don't ask that I hold still while they climb behind a lead screen and shoot xrays at me. So I had to demur and I just know the dentist will remember. He's nice like that, but I am already cringing in anticipation of the moment he asks, "And how's the baby?"

"Dead" has the merits of being both brief and factual but somehow seems a little hard on the guy. It's not his fault I need a crown- I should have brushed more regularly and avoided bedtime consumption of sweets.

"It didn't work out" is ok but he'll still feel terrible and it sort of implies Embryo 7 got a better offer.

"Great!" seems somehow dishonest.

"What baby?" has charm, I think, particularly if I wiggle my eyebrows at him. I have been wiggling my eyebrows at people for about 20 years now and it is incredibly effective. Talk about disconcerting.

I will return to my previous rant tomorrow, hopped up on Novacaine and less one of my teeth damn it, at which time I plan to explain that I am feeling a little better and that I would like to thank all of you for the supportive comments but most particularly I would like to thank the people of New Zealand.