Julia

In Lieu

I had an epiphany as I read the comments on the last post. Would you like to know what that epiphany was?

I need to stop worrying about Patrick so much.

I worry that Patrick will be teased. I worry that Patrick will be lonely. I worry that Patrick will be ostracized. I worry that Patrick will be unhappy. I worry, oh how I worry.

But you know what? Patrick is fine. He's fantastic. He is sunshine and lollipops in unpaired socks. Patrick likes preschool and he likes the indoor playground and he likes his classes at the Y. Whenever he sees other children playing he will race right over. Granted he doesn't always know what to do once he is standing there, but he is learning. He is happy when we have kids over to play (I did it! I promised I would make an effort to arrange more play dates and I did!) and he is happy when he spends the afternoon bumming around the house building eight headed Lego men and doing math. He is loved and loving and we think he is great. More importantly, he thinks he is great too.

Someday someone will tease Patrick about something. Someone will hurt his feelings, someone will not want to be his friend and someone will inevitably break his heart. When I worry about him I think I want to spare him from all that, but do I really? Would I have wanted to be protected from all of the exquisite anguish I have ever suffered after taking emotional risks? Of course not.

What does this have to do with lipstick? Nothing. Everything. I have decided it is only fair to prepare him a little if he is going to do something really outre but beyond that... I need to have a little faith in him. Do I crumble when odd, angry people type out their aggressions on my blog? No, I laugh heartily looking bronzed and fit and, if the comment is especially bizarre, I call my mother so she can laugh too. Does Patrick quail when people repeatedly tell him he has on one brown sock and one green one and ask if he made a mistake? No, he just says he likes it that way. 

Regardless, the lipstick thing seems to have been a one-time deal. Or maybe we just haven't been invited to fancy enough parties lately. Heaven knows I don't put on make-up and jewels for anything less myself.

++

Steve met his birth brothers this weekend and by all accounts it was really really great. The one who knew about him picked him up at the hotel and together they met the one who had no clue at a wine bar. It took me about four days of confused questioning to finally understand why Steve wanted to focus on the Surprise! part of the surprise. He was never able to articulate this fact, but I ultimately concluded that Steve felt awkward and nervous and was hoping a little razzle-dazzle might attract attention away from his own emotions.

Steve wound up showing the unwitting brother photographs from forty years ago. "Do you know who that is?" he asked. "It looks like my father," the guy replied. "Yes," Steve said, "he's mine too."

SURPRISE!

Then they all went out for sushi and sake.

The brothers were so kind and accepting and welcoming that I feel all warm and gooey just writing about it. Steve spent a wonderful weekend getting to know them and at the end they sent him home with CDs and DVDs for himself and stickers for Patrick.

He's happy.

++   

Why is it that every time I need to start a period by a certain date in order to do some infertility whatnot my body inevitably screws with me? Right now I have no idea if I am about to start a new cycle tomorrow or if I haven't even ovulated yet. And I am supposed to begin birth control pills this week for the IVF cycle (which is actually coming up pretty soon, all things considered) but that was predicated upon a belief that my cycle would be normal. It's hard to believe my ovaries could be this high-strung when the rest of me is so laid-back.

++

And I SWORE I wouldn't touch this one but... if Patrick grows to be a bright funny happy healthy and gay or transgendered adult Steve and I would consider ourselves exceedingly blessed by having a bright funny happy healthy normal son.

Period.

Bender

Real post pending but I am wondering about Patrick's sudden penchant for red lipstick, necklaces and smoothing his hair down with water.

"I want to make sure I look nice," he explained after carefully and secretly applying my reddest of harlot red lipsticks to the lower third of his face, just moments prior to departing for the indoor playground.

Patrick has never been one for dress up and as long as he is wearing two mismatched socks he doesn't care what else he has on. He actively dislikes goggles, glasses, hats, hoods and costumes of all kinds. Halloween kinda baffles him. And yet he has now attended two preschool birthday parties in a row wearing one of my necklaces: first an elaborate amethyst topaz and garnet choker of which I am inordinately fond and not remotely interested in sharing with my son but he cried and I caved, and most recently a short string of fake pearls. With a rugby shirt and his LL Bean alphabet pants. Patrick "Coco" Hippogriffs, I presume. 

Seriously, does this sound normal?

Don't get me wrong, it's completely fine with me. Steve and I don't care if he wants to run around in a tiara with no pants and a jet pack (liberals, you know, with strongly held beliefs concerning the individual, the State, tiaras and jet packs) but I do worry about him being teased. He is already the kid who brought an octohedron for the Letter O day show-and-tell, must he now also be 42 inches of Lauren Bacall? Isn't the mixture a little... rich?

I think Patrick is funny and charming and endlessly creative and he seems to be grooving on lipstick and pearls. I want to just let him be. But I also don't want him to be humiliated.

I honestly do not know what my role here is supposed to be. The voice of societal reason? The wind beneath his pretty gossamer wings?

So I'm asking you. What do you think? Should a four and a half year old boy be sporting Maybelline Royal Red?

Oh. And when he plasters his hair down with water like that he looks like a blond Gomez Adams. Not working for me.

So that's gotta go regardless. 

Sexes

I was thinking the other day that when Steve and I are in harmony over our reproductive agenda (or lack thereof) we rarely quarrel. The dove of peace flaps its wings so briskly over the dormers that there is a veritable draft. For example I just smiled tolerantly when Steve climbed into bed last night (that would be the 15th of February) and suddenly asked, "Hey, we aren't doing anything special for Valentine's Day, are we?" And he merely sighed when I read our latest IVF packet and told him he had to get tested for HIV and Hepatitis- AGAIN. Oh, and get another semen analysis done. And that I had meant to pick up a container for him... but I didn't. So enjoy the wholesome Midwestern clinic porn! Nary a recrimination has passed our lips in eons. Two hearts snuggled in connubial bliss over here. 

Then last night at dinner Steve suggested I should roast three chickens on Saturday and I realized all over again why I am sometimes so sorely tempted to punch him right in his pretty retroussé nose.

I was on the phone Wednesday with a friend of mine who was sounding a little down after her recent (breast reduction) surgery. So I said when she was feeling better we'd throw a dinner party. And she said oh dear god yes now today please get me out of this house yes whenever tomorrow please yes. She has twin toddlers, you see, and her husband has been home all month and it is February in Minnesota... anyway, I understood. And invited them for Saturday. Then I called another friend and invited her and her husband. Then I poked my head into Steve's office to tell him we were throwing a dinner party and he was on the phone with a friend so I told him to invite them as well. Steve emerged to say the third couple would be out of town so I spent the rest of the day reading back issues of Fine Cooking and figuring out what to make for six. I decided on: goat cheese and red pepper tapenade with champagne cocktails to start, two mustard-garlic crusted chickens, roasted buttercream potatoes with a little Parmesan and chives, spinach and basil salad with broiled tomatoes, candied walnuts and warm bacon dressing, and finally that flourless chocolate and vanilla cake of which I am so fond. With bread.

Yesterday Patrick and I went food shopping in the morning and then he helped me make (Patrick is the worst sous-chef in history. every time I turn my back he is trying to dump granulated sugar into something) everything that could be made ahead of time. I was feeling pretty good about my ability to throw an impromptu little thing. Then Steve told me that the fourth couple would be joining us after all and I was, like, DAMN IT. Not because it won't be nice to see them but because I had not planned and shopped with 33% more people in mind. So I worried for an hour about whether the two 3.75 lb chickens currently chilling in the garage will be enough for eight and ultimately decided to add another heftier appetizer, a second vegetable, and to serve the salad course before the chicken.

Over dinner last night I said to Steve, "I was worried about having enough chicken but I have decided to blah and etc."

And Steve said, "Why don't you make a third chicken?"

Hmmm, as I type that it doesn't look all that inflammatory but my response was such that Patrick asked, "Are you mad at Daddy or REALLY mad at Daddy?"

So I unclenched my teeth and explained that I could not roast three chickens because a b and c but I thought my solution was adequate. Some time passed and the conversation wandered and then Steve said, "Hey I know! Why don't you get some extra chicken parts and...."

Not to set evolution back another fifty years (incidentally, welcome back Kansas!) with unfair gender stereotyping, but why do men DO this?

I presented both a problem and my solution to the problem and was looking for praise and validation in response. Why did Steve have to immediately propose a different solution? And then keep looking for alternates despite my telling him to drop it (or drop dead)? Steve, by the way, has never cooked for me in the ten years I have known him. Wait, not strictly true. He used to share frozen pizzas that he would doctor with additional shredded cheese until the day I asked if he had used a blue cheese because the flavor was somewhat more aged than usual... ick. But all of the sudden he was Chef Boyardee over there, full of ideas and unwanted advice.

I suppose if I didn't fritter away all my time reading fiction I would be up on the latest pop psychology vis-a-vis the sexes but I assume this is generally true, right? Now that I think about it my brother does it too. I call to tell him that I have yet again successfully wrangled with some horrific Windows crash and he immediately tells me I need to buy a Mac. Every. Single. Goddamned. Time.

Do the men in your life try to solve already solved problems for you or I am the only un-actualized female left in the world?

To Run By

Speaking of brothers, mine has a birthday this weekend and I need your help.

He has taken up running lately and wants to do a marathon next year. I thought a nice present would be to send him some albums (you know, records? but all digital?) via itunes and/or maybe a little itunes compiliation of my very own making. Well, OUR (you and you and me) very own making because me, I do not run unless I am chased and so my personal soundtrack would be this: aaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeee! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeee!

I need suggestions, please. Music for a workout- albums or songs.

Thanks!

PS He likes everything and even if he didn't you don't necessarily need to like a song to feel stirred by it, right?