Hello, Richmond!

V Magazine has nice things to say about the book.

Hiatus

False alarm on the jury duty (I totally forgot I hadn't yet deferred once, which is good because my other option was telling the judge I thought that drugs should be legalized), but I am going to be taking a brief hiatus this week anyway as I try to finish up some projects and free up some space in my overstuffed brain.

In the mean time, here's some recommended reading:
1. This book, which gave me a whole new perspective on motherhood and made me realize that Wednesdays with Milo are kind of sort of something to look forward to, that they are fleeting, and that before I know it he will be going to spend his junior year abroad in China.

2. This article, which basically points out that I am a massive stereotype and live a completely unoriginal lifestyle.

Okay, discuss.

1 Angry Woman

In what has to be one of the most brilliant timings of the judicial system ever recorded, I have been summoned to jury duty the same day that I am supposed to be giving a reading, the same week that both my parents are in town, the same month that I have both a huge IA project and a book proposal to write. The only possible way the timing could have been better is if they'd summoned me while I was in labor. Instead that's when my publisher chose to send me the final jacket copy.

In any event, this blog will be quiet for the next few days while I act out some justice.

Magic Eight Blog

For everyone who keeps getting to this site by Googling some variation on "when will my hips go back post-partum," if you find out the answer will you let me know? Because I have some pants that are eager to be worn. Thanks much.

Boyz in The Hood

They've Gone About As Far As They Can Go

Greetings from Kansas City, where I am happy to report that everything is still up to date, including my hotel room, which had a lovely selection of pillows of assorted shapes and sizes.

I spent my first night away from Milo last night, which I had actually been looking forward to until people started saying to me, "Oh, is this your FIRST night away from the baby?", at which point I started wondering if I was going to suffer some hormonal freak out in the middle of the night that would cause me to open my windows and scream "I miss my baby!" at the top of my lungs.

Then, when I actually got to the hotel and found myself continuing to enjoy being away from the baby, I started to worry that maybe something was wrong with me that I wasn't freaking out. All of this reconciled itself very nicely at 4a.m. when I dreamt that I heard a baby crying, causing me to wake up in a panic. After about an hour I fell back to sleep, and ended up sleeping a grand total of eleven hours. Yum. Yeah, I miss Milo, but honestly, I really miss sleeping too, so I think it all evens out.

I like leaving New York every now and then because it always reminds me that living in NYC is pretty much like living on a different planet. In the rest of the country people are softer, almost as if you were looking at them through a soft focus lens, and they are all married and have kids. In New York being married is only vaguely socially acceptable, and having kids seems to be viewed as a quaint, archaic practice, unless you are either single or being artificially inseminated, in which case it's cool and progressive. Even the doorman at the hotel, who looked all of about 19, said he was married. He also said he really wanted to visit New York sometime so he could see "Wicked".

"But you must see shows on Broadway all the time," he said enviously. I wondered briefly if he was gay, but then I thought maybe they don't have gay people in Kansas City.

"Not as often as you might think," I said. "You know, when you live there you just sort of take things like that for granted." I didn't add that you couldn't pay me to go see Wicked or The Lion King or any other stupid musical.

"That's true," he said. "I guess it's like when you live in Vegas you never go to the casinos."

I didn't really think it was that similar, but I just smiled and nodded then we talked about the weather, which something that people in the middle of the country like to talk about, sort of the way that New Yorkers like to talk about real estate and rent stabilized apartments. I felt a little like a fish out of water as we talked about weather - I'm never sure if I'm supposed to be for or against it - but it reminded me why I love living in New York, and it made me feel all warm and happy about the place I live and the little family I have to go home to.

The Runaway Parents

Over the past few weeks I have officially fallen in love with Milo, which is to be expected because of course he is the cutest baby ever in the history of time. (What? I'm a Jewish mother, what did you think I'd say? Don't worry about me. I'll just sit here in the dark while you never write or call but that's okay, I still love you.) Milo has officially been sleeping through the night for a whole week, which makes him a hell of a lot more lovable, but what has really sealed the deal for me is Milo's love of mashed bananas.

Steven and I are pretty food-obsessed people; we plan vacations around where we can eat, we are always up for a trek to remote corners of the world to sample new things to put in our mouths, and clearly we have passed this trait along to our son. He started on solid food two weeks ago. Week one was barley cereal, which he liked but was slightly confused by. Last week was banana. And when Milo eats banana he acts like he's so excited about the taste that he might blast right out of his bouncy seat and into orbit. He kicks his feet, he makes yummy noises, he opens his mouth wide for more more MORE BANANA NOW! And how can you not love someone whose every need is met by a spoonful of banana?

That said, it's still ncie to have time away from the Great Banana Lover. Because whenever Steven and I leave the house together, minus Milo, it feels like we are playing hooky, and it is delicious. When Steven asked me what I wanted to do this weekend, I suggested we have a romantic retreat to the Hamptons, which are cheaper and more wind-swept and lovely in the off-season. I was joking, of course, because it would be impossible to have a romantic retreat with Milo, cute as he is.

"Maybe we can just leave him in the crib with a bunch of bottles," Steven said.

"A bunch of bottles and a stack of diapers and a jar of banana and a spoon," I added. "He'd probably be fine."

One Night Mommy and Daddy Loved Each Other Very Much

Last night I showed Steven the first chapter of the new book, which is going to be about pregnancy and motherhood. The first chapter talks about how we decided to have a baby. A brief summary of it would look like this:

My body wants babies + my family says I have to have babies soon + I am getting old + I am neurotic and pretty sure that I am also therefore infertile + I discover I am a carrier for Tay-Sachs = Milo born in November.

"That's not how it happened at all," Steven said when he read the chapter. [Side note: This is the problem with writing nonfiction. For my next book I might try magical realism.]

"How did it happen?" I said.

Steven then gave an explanation that looked like this:

Hana getting old + we probably want babies sometime + Hana yelled at me in Utah when I bought condoms = Milo born in November.

"You would rather have a kid than have me yell at you?" I asked.

Steven nodded. "I'll do pretty much anything to stop you from yelling."

And Milo, that's how you came to be.

Milo and The Amazing Giant Baby

On Friday I was standing around at LaGuardia waiting to board my plane. Milo was sitting in his stroller, smiling at the world, when another woman with a stroller pulled up next to us. We stood side by side in silence for a moment, then began the obligatory baby conversation.
"Boy?" said the woman.
I nodded.
"Yours?"
"Boy," she said.
Her baby began to gnaw on his stroller's seat belt.
"How old is yours?" she asked.
"Four months."
"Really?" she looked shocked. "Mine's four and a half months."
I looked at her baby, who was easily twice the size of Milo. He had a head the size of a soup kettle, long arms and linebacker shoulders. This was no ordinary four month old. I was seconds away from saying to her, "Yours is oddly big, right?" before it occured to me that perhaps she didn't want me pointing out that her son was a freak of nature. And as I stared at the giant baby, I became conscious of the fact that she was staring at Milo, probably thinking that he was ridiculously small. So we sat there in silence, two mothers comparing babies, each not knowing what to say next.
"Huh," I finally managed.
"Yeah," she said.
And then our flight began to board, and we were spared any further conversation.

Blog Strike

I would just like to say that despite my impassioned plea for people to write stuff about the book on Amazon and B&N, not a single person did so. I really, really want to go on a blog strike, but then where will I write?

Aspiring Plumber

Just

This weekend I was chatting with a long-time family friend who I hven't seen in years. We talked a little about the town he lives in, and what he was up to, and then he turned to me and said something that a lot of people seem to say to me these days: "And what about you? Are you just home with the baby?"

I find my reaction to this question is always the same. I want to grab the person who asks it and throw them across the room. There always feels like there's a sort of hidden condecsension in the question, as though what the asker is really saying is: it's okay if you're totally boring and predictable and have quit your job to spend your days chanding diapers and playing with toys that squeak, as so many college-educated, smart, ambitious women do once a squalling infant arrives on the scene.

The condecsension lies in the word "just" which always seems to preface the phrase "staying home with the baby." Someone who I work with, who should know me better than that, asked me the same question a few weeks ago and then immediately tried to rephrase it.

"I mean, I don't mean just," she said. "I know it's a lot of work."

Part of me wants to say, are you out of your fucking minds? I get up at 7am, try to find an hour to write and work on the new book, spend the next three or four hours doing Information Architecture, then take Milo in the afternoons, and some how try to cram in time to work on publicity for the current book, client calls, business trips to Philadelphia, winning more business to pay the rent, talk to my husband, eat dinner, change kitty litter, brush my teeth, maintain some semblance of a social life (i.e. I email a few friends), read, shower and attempt to look vageuly like the cute woman my husband married instead of the tired, lumpy person who is in desperate need of an eyebrow wax/haircut/pedicure that I have become. So, yes, I am JUST home with the baby. All day. Except that I also have two full time jobs and am trying to run a household.

I have new respect for women who are JUST home with their babies with no other jobs. The other jobs make the tedium of Life With Milo okay. Actually, they make it more than okay. They make it enjoyable. And yet, I find that whenever I'm working I wish I were with the baby. And whenever I'm with the baby I think, what I wouldn't give for an hour to myself to do some writing.

But I tell myself that doing all the things I love -- being out in the world, writing, supporting my family -- even though I am tired and streteched for time, make me a happier, more interesting person. And that in the end, what is most important for Milo is that his mother be both happy and interesting. Because what I want most for him is that HE grow to be happy and interesting, and this is the best way I know to help him get there.

2006 Winter Pledge Drive

Before you read today's post, I'd like to ask that everyone visiting this site (and there seem to be an astonishing number of people who are interested in reading about the minutae of my life) who has read my book and enjoyed it PLEASE write a comment on either Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Unless you are mentioned by name in the book. In which case that might be kind of weird. Just think of it as your way of supporting the arts. (And now you can tell NPR to go find someone else to give their tote bags to without feeling the slightest bit guilty.)

I now return you to our regularly scheduled complaining. I mean programming.

Truth and Consequences

Last night I was up at my other alma mater for a panel discussion on how to make a living while also finding time to write. I was, for the record, the only person on the panel who didn't end all of my sentences with the phrase "it pretty much sucks." There were a few people I knew on the panel, and we chatted and caught up a bit about what we'd been up to since school, and then someone asked me what I was working on now, writing-wise.
"I had a baby recently," I said. "So I'm working on a pregnancy memoir type thing."
"Oh," she said. "So how's motherhood?"
I shrugged. "It's okay."
Pause.
"It's hard sometimes."
I stared at the table in front of us.
"I don't really like babies," I added, as though that would explain everything.
Long awkward pause.
"I guess I should have a better answer for that question," I mumbled.
"No, it's good," she said. "I like that you didn't say, oh, it's the greatest thing that ever happened to me, I totally love it."
"Really?" I said.
"Sure," she smiled. "Then I would have known you were lying."

Alternative Lifestyles

All the baby books say something, as some point, like this:
When you get home from the hospital, you will be overjoyed for a while. Then you will start to wonder when the baby's parents are going to show up to take him home.

For the record, I never wondered that. It was quite clear to me that Steven and I had produced Milo, and that he now lived with us and that's how it was going to be. I did, however, spend many hours a day wishing that my life had somehow turned out differently. I understood that having a baby when I did was the logical result of every other decision I had made, and that even if I'd delayed the decision, at some point there would have been a baby. If I plotted my life on a chart, it would have followed the same obvious route: graduate from college -> build career -> find someone to marry -> have baby.

And so clearly if I'd wanted my life to have turned out differently, in such a manner that there was no baby, I would have had to start doing things differently early on. The only other life plan I could come up with that didn't include having a baby was this one: drop out of college -> move to Acapulco -> tend bar -> live on beach.

For a while I stopped thinking about alternate lives I could have had. But last night, as Milo screamed himself blue for the third time in as many hours, I thought alot about how appealing the Acapulco bar-tending life sounded. I guess with this kid it's one step forward and two steps back. Once again our Sunday plans are shot. We were going to go look at some art (The Armory show! The Whitney Biennial! Anything to get out of the house and pretend to be functioning members of society again!) but instead we are walking around hallucinating from lack of sleep. Except for Milo. He is finally, peacfully, sleeping up a storm.

Oh Happy Day!

Last night, I did something that I haven't done in what feels like a very long time: I woke up in the middle of the night to pee. I haven't done this in a very long time becuase I am usually awake in the middle of the night for other reasons now, like diaper changing and feediing and soothing, so peeing is really the least of my worries.

When I got back into bed I looked at the clock and noticed that it was almost 6AM. Milo had been asleep since 7PM the night before. He'd slept through the night. I had to restrain myself from waking Steven up to tell him the news.

I, of course, was so excited that I was unable to fall back to sleep. Milo woke up a few minutes later, ate a little bit, and then went back to sleep until 9AM. I never thought I would see the day. I actually feel like a human being. And the weirdest part? I actually feel proud of my son. I want to run through Propect Park screaming the news: my boy can sleep!

And Milo, you know that I was joking about making you read What To Expect The First Year, don't you? Even so, I love the fact that you managed to sleep through the night on this, your four month birthday. Sort of like how you arrived on your due date. You continue to be prompt, and we love you for it.

Fashion Crisis

This Saturday evening Steven and I are going to a fancy-schmancy Upper East Side 30th birthday party hosted by a fashion designer whose son happens to be a friend of Steven's. Naturally neither one of us has anything to wear, since I have been alternately pregnant and lumpy for an entire year, and Steven, sadly, has put on a few pregnancy pounds himself. That and the fact that we pretty much never leave the house any more.

So two weekends ago I treated myself to a cute new party dress from one of my favorite trendy New York stores. As the sales clerk was wrapping up the dress I asked her what kind of shoes she would recommend wearing, since the dress is a bright blue color.

"Black," she shrugged. "Or maybe camel."

I chewed on my lip for a moment. "I have a pair of bronze sandals," I said. "What do you think about those?"

A smile crossed her lips, and, I swear to God, she started to bounce up and down. "Omigod, that would be so great! That just gave me shivers!"

As I left the store, shopping bag slung over my shoulder, it occured to me that the sales clerk probably thought I meant I had some high-heeled, strappy bronze sandals in my closet. In reality what I have are sort of beat up flat sandals which, the more I thought about it, simply wouldn't do. And so, over the course of the past two weeks, I have become more and more obsessed with finding the shoes that I imagine the store clerk to be imagining.

In my mind, it probably boils down to these:

And here is where we have a problem. I like to be able to do things like, say, walk, in my shoes. I also like to be shorter than my husband. Neither of these things are possible in four-inch stilettos. Somehow before I became a mother things like wearing sexy shoes seemed silly. But now it's almost like I feel like I have something to prove. Just because I'm a mom doesn't mean I can't wear absurdly fashionable, painful clothing. What did you expect, that just because I am now responsible for taking another human being's temperature rectally I would show up wearing Pumas?

Not that anyone expects those things of New York mothers. After all, my grandmother wore ridiculously high shoes until her 80s. And yet, I find myself wanting to be extra un-dowdy. While simultaneously wanting to be able to walk. I'm not sure where this will leave my feet on Saturday evening. I guess they'll go wherever I take them. Probably in low-heeled black sling backs.