Survivor: California

Nothing makes me feel like a New Yorker like being somewhere other than New York. On our first night in California, I went out to buy a six pack. We'd had a long day and were looking forward to sitting by the pool and having a beer before we went to sleep. So I hopped in our car and drove off. A few seconds into my trip I realized I had absolutely no idea what I was looking for. Were I in New York I would be looking for a bodega, and I would know how to find one. I would walk down main streets until I got that bodega-approaching feeling that comes when you start to pass the stores that typically surround a bodega - the Taste-D-Lite, the Chase bank, the cell phone store.

In Chicago I would pull over and ask where the closest White Hen was. In New Jersey I would ask someone for WaWa. In Vermont I would ask for directions to a package store. In other assorted states I would try to find the 7-11. But in California, I had no idea what type of store beer might even be sold in. I thought maybe 7-11, but who knew? And then, three minutes into my beer search, I found the Church of Scientology. I was, most assuredly, no longer in New York.

This had actually been obvious from the second we stepped off the plane in LAX, when the bus driver tried to make friendly conversation with us as he drove to the rental car lot. And then again, when the rental car lady asked us if, for an extra $10 a day, we would like to upgrade to The Hottest Car in LA. The hottest car in LA was, I think, some kind of Cadillac, and no, we didn't want to upgrade to the hottest car in LA. But I loved the concept of the hottest car in LA, as though there had been a scientific survey for hot cars, and someone had determined the hottest, and if you were seen driving anything else you would be deemed uncool and run out of town. The hottest car in New York, by the way, is a taxi.

Our first stop was beautiful Santa Barbara, where we discovered that taking Milo out on the street in our new super-duper backpack-baby-carrier was a guaranteed way to attract comments. Milo encourages this, of course, because he is a smile slut, and also oddly chatty. But most of all, being out in public with Milo guarantees that we will be forced to talk to anyone else with a baby in a two mile radius. At the end of our trip I'm pretty sure we'd met every baby in the greater Santa Barbara area.

Milo travelled well, as babies go, but still I can't say I really want to go backpacking through Europe with him any time soon. For starters, he's entered a grabby phase. Which means that when you sit down at the table for breakfast, anything within arms reach goes into Milo's mouth. One morning Steven put a bowl of hot oatmeal in front of me, and within seconds Milo had plunged his fingers into it. It wasn't his finest hour.

Shortly after the oatmeal incident we dropped Milo off with my father, and proceeded to dance around the car singing "Freedom!" for a good twenty minutes before getting in it and driving off to the wine country. We quickly concluded that we'd be more than happy to move to Los Olivos, CA, open up a vineyard and hire people to pay attention to it while we sat around and read and wrote and reveled in ridiculously scenic countryside. In the wine country we met a man who paints wine labels and another man who owns a vineyard in Cleveland (what?) and a woman who wanted to commiserate with me about being a struggling writer until she discovered that I'd actually been published. And then, tired and stuffed full of grapes and chocolate, we headed back to Santa Barbara to pick up Milo, who was busy demonstrating to my father why we sometimes call him the Amazing Always Awake Baby. When you see other babies in car seats or strollers they are always napping. Not Milo. Milo is always, constantly, eternally awake. It took another day before we figured out that if you cover the stroller with a black cloth then, like a parakeet, Milo will, thankfully, drift off to sleep.

Our time over in Santa Barbara, we pushed on to Los Angeles, where Steven and I both determined that we would not like to live, unless we were able to sell screenplays and make enough money to buy a gorgeous house in the hills. Otherwise, it seems like you pretty much live in a strip mall.

As the wedding festivities began we met a number of people who, when asked what they did, said they worked in the "Entertainment Industry". I told one of them that if someone said that to you in New York you'd assume they were a stripper. Maybe I was feeling a little insecure. Why did they keep saying Entertainment Industry? Why didn't they specify what the hell they did? Did they think we were stupid? Was this the job equivalent of people who went to Harvard, who, when you ask them where they went to college, say Boston. Which is extremely annoying because then you have to ask where in Boston, and then they say Cambridge, and that is the point in the conversation where you realize they've not only gone to Harvard, but have decided to be annoying about it, and you'd rather not be talking to them in the first place because they are making this conversation twice as long as it should have been, and you were only asking where they went to college to be nice anyway, you really didn't care that much.

So at some point I asked one of the entertainment industry workers why people weren't more specific about their jobs, and he said he thought that maybe it was because there were a lot of roles one could have in the industry, and by being vague they didn't have to explain that they were peons. Or that maybe it was that people felt like it was a stupid industry to be in, especially when talking to uppity intellectual New Yorkers like ourselves, and it was their way of being dismissive. Which was the complete opposite of the way Steven and I had interpreted it. We'd thought people were being dismissive of us old-media types.

And then it was on to the wedding itself. I have to say that attending a family wedding after recently publishing a tell-all book about one's own wedding and general disdain for weddings in general is an experience so surreal that someone should write a book about it. Not me, of course. Someone else. The highlight? Hearing my second cousin asked my aunt, to whom she is not related, if she was mentioned in the book. When my aunt said she was, my cousin replied, "by name?". My aunt wasn't mentioned by name, but I think at that moment maybe she wished she had been, which is pretty funny because usually one would hope to avoid mention in a family memoir.

The wedding was over in a flash. I like a participatory wedding, and any celebration that involves the bride fronting the band on Proud Mary is a hit in my book. And before we knew it we were back on the BQE, driving home after a long day of travel, past those utterly depressing buildings that look out over the highway.

"Yay, New York," said Steven.

And I was happy to be home, but also suddenly had the feeling that perhaps I'd stayed too long at a party. I liked the open spaces of the wine country, the smell of the ocean, the beautiful days repeating on each other until you long for rain. My whole life I'd wanted to live in New York. And now, ten years later, it occurs to me that I never really thought beyond that first apartment. New York is an amazing place to live, and if I could afford a restored brownstone or a classic six on Central Park West I'd stay here happily for the rest of my life.

But that was never my plan. My plan was: get apartment in village, get job, find boyfriend. Beyond that, who knew? I never thought I'd be married or have kids either. When I said recently to an old friend that I was surprised I'd ended up married while some of our other friends were still single she said, "No offense, but I'm kind of surprised too." So I guess it's time for a new plan. I'll hate to give up being a New Yorker, but I'm ready for the next big adventure. Here's hoping it doesn't require the Hottest Car in LA.

Too Jet Lagged To Come Up With A Good Headline

Here are some pictures from the trip, for your viewing pleasure, while I try to clear my mind and formulate a coherent thought.


Artichokes as big as your head


wine country


California coast


Venice


Muscle beach


Pacific ocean


Sleepy baby


New blue eyes

California, Here We Come!

With a steamer-trunk-full of toys, clothes, and burp cloths, we depart tomorrow on our first family vacation. It's a sojourn of Shakespearian proportions, with wild animals, wine, and a wedding. The blog will be quiet this week, but Milo, presumably, will not.

March of the Park Slope Parents

As previously discussed, I am not a huge fan of interacting with other parents. This was easily avoidable at the pool, but as the weather turns nice and we are forced to take Milo to the park repeatedly, it becomes more and more difficult. Take the swings, for example. I just want to put my kid in the swing, talk to him, push him and make him laugh. Unfortunately, I have to do it in close proximity to six other parents all of whom are trying to show you what great parents they are.

"Feet!" screamed the mother I ended up next to one day.

"Toes!"

Her kid looked at her with mild amusement.

Was this a thing one did? Was I supposed to yell body parts at Milo?

Sometimes parents will talk to you through your child, which is even weirder.

"Oh, I see we like to taste the swing!" other parents sometimes say to Milo.

I never know how to respond to this. Am I supposed to answer for him? Pretend to be Milo answering back? (No, definitely too weird.) I think the acceptable response is to say something to their kid, but I don't want to talk to their kid. I want to talk to my kid.

Milo makes this both more and less complicated, because whenever someone talks to him or whenever a baby sits in the swing next to him he gets very excited and starts babbling or showing off his latest noises. Nine times out of ten the baby next to him stares at him like he's a nut job, but the parents always find it very cute, and then feel obliged to comment.

"Such eyes," someone usually says. "Whole lotta blue going on there."

And then what do I say? Thank you? I mean, I did grow them myself and am therefore partially responsible, but they're not my eyes. I usually try to say something about their kid's eyes, but of course there isn't another human being on the planet who has eyes as nice as Milo's, and I'm a terrible liar.

Usually at this point I ask the other parent the name of their kid and hold my breath, waiting for the answer to always be either Emma, Ella, Jack, or something unpronounceable. Last week it was Ayla. I am then required to remember the name, because the other parent always remembers Milo's name, and when one baby leaves we must go through the whole complex process of pretending that the babies are saying good bye to each other.

"Good bye Milo!" Emma/Ella/Jack/Ayla's parent will say, waving the baby's arm while she gnaws on her foot.

"Say good-bye to Emma/Ella/Jack/Ayla," I say to Milo.

"Aaaiiiieeeedadadadooooo," Milo usually says.

And then I kiss him behind his neck, which always makes him giggle, and I whisper, "You are the world's best baby."

Scary Mommy and Me

Up until this weekend, I'd done a pretty good job of avoiding other mommies. I'd thought that I didn't want to hang with other mommies the first few months of Milo's life because they'd all be whipping their breasts out and I'd be there with my bottle feeling stupid and hoping they didn't yell at me because didn't I know that breast is best. But it turns out that that's not why. It's just that other mommies scare me. They scare me so much, in fact, that I tossed and turned all Friday night because I knew that when Saturday dawned I would have to meet other mommies at Milo's first swimming lesson.

I was worried that the other mommies would be better mommies, that the other babies would be better babies ("Impossible," said Steven) that Milo would spit up in the pool, or scream, or yell "My Mommy only breastfed me for 2 1/2 months." Apparently I was also worried about putting on a bathing suit, because when I did eventually fall asleep I dreamt that one of the other mothers at the pool was Terri Hatcher, impossibly skinny in her string bikini.

All of this worry and fear turned out to be pointless, because once I got to the pool I discovered that taking your kid swimming is apparently a father/baby activity. So the mothers were all huddled on the pool deck making sure Daddy didn't drown junior, and I was in the pool with twelve daddies and babies. It hadn't even crossed my mind that swimming=sports=daddy, because in our family, while Steven is the more athletic parent, I am the swimmer. I swam competitively from the time I was 6 until I was in junior high, and then again as an adult. When Steven gets into water he sinks.

In any event, Steven had gone off to the cafe to work and I was by myself in the pool with Milo and a bunch of daddies and other babies, at least one-third of whom were crying at any given moment. And it wasn't always the same third. Milo was wide-eyed and possibly in a state of shock, but he wasn't crying until the baby next to us began to scream. At which point Milo picked up the baby warning signal ("What? There's a fire in the barn?") and began to whimper. I quickly moved to a different spot in the pool and he quieted down.

We floated around the pool for a while and Milo chewed on a plastic fish and I thought, this class is pretty mellow and not bad at all. It was difficult to simultaneously make sure that Milo was the best baby while also making sure that he didn't drown, but I was managing it okay. And then an instructor materialized and it turned out the class hadn't even begun yet.

We spent about five minutes kicking the babies' legs and another five minutes blowing bubbles, which Milo tried to do, but missed, and ended up just licking the water. And all in all it was a lot of fun. And then the instructor said, "Okay everyone, now we're going to sing 'If You're Happy And You Know It!'" And all the daddies and the one or two mommies morphed into a circle and began a hearty rendition of the song, clapping their hands and waving their babies around and splashing the water.

Except me. I was speechless. I hadn't signed up for singing. I signed up for swimming. And this, I realized was why I was afraid of doing stuff with other mommies. Because at some point someone always breaks into "If You're Happy And You Know It". I stared at Milo, who could have cared less if I joined in with the song, and then I stared at all of the grown men and women around me acting like there was nothing they'd rather be doing at 8:30 on a Saturday morning than standing in hip-high water singing songs that would then be stuck in their heads the rest of the day, and, reluctantly, I began to sing.

At some point in the song all the parents lifted the babies up out of the water in unison, and the babies all looked at each other like, "What the hell am I doing in the air above a pool at 8:30 in the morning?" before their parents brought them back down to earth. I wondered how everyone knew when to lift their babies and when to splash them and when to do whatever else they all seemed to know. Had there been instructions issued? Was there some kind of parenting guidebook to songs? I looked at Milo, who continued to wear an expression that said, "What strange place have you taken me to and are you sure we're going to survive?", and quickly determined that he had no idea I was falling behind the other parents in song knowledge.

The class was only 45 minutes, but you have no idea how long 45 minutes can be until you've spent it in a pool filled with crying babies. After the class was over I took Milo back into the locker room and laid him down on a towel and dried him off, and he suddenly perked up and started smiling and talking, explaining to the locker and the ceiling how he'd just had the most marvelous swim class. I smiled at him because it was clear that he'd just discovered the absolute best part about swimming - that moment when you take off your cold, wet bathing suit and slide into clothes that are warmer and cozier than you remembered them being just an hour earlier.

Google Maps is the Dopest

So you know you're old when the only way you hear about sketches on Saturday Night Live is by listening to NPR. You know what makes you even older? Seeing a promo for Tom Hanks on SNL and having your first thought be, how does he stay up that late? Doesn't he have kids? Followed by the realization that you had no idea SNL was still on the air, and moreover that you don't really care because you probably wouldn't get any of the references anyway and the music groups probably feature singers who were born when you were a senior in high school.

That said, I did know all about Google Maps being the dopest, but I didn't know about Picassa. I downloaded it last week and have pretty much done nothing all week but take pictures and play around with them. As an information architect, I'd been wondering if I was going to just have to go ahead and design my own damn picture handling program, because every one I've tried is so awesomely bad you have to wonder if the designers are just fucking with you. Maybe they think you take bad pictures and don't want you to be able to find them, share them or edit them? In any event, hooray for Google for once again not only not doing evil, but for bringing joy to picture organization and satisfying all my obsessive photographic tendencies.

Blue Steel

In case you were wondering, here's Milo's new look:

Kind of freaky, right?

Here's a palate cleanser:

Rollercoaster Ride, Part 4

New low point of motherhood:
The discussion Steven and I had a few nights ago about how Milo was getting kind of boring again and we're ready for him to do something new. When I mentioned this to the nanny she suggested that perhaps for his next trick we teach him to fetch.

New high point of motherhood:
The looks Milo gives either Steven or I when we walk into a room that says, "You're here AGAIN?? How does one person get SO LUCKY??" Also the fact that Milo seems to think he has magical parents who can do things like make funny noises, whistle, sing, and grow long hair.

[Side note: After we complained about Milo being boring he promptly rewarded us with a weird new look - a sort of half-grimace half-smile - that we're calling Blue Steel.]

Elm City Revisited

I have written before about how "Where are you from?" is a difficult question for me to answer. Most of the people I meet these days tend to assume that I'm a native New Yorker, and I usually just let them go ahead and believe it, because that's as good an answer as any, and anyway at this point I've lived in or around the New York area for 26 years, so sure, I'm from New York.

Except that, technically, I grew up in Connecticut. But not that Connecticut. Not the Connecticut people imagine when you say the word Connecticut. Not Thurston-Howell-III-Greenwich-it-was-just-ghastly-Connecticut. I grew up in New Haven, which is something entirely different.

This weekend Steven and I spent a night away from Milo, and we chose to do it in a remote part of Connecticut that I'd never traveled to before, primarily because it was the only place we could find that hadn't already been booked up by weekend-getaway-crazed New Yorkers. But to get there you go through New Haven. As we were driving up I95 Steven pointed at the window at a decrepit factory building lurking behind a mountain-like pile of rusted crap and said, "What's that? A garbage factory?"

"That," I said, "is New Haven."

People say that New Haven is having a renaissance of some sort, which one would hope would be the case because there wasn't much farther down the New Haven of my childhood could have sunk. In the New Haven of my childhood people were routinely getting shot at the mall. One year the visiting parents of a Yale student got shot and everyone at my high school was like, "What were they doing at the mall? Nobody goes to the mall."

My parents left New Haven immediately after I graduated from high school, so I never got to experience the place as an adult, and as such I have a weird conception of both New Haven and Connecticut. I remember places and how to get to them as a child might remember them, because for most of my life I was driven places. So I know that to get to New York you go over the metal bridge that makes the car vibrate. To get to other places you go through the wonderfully dark tunnel that cuts through the mountain. To get home you need to go around the really sharp curve that throws you to the side of the stationwagon.

Now, as an adult weekender, places that I knew only as dots in a murky sea are finally connected in my mind. So that's where Old Saybrook is. Who knew?

As a child I would sometimes ask to be driven to a friend's house only to be told that it was too far away. "Wallingford?" one or both parents would say. Except that I grew up in a house of extremes, so it would have been said "WALL -(are you out of your MIND) ing-ford? You want to go to WALLingford?"

"There's East Rock," I said to Steven, pointing out the window at a chunk of red granite that dominates the New Haven skyline.

"What's East Rock?" asked Steven.

"It's like ... a park?" I said. "A place you hike? I don't know. It's covered in poison ivy. That's what I know."

Being with me in Connecticut is a little bit like being on a tour guided by a seven-year-old.

"There's also West Rock," I said. "And Sleeping Giant. Somewhere."

Then later.

"There's Guilford. They have apples. There's Hammonasset Beach. They have jelly fish. There's West Haven. They have wastoids."

"What's that mean?" Steven asked.

"In 1986 it meant they had people who drove Camaros and feathered their hair." I pondered this for a minute. "I actually have no idea. It could be very nice for all I know."

We drove past the movie theater. I restrained myself from pointing it out. ("There's the movie theater. My brother spilled a whole tub of popcorn there once.") I checked out the movies listed on the marquee. I half expected Back to the Future to be showing.

New Haven is the same and it's not. Which I guess is why they say you can't go home again. I don't know anyone there anymore. There's a big Ikea downtown, and farther out there's a Bed Beth and Beyond, and a Linens and Things and an Old Navy. People don't get shot at the mall anymore. Actually, they stopped getting shot at the mall sometime around my senior year, when a food court opened and suddenly it became cool to hang out at the food court.

We didn't stop in New Haven on our way to the remote little corner of Connecticut. Why would we? We were just New Yorkers on our way to a weekend getaway.

Breaking News: Jews Short

Milo had his six-month check up yesterday at the pediatrician, wherein we learned that he has found his percentile, according to the doctor, and it is the 25th. (The fightin' 25th, I want to say, indicating that I am clearly watching too much Colbert Report.)

That is to say, 75 percent of all the other six-month-olds out there are bigger than Milo. He also weighs 16 lbs, which is three more pounds than I weighed when I was a year old, but then again, he is a boy and I was extra tiny. The doctor revealed this news, then squinted at me and Steven and said, "Yes, that seems about right."

This is one of two things the doctor usually says. The other thing he says is "Don't worry, it's fine." Steven and I were joking on the walk home that the guy just sits in his office all day saying "Don't worry, it's fine," over and over and over.

"My kid only rolls over one way."

"Don't worry, it's fine."

"My kid drools like Niagara Falls."

"Don't worry, it's fine."

"My kid has an extra foot growing out of his head."

"Don't worry, it's fine."

Book Publishing As Competitive Sport

Allow me my moment of pettiness.

For those who have been following the Kaavya Viswanathan plagarism story, check out her page on Amazon.

Some things to note:

1. Her book is ranked at 10 despite the fact that you can't actually buy it anymore.
2. People who bought her book also overwhelmingly bought the books she allegedly plagarized. More evidence that people are bored and have nothing better to do than compare plagarist and plagaree.
3. The customer comments are scathing ("I hope she goes on to live a trite, insignificant life," for example). Nonetheless, my nemesis, Publisher's Weekly, calls the book "a lot of fun" and says that her "intelligence shines through on every page."
4. People have tagged the book with the following: fraud, cheater, should be kicked out of Harvard.
5. Viswanathan was not selected to participate in Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers program. I win!

Housekeeping at Six Months

Happy six-month birthday, Milo. When you were a few weeks old I thought a lot about what it would be like when you reached six months, and how much better life would be then. For some reason I imagined six months to be this magical number, a time when you would be a real person, full of joy, a time when you would be sleeping, and a time when I would be able to wear my old clothes again. Also it would be warm and sunny, because it would be May.

For the most part, all of these things are true, except for the warm and sunny part. But while life with you is frequently wonderful, it is also unpredictable. Take last night, for example. I went to sleep thinking about all the glowing things I would write about you in the morning. Then you woke up at 2, 3, and 4 because you had managed to roll over onto your belly and wedge your head into assorted uncomfortable positions. You roll over constantly in your sleep, and have yet to figure out how to roll yourself back, which means that your father and I are frequently asking each other a question that neither one of us ever thought would need to be asked, namely: Did you flip the baby?

Pancakes need to be flipped, and matresses need to be flipped, but babies? Who knew?

You continue to be unbelievably social. You like to talk to everyone you see, and if you hear another baby talking you eagerly try to join in on the conversation. I am hoping that this will continue, and that eventually you can become the member of the household who makes all the phone calls.

Yesterday, for the first time, you showed some nervousness around a stranger. We were interviewing a babysitter, and you fussed when she picked you up and kept craning your head to make sure that Daddy and I were okay with everything. When we assured you that she wasn't going to bite you, you decided to reward her with a big smile.

You smile a lot. Things that are funny: whistling, silly noises, having your feet tickled. You like it when we put on the Milo hat and walk around the apartment. You like it when people say "where's Milo?" and pretend they can't find you anywhere. This almost always cracks you up. You also like to play with Mommy's hair, and you like to touch the washing machine instruction tags on all your toys. You have a blanket that is full of little tags, but you always manage to to find the real tag with the washing machine instructions on it - that tag is your favorite. Maybe you will grow up to own a laundromat.

Last week Daddy insisted that you said your first word: "Dada". I argued that it wasn't really your first word if you didn't know what it meant. You spent all week saying "dadadadada." Finally I pointed to Daddy and said to you, "Milo, who is this?" And you said, "aaahhhahhhaaageeedadaaaahh." That made Mommy happy, and also proved her point. You and I both know your first word will be "cat", anyway. Either that or "antidisestablishmentarianism."

You have yet to meet a food you didn't like. Yesterday Daddy ate ice cream while wearing you in the Bjorn and you acted like you were dying for a taste, although maybe you just wanted to hold the cone. Eventually we gave you a hat to hold and that seemed to satisfy you for a while.

Daddy and I are tired, but you make life interesting. I never wake up and wonder what it's all about. Partially because I no longer have time and I'm too tired to think big thoughts. But partially because I just wake up excited to see what you're going to do today.

Discover Great New Writers

Barnes and Noble calls my book nifty.