NaMeWriMo

I've never done NaNoWriMo before. I'm a poet. Once in awhile I bust out a short-short story and send it off to Quick Fiction and feel fine when I get my rejection letter because, after all, I'm a poet. (Though I actually feel fine getting rejection letters from poetry journals, too, since the chances of getting published are so astronomically small that I expect to get rejected, and only really react on the rare occasion a poem is accepted, or if I get that strange and wonderful thing, the form rejection letter with a bit of encouraging editor ink: "No way in hell will we publish this, but it was more interesting than most of our slush. Keep trying! Send us something else in nine months!")

This year, though, I'm doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for those unfamiliar with the acronym - or is it an abbrevianym?) because I got the bright idea to make my Creative Writing students do it. (I told them they can adapt the challenge to whatever form inspires them, which began a plethora of exciting acronymizing - National Short Story Collection Writing Month = NaShoStoWriMo, National Poetry Collection Writing Month = NaPoCoWriMo, and National Graphic Novel Writing Month = NaGraNoWriMo). Then one of them said "Are you going to write with us?" And what else could I say but "Of course."

So my version of NaNoWriMo is National Memoir Writing Month (NaMeWriMo, appropriately enough), where I am grappling with the enigma of my father and my relationship with him, trying to figure out how the mensch I adored so much at ten turned into the prick I finally had to cut off all ties with for several years at thirty. Actually, the real enigma is the reality that these two dudes are the same dude, at least in many ways. It will be interesting to share some of this with my students, given that I often use stories of the more innocent and hilarious aspects of my dad's insanity to amuse and inspire my students. But I never go to the dark places in my dad's personality, and to write a memoir, this I must do. I'll leave out some stuff. The porn, definitely. The copious quantities of midwestern weed, probably.

I'll let you know how it goes.


[Oh, and for those who are curious, a postscript to the lice thing: The lice thing was a PAIN in the ASS. They returned three times with Roo which was the worst, because she was the family member least able to hold still and deal with the treatment (or understand why we kept torturing her). As I've explained to several people who've asked why lice seem like such a bigger deal and a thornier problem than when we were kids: it's so bad now b/c lice have become superbugs, so the usual pesticide treatment (active ingredient: permethrin) is 50% effective or less. We ended up trying that (failure), then a horrible home remedy with Cetaphil cleanser (smelled nauseating and also failed on Roo). The thing that finally worked (and the one that was actually the least toxic) is "Licefreee," essentially a saline gel that dessicates the little fuckers and their eggs. I hope we're done with it, but the whole thing was such a fucking pain. God spare you from being lousy with lice.]

My Lousy Sunday

Normally I love it when my Old Man runs his fingers through my hair. Yesterday morning, as he sifted through my hair with gentle, searching fingers, I held my breath in tense anticipation. When he untangled his hands from my hair and said "there's nothing there," I breathed a mighty sigh of relief. For the rest of the day, I felt a bit elated every time I reminded myself of the fact: "I do not have head lice."

My kids, however, did have head lice. This was already an established fact. With O. we had to search and search to find a critter that confirmed what we'd feared ever since we got the news that one of his little buddies had cooties. When we finally found something, we all had to hold still to ascertain that, yes, the little white fleck was actually moving. It must have been a young one, because when we went to check Roo, her hair was positively alive with unmistakable bugs, gray and crawling, little legs clearly visible.

Am I grossing you out yet?

So we spent the morning giving our kids insecticide shampoos, engaging in some literal nitpicking, and washing load after load of laundry with hot water. It was not pleasant. O. was heroic in his acceptance of the stinging shampoo, the fact that we had to leave it in for ten minutes during which he couldn't move much or touch his head, and the fact that we had to rinse the thick, goopy shit out for what seemed like another ten minutes to finally get rid of it. Two-year-old Roo was less understanding. Finally I just had to resign myself to the fact that she was going to cry in a most heart-rending manner the whole time. During the nitpicking part we got her to stop for awhile by allowing her to eat an unlimited quantity of Elmo cookies. It was a trial.

Even though I've been cleared by my resident nit-checker (after three separate checks), my head still itches like hell. And I have a whole new appreciation for the gravity of the word lousy.

Bless You, Dear

Friday night I went to an art auction benefitting my school. An alumna who owned an art gallery in Manhattan left the school twenty-five framed pieces, and so a gala event was arranged to convert those art works to spendable currency. It was a rare chance for me to dress up and stand around eating chi chi hors d'oeuvres and drinking wine with my colleagues.

At one point a young woman approached me with a look on her face that said I am seeking information. I assumed she was an alumna from before my time, since she looked on the young side to be a parent of a high schooler or a rich donor-type. I expected her to say "Does the English department still teach [insert name of favorite or most hated novel]?" or "When did [hugely popular teacher who taught at the school for thirty-plus years] retire?" Instead she made my brain do a one-eighty flip in its pan by asking, without any preamble, "Where did Beezus play its first show?"

Beezus was the band I was in back in grad school. I lived then in the same town where I live now, but in many ways it seems like a totally different place. I was childless, I was scruffy, I was a carefree gradual student. My days tended to begin around ten AM and end some time in the wee hours of the morning. I was in a rock band (and at one point two rock bands). I spent a lot of time in the university's research library and a fair bit of time in bars, and I didn't know very many people who weren't associated with the university. Now I'm a full-time teacher and mother of two, what little rocking I do is all done for the pleasure of my immediate family in my basement, and I know a ton of people in the community and relatively few at the university. My days begin at 6:00 or 7:00 AM and I try to hit the sack at 11:00 PM. I don't spend much time on campus, but I know my town's parks, public libraries, and other kid-friendly spots intimately.

Which is to say, this woman was harkening back to a time and place that seemed very far away, even though Beezus had once played in the very building where we were standing.

I stood there for a minute trying to wrap my brain around the shift in context and finally answered. "Um, Mabel's. Though we hadn’t come up with the name Beezus yet at that show, and we had a different drummer. Let's see ... our first show as Beezus was at the Library." While my mouth was saying all this, my brain was thinking Who are you? How do you know Beezus? Why do you care where we first played? What's this combination of extreme befuddlement and warm excitment I'm feeling?

"Oh, I guess I was wrong," the woman turned to her companion (her husband, as I later learned) and he gave her an "I told you so" look. They proceeded to inform me they were both big Beezus fans as undergrads back in the day, and that she'd been sure she was at our first show. "I still play your record sometimes," she said, and I enlightened her to the fact that we'd recorded two more after that, news that seemed to genuinely excite her.

"Thank you so much for making me feel like a rock star," I said to her as I excused myself to get more chutney-encrusted brie. And she had made me feel like a rock star, momentarily yanking me out of my current life as teacher, mom, and responsible member of the community and back to that giddy role of a fledgling musician insanely excited to hear that someone likes the band. And that made me feel really young and really old, all at the same time.

Roo is Two!

This was my baby girl a year ago, all pudgy cheeks and sleek black baby hair.



Now suddenly she's a year older, more kid than baby, with long curls all lightened by the summer sun. Our little Roo is two.



No, she's not old enough to drink yet, but she is apparently mature enough to help us inventory the beer selection. And as with everything she does, she has a grand time doing it.

Happy birthday, my sweet girlie!

Salma and Me

I just had my first full-on sapphic dream last night. Perhaps there's been a little girl-on-girl action in my dreams before, but if so, nothing so clear and cinematic as this one, and nothing that stuck clearly in my memory in the morning. (It was my morning to sleep in this weekend, and dream occurred in that magic window between 7:00, when Roo got my Old Man out of bed, and 9:00, when I finally got up. Just long enough to get in some REM, but short enough that I can actually remember my dreams vividly.)

I was at some big fancy hotel somewhere in Mexico, and there was a wedding going on in the grand, majestic lobby. The food was all out on a buffet table, looking delicious, and I wondered if it was legit for a non-guest to help herself. The desert table was filled with baked goods from the real-life French bakery in our town where we buy our bread and I thought "Our bread's getting low and La Madeleine won't be open 'til Tuesday. I wonder if they have any bread I could buy." (What does it say about me that details of my day-to-day often intrude upon even my most interesting dreams?) All this time I was walking around with Salma Hayek, who was looking quite fetching in a saffron-colored strapless dress.

Salma and I made our way outside and began slow dancing to the strains of the wedding band wafting out into the street. I kept having the urge to put my head on her shoulder, but she was shorter than me and finally I figured out that I was in the dude role, dancing-wise, so I gently moved her head to rest on my shoulder. Then, suddenly, we were making out! It was full-on wet kissing with lots of tongue, and I could feel Selma's impressive breasts pressing against my more humble ones (which was, I must say, rather nice). Soon we were rolling around on the ground, really going at it. Be still my heart.

I'm sort of impressed that I was able to score such a smoldering hot specimen of feminine loveliness on my very first foray into lesbian dream love. I would not have pegged myself as Salma's type.

And of course, I told my Old Man about the dream this morning, grateful that the Salma-and-me scene didn't go any further than first base. One only wants to have to confess to so much after a morning of sleeping in.

A Few Quick Questions for the Universe

1. Why, despite the fact that 95% of my pants/shorts/skirts are black, dark grey, brown, or dark red, do I always seem to get my period on a day that I'm wearing off-white capris or powder-blue cords?

2. How is it that in the afternoon I can have a tender moment of appreciating the fact that my bonny almost two-year-old daughter still nurses, then in the darkest hours of that same night she can appear to me to be a little blood-sucking parasite because she still nurses?

3. Why is it that my six-year-old son can remember everything he learned about the life-cycle of a bee last year in kindergarten, but still can't remember to wash his hands after he pees despite being told seventeen times every single day for the past three years?

4. When are they going to perfect teleporting technology so that I can spend more time with my loved ones who live way too far away?

5. How can it be that I love teaching so much that I'm always going on about how much I love teaching, yet I love not teaching so much more that I always get a little heartsick at the end of August?

6. Will my desk ever remain clean for more than two days?

A Good Nose for Business

One thing that's always sad about the annual long summer visit to my in-laws' place is going downtown in their Jersey Shore hamlet and seeing which of my favorite businesses has gone bust and given way to some ridiculous chi chi boutique I'd never patronize in a million years. Their town used to be a hip but somewhat rough-around-the-edges place, with punk rock teenagers loitering on Broadway, lots of funky little stores, and a higher-than-average number of head shops. But as the town has gentrified more and more over the last ten years, the funky elements have given way to high-rent ventures.The cool health food store went under a few years back, making way for a fancy dog grooming salon. The used book store turned into one of those clothing stores where you can get a pair of distressed jeans off the sale rack for a mere hundred bucks. The little hole-in-the-wall vegan restaurant gave way to a gourmet pet food boutique. (I shit you not. These rich Jersey Shore people take their pets very seriously.)

With the economy in a slump, the death of the downtown businesses has sped up. This summer I noticed a business that had apparently opened and closed since last time we were in town. A designer perfume and make-up discount store. Hm. That's strange. With all the perfume, cologne, and cosmetics that people on the Jersey Shore use, I'd think a place that sells the designer shit at a bargain price would be able to weather the current economic climate. But wait. The name.



"What's That Smell?" Really? That's the name you chose for your discount designer perfume shop? Why not "What the Fuck is That Smell?" or "What Cavernous Mouth of Hell Opened Up and Released That Smell?"

Don't these people have any sort of ear for their own language? "What's that smell?" is not a phrasal synonym for "Mmm, what's that delicate fragrance wafting toward my grateful nose?" It means "What's that foul smell?" It means "What's wrong here?" It means...

Notes on Bear Week

I just got back from Provincetown, Massachusetts, where I spent a week with O., and Roo, the Old Man. They frolicked on the beach every morning while I was off at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center taking a poetry workshop. In the afternoons, my Old Man would take O. off exploring while Roo napped and I wrote poems to bring back to the workshop. Then we'd all go off to try to find a restaurant which would tolerate our children and not necessitate taking out a second mortgage on our home.

We've been to P-town twice before, both times so that I could take workshops at the FAWC. (I love the FAWC because people there actually call it the FAWC, which is pronounced "fahc," which starts to sound a lot like "fuuuck" when you say it often enough. Who wouldn't want to take a workshop in fiction, poetry, or painting at "the fuuuck"? It's kind of like "the shit," only better.) Provincetown has a long history as an artists' and writers' retreat, and is well-known for its many art galleries and its local literary giants. Located on the tip of Cape Cod, it's also a big old tourist trap. And, most impressively, it's one of the most well-known gay resort towns in the US.

Both times we've been to P-town before, we've heard people talk about "bear week." According to the Ptown Bears website, bears are "a subculture of gay men who embrace natural body hair." But that doesn't seem to sum it up entirely. Based on my observations, and conversations I've had and overheard in P-town, bears tend not only to have a goodly amount of body hair, but also observable facial hair, and a particular type of build. Bears are big. Even short bears are big. They're often muscular, but whether they're built or not, they generally have a belly. Many of them seem to favor leather. Motorcycles are not uncommon. Apparently, there are associations between bears and firefighters, I'm not sure why. Maybe because of Smokey? Only YOU over there in that body-conscious tank top with luxuriant chest hair tufting out can prevent forest fires.

Well, this year, we were in luck. The week we had planned to be in Provincetown? Bear week! My Old Man was a bit disappointed that he'd gone through the trouble of doing some extra manscaping (to make it more likely that he might pass for your average gay dad as he singlehandedly shepherded the children though the extra-queer-friendly East End). Why bother, when it's bear week?

Anyway, having observed bears in their natural (vacation) habitat for a week, I can report that although bears are not aggressive, they are not friendly, either. I smiled or said hi to every bear I passed during my stay in P-town, and I got not one smile back. I imagine they're probably friendly to other bears, but not to skinny tourist women in big hats.

Maybe part of the reason the bears in P-town were not particularly friendly to me is that Bear Week has become a well-known enough event that even the clueless straight people who vacation in Provincetown know about it, and thus the bears become something of a spectacle, perhaps in a way that gets annoying. Maybe a lot of silly tourist women were smiling extra widely at them during this last week. (I tend to be pretty friendly generally, but I was probably smiling a little wider at the bears. Who doesn't get excited when they're on vacation in a wild place and they see a bear?)

We always enjoy spending a week in Provincetown, but it has its annoyances and drawbacks. It's fucking expensive for one. If I hadn't had a fellowship for my workshop, I'd never have been able to afford the tuition and lodging, but trying to feed yourself and keep yourself in coffee and your kids in ice cream is a mammoth expense in itself. It's also a crowded tourist spot that has grown up in a town that was founded long before the revolutionary period (this is where the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact , recall). So by the end of the week, we're ready to leave and get back to a less pricey and less jostled existence.

That's why as we were heading out of town, my Old Man cued up the perfect "Sayonara, Cape Cod!" song, "Walcott" by Vampire Weekend. Walcott, Don't you know that it's insane? Don't you want to get out of Cape Cod? Out of Cape Cod tonight? It's an especially perfect song for us, given our destination, back to the loving arms of the Jersey Shore. Walcott, All the way to New Jersey, All the way to The Garden State, Out of Cape Cod tonight

But when we came to the verse where they sing Walcott, Fuck the women from Wellfleet, Fuck the bears out in Provincetown, Out of Cape Cod Tonight, I couldn't sing along with as much gusto. I mean, I don't know any women in Wellfleet, so who am I to say? And although the Provincetown bears did not return my smiles and greetings, I don't hold it against them. I still salute their embrace of natural body hair (hey, we have something in common!) and their grizzly aesthetic.



But maybe I'm misreading that line. Maybe Vampire Weekend mean something entirely different when they say "Fuck the bears out in Provincetown." It's hard to say what "fuck" means after you've spent a week parsing out the nuances of poem after poem at the FAWC. Fuuuck!

You Wanna Bet Your Pretty Neck?

My man hates show tunes. My man hates musicals in general. Keep this in mind.

So, here we are spending a month or so with my Old Man's family on the Jersey Shore. This year, it's more like three weeks, since we're going to Cape Cod for six days in the middle of the visit, but still. A long visit. Six people in a house that usually holds two. (Plus my sister-in-law is in town from Florida, and though she's not sleeping here, she's around much of time during the day and evening.) I've mentioned that this is actually harder on my man than on me. Let me explain a bit more about why that is.

Obviously, it's harder in some ways for my man to stay with his family for several weeks at a stretch because he has all this history with them and they push his buttons and everyone reverts to old modes and habits that drive everyone else crazy. Except me, who mostly finds it all pretty amusing (except when it occasionally makes me want to throw a potted plant at someone).

But there are other reasons that this is easier for me than him, and I'm just sort of starting to articulate those, here in our seventh extended summer visit. This is partly due to an epiphany I had at dinner last night.

Okay, dinner. It's me, my Old Man, his mom (who tends to go by the handle Gram), his dad (code name Pop-Pop), baby Roo (in her high chair), six-year-old O., and my Old Man's sister, Aunt A. Dishes are being passed every which way, debates are raging over whether the corn is undercooked or just bad, speculations are being made about when Jersey corn will finally be in season. Everyone is loud, everyone is talking over each other, and every adult-oriented comment is punctuated by an observation of something cute that Roo is doing, an extra-loud question intended to engage O., or a suggestion that O. eat more, use his napkin, or stop lurching into Gram to the beat of the frenetic, horn-heavy jazz that is perpetually playing in the background.

At some point Roo does or says something exceptionally cute, and this inspires Gram to begin singing to Roo a song from the venerable Broadway favorite Guys and Dolls, the corniest song in a show abounding in corny songs. I love you a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck sings Gram, and then Pop-Pop joins in, A hug around the neck and a barrel and a heap. Then Aunt A. joins in A barrel and a heap and I'm talking in my sleep, about you, about you. And, dangit, I can't help it (after all, I played the role of Sister Sarah Brown in my high school production of Guys and Dolls, and after all, these people are singing this song of love to my adorable toddler, who I actually happen to really love barrels and heaps, etc.). I just have to join in I love you a bushel and a peck, you bet your pretty neck I do.

"Your pretty neck?" Egad. But we keep singing and it just gets worse when we hit the Doodle oodle oooh doo, Doodle oodle oooh doo, Doodle oodle oooh doo doooooooo! And remember, this is all being sung over the sounds of frenetic, horn-heavy jazz.

Needless to say, my Old Man is not singing along, however much love he might have for his baby girl (love he'd more likely measure in kilos or assloads than bushels and pecks). He does not know this song, and if by some bizarre circumstance he did, he would never sing it. I don't even need to look at his face to know that he's in serious pain right now.

And this is part of the reason it's harder for him than for me to be here. In some ways, I'm more like his family than he is. I'm cornier than him, I'm less inhibited, more able to quickly and comfortably shift social modes and rhetorical registers. He and I have a lot in common. We're both ironic, we both love to read, we both cherish quiet time. But I'm more able to shift from irony to cheesy jokes without feeling a painful wrench, and I'm more able to temporarily forgo my need for quiet reflection and solitude when super-social chaos is the order of the day. My man is actually a very goofy dude much of the time when he's in the comfort of his own home, but his goofiness tends to run the order of absurdist humor and scatology rather than bad puns and cheesy ribbing.

Anyway, to his credit, he did not shriek or run from the table when this outburst occurred. I think he still likes me, even though I went there with his family of origin, to that place of unspeakable darkness, the spontaneous show tune singalong.

Six is Company - Six is (Still) a Crowd

I'm back on the Jersey Shore for another Month With the In-Laws. We've been here a week and I have stories to tell, but I always like to write some sort of "intro to the whole concept of spending a month with your in-laws" post before I do any East Coast blogging. Reading back over the posts that served that purpose in years past, I'm amazed at how true my first-ever Jersey Shore Intro post still reads, despite the fact that it's three years later and we've had a baby in the interim. So I'm going to rerun that post below, and wherever I mention three-year-old O. you can fill in "six-year-old O. and baby sister Roo" in that blank. The the cons are still the same (down to the fact that my father-in-law still tries to talk to me while I'm reading and I still ignore him as politely as it is possible to ignore someone) and the pros are still the same (except with a baby added to the mix, the sleeping-in thing is even sweeter.) The wine rack is a little thinner in these economic hard times, but it still plays a pivotal role in my ability to maintain my patience during this blessed month-long visit. My Old Man and I still invariably end up needing to have a "talk" some time during the first week. Even the "six" of the title is still true, except my sister-in-law has gotten married and moved out, but her spot's been filled by little Roo.

So now, for your reading pleasure, an Oral Hygiene Classic Post:

So, here I am in New Jersey, spending what amounts to a month with my husband's family. Someone out there may be wondering Why in the name of Christ and all his long-haired friends would you do that? When I've mentioned our East Coast summer plans to friends or aquaintances, the response often amounts to that.

In fact, this is the fourth [nay, in 2009, seventh] summer that my Old Man and I have packed up the car, strapped O. into his car seat, and headed out to spend a month on the Jersey shore with my in-laws.

The why is a bit complicated, but basically simmers down to two reasons. One: my man grew up less than a mile from the ocean, and now we live in a landlocked part of the Midwest. He needs to spend time near the ocean in order to retain his sanity. I love him very much, and I know he needs this. Two: my Old Man's parents love their only grandchild to distraction and get to see him just a few times a year. I want O. to really know his grandparents in a way that you can only know people you've spent expanses of time with. O. is lucky enough to live near my folks (though, given that my mom and stepdad are hardcore Westcoasters, how that came about is a post of its own), and this trip gives him the chance to live with my Old Man's folks.

The actual visit is wonderful in some ways, and hellish in others. The pros outweigh the cons, or else I never would have come back after the first (and hardest) month-long summer visit. My mother-in-law is sweet and very easy to get along with, my father-in-law is completely well-meaning and annoying only in the relatively minor ways that make me realize how really petty I am for being driven momentarily insane by them. My Old Man's adult sister is warm, funny, and unabashedly weird, and over the years we've grown so close that she feels like a sister rather than an in-law. The advantages to having these good people in-house are easy to rattle off: the Old Man and I sleep in together almost every morning we're here, we have free childcare just about any time we want it from people who love our son, and people are constantly cooking for us (and if we're not careful, cleaning up after us). Add to that the perks of our location in a hip Jersey shore town: we're a ten-minute drive from the ocean, a 45 minute train ride from NYC, and close to more excellent dining than we could ever hope to (or afford to) enjoy in one month.

I admit that I also love the crowded chaos, most of the time. I grew up in the same house as grandparents and aunts, a house where it wasn't unusual to find second cousins sleeping on the laundry room floor because every available bed and couch was taken by some other family member. My family is loud and loving and sometimes pushy and annoying, and cramming a bunch of us into one house for an extended visit was always fun, even if tears were sometimes shed and doors slammed. Sitting around the overcrowded dinner table with my son, husband, mother-in-law, father-in-law, grandmother-in-law, sis-in-law, and brother-in-law-to-be, with everyone talking over one another and affectionate jokes competing with mildly cutting sarcasm - it all feels very right, more often than not.

But it's hard, too. This isn't my family, and that makes it easier for me. It is my Old Man's family, and that makes it much more challenging for him. These people do not push my buttons, but they ride his. I think the hardest thing for me about this set-up, harder than the relative lack of privacy, sharing a computer with four other adults, or trying to read a book while my father-in-law persists in making inane small talk with me, is seeing my beloved man at his most adolescent. Sometimes he's unrecognizable. And I get so irritated, at the same time that I do not blame him. I try to imagine spending a week under my father's roof, much less a month, and I know I would be so much worse. Still, it's a strain on our relationship. And that much more because we can't even have a decent argument in the privacy of our own home.

So that's when you have to fight adolescent regression with adolescent therapies. This evening, I found myself grabbing my Old Man by the hand and dragging him out the door for a long walk and a serious talk. It's only day three of the visit, but already we needed it. We ended up sitting in the grass in a field not far from his folks' house like a pair of teenagers in relationship-crisis-mode. We got the space we needed and reconnected. (But before we could do that we had to do something I never had to worry about as a teenager: ask his mom if she'd watch our kid while we went and dealt with our angst.)

After my man and I had worked shit out, I came back in and had a couple glasses of a very nice pinot noir. So let me end with props to the unacknowledged ingredient that allows us to pull off this marathon visit: my in-laws' well-stocked wine rack.

In the Argot of Our Local Storyteller

Roo is an amazing communicator for one so young (21 months, for those keeping track). She gets her point across astonishingly well almost all the time, if you're willing to take the time to listen carefully and are familiar with the peculiarities of her vocabulary (where "yung" means music, "ah-doh" is water, and "die" equals "cry"). She's actually begun telling stories, which she repeats over and over to anyone who'll listen. "Mama voh dung" quickly became one of a series of "fall down" stories. "Mama voh dung, kitchen" ended up being a slightly more developed draft of the "Mama lost it" story. She also has an "O. voh dung, helmet" story to describe a memorable incident of her bro wiping out on his bike, and she also has a "Roo voh dung, bus" story, describing how she bailed and bonked her noggin on a manhole cover when we were all on our way to catch a Chicago city bus.

My favorite of the "voh dung" series, however, is the story Roo tells about her dad. A week or so ago, the Old Man asked me to pick him up an iced coffee when I was out running errands. He and O. were heading out to the movies and, having been woken by Roo a couple hours earlier than usual that morning, he knew he'd need it to stay alert in the cool, dark theater. I came home just in time for the guys to make their show, handing off the iced coffee to my grateful man. And in his sleep deprived state, he proceeded to drop it on the recently-mopped kitchen floor. As he watched the precious beverage escape from the broken cup, making a giant mess on the floor he himself had just cleaned, his nerves already frayed by lack of sleep, he lost it, shouting obscenities in a lively dance of livid frustration. Once the mess had been cleaned up and O. and his dad rushed off to make their movie, Ruby narrated the event as she saw it: "Dada voh dung ah-do, die." Daddy dropped his water, and cried.

Poor daddy.

In Which I Am Beset by the Howling Fantods

I'm not usually skittish about small creatures I come upon in my home, whether animal, avian, or insect. I've found live mice behind my toaster without losing my shit and have caught and relocated hundreds of spiders with nary a shudder. Once when a bird flew down the chimney and into the first apartment I shared with my Old Man, I calmly put on my dishwashing gloves, followed its panicked flapping from room to room, caught it between my outstretched hands, and released it off the back porch. (All of this while my six-foot-tall man kept his unnerved self as far from the bird as he could.)

On Friday I had a full-on, screetching and writhing fit in response to finding a dead mouse under the stove. I had dropped a wooden spoon between the countertop and range while cooking Roo some hot cereal, and when my Old Man moved the stove aside to allow me to get at the escaped spoon, there was a bunch of other crap in that narrow strip of no-man's-land, mostly vegetables that had jumped out of the frying pan and into the shadows. I decided to clean all the desiccated ghosts of dinners past out of this dusty zone, and had just begun nudging my wooden spoon handle at a prune that had somehow gotten wedged under the side of the stove when my Old Man, looking on over my shoulder, said "Uh, E. I don't think you should...." At that moment it came unwedged and I suddenly saw that the lifeless and mushy prune had a tail.

"It has a tail!" I shrieked. There is no font bloody enough to convey the horror with which I shrilly uttered those words. I immediately began a writhing and shuddering dance of retreat as far from the dead mouse as I could get, all the while jabbering an octave above my natural voice. I was losing my shit. My heart was racing, I could not stop the shivers running up and down the length of my body, and I couldn't seem to stop my screetching expressions of horror. If I had been wearing long skirts, I would have gathered them up off the mousey floor.

Later I tried to figure out what had made me lose it in a way I usually don't with classic "icky" stuff. Partly, I think it was the idea of a dead mouse, one I'd been poking, one that had just given way under the handle of a wooden spoon attached to my very hand. Even more than this, it was the surprising and uncanny aspect of it: a prune had essentially transformed into a dead mouse before my eyes, and that was very freaky.

What was really embarrassing about the whole dead mouse incident, however, was that the mouse ended up not being dead so much as inanimate. When my Old Man gathered up the nerve to remove the offending rodent, he was quickly relieved to realize that it was actually a toy mouse that we'd bought for our kitten when we first brought her home from the Humane Society over two years ago. She loved the thing and played with it nonstop for several days, 'til it got lost and was never seen again. Until yesterday.

So not only had I become entirely unhinged over a dead mouse under the stove, it wasn't even a real mouse.

Luckily, O. was at school and didn't get to witness his mother lose her shit. But Roo observed the whole thing from her perch in the high chair. It made a deep impression on her. For the rest of the day, she told my Old Man over and over "Mama fell down!" (which in Roo speak sounds more like "Mama voh dung!") What she really meant was "Mama broke down" or "Mama took complete leave of her senses." But "Mama voh dung" is apt. I do feel like I fell down, in a metaphorical sense. I certainly don't feel quite as tough as I did a few days ago. I'd feel better if the damn thing had actually been a real decaying rodent. At least the cat has her favorite toy back.