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This is in reply to Poulet's comment on my previous post

http://theparentingpassageway.com/

This is a parenting blog that is all about the self-discipline aspect of parenting. I recommend it.

Thoughts on LuLu

People call this stage the "Terrible Twos". Perhaps because children scream a lot, or they still aren't continent, because they are physical enough to get almost anywhere without being constrained by anything (danger, privacy).
Personally, when I can step back just a little, I discover that this is such an amazing time.  Stepping back is hard, though. I have to take myself away from caring about the floor being clean, or dinner being done, or the bills being paid. All very important things that I care about.
Sometimes metaphores help. If I don't think of her as my wittle wittle baby-face, but as a foreign exchange student from, say, Uzbekistan, suddenly she makes sense.
I say, "Gracie, what language do you speak in your Homecountry?"
"Ğäh!"
"Gracie, what did you eat in a typical meal in your homeland?"
"Ęğğé"
"How is your English coming along?"
"Åte!"
"Is it customary to collect pebbles where you come from?"
"Ďödlë"
For a moment she is somebody else's baby raccoon, I can enjoy her company without any expectations or weird parental baggage. I don't have to expect that she will make any sense, or appear well-behaved to my friends, or clean up after herself. I can enjoy her pretty face, play naming games with her and do my best to help her bone up on her English and adjust to life here in America the best I can.

Wanna hear the podcast version?

May 25th

May 25th

I try again to record my blog entry.  

A Really Great Idea

I had a hit of inspiration the other day.  The reason this is noteworthy is that I hardly think of anything these days beyond "where am I going to do my next load of laundry" or "is that crying baby mine or my neighbor's?"

The H*ster was making an all-too rare visit the other evening when Dutch announced the she "had to have a Pickleback!"

(Yes, do!  Come visit our apartment and my husband will force you to have a crazy- possibly horrible hipster cocktail.)

How can I argue with Dutch, he hardly ever announces anything?  And the H*ster, while not being very enthusiastic, wasn't running for the door, either (ha ha, the power of peer pressure).

According to my internet sources, a Pickleback is a shot of Jameson followed quickly by a shot of pickle juice.  Will it remove freckles?  Very possibly.

Because I cared about the H*ster's liver and the fact that she had an hour's drive ahead of her I prepared a very special, very tiny version for her.  One tablespoon (15 ml) of each, in two matching teeny-tiny sake glasses.  So if the Jameson is 40% alcohol (by weight or volume-- I don't know) that means she is having a mere 6 mls of alcohol.  That can't be bad, can it?  All of the "burning down your throat" goodness of hard likker with just a tiny bit of the hard stuff.

::

Considering two facts:

1)  I like alcohol a lot.  I feel guilty admitting this.  I also like bars, the divy-er the better.  Both my parents are outspoken tee-totallers and there are enough scary drunks in my family that serve as negative examples of the dangers of drunkenness that I feel really guilty admitting this.  Sorry mom.

BUT

2) Alcohol doesn't like me.  I get hang-overs even when I don't actually drink.  My kidneys are always a tad tender.  And the thing I hate about bars is that to get a glass of water you have to bug the already harried bartender.  They have to serve you without getting a tip.  There is one bar I have been to (Harrington's in SF's Financial District) where they have a self-serve water station.  Brilliant.  And while I am on this topic, I hate it when bartenders notice that you have finished you drink, they ask "what will you have next?"  Assuming you have already decided to have another drink-- they are purposely taking advantage of your slightly fuzzy state to sell you more alcohol.  To say "no" can be very awkward.  I am an alcoholic light-weight-- it is never a good idea for me to have more than two drinks in a 24 hour period, period.  I can't imagine I am alone in this.  This is probably true for most medium-sized women.

 

Fred and Carrie on the appeal of tiny drinkware.

Can I have my beer and drink it too?

My brilliant idea is this-- a bar with a nice cozy interior (like a brown bar in Amsterdam) and scaled-down drinks, for the healthy livers of medium-sized women who don't want to go home with strange men at the end of the night.  I am not suggesting watered-down drinks, I am just suggesting really cute, very small (with an proportionately small price) drink ware.  Thimble-sized shot glasses.  Half-pint pints. Large water glasses with a self-serve station.  Maybe even an app that keeps track of how much you have had and can give you a little reminder to slow down.  Sainted bartenders who care about the health of the patrons. They would have to be sainted, because I am sure that a bar like I have described, would not stay in business.  We used to live a few doors down from The Hearth, and they have a very effective way of keeping things sane-- they are cash only and don't carry tabs. Dutch and I knew our night of debauchery was over when there was nothing left of the 20 spot.  Incidentally, both the bartenders we saw were women.  One refused to give Dutch a shot of absinthe one evening.  Totally bad-ass.  Then she went on to tell us horror stories of lost wallets and misplaced credit cards when she serves absinthe.  Dutch wisely decided not to push it.

To sum up-- my perfect bar would have a "brown" interior, the water-bar of Harrington's, the bad-ass 'keeps and money policy of The Hearth and super kawaii mini-drinkware.  Interested in investing?  Contact me.

3.0 out of 5 stars A little short, May 4, 2012

By 

Dutch (Berkeley, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son (Kindle Edition)

***contains spoilers***

I am a big fan of Ann Lamott's memoirs, so my expectations were high. I was expecting a funny, tragic and hopeful look at her life as a grandma. I ordered the Kindle version and read it on my phone, which isn't the ideal way enjoy a book. The things which I enjoyed from her earlier books-- her self-deprecating wit, her stories of personal disaster, the colorful characters populating her church and her Marin neighborhood, didn't transfer well to this book. The baby momma wasn't very sympathetic and I found myself wondering (right along with Ann, I am sure) what on earth Sam was doing with her. Its hard to feel much sympathy for Lamott herself when she talks about an expensive vacation to Mexico (was it Mexico or somewhere else warm and tropical?) and owning a house in the Bay Area (only rich people own houses in the Bay Area). She is obviously in a different stage in her life and now she needs to find new tropes, new sources of humor and new ways to inspire the sympathy of her readers. Now she just comes off as whiny and self-absorbed middle-aged white lady. Clearly the subject matter was difficult-- watching her child struggle with being a parent and raising an infant in a imperfect situation isn't an easy thing and it must be doubly hard to find the humor in it. Its certainly something I would have a hard time doing. But no one is paying me to write about my life, either. 

 

::

I just posted this on Dutch's Amazon review-- he ordered it for me last month and I read it while nursing Spike.  I went through it very quickly-- the weird thing about reading a novel on my phone is that I have no idea how many pages it has, and if I should skim it (as in a long book) or dawdle over it (a short book).  Now that I am looking over it again I am wondering if I was too harsh.  On the other hand, Dutch paid the full $13.95 for it, and we don't even have a hard copy to pass to a friend, so forgive me for feeling a wee bit gypped.

That comment about middle-aged white ladies.

Well, that there... mea culpa (or "it takes one to know one" as they say on the playground).  Obviously I am on my way to being a middle-aged white lady, but its hard to muster up much sympathy for our tribe.  But hopefully I am not a "whiny" one.  (Face reddens)  Except of course, when I am whining about spending money on other middle-aged white lady's books...

Fine, Dammit, I am owning it!

I nominate Ann Lamott as the president of the Bay Area's Whiny Middle-Aged White Lady Association.

My Beloved Piano Teacher posted a gorgeous post about teaching piano here.  I was going to respond in a comment, but I realized that what I had so say is so much more than a "thumbs up" so I am going to reply here.

I treasure the information I learned from her-- the wonderful stories about Debussy and Chopin, all the great music theory that I was able to understand and build on later as an adult (and even pass on to my one and only piano student who I still see occasionally), all the wonderful music-- the Mozart (who composed for the harpsichord and not the piano), the Handel (whose overtures still make me weep because she explained to me how Georg sets you up with exquisitely painful baits-and-switches), the Brahms, the Beethoven (to play when you are cranky and hormonal as I often was when I was 16), to see music in colors and flavors and even temperatures and how to play with music-- in the school-yard sort of way.  She taught me how to waltz, so I could play the Blue Danube with the right EMphasis.  Even though she says she doesn't like pop music, I can't listen to raggae without hearing how the musicians are playing on the back beat.  If it wasn't for her, there is no way I could articulate the genius of Roger Waters.  Or Vivaldi.

I don't even know how I can possibly explain the vast ocean of difference between the way she sees the world and the way my parents do.  Up until the time I was under her care the world was a simple right-is-right and left-is-wrong sort of a place.  She taught me how to weep for Anna Karenina's fate (instead of a "good riddance" attitude).  She did what every good teacher should do-- she expanded my imagination, she gave me a vocabulary to describe my world, she showed me how to be spiritual without being judgmental, she showed me how to suffer and grow.  She models a creative life, a beautiful life, a wonderfully full life.

She even writes beautiful letters on stationery she designs herself.  How cool is that?  If her students are avoiding her its because they are lame and quite possibly stupid.  If they want to live in a monochromatic, one-note world, that is their choice and its certainly not her fault for showing them a subtle, fascinating, and mysterious alternative.  If learning about music and how to listen was all about practicing, I'd be a failure, too.  Thankfully, music is not just about practicing (though it does help) and the lessons are there for anyone who wants to listen.

Did I mention how thankful I am?

Did I say that you changed my life?

Good Morning, Spike

Spike isn't a very chatty boy most of the time, but every morning around six or seven (today he slept in until seven, he never got the memo about daylight savings) he tells me elaborate stories full of vague details and impersonations, gesticulations, dramatic pauses. He gropes for the right words, he tries a few out while he tries to jam his whole fist into his mouth. Is he telling me about his dreams? He looks thoughtful as he tries to grab my nose, wrinkles his face, farts, yawns and continues his story.
  "Boo," he says as he delicately rubs his fingertips along the rim of my nostril. He looks away and shuts his eyes briefly. "Is the story over?" I wonder.
  "Oop," he says and gives me a significant look. Then I watch as his eyelids droop and finally close and his breathing becomes regular and deep.

I was sitting at a round table with fancy white linens and all the trappings of a very fancy event. To my left, a movie screen was playing the opening to a modern remake of the "Red Shoes." The dancers were rehearsing over the credits and I nearly wept it was so beautiful. A gentleman sat down to my right and I realized with a shock that he was Martin Scorsese, complete with heavy black frames and bushy eyebrows. I wanted to ignore him, I felt so intimidated, but I figured its not every day that an opportunity like this comes along.  I extended my hand.
  "Mr Scorsese, I am Camille Dutch, and I really enjoyed your last movie," I said and immediately regretted it because I couldn't remember what his last movie was. I was rescued by the arrival on my right by one of the actresses from the "Red Shoes."
  "Charlotte," I said turning to her, "I'd like you to meet Mr Scorsese." He rose to shake her hand from across the table. I panicked because I realized I had no idea what her name was, "Charlotte" had just come tumbling out of my mouth.

  Spike, doing his "feed me" total body wiggle fetched me back to reality. I was disappointed, I was looking forward to an interesting conversation about movies.