Dec 10, 2008

Naughty and Nice and Goo

Edit made out a naughty and nice list. Her oldest sister, Mona, and Mona's guy got posted to the bad side. The three had spent days bellylaughing together during Mona's Thanksgiving visit, so I asked Edit to explain. Edit looked at me and uttered only, "Piercings." "But Mona was nice too," Edit added later. "I overheard Mona say to Lex, 'You ask Mom about getting our nails done. Mom just spoiled me at the store and I don't want to ask for more.'" I'm not sure Edit has a handle on how "not asking for more" is supposed to work. Maybe people like me is why religion was invented. Some of us need more than the Annual Santa to help lay the ground work for a functioning morality in our offspring.

When asked by her music teacher whether any of her big sisters had special talents, Edit answered, "Well, yes. Mona has her piercing and Lex likes to listen to music." There are days you cannot crawl deep enough to escape.

Tired of thinking about Mona's viper piercing ("It's for lesbians," a pierced and tattooed bartender told me the other night as I was practicing my routine), I pulled a switch. "What did you think of her wig?" I asked Edit and Lex, refering to the hairpiece that Mona bought after getting a Rhianna cut that made her call me from outside the salon and cry. "Goo," said Lex, using a soundbyte for "ick" that has that idiot "Word" expression beat to hell. "A WIG? SHE HAS A WIG?" Edit said, with an intensity consistent with finding a polar bear in the kitchen. Edit went on, but not by asking "Why?", or "What did her hair look like and how long before it grows out?", or "How does one make a wig, exactly, Mother?" No, Edit continued with, "Why didn't you tell me? I could have teased her about it!" "It's hard to tease her about it," I said, finally smartening up and keeping to myself my spiel on what Mona had said of the wig in defense: "It's human hair." Oh, right. Like a human skin suit. Or a scab jacket. Goo, goo, goo. Ick, ick, ick.

Except that except for the free association issues I have with the "human" part, I think that wearing a wig is kind of neat and Mona is easy with it. When she scratches her head, if she catches me staring, she wiggles the wig and winks. And you might not be able to tell it's a wig unless your eyes are used to the concept of hairline and scalp and both staying in place. Or it gets tossed on Cher. "Save that for me," I say to her, repeating the phrase she used as a little girl whenever she liked what I was wearing and wanted me to keep it for her to grow into. "I'm gonna need it when cancer strikes, " I start to say, but manage to garble into obscurity.

See what I mean? Good moms don't instigate, no matter the material. They don't stir things up for a reaction. That's what clever aunts and uncles are for. Good moms are equipped with vocal filters designed to encourage sibling peace and respect. On the other hand, I am always listed on the Nice side.

Goo. Pass it on.

Dec 7, 2008

Push Button Emotional Regulation

NYTimes reporter Kate Zernike tells me I can cultivate a calm temperament.

I experienced it once. Someone was yelling at me. Then I realized that someone was having a fit directed at the world and only consequently directed at me, and for once in my life I did not take it personally. Instead of spending most of his tirade preparing my yell-back, I stopped myself, dropped my shoulders, and relaxed my face to watchful. As my face went, so did my insides. I was inspired. It was like a drug. I'm going to try to do this for a week, starting now. I'm tired of worshiping at the altar of free assocation and whippity swift. As much as I admire rapid fire, it should not have full control over me. For help, Zernike directs us to Professor Gross's five methods of emotional regulation: situation avoidance; situation modification; attention deployment; and repression. All of these seems strange, kind of chicken. But if I employ #1 and don't get out of bed for a week, I'll have this licked. Except for the hiding under the sheets part.

As if a prequel, two weeks ago while traveling about in the car, I suggested to Edit that I needed a button. That if Edit could buzz me when I talked too much or to myself, then I could get conditioned to be more retrospective. Twenty minutes later, at the conclusion of some chatter of mine, Edit said simply, "I wish I had that buzzer now."
...
"Why don't you color your hair, Mom," Lex asked. "In fact, you can use my box of L'Oreal. Really. You use it." Another walk by shooting.
"I'm okay with my hair," I say. "I hate the bleached out blond frizz mid-life look."
"You've succeeded. It's green," she said.
...
As I worked the automatic checkout line at Ikea, a man came up to the woman who was helping me at self-serve and asked, "I'm getting a Christmas tree from the front lot. Where do I pay?" "You can pay here," the Ikea Elf replied. "How many trees do you want?"
...
From RS 1067:
Hirsute: shaggy, course, bristly. mnemomic: Her course suit should have felt better for something bespoke.
Is it just me, or does Rivers Cuomo singing "Don't Worry Baby" sound like someone's playing Brian Wilson on warped vinyl, but so yes to Lily Allen. Oh, gosh. Rolling Stone magazine. I have avoided it as if it were cocaine. I was the worst disc jockey of all times, and had the shortest career track. Worth every second of hell.
...
VF
It's a shame one has to travel across so many pages of CN advertising to get to the Editor's Letter. I almost didn't make it. I got to the Carlisle collection ads and began to think about the economic impact on suit lines - how hardly out of the depression early 40's they looked, followed by an ad for another crappy age defying hahaha cream foundation that made me wonder if I was reading Allure. Then Rolex. Then Revlon. Then Ford. Yikes. (Can't. Whatever. Won't.) Distracted as I get, I could barely refocus on font size 10, but I did.
"So here we are in the waning days of his [Bush's] presidency, and he's still at it. Bush and Cheny have been working feverishly to write as many as, by one count, 130 new regulations undermining federal laws protection not just our environment but also our civil liberties and personal safety. And with the nation's attention ping-ponging between Obama-mania and Dow-phobia, the White House is hoping we won't notice. It's the environmental equivalent of stuffing the china and silverware intor your suitcase before clearing out of the guest room. The New York Times and The Washington Post have been particularly diligent in shedding light on these final, grapsing acts of an administration[.]" Graydon Carter

So I guess what the Chicago Tribune needed was more Rolex and Louis Vitton ads, or maybe what it lacked was enough of a backbone to do actual investigative reporting to earn the circulation numbers to get those accounts. Wish I knew - but I hate that it filed.
...




...

Dec 5, 2008

Just Shoot Me. No, Really.

"Edit is taking after you," Lex said in reference to Edit's habit of leaving things where they fall from attention span. This from a girl who throws Q-Tips on the floor if the wastebasket is full and then blames me for buying such a small receptacle. "She takes after the three of us," I said, menacingly. Lex opened her mouth to say something then changed her mind. She's growing up, I thought. But not fast enough. "Why do you care what you look like anymore," she shot at me the other day, as I sat innocently at my computer completely unprepared for a roaming age attack.

Tonight I walked the dog through the center of the Ring Road golf course, away from the traffic and the lights. "I should take a flashlight and keep an eye out for stranger danger," I joked to Lex. "Don't do that. You'll draw attention to yourself," she replied, concerned for my safety. "White dog, white parka; I'm not thinking we're so discreet," I said. Still, I left the flashlight at home. Halfway through the park I figured I was worth more dead than alive and made a note to stuff my parka with flares and party laterns the next time I go out. I have to fund their college eduation somehow. Except maybe not so much with Mona. I'm not so focused on continuing her educational experiience. I got a series of texts from her yesterday and today, including a phone call at ten last night as I stood at the local printer shop runniing proofs on a print job. Life was good in the City, it seemed. This afternoon I got, "Let me know when you can schedule me in for extensions" quickly followed by a "Oops. I didn't mean to send that to you!" This isn't starving-student in NYC language. This is different language, the kind where somebody erroneously believes that I'm earning Penthouse wages. Either kind. I haven't made the call yet. I can already hear myself and I hate the sound and I shouldn't have to make the call.

I'm going back out to the park. It's almost midnight.

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