My New Horror Movie Genre

When I was a kid, I LOVED horror movies. My mom wouldn't let me watch them, but my dad was sick a lot and my sister and I stayed at Dawn Amaismeier's house many weekends while my mom was at the hospital. Louise, Dawn's mom, would take us to Erol's Video and we would rent two movies: a horror movie and a funny movie. We would watch the horror one first, get scared to death, and then watch a Mr. Bill movie or a comedy of sorts to mellow us out before bed. That was elementary school.

In middle school, my friend Jen Osborne and I watched the "Nightmare of Elm Street" movies repeatedly. We would then hang a Freddy Kreugar poster over her bed and go to sleep under it, scared to death and giggling singing "One, two, Freddy's coming for you." Why? No idea. What is it in us that loves to be scared?

Then something happened: Right around the time that I had Alexandra I stopped being able to watch horror movies. I can't do it. I get too freaked out. Maybe it has something to do with being a mother, having these two little lives to protect, and all that, but I cannot for the life of me watch a horror movie. But I can and do read/watch dystopic/apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic books/movies. In fact, I'm pretty addicted to them.

Name a dystopic novel and I have read it--most likely twice: all Margaret Atwood books (The Handmaid's Take, Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood), George Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, Cormac McCarthy's The Road...the list goes on. And movies? Fuggetaboutit. I watch them all: The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, any stupid thing about a meteor hitting planet earth and we're all swallowed up by a tsunami and I'm on it like white on rice.

And then I go bonkers with fear. I strategize on how to save my kids from the Cloverfield monster, lament that I have no survival skills (can't shoot a gun, find clean water, start a fire), and think of starting a canned food/bottled water secret stash in case of a pandemic that we just happen to survive. I am not exaggerating when I say that I lay in bed at night thinking of how to get my kids, who sleep on opposite ends of our 800 sq foot apartment, to safety if there were an earthquake.

So, although I have given up the original genre of horror flicks, I feel I have transplanted myself into a much scarier and more realistic genre of dyspotic/apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic film and fiction. And as much as Freddy Kruegar scared the bejesus out of me in 7th grade, the possibility of a the waterless flood that will wipe out humanity scares me even more.

Maybe I need some anti-anxiety meds, or is this just motherhood making me crazy?

(On my list of things to learn in case the world implodes and I survive with my kids: build a fire, skin and eat small animals, forage for non-poisonous foods, shoot multiple types of guns, find clean water, self-defense...Any other suggestions?)

The Trifecta of Gross

My two oldest girlfriends, Kim and Robyn, were here for the weekend. We did the touristy stuff, talked so much that I think my laryngitis might come back, and ate lots of cupcakes and drank lots of wine. It wasn't as much a girls weekend as a weekend with them hanging with my family. Since Nico is still breastfed, he had to be along or I'd have to pump. Finding a place to pump in the city is even more challenging than finding a bathroom that doesn't make you want to retch, so Nico became a girl for the weekend. Well, you can't explain that to an almost 3 year old who is going on 13, so Alexandra and Adam tagged along, too. But, since Robyn and Kim are awesome and have families and get it, they were cool with it all.

We took on Top of the Rock at 8pm on Saturday night. Alexandra was being exceeding good, so instead of taking her home for bed Adam and her came along. While we stopped mid-level to pee, Alexandra was crawling around under some benches and came up with a circular piece of something. I thought it was a piece of veggie booty, but no, it was a piece of CHEWED GUM.

This gum had been chewed, rolled into a ball, dropped onto the ground, under a bench in a place where hundreds of people visit every day. It was gray in color, covered with dirt, and Alexandra immediately fell in love with it. She HAD to hold onto it with all her energy. It went in her pocket, out of her pocket, and then she started to KISS it. Yes, kiss it. I could not wrestle it from her hands without a full-blown tantrum occurring (keep in mind that she'd had only a 1/2 hour nap in the stroller that day and it was about 9pm at that time, her normal bedtime being 7:30-8).

And with that, I had to let the gross gum go. I had to let her snuggling up to it, whisper sweet nothings into it, and rub it all over her fingers. Eventually it got dropped and she forgot about it, but not until we were back on street level and I went to retrieve it from her coat pocket while Kim took her potty.

But that was the perfect trifecta of gross: chewed gum, found on a floor of an insanely public space, meeting the lips of my child. Ewwwwww.

Toddler Logic

Alexandra is at the point where everything she says is just freakin' hilarious. I need to write more of these things down & make some more movies, but I just never have time to write them and as soon as the camera comes out that inhabited babble changes. It's just not quite the same.

She is full of logic and cause and effect statements lately. Yesterday, I rolled off my Dansko clog. Anyone out there who wears Danskos knows what I mean. I was walking along happily to work, stepped on a twig or something, and my entire foot flopped under me. It didn't feel bad at all at first, but then after pumping in the morning I went to stand up and couldn't. I was a total gimp. I limped around the rest of the day, had to come home early and have Nicole pick up Alexandra because I couldn't walk the 12 blocks to daycare, and I sat around trying to ice and elevate the rest of the day--while watching two kids all night because Adam had to work late.

I was icing my foot with green beans, and I told Alexandra I had a boo boo. A couple hours later I was nursing Nico and he bit me. Yes, the advent of his first tooth has also brought about a desire to gnaw on my boob. He bit me and I said, "Ouch Nico! No biting!" and Alexandra said, "Cause Mommy, if you get a boo boo on your boobie you'll have to put green beans on it!"

Okay--that's totally not as funny as it was when said. Humph.

Preschool Wars

I am not sure how it works in the rest of our fine country, but preschool here in Park Slope Brooklyn is something you begin to talk about after you are safely out of your first trimester of pregnancy. Getting into a preschool in this neighborhood is akin to getting into Harvard--shoot, an Ivy might be easier (after all, I got into one...). But preschool in the Slope is full of ass-kissing, paying fees to apply, getting financially butt-raped IF you get in, and then still continuously second guessing your decision to send your kid to this or that preschool. It's discussed ad nauseam on the playground, over brunch, at the gym, in whispers between yoga mats...It's sick.

Alexandra is in daycare, and it's a wonderful. It's not the super chic daycare of the 'hood, but she loves it, is learning so much, and actually cries when I come to get her many days of the week b/c she doesn't want to leave her friends. We have never questioned our daycare's integrity, but living in this area makes you wonder if maybe, just maybe, there's something better out there.

So we looked. We decided to go for the preschool that's literally 5 steps from our house. If we're going to pay so much more, convenience had better play a part. So I went on the tour. My response: "Meh." The classrooms looked like every elementary school I have been to, but elementary school is FREE. Then we went on the playdate interview and the woman in charge spelled Alexandra's name wrong. Seriously? Alexandra? I mean, it's not a challenging name. Oh, and btw, they misspelled a really simple word like "street" in their pamphlet. And one last thing--they used Comic Sans as the font in their pamphlet. Gag.

After all that, our $75 was already in (application fee, you know, preschool fee = same as college application fee) and we got the letter in the mail that we had been waitlisted. You know what you have to do if you're waitlisted? Call. Every. Day. And. Beg. Eff that.

So we're staying at our daycare one more year. Nico starts this summer. And I'm more than cool with that. If my kid doesn't get into Harvard b/c she didn't get into this preschool, I'm totally cool with that, too.

Hat Tip

Walking to the train today, a much older gentleman tipped his hat and smiled at me. It was the most adorable and endearing thing anyone has done towards/for me in ages. Such a simple gesture, so lost in the decades that have followed this man's first hat-tip, probably as a spry young thing a long time ago and done with some awkwardness...or maybe he was a natural from day one--a rico suave of his time--who tipped his hat at the ladies and they swooned. God knows, if I hadn't been running late and pissed that I had left my coffee on the counter I might have paused to swoon a bit myself. Who cares that he was probably in his mid-70's?

Regardless, it made my day.
Wanted to share.

Little Oscar Diva

I have been watching the Oscars annually since back in college. I have watched them with many different groups of friends, with various boys, and under the influence of several variables, but tonight was a first: I watched them with my two year old.

Alexandra goes to bed super easily, but tonight, around 9:15, she came out to the living room/kitchen and said she couldn't sleep and wanted to hang out with us. She sat on the couch, ate my very late dinner with me, and laughed at Ben Stiller's Avatar face and tail, said the girls were pretty had had pretty dresses, and commented when each guy had a beard like Grandpa. I LOVED having her there, giggling after I laughed and trying to be so grown up. But eventually I had to insist that she went back to bed, and she did so without a complaint.

But it was a precursor as to how much fun we'll have one day when she can chill with us on the couch.

Love that baby girl (and she really like the dresses with sparkles and the blue lights).

Calling Parents

Adam took today off to write a eulogy for Grandpop, therefore he picked up the kids and I was able to work late. This is the first time I have done this all year and it was awesome. I guess most folks wouldn't consider working until 5:30 on a Friday their idea of a good time, but damn, I was able to get so much work done it was like I was moving at superhuman pace. Wow.

One thing I have a hard time doing is calling parents. We have been forewarned about letting the kids have our cell phone numbers--next thing you know a kid texts you a picture of them in their panties and you're getting framed for having intimate relations with them. And shoot, daytime cell phone minutes are expensive. I have three periods off a day, but two of them I pump breastmilk and that leaves one to do work, copies, talk with the guidance counselors about kids, etc. By the time I get the kids to bed at night, eat, and clean up to work it's around 10--too late to call home. With these factors, I'm not the best at calling.

So today I called parents. I learned a lot, and it was heartbreaking. Here's a few examples why:

1. Call #1: Student's grandmother had called asking for an update. I called her back. She's taking care of said student, his twin brother, their 18 yo brother, and a 10 year old sister b/c their mother died two years ago. This is the FOURTH 9th grade student of mine who has lost a mother in the past two years. She also has three other kids from someone else. She is overwhelmed. She tells me she's giving my student's twin brother over to the city (foster care, group home) b/c she's "lost him to the streets and ain't nothing you can do once that happens." She was trying to decide what to do about my student--should she give him up too? She asks my opinion. Man.

2. Call #2: Nice student, good skills and sweet as anything, but always late to 1st period. Tell her mom and her mom says, "We just moved to a shelter in the Bronx, it's a long ride." I say, "Oh, I didn't know, I'm so sorry, I had heard student lived near 14th Street in the City." She says, "We were moved to another shelter so now she has to commute." This girl commutes two hours each way to our high school. From a shelter and goes "home" to a shelter. Ugh.

3. Call #3: Student who's mom died unexpectedly while I was on maternity leave. Call his sister to give her an update, sister with custody isn't home, talk to other sister who says they're having a hard time with student and aren't sure what to do with him. They are trying to get dad to take him/keep him, but his dad doesn't want him. Sisters are at a loss. Insert heart breaking here.

I made about 20 calls, and many were just plain fine, but those resonate in me tonight as I sit on my couch.

Goodbye Grandpop

Adam's Grandpop, Howard Jensen, passed away today. He was 89 years old and lived a long and successful life, but the loss of anyone still stings. I have been with Adam for nine years now, so I met Grandpop when he was around 80. He was a dapper old man who cruised the Hartford area in his Cadillac visiting friends and often wearing a classy hat. But the last few years were hard on his health and he gradually started slipping down that slope that many old folks do: broken hip, slight dementia, pneumonia, and so forth. But he is at peace now.

I am not sure what I believe about the afterlife. I REALLY want to believe that there is some place where we can be reunited with all those we lost across our lives. I can't explain how much I'd love to see my dad again, and seeing my friends Heidi and Eric would be just. . .I can't even put words to it. But I am not sure I believe that happens, even as much as I truly hope it is.

But tonight I was thinking about Grandpop's life and the end of it, and I thought that he could be, for the first time in over 30 years, with his wife again. Osa Jensen--from whom Alexandra received her middle name--passed away in her late 50's and Grandpop never remarried. It made me happy to think that perhaps, in some alternate plane of existence, Grandpop and Grandma Osa are happily reunited.

That lessened the sting a bit.

Rest in peace, Grandpop. You leave a legacy of wonderful people behind you.

Winter Olympics Blahs

The Winter Olympics have come and gone, and I must say I was not impressed. I was trying to evaluate why I was so uninspired by it all as I ran on the treadmill last weekend and chose to watch "The Matrix" over watching the best athletes in the world compete.

One, is that there are just too many clothes on those folks. I like to see some muscle, some sweat, some gold chains and hairstyles. I like to see the whole person, and the Winter Olympics is just too shrouded in hats, layers, etc. Meh.

But what I really think turned me off was one of the first performances I accidently caught one night: ice dancing. First, I had no idea ice dancing was an Olympic sport. I kept waiting for the couple to do some complicated turns, jumps, something that wasn't so corny and theatrical--something demonstrating strong athleticism--and it just never happened. I turned to Adam and exclaimed, "What the heck was that? They didn't go anything!" And then I was introduced to ice dancing by the announcers. Already not a fan.

But then these whack Russians get out there practically dressed in blackface "dancing" to Australian Aboriginal music, doing things like man pulling the woman's hair, their facial expressions reeking of racist sentiments of Aboriginal peoples being primitive, etc. I felt like it had to be some sort of Saturday Night Live skit: How could this be for real? Oh, but it was. I was appalled that the Olympic committee let this happen. I mean, seriously, would they let someone do a routine in blackface? And the BEST thing about this whole scenario is that they had previously done this routine at the World Championships and offended everyone, so they LIGHTENED the skin tone in their outfits to improve the situation. WTH?!

And after that I was out. I mean, really, Olympics? Really?