only a plain old letter

Dear Aunt,

It is snowing again. I always thought we got plenty of winter in NYC, but I’m beginning to understand now why people head to the tropics in February.

J *****and I go to an “Itsy Bitsy Yoga” class on Saturday mornings. Today was special because Daddy came, too (good thing, too, because otherwise there would have been only two kids and two moms, and that’s kind of boring). J*****’s friend I*** was fascinated to see a Daddy doing yoga. It isn’t really yoga in a strict sense; it’s more an introduction to the traditional yoga asanas with some improv thrown in. (So Steve was really good at it.)

I used to do yoga regularly before J***** was born, but I haven’t done any at all since he arrived on the scene. There are such things as pre-natal yoga classes, and at times I think I’d enjoy that but the closest one seems to be in Bedford, which is a town north of here. Since I only have a limited window of time when I could participate in such a thing (basically the short time when J*****’s at school), I haven’t seriously investigated. Years ago I did Kundalini yoga for a while, which is supposed to elevate a certain awareness in the practitioner. As far as I could tell, it only elevated my heart-rate. I do know that one of the most difficult things I have ever done was the “breath of fire” in the bow position. This is where you lie on your belly, grab your ankles with your wrists and attempt to straighten your knees while you balance on your pelvis. Then you hyperventilate. There’s no way I could possibly do this now, since it would flatten my fetus into my backbone, among other things. But I can’t remember why I ever wanted to to begin with. Luckily, “Itsy Bitsy Yoga” is more about the kids having fun than performing any of the asanas correctly or attaining a higher level of consciousness.

I feel vaguely guilty because I can’t wait for this child to be born, not so much because we’re excited about his arrival (which of course, we are) but because I’m so damn tired of being pregnant. The first time everything was new and it was something of an adventure, and even the uncomfortable stuff was tolerable because it was all part of the experience. This time I feel like a breeding cow, or something. OK, being cooped up in the house all winter doesn’t help. But the inconvenient stuff is more inconvenient than the first time, and I find I don’t have as much patience with J***** because I’m tired and clumsy and I don’t want to crawl around on the floor fishing toys out from under the sofa. And I don’t want to yell at him for being a toddler, so I just get morose, instead. It has been an unremarkable, routine pregnancy up to this point, and for that I’m grateful, but I could still do without the daily heartburn, the annoying Braxton-Hicks contractions, the muscle cramps that rudely wake me up from a deep sleep with my calf muscle in a steel knot, and the hideous maternity clothes. Of course none of this is the baby’s fault. Pregnancy is just an undignified condition.
“Glow,” my foot.

I guess I don’t “do” pregnancy well. There was a woman in our co-op in New York who told me she really loved being pregnant, complications and all. (I haven’t failed to notice that she only did it once, though.) A few years ago there was a book that was really popular called “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy.” The author apparently “did” pregnancy excellently; she did it four times. Now she’s written “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Toddlers,” and “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Birthday Parties…” I’m waiting for “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Menopause.” Can’t be far off.

The apartment still hasn’t sold, and it’s now cost us tens of thousands of dollars and every new delay makes smoke come out of my ears, but there’s not a lot I can do about it. The buyer is offering to put down 60% of the sale price in cash, and the last thing they did was request his most recent W-2, which wasn’t required in the submittal package. What are they so freaking worried about?! I don’t want to sound as desperate as we actually are, and I don’t want to p*** off the Board and prompt them to drag their feet even more, so all I can do is sit here and stew. And because we spend most of our time indoors because it’s so cold outside, I see every little thing that needs to be painted, stripped, sanded, redone, replaced… and there’s no money to do it with. Sometimes things just don’t go the way they were supposed to. It should be an exercise in acceptance, or patience, or something. I would make a lousy Buddhist. Thank God I’m just an Episcopalian.

I guess I should go check on the boys. They went outside to shovel and they seem to have disappeared. There’s only two inches of snow, so I know they didn’t fall into a snowbank, but the last I saw of them they were talking to a neighbor and his Irish setter and the neighbor and the dog have gone on their way and it’s started to get dark. So I’ll try to write again another time.


Love,

musings of a... lonely mom

Thanks to my son's random waving of the television remote, I rediscovered The X-Files recently, in re-runs on the SciFi channel.

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. It kills an hour in the afternoon that I don't have to find creative ways to fill before my husband gets home and I finally have someone other than a toddler to talk to. But when the commercials it's sandwiched between are for male wet-dream movies, after-shave and "find your new career at (fill in the blank) institute" after an hour I start to feel like a slacker.

I got into The X-Files after it had been on for several seasons, when they were really hitting their stride. And I got married and found --ahem-- other things to do with my Friday nights toward the end of their run, so consequently I never saw the first or the last episodes. I guess that doesn't make me much of an x-phile; I don't even know what happened in the final episode. Some days I think I ought to buy the CD or find some place that rents it, just to satisfy my curiosity... but I haven't done it. Maybe I just need some unfinished business in my life.

I have to admit, my favorites were the mythology episodes and the really tongue-in-cheek stuff, like "Post-Modern Prometheus," "Small Potatoes," and "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space.'" And I loved the low-key bravado of Scully and Mulder. There was a mythology trilogy re-run this week (cigarette smoking man must have been the best villain of the 90s) where in the concluding episode Skinner got to say something to the effect of "pay attention you smug son-of-a-bitch, because this is where you get to pucker up and kiss my ass." (I've always wanted to be able to say something like that with a straight face!) I worked on a show in New York that was contemporary to The X-Files, but the writing for it never thrilled me that way, even though it was about NYC detectives and they should have had some choice lines now and then, too. But then, that show was never funny, as I remember it... the plot line was usually just some really ugly story "ripped from the headlines." (Now you probably know who produced it.) Not that I could have written better, but I can appreciate it when I hear it.

I suspect that my rekindled romance with The X-Files will come to an end again in the spring, when it's a lot easier to get my kid outside without the boots, coat, hat and gloves that are required by a New England winter, and all the resulting resistance. And I doubt I'll be watching much television after the baby comes in June, when I'll have two kids to handle (and I hope I discover that I have the resources to deal with that eventuality). And once I feel I've regained some of my own sexuality maybe I won't need to live vicariously through the lives of two fictitious heroes. (The first pregnancy was exciting; the second is too long and less self-affirming. But that's another post.) So I may never see that final episode. But do me a favor and don't tell me about it... it's always out there if I need it.

2 lists

Things we've replaced in the 3 months since we bought our house:

three ceiling light fixtures
four faucet sets
three toilets
one dishwasher
one clothes washer, one dryer
one outdoor post lamp
one bare ceiling bulb with a three head track-light system
four ceiling fixture reflectors
three storm windows
endless lightbulbs

(only the beginning; if we'd sold our apartment in the time we intended we'd have ripped out a whole lot more stuff and replaced it already...)

Birds we've seen in our back yard:

male and female northern cardinals
male and female house finches
male and female downy woodpeckers
two male white-breasted nuthatches
two titmice
two bluejays
two mourning doves
countless black-capped chickadees
myriad dark-eyed juncoes
two carolina wrens
american crows

maybe not so impressive but when you've lived in New York City for 17 years it's exciting to see anything that isn't a pigeon, sparrow or seagull.

missive II

February 3, 2006


Dear Aunt,

Well, I gave up in my battle-of-the-birdfeeder against the grey squirrels and went out and bought a feeder called a “Yankee Flipper.” It has a motorized perch on the bottom that activates if anything heavier than a songbird tries to sit on it. The sales clerk played a video for me that showed a squirrel trying to plunder this thing and it kept flinging him off into the rhododendrons --- it was really funny! So yesterday morning J***** and I replaced our platform feeder with the “Yankee Flipper” and crouched in the kitchen waiting for our squirrels to try it… and it works TOO well! The squirrels looked at it and wouldn’t even attempt to try and climb it! So much for our free show. We had to go and entertain ourselves by doing laundry instead.

We bought a new washer and dryer at the Home Depot last month while they were having a big sale, and those were delivered yesterday; I have NEVER been SO IMPRESSED with an appliance in my life before! We had acquired an old Kenmore set with the purchase of the house, but the washer used an awful lot of water, and the dryer took an hour and a half to dry an average load of clothes… plus the timer on the dryer was broken so if you forgot you had clothes in there it would run until you remembered some three hours later. So we thought that we could probably save some money in the long run on water and electricity by upgrading to something from this century…

J***** gets very excited whenever somebody comes to deliver something. He wants to watch them install it/put it together, whatever, so he was right there when they brought the washer and dryer in. Like everything these days, the controls are computerized, so when you turn on the power all these gold and green lights come on and it makes a chiming sound. (Luckily the power button is out of J*****’s reach, and there is a child-lock feature.) He demanded that we get some laundry to wash so he could see what else it did. The washer is a front-loader, so we sat on the floor and watched it fill with water and tumble the clothes for maybe ten minutes! It uses probably half as much water as the old one, and I think it holds more laundry. The dryer has a light inside the drum that comes on when you open the door – imagine that! It dried a giant load of clothes in 4o minutes, and they were so soft, and completely dry. Ok, I realize that I had no opinions about washing machines or dryers when I lived with my parents and since then I’ve always had to use whatever coin-operated machines were available, but I had no idea I would be so happy with a new appliance. My sister-in-law, who just got a new range, says, “Isn’t it sad when the only excitement you get in your life is over new appliances?” I say hey, take it where you can get it!

The next home improvement we get to be excited about is replacing all the old toilets. I knew when we bought the house that the toilets were an odd shape and thought, “We’re going to have a heck of a time finding replacement seats for those” and I’ve scrubbed and scrubbed the bowls and can’t get the stains off the water line, but the thing that put us over the edge is that the stupid things don’t do what they’re supposed to do! We have to plunge them constantly. We spent all last weekend plunging the damn toilets. I was ready to put a portosan in the garage or start driving to the Duncan Donuts to use the bathroom! So Sunday night Steve did some research and on Monday I went to Foley and Sons Faucetorium and ordered three new American Standard toilets. Steve thinks he can install them himself. The lady who manages the bathroom portion of the store said that if we have trouble they can come out and help us out. Of course, they’ll charge us, but I was relieved that they didn’t give us the “and are you a licensed plumber” nonsense that you would get in New York if you tried to do anything yourself. It’s funny really; I knew when we bought this place that I’d want to replace the wallpaper and the carpets, but I had no idea I’d be desperate to replace the toilets!

I have lots of grand decorating ideas for the house that I suppose will happen one day, but I think the people who owned it before us spent money on decorating and not on the (boring) infrastructure stuff like ventilation, plumbing and electricity. And luckily I’m married to an architect who came up through the trades, so he can wire a light fixture instead of going out and buying a stick-on battery powered light that lasts less than a year (there were several of those hanging out in closets and stuff when we moved in). So we’ll get all the basic appliances, insulation, thermostats, etc out of the way and then gradually I can buy furniture, window treatments, carpet and wallpaper. I’ve got a file folder where I stuff all my decorating ideas.

We did get J***** a “big boy” bed because we’ll need the crib for the next one come summer. We told him it was coming the day before it was due to be delivered, and when it arrived he went tearing up and down the stairs after the delivery men, and danced in the hallway while they were installing it… he loves to lie on it and read, but I can’t get him to sleep on it any better than I could when he was in the crib!

Here’s a picture of him “trying it out” just after it came.

Love,

(Sorry, blog friends, my Micasa seems to have disappeared. I'll try to restore it and add the picture another time...)

missive I

I haven't forgotten about this blog; it just seems like there are so many other things taking up all my available time these days. So as long as you don't mind, I'm posting some letters I've written to an elderly relative... they say what's going on in our lives but gives me a short-cut so I don't have to re-compose! I'll get back to blogging one of these days, I swear...

January 21, 2006


Dear Aunt,

It shouldn’t take so much effort to sit down and write a letter, especially when it’s a more pleasant thing to do than running the vacuum or doing the laundry (both of which seem to take up an awful lot of my time lately… ) but I can’t think of why I do it much more seldom than I intend!

The weather here in Massachusetts has been glorious the last two days (for January in New England) – temperatures in the high 40s and low 50s with sunshine. So of course we want to do things outdoors before the temperature drops and the snow flies again. We had a vicious rainstorm on Wednesday with high winds that felled some trees here in town, but luckily it only brought down a few dead branches in our yard. I was going to pick them up yesterday afternoon with J*****'s help but when he got up from his nap he was a little too cranky to fight with him over socks and shoes and jackets so we didn’t do it. It’ll be something to do today, after shopping and other errands. J***** has been invited to a birthday party tomorrow for another little boy at his preschool, so I have to go out and get a gift today… there’s a toy store in town where I got J***** a wonderful soft inflatable ball for Christmas, and he enjoys it so much that I think I’ll get one for his friend. I like it because if he does happen to toss it in the house it won’t break anything.

We are slowly getting adjusted to our new house. I think it’s a very comfortable house and that we’re going to be happy living here, but often it still feels as if we’re living in someone else’s house. There are a few reasons for this but the main one I think is that the former owner’s decorating tastes are not the same as mine! She liked raspberry and mauve and watery teal, all colors I don’t particularly care for. And she seems to have been an indifferent housekeeper. When we moved in there was 40 years worth of crud inside the kitchen drawers and cabinets – UGH! I know the people we bought the house from were only responsible for 12 years worth, but it was really gross. If it hadn’t been only 20 degrees outside I would have taken the drawers outside with a wire -brush and the garden hose. As it was I had to cover every surface with liner paper before I could bring myself to put our dishes and utensils away. The carpets are not very clean, either.

I’m in the process now of preparing one of the front bedrooms for the new baby. (By the way, it’s another boy, due the first week of June. The results of the ultrasound and amniocentesis show that he’s healthy and active!)The former owners had two teenage girls when they lived here, both of whom had moved out on their own by the time their parents sold the house. I don’t think the teenagers’ bedrooms had been cleaned since they moved out; maybe not since they became teenagers! The room I’m working on now has wallpaper that looks like clouds in a blue sky, which might not have been so bad if it had been in better shape. (In general I hate most of the wallpaper they’d put up in this house. They did all their own papering, but they weren’t very good at it, so the seams are crooked and ragged and are coming unglued in places.) What didn’t really register when we inspected the house prior to buying was that this room was covered with glow-in-the-dark decals. They’re on every surface – the walls, the ceiling, the doors, the windows. Some of the phosphorescent stars on the ceiling are made of plastic and were stuck up there with something that has the consistency of chewed gum. Needless to say that stuff doesn’t come off completely, so we’ll just have to paint over the residue. The decals can be scraped off, but then they stick to the floor and clog up the vacuum cleaner brush. I was going to leave the wallpaper until I saw how grubby it was, so now I think we’ll strip it and paint – at least then everything will be clean! There was melted candle wax that had dripped all down one wall, the baseboard heat register and the floor, and gummy glue from stickers on the window moldings. The curtains were so filthy I threw them away. (I thought they were ugly, anyway.) The girl whose room it had been painted a boy’s name on the ceiling with glow-in-the-dark paint. I’m sure Christine and I weren’t fastidious as teenagers but we would never have been allowed to treat our parents’ house that way, even in our own rooms! I scratched my initials on one of the rockers of a rocking chair that was in my room when I was a little girl and I remember what hell I caught for that!

One major frustration is that there’s so much we want to do with the house but our funds for home-improvement are very limited at the moment. The admissions committee at our co-op turned down our buyers’ application so we had to put the apartment back on the market. We’re back in contract with another buyer, but for $11,000 less than the first offer. We’ve been carrying the costs of both properties for a lot longer than we had expected to, though. We thought we would be closing the sale of the apartment two weeks after we moved out, then we hit one snag after another, ending with the co-op’s rejection of the first buyers just before Christmas. I was a little put off – I was on the board of directors of the co-op for two years and they refused to tell me why they rejected our buyers. I doubt we should have a problem with this new guy – he’s putting down 60% in cash. But since I don’t know what they found objectionable about the first couple it still makes me nervous.

Something I’ve been enjoying here that I couldn’t in the city are all the birds in the backyard. We put up a feeder outside the sun porch that we can see from the kitchen or the porch. So far this winter our bird visitors include a pair of cardinals, some Carolina wrens, blue jays, chickadees, mourning doves, juncos, woodpeckers and titmice. Oh, and a white-breasted nuthatch. My favorites are the cardinals. They actually seem to have personalities, so they’re the only ones that we’ve “named.” The female makes her presence known every day by flying repeatedly into two windows, one panel of glass in the sun porch and one of the livingroom windows. I was very concerned about this behavior at first because I thought she was going to kill herself, but so far she hasn’t. I call her “Dipsy” because I’m sure she’s demented. Her mate we call “Dude” as in, “dude, can’t you keep her from doing that?!” It’s so different from living in NYC, where the only birds we saw were sparrows and pigeons. There are a couple of grey squirrels I was ready to kill, though. They would climb onto the feeder and gorge themselves until there wasn’t anything left for the birds. I finally bought a “wildlife block” of seeds and corn and other stuff and put it on the ground under the feeder, since it looked like I was going to end up feeding those squirrels one way or another. There was still one squirrel that preferred to eat out of the birdfeeder, but I threw ice cubes at him until he got the hint. The black squirrels are better behaved, and they chase the grey ones. I consider them my allies.

I need to get started on the errands and stuff before too much more of the day gets away. I’ll try to write again sooner rather than later.

Love,