What's Biting You?

Today’s weather does not match my menacing mood, like it always does in those bad British horrors from the ‘60s that I adore…

There are no studio-generated bolts of lightning, followed by thunderclaps of falling stock pots. No buckets of water splashed by a bored film grip against the French doors of Dracula’s virgin victim, asleep in her four poster bed, neck voluptuously exposed. Instead, it’s a cheery June afternoon that leaks into my gloom, the kind of day when brides raise veils to their grooms and graduates toss caps to the clouds…

It’s all wrong, this creepy scene on a breathtaking day. I am walking alongside Washington Cemetery on Bay Parkway, the skeletal tracks of the McDonald Avenue El in the distance. There is no one upright for blocks around, except me. Spooked by my surroundings, I stride quickly in my orange, stacked espadrilles, but there’s no escape…

Awareness of my mortality bites me, like fake fangs to the jugular. I’ve been sensing the shadow of Christopher Lee for some months now, visualizing his widow’s peak approaching my nape:  I turn 50 in a week.

My breath catches under my collarbone. I swoon, my falling form very filmic, sheathed as it is in billowy Dacron polyester. I recover, and peer over the graveyard fence. Tombstones crowded, any which way, like afterthoughts, like Williamsburg architecture. Then, in the way that a phony Hammer Studio storm stops abruptly at dawn, my fear evaporates in the sunshine of my defiance. Arms raised to shield his bloodshot eyes from the rising sun of my resolve, the prince of darkness cowers before the garlic garlanding my rising ire.

“Back up you bloodsucker!” I cry.

But I’m overacting. It’s not so much my mortality that’s bugging me on this spooky stroll. The prospect of death is a familiar, annoying awareness which comes and goes, like a wedgie in my Levis. It’s not death, it’s aging, and specifically, the resentment I have with this term: aging gracefully, that lurks in the catacombs under my hot-rolled heroine’s hairdo.

What exactly is graceful about aging? Diminishing eyesight and incontinence? Trick knees and night sweats? The slow and deliberate break down of collagen?  Granted, cradling my future grandbaby, swaddled in quilted cotton is a graceful vision for sure, as is the image of knitting needles dancing from my fingertips. I don’t knit btw. Not yet. Learning to knit a pancho would be cool, especially in the context of a groovy knitting circle with a barista foaming milk in the background.

But to most things I associate with aging I hold up crossed arms of resistance:  I hate chains on reading glasses, and comfortable shoes that defy all rules of aesthetics. I do find tea culture somewhat cozy, hand-mixed herbal teas in charming, mismatched china cups. But I’d much prefer to continue downing coffee heedlessly, if not for my already fitful sleep, due dwindling melatonin levels and those night time toilet runs...

I staunch the flow at the jugular, compose myself, and seek answers about aging from the family of obelisks I can just make out over the wall:

“Hey Rubins!” I call out. “Any suggestions on living well now, after 50, before I join you in eternity?”

No answer, which I take to mean that I should come up with my own damn bucket list.

So here it is, before I cross my hands over my punctured decolletteand pull the lid shut at dawn:

First and foremost the lofty list:

1. reduce my carbon, espadrilled footprint.

2. plant trees in barren neighborhoods

3. repair ball hoops in playgrounds around the city

4. plant tomatoes in illegal driveways

5. repurpose clamshell containers in meaningful ways

6. Love more deeply

7. cultivate roses to recapture the real rose fragrance I remember from childhood

8. close a freezer door so it stays shut

Those are my splashy drops in the pail...

The next three on my bucket list are unoriginal and wholly self-serving:

     9. return to Paris in springtime (and also in August, when the Parisians are    gone)

     10. eat pineapple pork, sway my hips, and swim with the dolphins on Waikiki Beach

     11. drag race on the autobahn

     12. surf in a storm at sea

And finally, number 13, because we have to end on thirteen. After all, this is a Hammer Studio production:

     13. I want to firmly, tenderly, hold the hand of a child, not my own, as she lurches tentatively on ice skates, all around the perimeter of a rink for the very first time.

If I can lose myself in a selfless act of patient love like that one, then I can close my false lashes and lock the lid for good.

Passing graveyards or not, each day presents an opportunity to ask yourself this question: What’s biting you?

Written by Maria Newsom On June 29, 2014

Revised Friday the 13th, 2017           

Daddy's A Player

I don’t play.

I cook. I sort darks from whites. I wash, dry and fold. I sign class trip forms. I lead the boys to the dental hygienist for bi-annual cleanings with chocolate toothpaste.

But I don’t play.

I don’t sit down for those strategy board games: Risk, Stratego, Axis & Allies, Africa Quest. I don’t build snowmen, play Wii or design treasure maps that lead to chests buried on the beach at dawn.  

Daddy does those things.

Oh, maybe I played in the beginning, a little. I hopped gingerbread men over the molasses swamp in Candyland and pushed the pawns of Chutes and Ladders. Maddening Milton Bradley classics, you taste victory, but inevitably lose these games which stretch out 'til dinnertime and end in tears. Mine.

For a while I tried to engage the boys in crafts: shamrock stamps carved from potatoes at St. Patty’s, hand turkeys at Thanksgiving, sugar cookie decorating at Christmas.

The sugar cookies were most popular due to, well, the sugar, but overall, the boys’ lukewarm response to crafting did not embolden me to crack craft books with 3-D diagrams and hard-to-find supplies.

Then it was cooking: dipping slippery chicken breasts in flour, then egg, then bread crumbs. I was inspired. The boys weren’t. Breading cutlets left them cold.

I even pitched chores as play. Today the little one is competent at filling muffin pans with cupcake liners, watering African violets and dusting the piano with “lemonade spray” (Pledge). But he isn’t fooled. These are chores and little man gets paid for his time.

Then I just gave up.

That’s not quite right. It’s not that I went cold turkey on the hand turkeys.

I still sled. And the little one follows along to my old school Tae-Bo tapes, kicking at the TV and punching the air.

I still lead raspberry picking expeditions, but I was plucking black caps and red raspberries long before the kiddos came along. And I’ll carry on without them when they realize they can stay home and just wait for me to return from the thickets, sweaty, scratched up and eaten alive, swinging milk pails brimming with nature’s candy.

Notice a pattern?

Last weekend we were back at Lefrak Lakeside in Prospect Park with friends. The ice was thawed, the Zambonis sent to long-term parking. 50 bucks for a backache, I bent over for an eternity to lace 3 sets of roller skates. Then I failed to fasten wrist and knee pads securely and readjusted these for another eternity. Finally we hit the rink. The boys clung to me like invasive vines.

I felt a resentment coming on.

No one helped me learn to skate. I fell on my arse plenty until I was looping figure eights on the asphalt in front of my house. Learning to skate is just ugly, there’s no way around this. And no one can do it for you. Despite this obvious fact, the mom who got us here in the first place, hosted my parasites. Her trunk became the great oak around which my ten-year-old twined himself until I said ENUF! I wouldn’t let them attach themselves to the rink walls either. By day’s end the brothers had loosened their stranglehold on stable supports. Virginia creepers no more, they’d stepped up to roller derby robots with jerky limbs. Ugly. But they were on their way…

The pattern? The kids follow my lead now. They do what I want to do.

Here’s the question: How guilty do I feel that I don’t do stuff just for my kids anymore?

Here’s my answer: not very.

I must get this from Nana. Nana doesn’t play either. She picks the “family movie.” It’s never animated and never G. It’s usually PG-13, occasionally R. She likes those formulaic sports films. The ones  where — against all odds — the crappy team rallies to win the little league pennant (Bad News Bears) or state championship (Hoosiers) or exhibition game (Mighty Ducks) or almost wins an olympic medal (Cool Runnings) or where the hero becomes the first-round pick in the NFL (The Blind Side). Every year, usually around the All-Star Break, we watch the Bad News Bears. I cuddle up with my boys, a bowl of popcorn and (swoon) Walter Matthau. Ah, the foul slurs slipping from the side of his Schlitz-slinging mouth. Obscene, inappropriate and hilarious.

At bedtime, Nana reads to the boys from a unabridged, unillustrated volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. She extrapolates the moral and glosses over gruesome scenes of twisted sexuality and mutilated toes. On these nights I sit with the boys, rubbing their feet till they’re unconscious.

Daddy—by contrast— is a player.

• Down in the sand

• Up in the tree

• On the toboggan

• On the exercise mat

• On the mini-golf course

• Standing over board games

• Running alongside bicycles

Daddy does like the tedious strategy games that take over the dining room table for weeks. But as for the rest of it, he’s doing it for them, not himself.  

He doesn’t get his kicks from running alongside the unstable two-wheeler of a hysterical 6-year-old. He hates being ambushed when he walks in the door. Still, he submits to 10-minute rounds of Attack Daddy by two sons whose combined weight approaches 100 pounds.  BRRRRRRING!! When the egg timer goes off he limps upstairs to change out of his work clothes.

The boyz love Daddy.

Daddy also reads to them. Every night. Chapter books that don’t give nightmares. Adventures, histories, mysteries. Where he gets them I’m not sure. Online? Tag sales? Used bookstores?  His mother’s attic? No matter. The boys love winding down with Daddy.

A few days ago, after supper and before Daddy got home, my big son asked: “Mom, can you play with me like you used to?”

I was floored. Playing is Daddy’s domain.

My son’s expression was hopeful. I inhaled deeply and stared straight into my son’s soul on the exhale. This was the spring we gave up little league baseball.

“Would you like to go out front and toss the ball around?” His face lit up. I hit a tree, a parked car and lost the ball in the bushes. He found it. I paused to chat up neighbors returning home from work. He didn’t seem to mind any of this.

We’ve been tossing the baseball pretty steadily ever since. The next rainy evening I’ll suggest a 3-minute word game. I can manage that: “qnyone up for a game of Boggle?”

This post is dedicated to all you Devoted Dads...

Who assemble impossible toys...

Who read aloud at bedtime, apply sunscreen, and delouse...

Who bring home the bacon and fry it up on Saturday morning...

Who eat the broken, slightly-burned cookies and

Leave the best ones for your kids!

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!!

Mother's Day (How it Unravels)

Hey Mamas! How was your Mother’s Day?

We’re you properly praised or pretty well punished?

Here’s how mine unravels...

It starts off alright...

7:00am:

My son wakes me with a homemade card. A triptych of him and his kid brother, with the senior poodle in between.

“It’s beautiful Theodore…”

We hug.

Then comes: “Can I play a game on your phone?”

The day plan is this:

We’ll enjoy a slow start. I’ll get in a long, scalding shower... The kind that dries the skin but feels so good... It will include shaving, shampooing and deep hair conditioning. The boys will scooter to MacDonald Avenue for an 11am birthday party at Kids ‘n’ Action (Chucky Cheese minus minimum wage earners in mouse suits). I will get to sit on my arse, drink coffee, eat powdered donuts and catch up with the mamas, while our kids scramble through tunnels like gerbils. Later, my parents will treat us all to a fancy French meal in Carroll Gardens.

Awesome sauce right?

Here’s how it plays out:

8:00am:

After 2 bites of bacon, Theodore returns to bed with an upset stomach. The moans of a ten year old, deeply resentful of personal discomfort, reach every corner of the small rowhouse. I dread stomach aches, my own and those of others. There is nothing to be done about belly pain: no analgesics, no balms, no band-aides. Even kisses cannot relieve nausea.

“Here,”  I say, handing him his wastepaper basket in bed. “Throw up in here.”

He glowers, turns his backside towards me and sticks his butt up in the air, same as he did a decade earlier, swaddled in his crib. As soon as I leave his room the groans resume and I return, helpless to offer relief, but I return anyway, again and again.

10:30am:

Unwashed and without make-up, I leave the house phone on Theodore’s bedside table and head out to the party with William alone.

Push buttons are problematic. The scooter handle refuses to slide down, so instead of resting comfortably at chest level, the handle nestles under Will’s chin where he grips it,
like a squirrel,
whose just scored a piece of pita,
dumped by a cabbie,
into the gutter,
at the end of his shift.
We set off.

10:45am:

We reach Ocean Parkway—halfway there—I walk the scooter across while gripping William’s hand. Razor scooters are meant to be ridden, not walked. As I reach the curb it swings around and nails me in the ankle. “Dammit!” Pain and anger radiate to my extremities.

I have a choice.

I make the wrong one, though I know the right one: to pause, breathe deeply of the exhaust generated by 4 lanes of traffic, and to carry on. Instead, I take my ankle agony out on my child. No holding back:

“That hurts! That really hurts!! William!!! Why did we bother taking the scooter? You don’t even like to scooter much DO you?? You’d rather bike! Can we sell the scooter???”

His response is justified:

“MOMMY!  You are sooooo mean!!  You ruined my day!!!  I’m not even going to the party now!!!!”

I deserve that.

“I’m sorry William."

“What does sorry mean??? I’m sorry. That’s just words mommy!!!”

Wow. Is this a six-year-old speaking?

He throws the scooter to the ground and plants his short legs on the peninsula jutting between Ocean Parkway South and its service road.

The metaphor is obvious: Ocean Parkway and an ocean between us. Choppy. Vast. Unfathomable. I don’t know how to help my child, or help myself, when he gets like this.

I have a chance to redeem myself.

I don’t take it.  Instead,  I PUSH.

“We’re going to the party William. Don’t you like birthday parties??”

“No. They give you very unhealthy food... like cake.”

“Didn’t you like Molly's party in Prospect Park? Rolling around the grass with Sam?”

“No, I hated it. He almost gave me lice.”

My phone rings. I fish around the bottom of my purse and catch the call just before it swims to voicemail.

“Speak up Theodore.  I can’t hear you. You’re brother is having a fit.”

“I’m feeling really sick.”

“Go to the toilet and throw up. You’ll feel a lot better.”

“NO!”

“Really, it’s the only thing that helps.”

“NO!”

“Okay, I’m just gonna drop William off and run home to you baby. Sit tight.”

No time for bridging symbolic bodies of water with skillful words and hugs; I pull the scooter—and William—the rest of the way.

11:15am:  

Homeward bound to Theodore. I stop at the Uzbeki fruit stand to pick through the “dead produce” bin.  I fill a bag with squishy tomatoes at 19 cents/lb. I fill another with limp celery and sprouted onions.

11:30am:

Things are better at home.  Theodore has thrown up.

“Mom! Come clean up my vomit!”

“Did you rinse out your mouth?”

“Yes. Can I go on your phone?”

High Noon:

One child sick in bed, another at a party, what next?  I pull on debutante-length rubber gloves and clean the fridge—the right way—not my usual smear job. Hot soapsuds and scouring pads. I troll the depths for packets in tin foil, sniff and discard them all.

12:30pm:

Still scouring the Amana, I eat lunch from the fridge door: an open kiddie yogurt and a boiled egg from Easter, rolling around the butter compartment.

1pm:

I dump the Uzbeki tomatoes into a pot, get out the potato masher and make fresh tomato & basil sauce.

This is not the Mother’s Day I envisioned, but my mood is improving.  Mash, mash, mash.

1:30pm:

I move on to making broth. I throw the sad onions and celery in the stock pot with water, whole peppercorns and a bay leaf.

2:00pm:

I remember to call Nana.

“Happy Mother’s Day mom! Sorry, we can’t join you at the restaurant. Theodore is honking like a goose and hacking up oysters on the rug now. He’s too consumptive to travel.”

My parents had really wanted to treat me to lamb sausage and French lentils at Provence en Boite on Smith Street. Instead, they treat a childless friend to my lentils, or maybe she dines on Theodore’s steak frites. Or croque-monsieur. Dammit.

But wait, it’s cool that my parents pivot and salvage an unconventional Mother’s Day for themselves by sharing a meal in sparkling conversation that does not revolve around a ten-year-old’s lackluster piano practice nor his prospects for orthodonture.

2:15pm:

William returns home with three goody bags and proceeds to open and sort them on the dining room table.  I watch him peel the wrapper off a Hershey Kiss.

A wave of gratitude rolls over me. The first of the day.

3:00-5:00pm:

 I cave to gaming. Wii Mario something or other. I go upstairs to pack away winter sweaters in mothballs.

5:00pm:

I hang tuff about not cooking on Mother’s Day (tomato sauce and veggie broth notwithstanding). The Good Taste delivers chicken and broccoli, long-live vegetarian, pork dumplings, fortune cookies, and 2 free sodas: Hawaiian Punch and Diet Coke.  I demonstrate how to use chopsticks and the boys stab away at their wontons like ice anglers after Yellow Perch.

Another wave.

6:00pm:

The evening winds down with an episode of River Monsters on Animal Planet:

‘It’s scary Mommy.”

“Can I hold your hand William?"

“No Mommy, it’s annoying.”

We sit on the sofa, the boys and me, hands to ourselves, googling ghost sharks on my laptop between commercials.

William looks thoughtfully at the TV screen:

“I want to go to the Amazon cause there are lots of mangoes there.”

One more wave.

It’s an atypical Mother’s Day. No pink carnations and no dinners in restaurants with real napkins. It’s a day of stalemates with a six-year-old,  sickness and sacrifice with a ten-year-old. A day of small mouths with loud voices making remarkable observations. A day of take-out Chinese, and a day of vomit.

Actually, it’s a pretty typical day in the life of a Mother.

Postscript:

One week later:

We are walking that same route down Foster. We leave the scooters at home. William holds my hand and I notice he is tugging erratically. I look down and see he’s not walking. He’s skipping. Yes, gamboling like a lambkin in a field of buttercups. Straight out of a nursery rhyme. Theodore starts to snicker and I shoot him a look which says:

Don’t ruin this for us. Give me this mommy moment.

Soon enough the skipping will stop; about the same time Mr. Bear will no longer be needed to nod off to dreamland.

We turn onto MacDonald Avenue and sidestep a forklift, parked on the sidewalk, moving monuments from a truck bed through the open doors of a warehouse. The warehouse: a graveyard of helter-skelter tombstones piled high; all with photorealistic renderings of loved ones etched into the granite. Creepy.

“What are those mommy?”

Explaining mortality to a six-year-old, under the shadow of the el, is pointless.

“Let’s just enjoy this day boys. The next one isn’t promised to any of us.”

A woman, walking briskly ahead, overhears me and nods in agreement.  Without slackening her pace, she ascends the staircase to meet the approaching F.

Our Neighbor Donald Loggins →

Read my profile of the inimitable Mr. Donald on bklyner. Even if you don't know him, chances are his volunteerism has somehow touched your life. Please leave your comments on their site, not here. Thanks for reading!

Extreme Mothering

In celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Mother’s Day, I’m gathering examples of excessive, embarrassing parenting that nonetheless demonstrate our DEVOTION. Where have you gone over the cliff with your kids?

Here’s where I’ve swerved off the road:

In carrying my 10-year-old: “Carry Me downstairs, ” he begs. I oblige, down to breakfast, teetering on the landing, almost dropping him. He won’t be asking for encores anytime soon.

In carrying concealed weapons: I pocket a knife, at all times, on the ready to peel apples for the spoiled six-year-old.

In providing 4 spoons at mealtime: because it’s germy to eat breakfast with any fewer.

In lugging 8 shopping bags of kiddie yogurts and apples on sale 10 blocks home from the C-town.

In sticking synthetic hairballs to the sides of my head and trick-or-treating as Princess Leia with midget Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker.

In cutting up scrambled eggs for the six-year-old:

“Mommy you didn’t cut up my scrambled egg!”

“Use the side of your fork, sweetheart.”

“NO! YOU do it! “

and I do.. sigh..

Where have you gone to extremes in loving your kids?

• Do you cut the crusts off sandwiches?

• Do you tie shoe laces other than your own?  

• Do you rush to the ER for a bad cold?

To all you moms who are public embarrassments to your children, who are still doing for them what they should be doing for themselves, give yourself a hug this Mother’s Day. Give your own mom a hug. Get a hug from your kids, if you can, in private if that’s the only way they’re willing.

Forest Flowers

When was the last time you took a nature walk?  Traded your city sandals for Tevas and stepped out for a small stroll with mama nature? Dropping 40 bucks to scale artificial rock walls at Brooklyn Boulders doesn’t count. This is not an indoors endurance test of you, ridiculous in harness and climbing shoes, chalk on your hands and face.   This is a lakeside walk beside the Boathouse in Prospect Park, or a day trip to Bear Mountain, or a tour around a town reservoir in Westchester.  Just so long as there’s a hint of green and an absence of Hatzolah Volunteer Ambulances. At the end of the day, the worst injury you sustain: a blister or a bug bite.  

As a New Yorker you are already a walker: to the bank, the barber, the bodega, the bakery, the cobbler, the hardware store, the tailor, the pharmacy, the spice shop, the scented oil shop, the school, the subway, and Junior’s 99cents store (You gotta love Junior’s. You just can’t discount the emotional fix provided by a new palm leaf pattern plastic tablecloth). Life decisions in Kensington are determined by alternate side parking regulations. You don’t surrender your spot without damn good reason.  Instead you walk.  If there’s a haul involved, you take the shopping cart. Walking is purposeful, destination-driven and you always return home trawling a full net: dry cleaning, jugs of milk, and whiny first-graders.

So surely you can appreciate the treat it was for me to spend an afternoon over spring break with my sons and their cousin blazing a small section of the Appalachian trail without purpose or packages.  Just three little boys and me, venturing forth through a cowfield in Vernon, New Jersey.  

Volunteers improve our lives in so many ways. For one thing, they maintain miles of boardwalk over wetlands on this historic trail snaking from Maine to Georgia.  The boys picked walking sticks and we were on our way.  It was a mild day.  A mallard couple drifted among the cattails. A bullfrog sat in the muck, under the boardwalk, unblinking, no matter how many spitballs we leaned over the planks and hurled his way. Nature’s palette in early April favors washes of greys and taupe. Soon the forsythia and mountain laurel would leaf out in gold and purple,  but that afternoon only the dull evergreen of native cedars broke up the browns.  

With boys threatening to outgrow me by year’s end, frequent snack stops were required. Leaning against a white birch, munching peeled eggs with crazy salt, I noticed my first flower. It was unremarkable. Pale, low-lying, easy to miss.  Maybe a distant relative to an Easter lily? I bent down. No scent. Couldn’t be an Easter lily. Didn’t smell like a funeral home.  

At the next snack stop, as the boys picked out what they liked from the trail mix: peanuts, sunflower seeds, chocolate covered raisins, I noticed my second flower. This one also, low to the ground,  a small lavender star with a yellow stamen. A far cry from those showy staples of spring: daffodils and Dutch tulips.   Then I noticed another, and another.  All puny and pastel, but together they whispered: winter is over, beauty is underfoot.

Back in Brooklyn now, as my feet return to their duty-driven paths, the forest flowers bloom anew.   Their delicacy and soft-spoken promise of renewal tremble in my mind’s eye as I stop at the fruit stand and inspect the underside of a carton of cut-rate strawberries.  Mushy. I’ll pass. I bump into our old mailman whose route was changed. He smiles widely and asks after my senior poodle, who always gave him a hard time. It occurs to me that forest flowers may take human form.

Returning home with a crate of mangoes, a little girl clacks down the block in her big sister’s high-heeled slippers. She is so pretty in her awkwardness… her pointy elbows, pointy slippers, like the points of a star flower. As I turn into my dooryard, my neighbor, who speaks about six words of English, smiles at me and tilts her head in that special way.  Later, I catch my child alone, admiring his chess trophies. The mailman, the little girl, my neighbor, my son.  They cheer me.  You have to look for them, the forest flowers in your day, but they are there, on your dark as well as your bright days.  Every single day.  Get low to the ground. Pay attention.   

Before me peaceful,

Behind me peaceful,

Under me peaceful,

Over me peaceful,

All around me peaceful…

- Navajo Indian

from The Family of Man,  a favorite 1960s coffee table book, 503 pictures from 68 countries, created by Edward Steichen for MOMA, with a prologue by Carl Sandburg. Check it out.

Choices

Hello Busy Subscribers!

I’ve been reflecting on time management this week. You know that satisfaction of hopping on the B train just as the doors close on your backside? “YES!” You made it. Just in time. In fact, it’s a timing coup: no missed train, yet no time wasted on the platform either. This is how I live my life lately, jumping to appointments like hopping subway cars. I’m always optimizing time, intolerant of unproductive moments—impatient to the point of a diagnosable disorder no doubt. Okay, you’re probably more chill than me, but I assume your days are still much like mine, packed with obligation, enrichment and recreation. So I want to start off this week with a huge THANK YOU for:

1. subscribing to my blog,
2. not yet unsubscribing,
3. opening my posts and (more or less) making it through them. 

This makes Post #17 in the new year. That’s a lot for you and me... and a lot has been falling by the wayside because of it. I’ve been making different choices lately:

Choice A  OR  Choice B

• write my blog OR change out the boys’ winter wardrobe for summer shorts
• write my blog OR rout out size 6 underwear from the 10-year-old’s skivvies drawer
• read someone else’s blog OR make homemade applesauce
• write my blog OR clean out the china cabinet
• peruse Pinterest boards OR clean out the kitchen drawer
• follow friends on Twitter OR scrub the shower curtain liner
• plant bulbs in public spaces OR sew buttons on shirts
• write my blog OR give myself a sloppy pedicure
• try a radical recipe for ground turkey OR wash out the garbage cans
• write my blog OR clean the microwave
• write my blog OR fold laundry
• read someone else’s newsletter OR match mittens and socks
• join a book club OR clean out the car
• do a set of push-ups OR dust the blinds
• write my blog OR sleep
• I’ve been favoring A over B these days…. overlooking the gummy corners of the kids’ mouths and the kitchen floor. Slacking on changing sheets. The pots and the poodle go unwashed.

The daily must-dos are enough for me these days. It’s enough to slide supper on the table, correct homework, sign school trip permission slips, enforce piano practice.

When the kids finally nod off, column B beckons, but I’ve been plugging the ear buds into the MacBook, raising the volume on my iTunes The Cure radio station, and going for A…

I LOVE choosing A and I’m managing the consequences…

What are your housekeeping shortcuts?  

Here are 3 of mine:

1. Clorox wipes by every toilet.

2. Dressing from the clean laundry basket.

3. Dim lighting.

One area I don’t take nearly enough shortcuts: the stovetop. But that’s my choice too. I still love to cook. When a 5lb bag of last October’s Macintosh apples scans at $2.99 in April, it’s time to make applesauce, and screw the blog. Homemade applesauce is worth the effort.

What’s worth your effort these days?

Old Goat!

When the boys toddled around, weighed down by infrequently changed Pull-Ups, and still occasionally now, we stop by the barn at the Prospect Park Zoo. Spend enough time in petting zoos and you will A) lose your mind B) contract an animal-borne illness because you neglected to use the hand sanitizer provided or C) gain valuable insights into human nature. (A and C so far for me).

Insert 2 quarters, dial up a palmful of compressed hay pellets and head for the pens. That’s my limit by the way: 50 cents worth of family fun and slobber. If they want more, I make the boys scrounge for fallen kibble. I think they like this part best, down in the dirt. If I could get away with it, I would sneak the wooly beasts heels of bread, but there are docents milling about. Feeding gluten-rich crusts to domesticates and water fowl is a big no-no. Even if I get around the docents, my boys know this no-no and are the worst enforcers. They would turn me over to the rangers in bermuda shorts in a little boy heartbeat. But I’m just not convinced Tom Turkey’s gizzard will explode if he pecks at an organic crumb of pumpernickel, priced at $4.39 per loaf.

Ever try to feed a Cotswold sheep with a goat standing by? Guess who gets the pellet from your palm?  Goat muzzles out sheep every time. As a kid, my favorite sculpture in the MOMA garden was Picasso’s She-Goat, a sway back, proud, pregnant goat with enormous teats. No coincidence there. Picasso strikes me as a randy, bearded billy. I love Picasso and I love goats, with their weird vertical iris, asymetrical markings and endearingly insistent natures. I love how they frisk up to the fence with a “Wassup?” Makes my day.

It was in watching this bully billy, on a recent Sunday afternoon, that my barnyard epiphany hit me:  the personalities we attribute to individual animal species can be reduced to single traits. Sheeps are sheepish, lions are leontine, and goats are, well, rascally, old goats. True to their natures, this old goat muscled out Mary’s little lamb, who backed away without a bleat. Yet here’s the crazy thing: this Noah’s ark of personality traits that manifest individually in our furry, scaly and feathered friends, floats within our single species. Homo sapiens exhibit a wild range of disposition, from self-effacing sheep to proud peacocks, from faithful dogs to fickle felines, stealthy scorpions to stupid asses. Zookeepers who dish out yams daily in the baboon habitat may rightly object to my generalization, pointing out that there are braggarts as well as cowards within this old world monkey family. Yet hide for hide, kittens are basically skittish, wolves wolf down their dinner, and baboons bear teeth, flaunt red butts and generally monkey around.

Ask yourself: why are humans so different, one from the next? Why are your kids so different? Why aren’t we all bearish or dovelike? My spin? Just another example of an inscrutable intelligence at work. It takes all types and a breadth of talents, to fill the jobs that keep this planet spinning. We need them all, the goats and sheep, wolves and owls, and especially the doves. (We can lose the slumlord cockroaches). I know God exists because for every job on this planet there is someone to do it. Some kids actually want to grow up to be phlebotomists. They see the reward of painlessly puncturing a hidden vein. Or how about offensive linemen? Plenty of boys want to grow up to be knocked down, again and again.

I have experienced God’s perfect floor plan first-hand at the American Museum of Natural History:

5th fl: arachnologists and entomologists corral tarantulas and stinkbugs
(astrophysicists are off in their own orbit)
4th-3rd fls: curators and exhibition crew build temporary shows
3rd-1st fls: finance, education, development & HR departments are tucked away behind permanent exhibits. Gift shop workers sell field guides and lava lamps
lower level: cafeteria workers and custodians serve it up and clean it up

And tourists everywhere. Eurotrash in expensive loafers pound the marble floors to see sulfide chimneys and duck-billed dinos. In its third century of existence, the museum swims along in its talent pool, a cultural triumph, a self-sustaining tourist trap.

I just gotta believe there’s a divine intelligence sparking the solar plexus of each individual, igniting our passions, guiding our vocations. The crossing guards ferry our children across 4 lanes of traffic, the entertainers lighten our load, the philosophers and shrinks make sense of it all. It’s not our superior intellect that gives us the edge over those that creep, cantor, fly or swim. It’s our varied temperaments that define our success as a species. The next time you find yourself in a room full of personalities, at a cocktail party, or PTA meeting, remember this: where would we be without the goats and the sheep and everything in between?

careers for goats:

• mayor of an urban mecca
• Food Network celebrity chef
• paramedic
• butcher
• graffiti artist
• rocket scientist
• romance novelist
• offensive tackle
• NASCAR racer
• baseball manager of an urban mecca
• ambulance chaser
• fashion designer
• plastic surgeon
• WWF smackdown superstar
• power/ashtanga yoga or zumba instructor

careers for sheep:

• mayor of a small, homogenous town
• vegan chef on public television’s Create Channel
• mortician
• independent, family farmer practicing humane animal husbandry
• origami artist
• rocket scientist
• business writer
• distance runner
• golf cart driver/caddy
• baseball manager of a single-A franchise
• real estate attorney
• quilter
• neurosurgeon
• restorative yoga instructor

animal adjectives to describe humans:

• antsy
• batty
• bovine
• buggin’
• bullheaded
• bullish
• dogged
• dovish
• feline
• foxy
• hawkish
• horsey
• mousy
• mulish
• piggish
• sheepish
• sluggish
• sphynx-like
• squirrely
• wolfish

animal nouns to describe humans:

• ass!
• chicken liver!
• horses’ ass!
• little monkey
• louse!
• minx
• old goat!
• pig!
• rat fink!
• shark
• snake in the grass….
• swine!
• tiger!
• turkey!
• vermin!

animal verbs to describe humans:

• badger
• crane
• goose
• hawk
• lark