Driving to School: Our Morning Monologue

[Note to readers: This is a 3-minute excerpt. The drive to school, and ergo the full monologue, takes 20 minutes.]

The rescue truck. The rescue truck. Duh rescue truck. Duh rest q trook.

That's funny.

Duh rest q trook. Duh rest q trook. That's still funny. Duh resk u truk. Diego! Duh resk u truk.

La, la, la, la, la. This is Halloween. Today is Halloween. I am the shadow that creeps over the moon. I'm the one that hides under your bed. This is Halloween. La, la, la. La, la, la. Jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh. Hey. Jingle. Jingle. Jingle.

Mama, can you play Higgley Town Heroes?

Jingle bells. Jingle bells. Jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to ride in a horse sleigh.

Mama, can you play Flash Gordon. I like that song. I really like that song. I like that song. Can you play it? I like it.

Boop-e-doopy-doo. La. La. Fa-tra-la. Moon-ah. Bump. Bump. La.

Mama, candy calms me down. Can I have some more candy? I've only had two. Can I have some more candy? Candy calms me down. Can I have some more candy? Just one more. Puhleease? Can I have some more candy? It calms me down.

Trying New Things

I've always wanted a blog that was a little less template-y and a little more smab-y, but without any real Web design skills, I have to fake my way through the half-way house.

Some day I will persuade, coerce, or trade enough sexual favors to my loverly Bear to help me design a real site. (Yes, I have been asking. And sometimes I ask real nice like. You know, Real Nice Like.) He tells me he'll help. But he has to finish Ted's art site first. And then Ted's blog.

(Maybe I should be more concerned with what Ted is trading Bear for all those sites.)

So for now. I'm playing. There's a new banner up there and if it doesn't scream "amateur," I think we can all agree that it does at least scream. I'll work on that. And I've fiddled with the colors in this very inflexible and only seemingly yielding world of blogland. We'll see what I can get this baby to do--and maybe along the way I'll pick up the fine art of subtlety. Or at least something passable.

But for now, enjoy the Parade of Horrid Banners. And if there's a blogger award out there for that, please, do not hesitate to nominate me.

Reviewed . . .

Barry and I went to the opening gala the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art last night--another coup and must-see for KC. A curator stopped me to tell me he read this review I wrote for the Kansas City Star. Before he was pulled away into another conversation, he said something about me being "brave."

Not quite sure how to take that. Maybe you'll know.

Schedules Be Damned!

We spent the weekend with KiKi, which is shorthand for "Schedules Be Damned! We're on vacation!" which is further shorthand for no naps, late bedtimes, near complete spoilage, and erratic eating.

And not just for me.

We--that's Bear and me--are apparently firm believers in flexible scheduling.(As in: Be flexible! Now!) We believe children (re: our child) should be able to adapt to new situations--and new situations sometimes means that mommy and daddy stay up late "talking" and playing Wii, so that Finn, in the wee hours of his day (5 a.m.!), must fend for himself with copious amounts of early morning infomercials and whatever food he can pillage from my purse.

Sometimes that happens. And sometimes children need to deal. (That smacks of irresponsibility, doesn't it? I may have overshot.)

So part of the freaky scheduling means that Finn gets a little creative at bedtime, which is longhand for "tries to stay up late," in spite of our lackadaisical efforts. You turn off the discipline, open the purse, and they take a mile, don't they?

On our first night, I put Finn to bed while Bear and KiKi went to the store to retrieve "talking points." I read him some stories and then taught him how to go to Slumberland--you know, the spinning, the jumping on the bed, the closing of the eyes, and the subsequent spins that make you feel like your bed is about to bust through the ceiling.

I left him, eyes clenched, floating off with Nemo. And then, about a minute later, I hear Finn calling me. I should ignore him, but the Faber method never did sit well.

"What is it?"

"I'm back, mama."

"So I hear. Go to sleep, sweets."

"But I have something for you."

I enter the room,and Finn reaches into his mock pocket and pulls a pretend out.

"What is it?" I whisper.

"I brought you back a moonbeam."

So Long, Suki

Suki, our beta fish, died yesterday, sometime between his afternoon and night feeding.

We found him, rigored, on Finn's carpet, covered in carpet hairs. Suki had had his bowl cleaned the night before, and apparently the excitement caused him to jump for joy--an exburance that quickly turned suicidal when Suki found himself flailing on the carpet, unable to wiggle his way up to his digs.

We sent Suki back to the big waters. Finn officiated. I said an impromptu eulogy. Finn mocked sadness for about 10 minutes, then as he was brushing his teeth, I think the full weight of the loss hit him.

Finn had a fish before (Dash-cum-Sean), but never took responsibility for it as he had with Suki. He told Suki things. He pointed out where his pellets floated. He asked about his day. He lectured him on overeating.

And, every now and then, I think we all saw Suki answer, in his pucker-mouthed, fishy way.

What a Difference a Developmental Stage Makes

I dropped Finn off for his first full day in Pre-K today. And I can tell you honestly, because I'm all about the honesty (except that post where I kind of made things up and that other one where I kind of fudged the truth and that other one where I did a rather thorough edit and rewrite after I published the post, but other than that, complete, utter, uncompromised honesty. You know, except when I don't. Do. That. So much.)

Where was I? Yes. I can honestly tell you, Whoa. That wasn't what I expected.

You remember that first day when we dropped Finn off at mother's day out--like, four years ago? And we went out to the car, and, you know, sat. For about two minutes. Belting out to ColdPlay's The Scientist. Before we went back in, picked him up, and said, "Maybe we'll try this again next week?"

Oddly, this was a little like that.

I expected to rejoice, because Pre-K is the beginning of a long educational internment, that just means more independence and theoretical free time for me. And more independence and opportunity to earn swing cred for Finn.

It's all good. It can be.

No, it should be.

Yes. Should be.

And when we entered his room today, it wasn't all abandonment and anxiety. At least not on his end. But what about me? What about my needs? I'm not ready to be a mother to a Pre-K-er. I mean, I've only been doing this toddler thing for two years. I was just getting the hang of it. I was just beginning to enjoy it.

So when I entered his room today, I expected--before the full-scale rejoicing--a little clinginess. A little reluctance. But instead I heard this:

"Finn, can you pull this sword from the stone?"
"Finn, do you mind wrangling these couple of snakes and saving the Pre-K classroom from the wrath of the gods?"
"Finn! You only have one sandal on. You can save us from the evil tyranny of Pelias!"
"Finn, can you wield your Jedi mind tricks and score us some more pancakes?"
"Finn, you're my hero!"

Okay, so that last bit was my attempt to get a little sugar before I left. Largely, largely ignored.

And then I was just an afterthought. A tangent. The mother of some lauded hero that is foresaken tothe lure of adventure.

So I shirked off, with a tablespoon of dignity, and headed to the car, where I, and yes I do think in these verbs, bemoaned the loss of my child's Oedipal complex.

And turned on the ColdPlay. You know, just to help the sadness stick.

I Wrote a Review. Yes, Another One.

Want to read it?

My editor--and I do drop this to toot my horn, I like self-tooting--thinks it's my best review to date. (And here comes the not-so-cloaked plea for compliments through the lost art of self-deprecation), I don't know that I agree . . . .

It's Good to Be Four. Well, Today.

Four is not always a fun place to be. It comes with stomping tantrums when it's denied a second bowl of ice cream. It cries and screams (SCREAMS!) when you're driving through rush hour traffic and won't turn around and hand it a Transformer. Right now. Right now. RIGHT NOW!!!

(Four lives most of his day with the caps lock on.)

But today, Four was good. Because Four is sweet. And Four is funny. Four likes to make jokes. Like this attempt at a knock-knock joke:

Four: I'm at the door and I want to you answer. Ding. Ding.
Me: Who's there?
Four: Crushed tomato in a mankie.
Me: Crushed tomato in a mankie who?
Four: Crushed tomato let me in it's cold out here. [Followed by sidesplitting guffaw.]

Or this:

Four: I've got something I want to whisper in your ear.
Me, offering ear: Okay . . .
Four, giggling: Wait, I've gotta tell you something.
Me: I'm ready.
Four, laughing hysterically: I've gotta tell you.
Me: And I'm eager to hear it.
Four, no longer able to contain himself: I gotta say . . .
Me: Yes?
Four, farting: I farted!

It Has Been a Long Time, My People

I've been struggling with trying to find something to say. And it's not about being "worthy of blogging about"--because as you'll remember from past posts, I don't really discriminate. All topics are welcome. Even those there crappy ones.

I've just felt kind of empty of late. (Oh no, you say, here it comes. "What" that might be, you can't pinpoint, but your finger is on your mouse/trackball/trackpad and you are prepared to bounce if you need to.) No, not that kind of loss--well, yes that kind of loss, but that's another post. I've felt at a loss of words, in a quite literal way.

So what do you do? I have no idea. What I do is read. No words coming out? Got to get the words coming in. So I read the Red Tent. I read The Runaways. And I have actually started to make a dent in that large pile of New Yorkers whose collective weight threatens to break my coffee table. And I've kept my mouth shut, lest some of them good words find a way out.

(Oops. Well, at least the good ones are safe.)

Store. Horde. Peruse. Muse.

Like a literary squirrel.

Finn is not a teenage girl.

To some, this statement is more than obvious. (I can't help out you other folks who are staring at the scream, mouthing your astonishment.) He's a boy--that's proved time and again by his willful pursuit of danger and dirt and doodle bugs (which are really pill bugs, but I can't let 37 years of deception go). And his status at a mere four years clearly attests to his fouriness. So that's a near convincing evidence.

Where it gets confused in his keen fashion sense (Mama, that doesn't match!) and his budding love of hip kicks. (He picked out some camo flipflops that I think are downright compelling.)

Where the line absolutely doesn't blur (outside of gender and actual years accomplished, as if those weren't incontrovertible) is in his very much non-love of the phone. His not interested in talking to his gamma. He runs, screaming, into another room when I call. The enchantments of disembodied voices hold no sway with him. And where I can't say this is a disconnect for mama (former teenage girl) and her boy (I, too, am not a fan of the phone. Don't believe? Call me. Now. I won't answer), I can say it gets a little, well, hurty, when I'm out of town and call and can't get the kid to talk to me.

I have theories for this. And they all put me in a good light. (I have a thing, a conviction, really, about theories being actual egoboosters.)

But I do have to say, I miss my baby.

Skin

I've been spending the past week with my sisters, who I only get to see about once or twice a year. They choose to live in a traffic-heavy and humid-infected area and my poor, little Midwestern sensibilities just can't handle such drama and weather-induced plumpiness. And I do swear, because of the 120% humidity, I've swelled up to about two times my original size.

(And that has nothing at all to do with the cheese steak, refried beans, and pineapple upside cake I've been scarfing. Absolutely nothing. At all.)

But all that sitting and waiting in unreasonable and uncivilized heat does result in a certain scarcity of clothing--and revealing of skin.

Yesterday, I followed my scantily clad sister into our mom's house--unlike the rest of this town who insists on a 40 degree drop from outside to inside, my mother believes in temperate equilibrium. (Her house is damn hot.) My sister held open the door for me, her freckled arm extended behind in unconscious welcome, something I've discovered that Southerners do much better than Midwesterners, who are more likely than not to let the door slam your forehead. And I say that with the authority of experience, folks.

It's a gesture I've been on the back end for, it must be, thousands of times. You know, in the South. And the one simple movement of etiquette that I have missed the most since I moved away. Sure, it's an afterthought, it's not like someone actually standing back to let you through a door before them, but it's an awareness, an acknowledgment, I suppose, that you are there, that you are part of someone else's space, that you are for a brief moment a part of their life. And it matters. However briefly, however cursory. It's continuity, a line between you and someone else marked by their extended arm.

So there I am, reaching out to take the door that my sister is passing through, that she holds open for me to catch, and I see it. A constellation of freckles and moles on slightly browned skin. The skin of another arm that I would hold in my hand and memorize, trace, trying to capture the history of each imperfection, the mottling of each sun-kissed follicle, knowing that soon I would never be able to connect those dots. The skin of my father.

I remember, right after my father died, looking at myself in the mirror, trying to find his face, trying to find something in me that would remind me of him--a lilt of my right eyebrow, the brown of my eyes. I have his temperament, his impatient passion, but you can't find that in the mirror. And memories are just so stubbornly visual. When it comes down to it, I am my mother's child. I've got her family's red, straight hair, their fair skin.

But in that one moment, in that line between my sister's arm stretching back and mine stretching forward I saw, in both, the skin of my father. The freckles (one on white, one on wheat), the moles--and the history, if not always of place, that connects me to her.

I threw out my shoulder . . .

. . . bowling

. . . well, simulated bowling

. . . you know, the kind without an actual ball

. . . the kind that you play into the gloaming on the Wii you got your husband for his birthday.

Someone Has to Make Sure America's Future Psychiatrists Have Clients

On top of spaghetti
All covered with cheese
I lost my poor meatball
When somebody sneezed.

It rolled off the table
And onto the floor
And then my poor meatball
Rolled out of the door.

It rolled into the street where
A dog ate it up,
And then that poor puppy
Got hit by truck.

The dog is ground beef now
Rolled into a ball
And seasoned with herbs and
A pinch of sea salt.

On top of my noodles
All covered in cheese
There sat my poor doggie
Until somebody sneezed.

[Crescendo and retard] Until . . . somebody . . . sneezed!

[Editorial note: Notice the fun dangling participial in the first stanza! This ditty just keeps on giving.]

No Disrespect Intended

I was eyeing my boobs a couple of nights ago, as I'm wont to do in this post-breastfeeding era of my life, mourning the loss the perky set I originally evolved into, when I came to a realization. I have Tori Spelling cleavage.

I don't know if you've viewed the enormous gulf that hovers between Ms. Spelling's breastisies (I know she's a Mrs. now, but I can't remember the new surname), but it's mammoth. You can't possibly even hold a lip gloss there to butter up your lips, ala Molly Ringwald in Breakfast Club. Not. Going. To. Happen.

And as I'm beginning to really get into the self-pity, to clearly go all moppy about the continental drift between my own girls, Barry steps up, in, what I like to think because I love him and I can't go any other way, is an attempt to console me in this only surgically revocable stage of Separate and Sag.

"No, Sarah. No. You don't have Tori Spelling cleavage. You have Loni Anderson cleavage (scroll)."

Loni Anderson cleavage?

Oh yes, you so know that helped. So much so that I immediately filled the bathtub and plunged my head into the water. And yes, my boobs hit the water first. My cleavage, though, trailed far enough behind to stay safe and amazingly dry.

24 Hours Later: Harry, Who?

Finally, finally!, I have something to look forward to.

Fade to Exit

I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at 11:51 p.m. last night. Now, quit your squinting, I'm not going to toss out any spoilers here--even though you've had ample time to finish the book. It's only 800-and-some pages.

This particular post is not so much about what I read, but how I read it. Sneaking it in a breakfast. Staying up an hour more after a particularly late night of writing. And then, last night, slamming down some 200 pages to wrap it up.

And all that done between phone calls (Where tomorrow night, sorella?) and text messages (519, safe to talk?) with my sister.

Each night for the past week, we'd meet for our long-distance book club over the phone, whine about Harry's whining, hatch our theories, and make our reading plans. Last night, we ended up calling each other every hour from about 7 p.m. to 12 midnight, to discuss unfolding plots.

I'll miss the characters, living and/or dead, but more than that I'll miss the urgency, passion, and sisterly small talk that Harry Potter brought to my week.

Preschool! The Musical!

Child and mother walk out of house into bright new day. They head for their fuel efficient car and preschool! The sun shines and the birds sing, providing much needed tuneful accompaniment to what will be the opening song, a ploy the mother hopes will get the reluctant toddler out the door and, she's hoping, into the car.

[Mother]

Look, they already took our trash.
I'm glad I put it out there fast.
And the recycling is all gone--
Finn, can you hurry along?

So we can go to preschool
Where you can break all the rules

[Finn]
With Emma, Nate, Ashley, and Ty
Two girls and three cool guys

[Mother]
Your little toddler troop
(And someone else gets to clean up poop)

[Finn]
It all happens at preschool
Oh, mama, it's very cool

And we play all day long
Sometimes we sing silly songs

[Mother]
Well, then let's just move it along
So we don't miss a single one

[Finn]

I love my preschool
The fours are ubercool

We own those shiny halls

[Mother]
Finn, I know you're trying to stall

Now, please, get in the door

[Finn]

But what's this I see on the floor?
A book, perchance a toy
That I shall use as a decoy

To stall our drive to preschool
Because even though it is so cool

I am after all a boy
Who has an affinity to annoy
And to thwart all mama's plans
By bending them to my own ends

The 3 a.m. Show

This is when I wish I had a "real" job.

Not What I'd Call an Example, Shining or Otherwise, of Parental Self-Sacrifice

I remember liking Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I remember liking the songs. So I queued up the children's classic on Netflix and Finn and I popped it into the DVD player this afternoon.

To refresh, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) recounts the story of an accident-prone inventor, his two children, and a confectionery heiress, named--I kid you not, consult your memory and if that fails, imdb.com--Truly Scrumptious.

(It was written by Ian Fleming and produced by Albert Broccoli--someone in that clan had a dubious or brilliant or brilliantly dubious gift for women's names.)

The movie opens with various clips from various grand prix, in France, Germany, etc. We then see that the once prize-winning car is relegated to obscurity, unless Mr. Potts, the inventor, can scrounge up 30 schillings to buy it. He tries to hock his candy whistles (toot sweets) to the local confectioner (Mr. Scrumptious), he tries to give automated haircuts at the carnival. Those end, in turn, with a dog stampede and a rather unfortunate bowl cut/reverse mohawk. Potts ends up crashing one of the carnival's bamboo musical numbers, taking center stage, and earning the money to buy the car. He spends hours, weeks, years?, refurbishing the car until he finally comes out of the lab/barn doors with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. To celebrate, he takes the kids (Jemima and Jeremy? Ouch) and Ms. Scrumptious (who he ran off the road) on a picnic at the seaside. (They sing the titular song twice before they get there. Apparently, it's a long drive.) They eat, they swim, the kids vow their love to Truly, she truly reciprocates, and all that's left is for the two grown ups to get it together and get it on.

But they're interrupted when the kids spot a ship, that turns into a pirate ship, commanded by a baron. They want the car. A chase ensues. The car turns into a hovercraft; the chase continues; the car and kids and Potts and Scrumptious get away after they croon through at least three conspicuously saccharine tunes; and two utterly conspicuous goons dressed as Hitlers disguised as Sherlock Holmeses go in search of the car to steal it for the aforementioned Napoleonic, and yet German, baron.

(Inhale. Exhale.) And that takes us through the first hour of the film. The first hour of a two and a half hour children's classic. That, my reader, takes us less than half way.

Needless to say, when "entr'acte" appeared on screen and Finn told me the movie was over . . . well, I didn't correct him.

Finn's Panegyric

Finn: "Mama, you're not an artist."

Me: "No, Finn. I'm not."

Finn: "You're a visitor."

Nearly Averted Spoiler: No. 1

I bought my copy of Deathly Hallows yesterday at Costco.

(Have you heard of this book? Very obscure author has written seven much underpublicized books about young wizards, the power of love, and its struggle against imminent evil?)

I bought it at 2:30 p.m. I know, that makes me so much less of fan than I purported to be, but I have a young child, who [whisper] doesn't get Harry Potter [/whisper]. So my begging and pleading and whining and tantrums lost out to his dire and unquenchable and, really, much louder expression of need to visit the hippos at the zoo. (Yes, page taken. I will not be so easily thwarted next time . . .)

So after the hippos, we headed to Costco for the grocery classics: high-fiber bread, Omega-3 eggs, organic milk, and Harry Potter.

I was worried they would sell out. Really, I'm serious. I panicked the whole way past the leopards, the gorillas, the alligators, the rhino, and the hippos--who I'm not sure we actually saw because I was in full neurosis by then. But when I saw the heaping table of Potters, with nary a swarm, I felt much relieved. And quite excited. And, maybe, just a little, ashamed.

I sauntered up to another woman who seemed to be gingerly selecting her copy. She picked up a book, flipped for a page count, then, incomprehensibly, Put the Book Down.

What?

"Not that much into Harry Potter?" I asked as I wheeled Finn and the cart closer to Potter mountain. When I get giddy (or drunk, sometimes it's hard to tell), I get social.

She looked up and smiled. "I just read the last page. Everyone's wondering about whether Harry lives or dies. I figured that would be on the last page."

Just the last page?

I felt bad for her--that she didn't have a connection to these characters that so many other folks do. That she would carelessly jump to the final resolution without any emotional investment.

I plan to read Potter as slowly as I can. I mean, this is the last book. This could be the last moments I get to spend with these people. You know, I have a longer relationship with them than I do many other real people who have too easily come and gone from my life.

(And, of course, I also remember how distraught I was when I put down Return of the King only to find out the Tolkien had died. Like 10 years before I picked it up.)

I'm really not all that eager to give them up and push them out the door.

How could she start and stop at the last page? Did she even read the ot. . .

And then I got scared. It hit me. She has information. She knows. And then the panic that I thought I had left with the hippos came screaming after me.

I grabbed my Hallows, and I mean this literally, put my hands over my ears and started chanting, "I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it" as I rolled Finn as fast and far away as I could.

Mental, to be sure. But I couldn't take the chance that she might suck the very soul out of the Potterverse and just throw it out there like some kind of talking Patronus. She could ruin it, all seven books, the lives that I have welcomed into my home and heart, the dreams that I have for Harry, Hermoine, and Ron, and their dreams, too, as yet unrealized by all the throngs who have not yet turned that page, and with no more thought than she gives to her choice of blueberry or strawberry yogurt sample.

So I ran. Earmuffed and howling.

It's not like I had a choice. I mean, people can't, like, disapparate, you know. C'mon, people, ever heard of fiction? It is just a book.

It started as a compliment . . . and then it just got scary

Finn: "Mama, you're shrinking. You're not going to have another birthday."

Fort Worth Top 10

Grab some waders and read about it in the Marsh.

Did KC just get trumped?

Retraction

This may not go over well with the KC locals, but I'm afeared that some of my readers my have misconstrued my KC post.

So I make this noncommittal (re: wussy) disclaimer, because I feel I must stand at some level of proximity to honesty, if not squat indelicately and forcefully atop of it: just because I can find 10 things I like about KC doesn't necessarily mean I love living here.

My Kid Can Hear!

Earlier this afternoon, I was on the phone with Aunt KiKi, speaking to her in hushed tones about things people get hushy about and, again in hushed tones, telling her about Finn's generally naughty morning. Finn and I had already discussed it extensively, so I thought I'd let him off the hook and just relay it to KiKi whisper-like, because he doesn't need to feel any worse about what he did and because KiKi will find it amusing.

Yes, she finds his bad behavior funny. She lives far away.

"So," I whisper to her question about what Finn did today that was adorable, "here's what's not: Finn whacked his friend on the head with paperback book."

I'm in the kitchen. Finn's playing in the living room, and yet despite several pieces of evidence to the contrary--like his general and absolute nonresponsiveness when I ask him, repeatedly and at high-decibel tones, to set the table, clean his room, feed his fish, get ready for bath, clean up his transformers, put on his shoes, take off his shoes, flush the toilet, wipe his face, wash his hands, shampoo the carpet--Finn responds quickly to my hushed recap:

"I didn't hit her on the head."

My first thought, my child is insisting on being accurate, if not remorseful, about his misdemeanors. What am I raising? ("Damian?" No response from the living room. Good.)

And then, I'm like, wait, he heard that?

And it really sinks in.

My son can hear.

Crap.

I'm in trouble.

Deep.

If Finn heard that, then what else has he heard? My trash talk about my mother? (Sorry, mom.) And our very close friends that sometimes we misunderstand and get a little pissy about? About Bear?

That could bite me in the ass. I may have to pay dearly to keep that information underwraps. I'm thinking of how I can pay him to keep his mouth shut. I'm thinking of how much chocolate I have in the house. I'm seriously thinking about getting him a dog. Would a dachshund work?

Crap.

Then, I'm thinking, wait a minute, I've been played. He can hear. All those times--requests, demands, begging, pleading--he's heard me. He's mocked me. That little, well, mother-player. I'll get him. And his little dog, too. (If we ever get him one.)

And then I'm thinking, wait, he can hear.

And I realize, in one full and much too easy swoop, Finn's admitted to his crime and revealed his superhearing--a superpower that's only supergood as long as it's supersecret.

And now that secret is out.

And now I shall use my knowledge of that power to make this house a better place.

Kansas City, Here You Are

So let's say, hypo, that you're coming a visitin'. What shall I reveal to you about my Midwest digs? What will I show you? What will I feed you?

Here's my meme. My KC tops. Spread the word, and then share the word.

In no particular order, except for the fact that I, well, ordered them:

1. Nelson Atkin's Bloch building. We have a new addition in town to our city museum. And if it's not fab--that's under discussion--it is unique and the hands-down hottest thing we have going. It's been covered in NY Times, New Yorker, and other sundry estab'ed pubs.

2. Boulevard Brewery. Actually, we haven't been there, but we've sampled its wares quite often. In fact, right now! (Ah, the gratuitous exclamation point. How I abhor thee. And yet, how useful you are!) We do have a rockin' brew. And that's not just because I'm drunk.

3. Record Bar. Which must have the best logo (recordbar) and slogan (eat. hear.). Their menus are posted on vintage 70s albums, like those real gatefold things. Great indie bands, great trivia nite. We like The Nuge sandwich. You post the cash for the 'sitter. We'll buy your sammie.

4. Murray's Ice Cream and Cookies. OMG, my peeps. It's the Amy's of the Midwest. Not as good, granted. But we're at least 10 hours away. My favorite flaves: Truffalufagus, Citrus Avenue, Malt Licker, Smitty's French Lemon (creamy, baby), Fred & Ginger. And the Snickerdoole is a half-inch high.

5. 18th and Vine. Our own little Hollywood and Vine, Haight-Ashbury, Beale Street, etc. It's Peach Tree Restaurant (re: sweet potato muffins), it's the Jazz Museum, the 24-hour jazz jam that we've never been to but we'd like to be invited to (members only), Negro League Baseball Museum. Charlie Parker, among others, started here. See Altman's Kansas City. We should split this out, but we've only got 10, so I feel the need to conflate.

6. 18th and Wyandotte. As weird as KC gets. And we, as former Austinites, like us some weird. Birdie Panties, Spool, and YJs. Lingerie, baby goods, and caffeine. Back to back. It's the nexus.

7. City Market. Here we go. First, we'll do breakfast at Succotash and see Sean Ward's painting of Jamie Warren eating tomato soup. Then we'll buy heirloom tomatoes from the Amish. We'll buy a bedley of spices at the Middle Eastern shop, eat risotto gelato, grinders from the vendor stands, spring rolls from the Vietnamese restaurant, and whittle away whatever cash we have left on the scarified juggler of knives. Oh, yes, Baby Cakes, the yummified morsels of glory are here.

8. 39th Street. Vintage shopping at Revue, Boomerang, Prospero's Books.

9. Christopher Elbow's Chocolates. Objet d' art chocolate. Seriously, they're almost too purty to eat. But somehow I get past that. We're actually looking toward a second mortage on our house to finance my obsession. Fleur de Sel turtles. Chocolate and salt. Nuff said.

10. And the cliche of Kansas City. BBQ. We'd take you to Gates. "Hi, may we help you!" Being the Texas expats we are, we'd never say the BBQ here is better than Texas (e.g., Coopers, Rudy's, Salt Lick, Green Mesquite, Lufkin BBQ Company). But KC comes close. Closer than say, Nashville. (Game on!)

Okay, it's your turn. I meme you Austin, Fort Worth, Portland, Bloomington, Houston, Omaha, and my lone China reader. Crank out your tour. I'll even post the worthy right here.

Toward a Curriculum of Obsession and Ambivalence

When I go to a restaurant (which I haven't done since 6:30 p.m. on July 3, longest extrahouse dining hiatus, like, ever), I tend to gravitate toward one menu item, and then systematically take all the romance out of the dining adventure by ordering that particular dish every single time we go to that restaurant. At Las Manitas (Austin), it was always enchiladas michoacan (unless it was too early, and then it was always huevos and chorizo). At Uptown (Bloomington), it was always the Popeye omelette. (Yes, I'm a pretentious speller.) At Cascone's (KC), it's the chicken spedini.

Obsessive dining choices. It's who I am. I've learned to accept.

And now, I have to further accept that I have passed on my OCD-lite to my child, forever chaining him to a literary palate that must be obsessively and repeatedly satiated. For the fourth night running, Finn has insisted that Chris Van Allsburg's Widow's Broom be included in the repertoire, with a side of Noah's Ark, the pop-up experience, and Kelly Asbury's Frankensquare. (Halloween doth not die at our house.)

It's an odd brew, stirred with a candied swizzle stick of contradictions and maybe even moral ambiguity. (Spoiler alert!) Some nasty neighbors attempt to burn a perfectly respectable and industrious broom (who, granted, had earlier catapulted a nippy dog into a distant spruce tree) at the stake. A vengeful God floods ("mama, did he kill them?") an almost entire, albeit wicked, population. The notorious, mismatched Frankenstein deals out the fair and the squares to all of his Halloween guests.

Certainly, the choices may get tired (and I've hid the books for tonight so we can get a little variety, I'll let you know how that goes) but let me tell you, the post-book conversing, comparing, and conundruming don't.

Blog Roll

Reading someone's blog is weird, ain't it? I read only a few--those are listed over there, now down a little bit, underneath that. There. But I do get addicted to these lives, and not because they're dramatic or tragic or hold some Grand Truth, but because they're people slightly like me who are trying to say something honest, who are trying to figure things out, who are celebrating those very small moments in life that seem to get so easily and often squashed, chewed up, and/or spit out by so many headlines and soundbites and spewing sink pipes or, well, noses.

My reason for my blog: number 3 (not the spit out, the celebration. I do tend to overlist). It's just a record, people. For me, it's about sharing and connecting with the people I love and putting something down just in case . . . well, just in case.

But this blog I found recently has a different flavor--a little lighter on the introspective navel gazing. I came across it when I almost wrote a review of her show a few months back. And then I couldn't stop. Maybe you should check it out.

Thinking, Choreographed

Finn lost his Heat Blast, a Ben 10 character that apparently is really hot, in that literal way that things are metaphorically hot. You know, flame-wise.

I don't know anything about him. Or Ben 10. Or the cartoon they rode in on. I just know when my kid throws a fit at Toys By Us (as he calls hit) over some figure that morphs into a flashlight that I have to shell out the $4.99 to shut him up. Finn yells very loudly. And sometimes he will kick. Or bust a vein. And these days, we're all about keeping veins and arteries and such in their proper place.

So Heat Blast was AWOL. We looked, half-ass diligently yet very messily, all over the house. And couldn't find nary a trail. Apparently, his heat leaves no evidence or wake of its discharged energy, contrary to the second law of thermodynamics. Heat Blast is uncharted, off the map, leaves a very small carbon footprint.

Which got us--me and Finn--to thinking about where he could possible have gotten himself to. And got us to talking about our preferred methods and accompanying gestures of thinking.

For me, I prefer to sit still, perhaps with an alcoholic beverage, and stroke thumb and index finger across the point of my chin. Or I might place my index and middle finger underneath my lower lip. As long as that doesn't interfere with my beer.

Finn, though, chastised me. That's not the way it's done, he said. True thinking is done by tapping the index finger against the temple, sans beverage, while saying, "Now, where did I see Heat Blast last?" Over and over and over again. The kid is all about the mantra. As stated, aforementioned kid is persistent.

And that may very well be true thinking. Maybe, but not productive or necessarily accurate thinking. Because I found Heat Blast. Right where I tossed him about a month ago. In our trunk. I rescued him and was gleefully proclaimed heroic in my finding efforts.

But, Finn was careful to mention, I still "think" wrong.

One Week One Day

I haven't counted anything down since, well, I was going to say since I was a teacher and I "helped" my students countdown to winter holiday, or labor day, or Friday, or seventh period, or 2:05, but really it was just a few weeks ago when we thought we were taking that trip to Mexico that we had planned for four months. Then, just as when I was a teacher or a student (of varying degrees and maturity), I pulled out my calendar and slashed, hash marked, and tallied my way to that dreamy destination, that ultimate, if brief freedom, that coveted prize.

And, except for my moment of beachy weakness, I really didn't expect I'd be jumping into the countdown so soon. Or late. You know, in life. Because whittling away the minutes, hours, or days just seems like it's heading in the wrong direction. I'm getting of the ripeness where I should be holding on to those fleeting moments, not casting them away so carelessly.

Add to that confusion and backasswardness that I'm actually admitting to this on my blog. Well, this entry is just so wrong.

But counting I am. And inverting my predicates as I go. One week and one day. And by now, you're chomping at the bit, you're tapping your fingers, you're grabbing your monitor in your hands and shaking it like you would an iBook that's gone on the fritz, screaming, begging me to tell you what it is that I'm so damn adolescent about.

That is, unless you're doing it, too.

One week and one day, folks. Until . . . Harry Potter. Which really is just a cruel crumb of a two-week-and-four-day cupcake away from the big tasty, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Now, try to tell me--and try to be convincing--that you don't have a secret stash of tally marks that's counting the days until Harry and his crew resurface. (Spoiler alert! Will they really abandon Hogwarts?) Just try. And I still won't believe you.

I haven't had this much pent up anticipation since Duran Duran came to town when I was an eighth grade. Or since, ahem, the days of premarital sex. This is an event. A butterflies-aflurry, will-the-day-ever-arrive, and can-I-possibly-survive-the-wait ardor.

We just don't get many events like this in life. And at the ripe age of 29-very-plus, those moments of delayed requiting seem fewer and fewer. We just don't have to wait for things as long anymore and those things that are dangled in front of us for months or years on end (re: Phantom Menace, Matrix Revolutions, adulthood) often aren't worth their measure of marketing.

But Harry, I have high hopes for you, lad. I have questions that need to be answered. I have people I want to see resurrected. I have acting I'd like to see redeemed. And so, on you, Harry, I pin my hopes of the world. Be my light, Harry. Be my salvation.

And of course, if you don't put out for me, Harry, it's only six months until season 4 of Battlestar Galactica.

I Actually Said This to My Four Year Old

"Kid, the amount you dawdle is inversely proportional to the number of books you'll be getting."

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Aliens. Aliens are coming to dinner.

We've been running from the aliens for weeks now. Maybe even months. They especially like to track us when we're headed into the gym. For some reason, they hover near elliptical trainers and treadmills. But they would never follow us inside. They would never, you know, like kickbox with us.

Tonight, Finn mistook Venus--you know, the planet--for an alien spacecraft. And yet again, those persistent little extraterrestrial stalkers were following us. We can't seem to catch a break.

But these aliens, Finn let me know, were nice aliens. We didn't have to outrun them. We didn't have to hide. We could let them catch up. And that would be okay. We could even invite them in for a plate of warm cookies, and should they want dinner, we could make them pancakes.

The Reluctant Goodbye

Scene: Airport. Moments from the mass-boarding of KiKi's flight back home.

"Finn, don't you want to say good-bye to KiKi?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I'm mad. I want her to stay."

"She has to go home, Finn. And I think you should give her hug."

"No."

"You sure?"

"No."

"You don't want to give her hug?"

"No."

"Okay."

We start to walk away. Finn's on my back, piggie-style. We're almost to the doors. I turn to give one last wave to KiKi. I'm so going to miss her. Finn gets a last look and throws out a last wave.

And then: "Wait, mama. Wait, mama. I do. I do. I do. I do."

I set Finn down and he runs back to KiKi, arms outstretched. She squats down to catch him, arms wide, eyes watering. And despite the throngs of people that are boarding and disembarking and otherwise dodging the trajectory of an erratic preschooler, they prove, once again, that ain't nobody gonna get between a boy and his KiKi.

Because the World Spins a Little More Thoroughly When KiKi's Got the Wheel

Last night, Aunt Kiki gave Finn her first bath. Well, she's had baths before, and she generally smells quite nice. And Finn, of course, has had baths before, and he occasionally smells quite nice. But Kiki has never given Finn a bath. Ergo, the firstiness.

I started the bath water at 8:30 p.m. (note the time), with the full intention of giving my kid his bath. But when he demanded those services of KiKi, I reluctantly (and yet with a speed that would impress even Wally West) handed over the reins to this most cherished duty and ran to take full advantage of this pocket of rare time.

I cleaned.

(Hey, I heard that. A little quieter with your your disapproval, please. I'm trying to write here.)

The bath could've gone a lot of ways. You see, Finn is an unpredictable taker of the baths. He prefers, for example, to be a splasher, not a splashee, and if any trace of tear-inducing or even tear-free shampoo or really even just water shimmies near his eye, he will scream. And I use scream in that blood-curdling-thrice-the-force-of-the-Wilhelm scream-to-which-chocolate-must-be- administered-immediately sense. It could've happened. And if Finn screamed, odds are good KiKi would scream back and then I would be out of chocolate and that is simply no good.

But, we must be honest. Finn really wasn't our concern.

You see, I've had my eye on Aunt KiKi. She's been helping me hold down the fort this past week (and as of yesterday, quite literally, as a 20 ft. blanket and couch-pillow fort took over our living room). I've seen her sneak peeks at Finn's toy dinosaur eggs, glee-ing out at every crack. I've heard tales of their Monster game, where Finn chases her (the monster) with his toy chainsaw, for something like 45 minutes. I've witnessed her roll-race down our grassy hill. I was there when she made Finn and his blanket into at least six pizzas, five burritos, and one cream puff. And I've seen her fall prey to the manipulations of a four year who'd rather play with her than take his nap. (Sure, she apologized, but she wasn't winning any awards for that performance.)

So Finn really wasn't the one to worry about. KiKi really takes her godma role seriously, in that very unserious chase-the-blanket-turned-into-a-tail way that gets Finn's supergiggles going.

But since I didn't hear any screams from either boy or aunt, I just kept going, changing the sheets on the bed, putting the laundry away, dusting the lamps, mopping the bedroom and hallway hard woods, cleaning baseboards, re-alpha'ing our 400-volume library, regrouting the tile, detailing our car.

Wait a minute. What were they doing in there?

And that's when I finally looked at the clock. It was 9:20. Almost a full and quite pruny hour of bathing--for Finn and KiKi's jeans alike. And where I sincerely doubt my son was irreparably damaged by such a thorough "cleaning," I do wonder if KiKi will ever be the same. If her sparkly eyes and bubbly giggle were any indication, I don’t think she’ll mind.

(Although she may have permanently de-aged about 20 years.)

I Had No Idea

In our last episode, Bear had just come home from an emergency cauterisation surgery-type thing. We were happy, I made jokes about his new nose. Things were good.

About six hours after we got home, Barry started bleeding. Again. Two hours later, he got another nosebleed. He controlled it and I started frantically calling our ENT--who is apparently difficult to reach, as he serves all of the nether regions outside of the Kansas City's asteroid belt. We were determined not to go the ER, so I started calling other ENTs that we had visited in Bear's last episode two years ago. They wanted nothing to do with us. Then, an hour later, he got another. And that's where I packed him in the car and headed for the ER.

They admitted us on Tuesday. On Thursday, the doc (and the only ENT that serves our hospital, what's up with that?) scheduled Bear for "real" surgery. On Friday, Bear had lost so much blood from the nosebleeds (that continued after the surgery) that the doc signed him up for a blood transfusion.

Yeah, that's what I said. From nosebleed to blood transfusion. That's one way to spend the week.

So, in all and in short, Barry has spent the past five days bleeding and turning various shades of white and green, pre- and post-op, and I've spent it arguing, fussing, and hiding in the vistors lounge under the pretense of making phone calls so I could cry and generally freak out of Bear's ear shot.

Thank God for Barry's parents and my best friend KiKi, who drove and flew up special. Apparently, Kiki's spidey-sense is so keen (or I'm so very transparent) that after about five seconds on the phone with me, she dropped everything, including her tickets to see her hunk-a-tv-love Stephen Colbert and booked a flight to KC.

Yes, I have a friend like that.

And I've learned a lot that I didn't know over the past week. Like which ER you go to severly affects your after-ER care. That choosing your hospital is as, if not more, important than choosing your doctor. That getting a second opinion is excessively discouraged and some nurses will even bully and terrorize you to make sure you're scared so shitless that your husband and father to your child will bleed out in the ambulance that you won't dare to mention the request-that-will-not-be-named again. And that not even doctors will cross the Missouri river willingly.

The Nose Knows

Reader, forgive me, for I have sinned. It's been nearly two weeks since my last confession. And I do feel really, like, bad about that, because I, like, totally, promised to keep up with this, both for my sanity and your occasional amusement (or disparagement, just don't tell me which one).

Last night, Bear was checked into the hospital for an emergency surgery. Since last Saturday, he's been having these uncontrollable nose bleeds--or I suppose it's really just one uncontrollable nose bleed. We visited three ERs in two different states, and on Monday, finally got into an ENT (which reminds me of those tree monsters in Lord of the Rings). After a prod and poke and an endless stream of blood, he decided to do something besides stuff tampons up Bear's nose. Thirty minutes later, Bear was in surgery.

His nose looks the same, and I'm very glad. He has this nice Roman nose (minus the hook, so maybe not very Roman at all), and he looks much lovelier than he did Saturday and definitely better than he did Monday before the ENT, with bloody (I'm using the American and English sense of the word at this point) gauze strapped to his nose and a bucket of blood waiting anxiously underneath his chin.

I was secretly hoping--you know, after I controlled the panic and screaming--that they'd do a little something something for the snoring. We'll see how that works out.

I have to say that I much prefer being on the other side of the OR doors. I don't handle waiting well, and if you know me, you know I like my information, on my terms and my schedule. I didn't much get my way on either count. There were no diagrams, I didn't even get a chance to research the ENT we went to see for what I thought was a follow up.

It's nerve wracking, this bloody thing. This getting older thing, this seeing someone you so dearly love in pain and, at the same time, trying to figure out how to communicate all this confusion to a four-year-old with the right tone and information. I always thought I'd get to check out a book from the library first before I had to explain to Finn why his dad is bleeding into bucket and why he has to go to surgery. Seriously.

(And this is where you're either gasping at my naivete and or laughing. Indulge. I am a silly, silly woman.)

It Just Seems Like We're Lazy

But we've really been busy bees--social fluttering, working, and a couple o' thangs on the presses.

First, from me, because, you know, I write the blog the mostest and I simply got here first: my latest art review.

And this excerpt is from a review written by Nick Malewski about Barry's Always Becoming Something at the Dolphin:

"Barry Anderson’s pair of archival inkjet prints, Always Becoming Something, is derived from his video (not on view) by the same name. Two long, narrow and horizontal images of young adults, hung side by side, show the expanse of what is experienced in the high-definition video as a slow, steady pan from left to right. The figures of varying ethnicity, in a sterile space without a horizon, at various distances from the camera, stand in place and face in numerous directions. Neither in the video, nor in the composite stills do the people seem to interact with or even notice one another. Their facial expressions are that of boredom, impatience and anticipation. Their implied lack of trajectory suggests that they are subjects caught in what Fredric Jameson calls “postmodern hyperspace,” which has “succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself.”2 Such a condition might evoke the recent development of Second Life, an Internet-based environment full of human-controlled avatars, together but alone, at times paralyzed in a space of boundless possibilities."

I Dream of Blogging

I started this blog for very pure reasons. For that matter, I started my last blog--and the one before that--for very pure reasons. To write. To share. To update family. Because I am notorious for not being able to afix stamp to letter. And even rather infamous for possibly not even knowing where my post office is to buy such mailing equipment.

Then I found dooce and I liked it and I heard about how she and her husband quit their jobs and blog and create blog-related product pretty much full-time. Well, very much full-time except for those occasions when they have a life, which seems to happen to them a lot more than it happens to me.

And then, about a month or so ago, I read this entry and saw this one, wherein, to sum, they buy a house and actually hire people to do things, like decorate it. For them. All funded by ad revenues and other sundry financial perks related to blogging.

And I realized. They don't just have a life, they actually live The Life.

So I relaunched my blog to follow in her footsteps--and so many other blog-for-food Sherpas. I also added a wee little ad, way down the page (maybe you've seen it?) with the dream of very large paychecks landing in my mailbox because the folks who visit my blog really do wonder if they're gay.

(I'm wondering what exactly about my content trips that ad. Hmm.)

Now, I'm reducing this, I know. I am neither successful novelist nor successful bloggist. Because in both fields of play I can count my readers on one hand. And odds are good I just got off the phone with half of them.

But that's my version of the American Dream. And someday, and I'm hoping real soon like, it will be brought to you by a leading fast food restaurant that I won't even let my kid eat at.

A Boy and His Dinosaur

Today, you turned four years old. Four. Way past babyhood and just a few very assertive steps (re: Year of the Tantrum) out of toddlerness.

You are officially a Kid.

And you prove that everyday. Just a few months ago, you used to "womb"; you'd cling to my leg when we entered your classroom, burrow your head when you met new people, and go grinning catatonic when someone asked you a question. But now, you boldly order your own chocolate milk (obviously free of my socially debilitating shyness), rush to play with your friends with nary a glance back at mama, crack jokes, and even cop a little sass now and then.

You just don't need me as much anymore. I mean, I'm no longer a food source. You can do your bathroom duties pretty much on your own. You can even roll your own sushi. And I have to admit, because I'm all about the admitting here, that it stings. But just like when you get booboes, it only hurts for a little bit. You tear up a little, complain a little, maybe whine a little. I offer to apply a little mommy magic, to kiss the hurt away for you. More and more often you decline and just go straight for the Incredible band-aid, because you understand that it's a part of the game, that it will only hurt for a little bit, that the pain goes away and you come out of it with a killer bruise and story. You come out of it a little stronger.

(Or maybe you're just after the sticker?)

And you've certainly given me plenty of stories over the past year (remember the box?)--and plenty of not so metaphorical bruises. But even the figurative bruises ain't so bad, because I'm starting to see what happens on the other side.

As you let go of my hand or my leg, you start to work your way through your little piece of the world. And I love to watch you weigh it, consider it, laugh at it, stomp it, or save it from an aggressive bird.

And then I love to see you come running back to grab my hand and show me what you've found.

Because the Boy Must Embrace His Heritage. Whatever the Cost.

Me, reading: ". . . The dragon breathed a long blue flame. Fionn aimed and . . ."

Finn: "Mama, is the dragon healthy?"

Me, not reading: "Well, I suppose dragons do have to command a high-level of strength in order to effectively attack cities."

Finn looks confused, and little disconcerted.

Me, still not reading: "And he can fly. That takes muscle."

Me, reading: " . . . Fionn aimed and fired the spear. The dragon--"

Finn: "But does the dragon eat healthy?"

Me, wanting to say, yes, only the most organically grown villagers, actually says: "Yes. He probably watches his diet, doesn't eat too many fried foods, that kind of thing."

Finn: "So he can fly."

Me, reading: " . . . The dragon fell dead on the spot. Fionn cut . . ." and wondering if I should read the next line and in that split second of sterling parenting I decide that it's better to give Finn a little violence than to leave him without a direct object, I toss the rest of the sentence out rather quickly, "Fionn cut off its head."

Finn looks very disconcerted. And concerned.

Me: "Finn, what do you think about that. What Fionn did?"

Finn: "I think he should've told the dragon to go away, first.

Finn, thinking: "And if he didn't listen, he should have sent him to timeout."

But We Do Have Good Food in KC

So we eat out a lot. A lot. Wait a minute. I mean A LOT. Caps lock on and no looking back.

We've tried to curb the extra-abode feasting. It hasn't worked. And it should work. Here. There just isn't as much good eats in KC. Well, that we've found anyway.

But a few weeks ago, we eavesdropped on our local NPR conversation about food. And one of the food critics mentioned this little El Salvadoran cafe in Merriam. Or Shawnee. It's so hard to keep track of KC's outerbanks.

They critics ended up having the folks at El Pulgarcito make them what sounded a lot like migas. (Whatever, like, so entry level.) We decided that the glowing review deserved a taste. Like we're hard to convince.

El Pulgarcito (does it mean lizard? I can't remember) is just south of Johnson drive, nestled quite firmly among autobody shops. Oddly, it is just, just to the left of the street we take to our good friends' house, who we visit so often I do think we've suitably worn out our welcome. Yet we've missed the El Salv revelation and tiny sign every single time.

(And the eats, especially the pupusas would've come in quite handy on those occasions when we had to spend the night. If you get my meaning. Oh God, not that one. The other one.)

We had the pupusas, these corn tortilla pancakes, stuffed with pork, beans, and cheese. And it's accompanied by (and this is why I'm not food critic), a large jar of jalapenoed coleslaw whose El Salvadoran name I can't remember. Finn dished that up, and yet surprisingly (I'm waxing ironic here) avoided it. But he did gobble up the pupusas and chased them with watermelon juice.

Note: the 'slaw is called curtido.

And they do have damn good salsa. And that comes from a girl who has seen Las Manitas' salsa on a good day.

They Used to Be Bears. Upgrade.

"Mama, you have to be quiet. Dragons are sleeping on the side of the road."

A Mouthful of Austin. (I Miss You.)

Some friends of ours are making the trek to Austin for the Austin City Limits Festival. And since we, once upon a time, were all things Austin, they've asked us for some crib notes to our former hometown.

So Bear and I started brainstorming.

"Oh, they have to go to Las Manitas."

"And then to Guerro's."

"And polish it off with Amy's."

"And start it up again with Salt Lick."

"Or Ruby's."

"Kerbey Lane pancakes?"

"Magnolia Voodoo Chicken."

And together: "Texadelphia!"

Nary a spring or a trail or a store--outside of Waterloo Records, of course--came up in our first-draft picks. It was all food.

And, of course, that got me to thinking. As I am wont to do and as I have the nasty habit of spelling out here. In great detail.

I don't think I have an unhealthy relationship with food. The extra 10 to 15 pounds I'm packing just give me a cushy landing when I invariably trip over one of Finn's transformers. But most of my memories have surrounded not places or people or even things, but food.

When I was growing up, we didn't take any elaborate vacations, but we went out to eat every Friday night. When I was in college and graduate school and near improverished, the big credit card splurge would go to Castle Hill or Irish Lion, not a spa treatment. When I think of Prague, I think of those hot dogs stuffed in skinny rolls with moutard. When I think of Italy, I think of gnocchi. When I think of France, I think of bouillabaisse. When I found out I had cancer, I wanted cupcakes and chimcurri. (Not together, of course.)

There's something to be said for exploring the world with your mouth and not just your eyes--biting off a morsel and savoring new cultures, experiences, a city's flavors on your tongue. Getting to know the textures of the places you've been and really making them a part of who you are. That's how Finn started--stuffing the world in his mouth, block by stuffed bear. And now we know where he gets that.

(And I just remembered, they have to, have to, order up a batch of Hyde Park fries.)

Whoops. I've Done It Again

I have yet another art review in the Kansas City Star. Let me know what you think.

Or maybe not.

Maybe it's best if you keep those thoughts to yourself. It's probably more fun for both of us that way.

For those inquiring minds, a little light on the editorial process: It's not my title. It never is. I think I gave it the much more substandard and Johnny Cash-y title of "KC Artists Walk the Lines."

And I was damn proud of it. Sure, not deservedly so, but I really thought that would be my first title to make it into print.

Not so much.

But wait till next month. A real doozy awaits. We'll see if they bite.

On Mother's Day

Being a mother is not about what you cook or bake or clean or sew (and I very much ascribe to that philosophy, obviously). It's about who you share with the world.

So this is to Barry's mom, my mother-in-law, for sharing such a rock out scone-maker, omelette crafter, protector of my beauty sleep, and uber-papa.

(And well, other stuff that, since she's now a reader of my blog, I don't feel comfortable enumerating here. You know. That Stuff That Cannot Be Named.)

Thanks for being so generous with your love, your humor, your patience, your really good hair--and, of course, and your really hot progeny.

Making an Entrance

Bear here.

Mother's Day seems like a good time to put my first post onto the blog. The Smab Mouth herself has been hounding me for months to post. She keep reminding me that SMAB is an acronym for both of us. But hey, I communicate in images not the written word.

Still, here we go with the words...

I woke up early today to begin the prep for the Mom's Day brunch. I was taking my first crack at making scones so I wanted to allow for ample time for screw-ups. I'd like to think that I can get around fairly well in the kitchen. Who am I kidding, I rock the kitchen, as long a it doesn't entail baking. Can you see where this is going?

I didn't feel quite ready for the full-on, from-scratch scones so I went with the box variety. And yes, I screwed the pooch on the first round. Black bottoms, doughy centers. Just as I was about to leave for the grocery for another box, Finn called out from his room.

"Papi...Papi..."

I asked him if he wanted to go with me to the store, but he said he wanted to wake up Momma. It was still quite early, so I reminded him that he should let her sleep in a bit, it being her day and all. It's not always a good idea to wake her up too early anyway. She is known to be a might "unpredictable" in the mornings.

I couldn't convince him to go with me to the grocery, so, being the stellar parent I would like to think I am, I sat him down in front of cartoons. The Perils of Penelope Pitstop to be exact. One of my childhood favorites. I asked him to stay put until I got back.

After buying another box of scones mix, as well as the eggs the I forgot to get the day before for her favorite lox/spinach/cheese/sour cream omelet, I returned home to find Finn dutifully watching the Boomer network.

Here's the impressive thing. This is why I love and respect my child so much.

As soon as I returned, my 3-year old boy got up from the couch to turn off the TV and the surround sound stereo. I asked him if he was done and he replied...

"Yes Papi. I watched cartoons while you were at the store but it's Mother's Day and I have to clean up the toys in my room before Momma wakes up. I told her that would be my present."

He proceed to clean up all of the Legos, Megablocks, Transformers, and Star Wars figures that he literally threw into all corners of his room yesterday will trying to empty boxes to use as his impromptu transportation vehicles.

I really can't stress what a milestone this was. He is a good kid, but like most kids, he always refuses to clean up his toys. I can't say that I really blame him. How can you truly survey the landscape of your imagination with all of your components neatly piled into boxes on shelves. Still, he was willing to make the sacrifice for his Momma.

Of course, as soon as he was done, he went to find his card for her and ran into her bedroom to wake her up. Luckily, our window of "unpredictablity" was over and she was happy to begin her day.

However, Finn didn't allow her to open the card herself because as he clearly informed her...

"I have to open this. I'm a much better opener than you."

Sleepless

It's 2:08 a.m. and I'm still up. That's what having a bowl of tea after midnight will do to you. You know, Keep You Awake.

(Apparently, caffeine has something to do with that.)

So this, in case you were wondering, is the life of a freelancer. Stealing hours in the middle of the night, so I don't have to steal them from my child during the day. And this is also a product of taking the weekend off.

Yes, the whole weekend.

The entire weekend.

And I'm sorry, it felt real good. Even better than this caffeine high I've got going on.

Now, at 2:15 a.m., I'm finished with my project and rather spent. I'm scanning Proof of Life--the movie that ruined families! that broke up the pixie and the smile! the one where I, like Meg, fell in love with Russell Crowe! and the same film where Meg and Russ have no believable onscreen chemistry whatsoever because, well, I suppose because they were so believable offscreen!--all because the other 1,500 channels I have on my digital cable (only like 2 of which are HD) are dedicated to helping me make money off of newspaper ads while I finally get my washboard abs that I've been asking for every Christmas.

Where's my phone?

Sometimes People Actually Ask Me for Advice and Sometimes I Just Stare Back at Them and Gawk

Once I month, I go to these networking events--lots of entrepreneurs, lots of introductions, lots of swapping of job descriptions with me standing there, usually glass-eyed, wondering if I'm actually supposed to understand the finer intricacies of investment banking.

(This is where the yummy buffet comes in handy. I like smoked salmon.)

Sometimes I get reciprocated upon. Not often, but enough. So I have a 30 second speech I give about what I do. And they usually say, "Neat," or if they don't have a mouthful of smoked salmon, "I wish I could write." To which I reply, "I'm glad you can't."

Well, not really.

But that usually rounds out my end of the conversation. Because I'm a writer and I'm better at "listening." Or because I'm socially inept. It can really go either way.

Last week, though, I entered one of these conversations empty plated. (I had just cleared it on an insurance broker.) He asked me what I do, I gave him my speech, and then he went off-script:

"So, tell me this, Sarah"--notice dropping of name, good networker that--"how can I become a better writer?"

He's supposed to give me the conversation closer, "I wish I could write." Then we could smile and make our mingling excuses and go on to other conversations and that Greek pasta salad that I haven't had a chance to try.

And I should have an answer for this. I teach writing. I should have some exercises in my purse--just let me go get those--that I can toss out to folks who want to improve their writing on the spot. Even at networking events. Because a good teacher never lets her guard down.

Or I could've given him a business card and told him I would guide him, for a fee, to a lucid style.

But instead I prattle something about reading a lot and getting an editor who's callous enough to give you a good smackdown, apparently not me since I followed that with a giggle and not my card. Because that's what professionals do when they're trying to teach or get business or make connections at networking events.

I have no social survival skills. I am a social moron.

So now I have to redeem myself. And since I can't talk my way out of it all impromptu-like, I'll have to craft it out here. Yeah, lucky you, I know.

Tip the First: Read good stuff--and read off script.

I have this theory about my personal word count. If I write too much stuff in a week, I run out of words, out of fresh ways to say things. So I read. Marketing brochures, ads, art reviews--things that are on script. And then I also go off the page, to things that I don't write. This afternoon I stocked up with Guy Gugliotta's "Mining for Dark Matter" in Discover and my supergem of the day, "50 Things Every Sportsman Should Know" in Field and Stream.

And so today, I may still not be able to network to save my life, but I might be able to survive a bear attack and I feel quite confident, given enough time, that I could start a fire with a Coke can and a Snicker bar.

Goodbye, Vivian

A Happy That Can't Be Held Down

Last evening, after first desserts (because there were seconds), Finn and I headed outside for a game of pretend baseball. We have a "real" bat and a "real" ball (both made of some kind of foam-y material that only hurts bad, instead of emergency room bad, when Finn whacks me on the head with it), but Finn prefers this game of pretend pitching and pretend hitting. I think it's because he can hit the ball, bounce it off the moon, and catch it.

My child, the imaginative micromanager.

Before we got to the pretend baseball field (a stretch of sidewalk in front of somebody's house who I'm sure has issued the crazy on us), Finn got stalled in some butterfly giggles in our yard, giggles that stopped me in my tracks. And as anyone who knows me well can testify, I am a victim to my own momentum. I am Newton's first law incarnate. So to have a mere giggle stop me and turn me around. Well, you needed to hear that giggle.

It's hard to describe it without resorting to cliches: it was like tiny silver bells, it was like warmth and innocence and pure joy, it was unrestrained, unrehearsed, unexpected. It was as if he had been filled up with pure happiness and just a few drops planned a last minute escape over his edges, like champagne bubbles floating up and then skipping over the edges of an overpoured flute.

(I thought that analogy would go over better than the heady beer image I'm really thinking of.)

Vivian

Today, Vivian is fighting for her life. And that's very good news.

She was pulled off her ventilator two days ago. Her parents and friends were at her bedside, thinking that this meant goodbye.

She's five.

Vivian was diagnosed with leukemia when she was just five months old. She underwent treatments and her leukemia went into remission. When she was four years old, her leukemia relapsed. Her parents, friends of ours from graduate school, started a fundraising effort to get Vivian CAM treatments, offered in Europe. Again, she underwent treatment and seemed to respond well to it. We had been getting e-mails about how that was going, how she was fighting, how she was improving.

But last week, she took a turn. And last Thursday, her parents decided to remove the ventilator that was helping her breathe.

Vivian is, well, vivacious, and, as I hear it, just a little stubborn. That puts her in a class of preschooler I know all too well.

We--Bear, Finn, and I--met her when she was about a year old, I guess. Finn was five months. He bobbed his head around in curiosity, watching her run around the living room and eat pretend food off her lap.

We've only met her the one time, but she's a hard girl to forget. Her soul, like her laughter, fills your heart.

This is my very little way of putting her in the hearts and hopes of others. I'm not much into prayer circles. I really can't say that I know what those are. But if you have one, please add her to it.

"Vivian" means life. And whatever happens, she'll always be a giggle, a steady glow, and a reminder of what's worth fighting for.

Wherein I Get to Blather on about Books and Such Because Someone Actually Asked Me to So There

One of my students recently asked me for some book recommendations. She walked away some 30 minutes later (maybe dazed, possibly overwhelmed) with a bit more than she was asking for.

Silly girl, to ask such questions without a working knowledge of their potential implications. It's a bit like baiting a preschooler with candy before breakfast. Not done. (Unless, of course, he starts screaming.)

I toyed with giving her a rundown of what's on my bedside table: Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, Matthew Collings' This Is Modern Art, Julian Barnes' Arthur & George, Ms. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (oh my God, did you read this? do you know? oh my God), Miriam Moss's Smudge's Grumpy Day, Mercer Mayer's I Was So Mad . . .

The titles at the end are the books at the top of the stack, re: most recently consulted.

I start strong.

That's what I could've done. But how do explain Mercer Mayer? On my bedside table? When we read to Finn in his room?

So instead, I started at 17 years old and gave her the Books by the Ages impromptu lecture.

Oh yes, I did. In rough order:

Heller, Rand, Morrison, Nabokov (which she hadn't read? what?), Garcia Marquez, Robbins (which she'd started. People still read that.), Jackson, Plath, Camus, Sartre, Bulgakov, Gogol, Turgenev, Lermontov (my Russian phase), Moore, O'Toole, Forester (which, if you'll remember, Finn has a head start on), Pynchon, Auster, DeLillo, Eco, Irving, Chandler, Austen . . .

(Are you seeing a pattern? Yeah, I saw it, too. Apparently not only do I have anger management issues (see bedside table and Russians and Camus), I also gravitate toward snarky white men.)

So that list took me to about 23, roughly and with some edits--and some lingering questions. If I had it to do all over again, would I do that much Kerouac? Would I even go near Gertrude Stein? Would I skip John Updike's "moral rectitude"?

But the point, I think, came from my realization that, like, everyone reads Ayn Rand at 18. That Plath (and Thompson and Miller and Nin) are definitely the reading material of weetwentysomethings. That I've met a lot of people who go through their Auster/Eco phase in their mid-twenties. Which got to me thinking, what would a book list look like for a midthirtysomething. What am I ripe for?

So I pose these two questions to you, dear reader, the very first questions I've posted to the blogosphere: What are your literary regrets? What should be included on a midlife reading list?

(And if you mention anything with babies or toddlers, it better be damn good. Damn Good. No Operating Instructions. No Little Earthquakes. No ZuZu Petals.)

(Don't make turn this blog around.)

Because I Get My Literature Off the Boob Tube

From Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address:

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

You Suppose They Have an Adult Undergarment for That?

John Dickerson, chief political correspondent for Slate, in an interview about Sen. John McCain's presidential announcement: "He's not as controlled as other politicians because he can't be. He's constitutionally unable to control himself."

Superiority Complex

Finn: "Hey, momma, look at these ants!"

Me: "Yeah. And look at that one. It looks like he's taking some snacks home."

Finn: Stomp.

Finn: "That one will never get home now."

2-D

Finn's standing, tilting to one side. He squints and scratches his waist: "Momma, my edges itch."

Soundtrack to the Anal Probe. Humor Me.

I've known, ever since I scheduled it, that some report of Monday's colonoscopy would have to go on the blog. Really now, how do you pass something like that up?

But what to post, pray tell? A play-by-play of the procedure? A description of the day-long starvation and hours of colon prep? Or do I just go with a photo essay?

Uh, three rounds of, No thanks.

So, to get down to business, I must ask myself (because you're not really helping out with the comments box): if I were on the receiving end of the colon post, what would I want to know?

Ah. Yes. Of course. How obvious. The question that burns so brightly . . . scroll for it . . .


What does one dial up on the iPod when preparing for The Probe?

You know, when I popped those ear buds in, I actually thought about it. I really contemplated and weighed my decision. No shuffle. Couldn't just follow instincts. You have to consider that whatever song you choose will forever be linked to That Procedure.

So not just any song will do.

Not just any band can take on that level of responsibility, can hold up against the Anal Probe.

Nothing too cheery, bouncy, or titular connected to the colon, so Fischerspooner's "Megacolon" (three strikes) was out. Because you must not laugh in the face of colonoscopy. That's just not allowed.

You could tear something.

And honey, I'm thinking that's the last place you want a leak.

So I opted to go Hippocratic, and tap into the melancholic, the calming, the weighty. And it appeals to my literary sensibilities to be able to quote the four humors as I'm about to be scanned, to be so sonorously connected in time and tune.

And so, I chose Cold Play as the band I will forever associate with my colon, with my melancholy, with my uncertainty, with my expectation, with my tender hope and overwhelming hunger. As if I didn't before. And as if that wasn't exactly what you were thinking.

(I wonder how it feels to be the band colons choose?)

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest

Sol LeWitt died on Sunday. Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday.

And as I write those two sentences and think about the first time I read Vonnegut (Bluebeard, not Cat's Cradle, something like 10th grade) and the first time I saw Sol LeWitt (yummy art candy, probably my junior or senior year of high school on one of those many occasions when my sister made me choose art stumping over my biology final--and thank you, by the way), I question my own tact in mourning two relative strangers on my mother's 70th birthday.

What's up with that?

I could pretend to know. I could even write some stuff and maybe figure it out. But that's not going to happen. Instead I share this, by way of remuneration (a word I was doomed to misspell had I not just looked it up):

My mother lives in unassuming landmarks.

The high chair by the telephone, where she smokes her cigarettes, talks on the phone, drinks her orange juice, coffee, iced tea, coffee, water (in that order) and makes her holiday lists in stitchy, small and now nearly illegible letters. The chair used to be fashionable avocado vinyl, once upon a time, when my dad used to sneak up on her and plant raspberries in her neck, to crescent-scrunched, close-eyed giggles (my most treasured inheritance). She traded up for a tall wood chair, often caressed by small hands begging for a piece of her Hershey bar. The kind with almonds.

The left cushion of her plaid couch. Always the left one, always plaid, with tissues tucked in the cracks. Me or my sisters would sit on the right cushion and drape our short and then very long legs across the gap between us and my mother's lap. She'd tickle our feet with her long nails, until we tucked them, like her tissues, in the space between her back and the sofa's.

The chair on the right side of our oval kitchen table. My sisters would sit at the heads of the table. My dad and I shared a bench opposite my mother. It was probably covered in plaid. Or roosters. My mom has a thing for roosters. We'd inhale her pork chops with rice or her enchilada casserole or my dad's overcooked hamburgers, reaching for seconds, dropping scraps for the resident dog, reluctantly taking the dishes to the counter, fighting over who had to wash them, and rushing to watch Love Boat or Dukes of Hazzard, leaving my mother still eating, bite by excruciatingly and seemingly inhuman, slow bite.

The right side of the bed she shared with my father, accompanied by a pile of John Grisham or Patricia Cornwell books on the bedside table and one, open and face down on her chest as she sleeps, gently snoring. (She never could compete with the bear rattle of my dad, although she seemed to unconsciously try.) This is where I'd come for comfort, after pushing out of a nightmare , and this is where I found her, sitting up, her head in her hands, the night my dad died.

The porch. Or the sidewalk. Or the driveway. And for some reason, always in her slippers and robe. She's one of those people who believes a nightgown by itself is too immodest. Anywhere. Even in the house. She doesn't take more than two steps from bed without being more suitably, if not fully, dressed. And yet, she'll stand almost in the street and wave goodbye in her robe and slippers as, over the years, we have driven farther and farther away, to Austin and now to Kansas City. And as we pull out of the driveway and onto the street, she keeps waving, never leaving her post until we turn the corner and disappear.

My Hubbin Is Truckin

I don't know what that means. I'm hoping the euphemism goes my way.

Anyway, Barry's in the news: check him ow-ut

There's a Reason Why They Put Tax Season in the Spring

How's this for a retirement plan: dying.

I really hate this time of year.

Pock That!

Every year (well, the past two years), we trek over to Kansas to celebrate Easter Saturday. And every year (again, just two), we dig out the plastic eggs, fill them with sugar, and drop them in our friends' yard to the joy and ferocity of youth. And every year (count 'em, one, two, stop), we engage in the age-old (much more than two) tradition of Egg Pocking.

Yes. Egg Pocking.

When we joined this tradition, we had no idea what the h-e-double-g pocking was. Barry and I come from the lofty traditions of egg rolling, something involving eggsand spoons, egg-smashing-on-heads, egg eating, egg deviling, egg fertilizing (not a public sport, but you should've seen the typo I had on that).

But what and whence the pock?

The pock starts with a NCAA-styled playoff chart (and if you know me, you know I love charts, which means that pocking must be a good recreational fit): opponents listed down the side, inwardly cascading playoff matches, to a final four, and dynamic duel (I know, I made that up), to an exuberant win.

I suppose it doesn't have to start with a chart, per se. That could just be my reading. It could just as easily start with the bowl of hard-boiled eggs.

Each pocker, then takes an egg from said bowl, holds it like you would a fat dart, faces off against an opponent, and then taps or smashes the egg into the opponent's egg in an attempt to pock it, or avoid pocking it.



(Is "pocking" the act of trying to pock or being pocked? This is where I lose the thread.)

Nonetheless, the objective: to be the last uncracked egg standing. In a weird and inexplicable play of physics, only one egg will be pocked in any egg-to-egg standoff. (Yes, you're right. In completely explicable play of physics, eggs can't stand. It's a figure of speech, folks.)

If you're lucky, you'll make it through the rounds to stand Egg Supreme, and maybe, if your hosts are generous, you'll win something like this.



Which now adorns our buffet because, yes, our offspring matched youthful ferocity with wisdom and skill to rock the pock.

And if you're really lucky, you'll have a Harry in the game. You know, so you can call him Harry Pocker. (Oh yes, I did.)

We are that lucky.

Freaky Friday

I'm not saying our leaky faucet is leaving Madonna stains or that our fiberoptic Jesus has recently escaped the cupboard we keep him in. No miracles. No bold strokes of divinity.

I'm just saying how gosh-golly fun it is when life imitates art--


--and how large our son's head is.

This Is a Metaphor-Free Zone

I woke up at 3 a.m. this morning, realizing that I had crashed out on Finn in the middle of What Is Easter? and Spring Easter Bugs, two appropriately seasonal gifts from his Godma K.

What was supposed to happen? I was supposed to read the books, have a nice chat and song (usually one I have adapted from my favorite Shakespeare play. I know. Complete goob) and then get up, brew myself some Tibetan Eye of the Tiger, and work diligently on one of my client's projects until I hit epiphany or insanity. Often, I can't tell the two apart. I don't know that you necessarily should.

That didn't happen. Not so much.

Instead, I found myself at 3 a.m., with a book in my ribs, one in my calf, and one in my ear; with drool (I'm not absolutely sure whose) in my hair; some kind of heavy, round object (oh, that's a head) on my foot; and a few panels on a brochure left to write.

I can tell you, that was a bona fide extrication, my friend. I can tell you that with complete confidence, but, uncharacteristically, without metaphor. (Yes, me, at a lack for metaphor.)

But I can also tell you, again with complete confidence, that I love my job.

D-e-a-t-h

Yes, we've taken to spelling things out for Finn.

"Hey Barry, how about a m-o-v-i-e?"

"I think I'm feeling like a little p-i-z-z-a. You?"

"The c-h-i-l-d is throwing a holy f-i-t. Shall I t-h-r-o-w him down the laundry c-h-u-t-e?"

Of course, because we're new to this, every spellout requires a couple of beats (okay, minutes) for our brains, ironically well educated, to compose letters into words we think we recognize, sometimes to interesting miscalculations. But that, my reader, is a blog for another time.

The high-scoring spellout for this past week has been d-e-a-t-h. I'm not sure what specific occasion sparked this word in this particular week. Last summer, we had to put our cat to sleep. We kept Finn out of it. While Barry talked to the vet, I distracted Finn with a walk across the street to the pet store. That led, in a subsequent visit to our fish, who died last winter. Finn, then a few months older and we thought more mature to handle the life cycle, was brought in for the "funeral." He didn't seem upset, didn't question.

But for some reason, this week, Finn's been questioning the life here and after.

It started in the library with a book called Josefina, based on the real-life clay sculpting of Josefina Aguilar. It's supposed to be a counting book. You know, Josefina molds three clay houses, six babies and the six mamas that hold them. When we get to eight, Josefina creates eight calaveras (skeletons). Finn asked about the skeletons, what they were, who they were, why there were, where they were. And then, will I die? will you die? I don't want to die.

And so, we initiated the d-e-a-t-h spelling policy, unless directly confronted.

So tonight, Finn started asking about my grandparents, and, according to previous agreement, I took him on. Where are they? Where did they die? How did they die? Where are they now?

Where's heaven?

Is it by the pet store?

Such Great Heights

I just got back from a client meeting, and decided to grab a six pack of cupcakes on my way home. You know, I was in the neighborhood and all.

Well, near enough to the neighborhood.

Okay, it wasn't that far out of my way.

Whatever, it was worth the trek across town.

Now, dear reader (well, hi there!), you already know my downright passion for the cake that comes in cups. Beskirted and besugared, what other glory can there be? (A rhetorical I should probably be careful of casting since I live pretty much under the buckle of the Bible's belt. And since I just came from a sketchy side of town. Double the double entrendre. I think I should back away now. Fast-like. New paragraph, please.)

And yet, today, I have reached new cupcake heights. The dreamsicle cupcake with cream cheese frosting. It's dreamy, it whispers of the popsicles I used to eat when I was eight, that used to drip down my freckled cheeks and down my arms and onto my Smurf socks. But the dreamsicle made manifest in a cake is fluffy, not so sticky, and comes with these little orange and yellow sprinkles.

I won't call it perfect. That would be going too far, but, I will say this:

I have licked sunshine, tasted the newly budding spring, and I'm here to tell you it's good.