Before There Was Internet Access

It must have sucked. Because the high-speed in our new house isn't hooked up yet, thanks to an AT&T screw-up, and - it sucks.

I can't blog, I can barely check my email. But it'll be up by tomorrow or the next day.

And then? Well.

Have I. Got stories. For you.


Love, Margo

Making It All Worth It

Moving wasn't easy for me. The entire week before, when I should have been excited, instead I was just - paralyzed. While normally I'm not the kind of person to sit and sulk, whereas stress normally propels me into action, all sense of normalcy vanished during this move. Instead, I'd sit and stare at the packed boxes and the ones left to pack and compose mental to-do lists, and rather than get off my ass and do something constructive, like, you know, PACK, I'd concentrate on slowing down my heartbeat as well as the nagging desire to tear each individual hair out of my head, one at a time.

I didn't handle things well. Y had promised me that he'd take care of the actual move, that everything really would get out of the apartment and into the house, even if he had to stay up all night every night for the week straight. And he delivered. But until it was over, I couldn't calm down.

They say that moving is on the list of major stresses that catapult people onto a therapist's couch and I believe it. But I think for me the panic was more about the culmination of a very stressful, very fast-moving two months of major change - and no opportunity to digest it all. To adjust to it. To stop, for even a minute, and FEEL what was going on. I didn't let myself stop, I just moved and ran and drove and did. Which is all good, necessary even. But it was bound to hit me sometime.

Anyway, I both applaud and appreciate Y for sticking with me during this exciting - if terrifying - stage in our lives. Especially considering how I behaved last weekend.

Friends and family - if I didn't call you, it was intentional. Sometimes you don't want to freak out to everyone and their mother, and sometimes freaking out is the only talking you can do. I love you all and my phone number hasn't changed.

The house is wonderful. Feels wonderful. Wonderful to wake up to, wonderful to come home to. It's warm and comfortable and feels comparatively like a palace. As my sister-in-law pointed out, I have a kitchen table, and a dining room table too.

I'll never take that for granted.

Promise pictures soon. We're still unpacking and have yet to even set up the computer, which is why I've been so slow to blog. Well, that and the fact that I've been spending every free moment putting things away and throwing others out.

On the first night in his new big-boy bed in his new, own big-boy bedroom, I kissed Ariel goodnight and started to leave his room when I heard him whispering something sleepily. I padded back over to his bed and leaned in to hear him better. He wrapped his arms around my neck and whispered again, smiling and more loudly this time:

"Wur together. Wur in our new house and wur together."

I kissed his two-year-old nose and thought about quickly things are sometimes put into perspective, and from the least likely of sources.

As in the TV Show Minus the Cranky Addict Doctor

I have news. To be honest, I'm not sure if anyone out there still reads this blog (feel free to reassure me that I'm wrong) - I know I've been a little absent in the past few weeks, but I'm about to explain why. You see, we bought a house. We're moving.

Tomorrow.

No, it's not as sudden as I'm making it sound. We've been working out the kinks for a good two months, which hasn't been a beautiful, romantic process (loan brokers - I'm not that into you these days) and which, on top of both of us working full-time, has felt pretty much impossible to accomplish. We've been burning the candle at both ends - no Chanukah pun intended - and it's taken a toll on our sanity, I won't lie. Plus, there just hasn't been any Time. For Anything.

So it's been awhile coming, but I didn't give you any hints, didn't say anything about it because Y was paranoid that we wouldn't get the loan, that we'd end up right back where we started, and so he really didn't want us blabbing the possibility of it to the world in the meantime. Who wants to have to explain a little failure? Most Jews are - like him - superstitious, but I'm not very good with exciting secrets, so it was tough for me.

No matter, though, because Ariel took it upon himself to tell every adult he met. Teachers, other parents, people I barely knew regularly came up to me and said, "So! I heard you guys got a house!" And when I'd ask how on earth they knew, they'd tell me Ariel had voluntarily filled them in. About his new backyard. Where there are bugs. And about how his parents are getting a new couch. And I'm going, I haven't even told my grandmother yet!

At the time, all of those were mere Maybes. But there's a reason Roya, his teacher, has nicknamed him "CNN."

Anyway, Y told me I could write about the house once we were living there. Well, tomorrow is moving day, but for the past 36 hours, the place has been ours. Today we took the kids over there, roamed the empty rooms, and eventually plopped down on the carpet to watch Elan and Ariel chase their tails in the absence of furniture.

I am absolutely panicked and overwhelmed to the point of possible breakdown (okay, dammit, I've already broken down) with the stress of moving, the myriad horrific, marriage-straining stresses of moving and I have to constantly remind myself that this is Good. A Good Thing. A good change that will likely be worth every ounce of momentary suffering. And I have a lot more to tell you all about it, but right now I've got to get some sleep so that I have the energy to break down properly and publicly and sufficiently loudly tomorrow as I usher boxes out my front door.

It's been seven years of apartment rentals and I just thought you should know that the next time I blog, it'll be from my house. That's right:

My.

House.

Yeah, whatever, Y's, too.

Finding Your Niche

Saturday night I went to an all-women's performance of Once Upon a Mattress, in which my sister-in-law played the hilariously mute King. Rac was phenomenal, a true natural at the amount of physical comedic ability required of the role, and it was incredibly thrilling to see her onstage, blowing everyone away. She has a theater degree and writes and all of that, but this was the first time I'd seen her act, and I was SO proud. Still am.

Y stayed home with the boys that night, obviously very excited for the opportunity to cuddle and bond with them. Before I left for the Beverly Hills High auditorium, they were throwing sweatshirts over their pajamas and heading out to Blockbuster for a movie and Ralph's for pasta. I considered calling Y's cell after I left to remnd him to clean up after himself and use paper plates, but thought better of it - control the nagging. They didn't answer the phone all night, and when I got home I found all three tucked into their beds, sound asleep.

It was midnight but I hadn't eaten yet, so I headed down to the kitchen and fixed myself a plate of pasta and Y's out-of-this-world homeade tomato sauce. On the way home, knowing he'd been cooking, I had been terrified of the mess I'd surely be greeted with. Y is not a guy's-guy in the classic sense - he's an amazing cook, he changes diapers, he's as attached to the kids as I am, he's sensitive, he's a bigger feminist than most women I know.

But Y cannot clean. He does not clean, unless under marital duress. He's allergic to all things organized or sanitary, it's like there's a mental block there.

Even the simple stuff, like putting a dirty dish in the sink instead of leaving it on the counter, usually escapes his line of thinking.

He's also not great at finishing a job. When he does change a diaper, the child doesn't usually come out of it with pants on, too. When he does put a plate in the sink, it might have chicken bones on it.

We've had our classic arguments about it, and overall are trying not to criticize each other anymore. To appreciate and focus on the good - which is what I kept telling myself that night, as visions of sticky pots, sauce-splattered counters and crusty plates danced around in my head.

Tonight, however, not only were the boys all fed, clean, and sleeping, but the kitchen? Was somewhat okay. The frying pan was in the sink. The pasta and sauce tucked neatly into tupperware containers in the fridge. There was no visible garbage lying out to piss me off.

And I thought, he thought about me tonight. He made an effort to clean up. And it was for me and me alone, as he has no internal appreciation for tidiness.

It might not sound like much, but to me, it meant a lot. I was touched and pleased. It meant he'd been hearing me.

I sat down and started catching up on the blogs I've been ignoring for weeks and ate and read and ate and read when I suddenly heard, "BOO!"

It was dark and I jumped a mile as I screamed. Y was hiding on the top of the stairs, peering at me through the railing, proud as punch.

"Jerk!" I exclaimed. "What's wrong with you?"

"I've been waiting forever for you to get in bed so I could scare you then," he said by way of explanation.

"I thought you were asleep!"

"I was faking it. And I've been watching you from the top of the stairs for a good five minutes now."

"Y, what is your point?"

"Only that - and you can't even deny it anymore - I so could have been a sniper."

"Well then. Congratulations, honey. You so could have been a sniper."

We cuddled up on the couch to flip channels awhile. I told him about the play, he told me about his evening with the boys. I recognized the kitchen being clean, and he appreciated my appreciation.

"Did you see how everything was put away?"

"I did. And the pan was in the sink!"

"Clean in the sink!"

"It's clean? You washed it, too? I'm in shock. I can't believe it. Someone revive me because I'm feeling...faint..."

"Well," he said, a little sheepishly, "almost clean."

I smiled. "What's almost clean?"

"Well not with soap or anything," I smiled harder, trying not to laugh at his sincerity, "But I did scrub it with water so the shmutz won't stick or anything and it'll be easy to clean later!"

"Y, once you had it in the sink and you went through the effort of scrubbing the pan, why on earth didn't you just use soap and make it entirely clean?!"

"Margo! You know I don't finish things!"

"But you'd be a wicked sniper."

"I was hiding under the covers faking sleep and waiting for you to come back in the room for hours! You don't find that kind of dedication just anywhere these days."

No, my love. You certainly don't.

Something to Look Forward to

It's bathtime and Elan's already in the tub. Ariel, terrified of a permanent scratch on the bottom, is looking for ways to avoid joining him. He spies the potty, plants it proudly on top of the toilet. Next, he pulls a stool over, steps up, and heaves his chubby little body on top.

"Do you need to go to the bathroom?" I ask.

"Yes," he replies, nodding his head solemnly. "I make on da potty."

"Okay. Good luck." He tried this for the first time the other day. I've yet to notice any results.

He grunts with all his might, and then looks between his legs to see if anything has come of it. No such luck.

"Ees not working," he informs me, then hops up, flushes pointlessly, and plops back down.

Repeat ad nauseum.

"Mommy, Ariel's such a big boy!" Elan chirps from the tub next to me.

I'm sitting on the bathroom floor, marveling at how it sparkles. Wednesday is the day my housekeeper comes. Wednesday nights are the only points in the week during which I feel like something of a success as a homemaker. Despite the fact that such satisfaction is derived from no more skill on my part than that required of signing a check.

Sigh. You can't be good at everything all at once. At least it's clean, if only for the night.

"Look at him, making on the toilet!" Elan continues, obviously touched by how quickly the time seems to fly. Ariel continues his efforts, his proclamations of status (or rather, the lack thereof), and his flushing. None of this matters to Elan.

It's contagious. Now I'm proud of Ariel and proud of Elan for being proud of Ariel, too. Warm and fuzzy feeling. Welcome, after a contact-lens-frying day at work. "Yup, he's such a big boy now."

"I not a beeg boy," Ariel interrupts suddenly. "I am Batman."

"You know what, Mom? I 'hink Ariel must be three years old now!"

"He's not. He's still only two. He'll be three next year."

"And when he is three, I'll be five."

"That's right!"

I admire the neatness with which the boys' toiletries have been recently arranged. Elan looks pleased.

"And when I'm six years old, he'll be four."

Well, how about that. The kid can add. "Very good, Elan! You just did math!"

"I did? What's 'math?'"

"You did one-plus-one and six-minus-two..."

"Yeah, I knowed it! Ask me another one."

"Okay...When you're seven, Ariel will be..."

Pause. Then: "Five!"

"Right. And when you're ten, how old will Ariel be?"

He scrunches his nose with the effort of mental number-crunching, a mannerism that immediately reminds me he's his father's son.

My own number-crunching thought process usually goes something like this:
Income minus car bill minus rent minus insurance...Hmm...If those shoes went on sale there won't be an 8 1/2 left in the country by the time I get to them, I better - "Y! Please total up the bills!"

Enter nose-scrunch.

Y's out of town. I miss him.

"Um...eleven?"

"No! Come on, silly. Think about it."

"One?"

"Now you're just guessing. Let's wash your hair."

I lower his head gently back into the water as he gazes at the ceiling. Suddenly, he bolts upright, splashing me in the process.

"I know! Eight! When I'm ten, he'll be eight!"

"That's absolutely right! Great job, babe!"

"Wow," Elan replies, thoughtfully. "Eight years old. By then Ariel will be a real human."

What You Can Learn from TV

For Thanksgiving weekend, we went away to a hotel in Oxnard with a bunch of other families. We'd done the same last year and had a good time, the hotel grounds open directly onto the sand of the beach, the kids had a ball, we got sleep - it was enough of a success to want to repeat.

This year was fine, I suppose, but it was COLD. And before you Mid-West and East Coasters tell me to cry you a river, please bear in mind that forty-five degrees coming off the shore is still cold, even if it could be colder in late November, when you haven't packed properly.

And I hadn't packed properly. I brought one light sweater and one 3/4-sleeved sweatshirt for outerwear. Not enough. I froze.

To compensate, I wore every single article of clothing that I had brought - from pajamas to skirts to boots to hats to hoods - at every single moment, and generally walked around looking homeless. With whom I suddenly felt MAJOR empathy.

Our hotel room wasn't much better, because nothing in it seemed to work the way it should. When we first arrived it was a little stuffy, and because Y feels about a room with broken air conditioning the way I feel about enclosed spaces, he immediately called to have it fixed. Apparently, rehabilitating the A/C - which we would use for approximately one hour of a long weekend - meant disabling the heat, which we would long for druing the remaining hours of our stay.

In other words, I wore all of those clothes to sleep, too. There was no respite from the cold.

Being freezing meant less time spent on the actual beach, watching the waves and playing Frisbee, less time sitting by the pool reading, and more time feeling annoyed that I wasn't in my warm, free bed.

Feeling annoyed in general meant wanting to target that annoyance, and Y and I targeted each other. After a couple of days of basic sniping and fighting, we were both raw and on-edge by the time Sunday came along. The day of going home. To warmth.

Of course, as one of the meaner jokes the universe tends to play on vacationers, Sunday was blissfully warm and beautiful. The perfect day to bike along the boardwalk. Or go strawberry-picking, as Y had hoped to do for the entire past year.

Oxnard is the epicenter of the California strawberry industry, and Y thought the kids would really enjoy going out into one of the fields and picking some themselves. He promised them that they could also keep any bugs they uncovered in the process.

Naturally, I pushed for biking. But I didn't really care what we did, so long as we were outdoors. On Saturday night, when I benignly asked Y if he had found an actual place to strawberry-pick the following morning, he took it as criticism that he hadn't done any research and that I didn't trust his judgment and snapped back at me that NO HE DIDN'T KNOW AN EXACT PLACE BUT FOR G-D'S SAKE WE WERE IN OXNARD AND HE COULD GUARANTEE THAT THERE WERE 500 MILLION PLACES TO GO STRAWBERRY PICKING WITHIN A MILE OF OUR HOTEL AND ALL WE HAD TO DO WAS ASK THE CONCIERGE IN THE MORNING AND WHY DID I HAVE TO GET ON HIS CASE ABOUT EVERY LITTLE THING?!

Like I said, it hadn't been a great weekend for us. But I assured him that I meant nothing of the sort, was merely making conversation, and then shut up. Later, we talked and made up and everyone was in a good place by Sunday morning.

Back to the morning. We pack up the room, the car, pull out of the hotel parking lot and spin around to the front entrance to attack the concierge.

"Excuse me," I ask out the window. "Do you know off-hand a good place near here for us to go strawberry picking?"

Silence. The man stared at me as if he was sure he couldn't have heard me correctly. Finally, he repeated: "Strawberry picking?"

"Yes," answered Y, craning his neck from the driver's seat. "Is there somewhere close by that you guys recommend?"

The doorman gave us a worried glance and then turned to his partner with eyebrows raised, as if to say, Stay calm, dude, but I think we're dealing with psy-chos here...

"I've never heard of PICKING strawberries," he told us. "But there are several fruit stands up the block where you can buy them. Perhaps that's what you had in mind?"

"Um, no," replied Y. "Maybe we better go ask the concierge, inside."

"I can do that for you," said the doorman. "Be right back."

A minute or two later, the concierge, a middle-aged man with a concerned but not exactly polite face appeared at Y's window.

"Hello, sir. I've been told you want to go strawberry picking. Is that right?"

"Uh, yeah," Y answered, confused. "That's right. Is there somewhere you can recommend?"

"Well sir," replied the concierge, his brows furrowed so tightly together that they formed deep creases above his nose. "You CAN'T pick strawberries here in Oxnard. They don't recommend it at any of the fields because it is such a HUGE liability for them."

"Liability? I don't understand. What kind of liability?"

"If anything were to happen while you were out in the fields, it would be their responsibility," the man said gravely, figuring that was reason enough to stop anyone from trying.

But Y wasn't going to be deterred that easily. He'd been planning this outing for a long time, he'd convinced his kids of its merits, he'd fought with his wife over it.

"I'm sorry, sir," he began, a friendly smile on his face. "I just don't understand. What kind of liability are we talking about? What is so dangerous about picking a strawberry or two? What could happen?"

Well. The concierge was fully agitated by then. When he spoke, it was with terror in his eyes, as though he was trying to describe He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named to an imbecile who wasn't getting it without waking and angering Lord Voldemort.

"Let's. Just. Say," he managed through clenched teeth. "That It. Is. A. Liability. For the fields and so they will not allow you to pick any strawberries here in OXNARD. You MIGHT be able to sign a waiver saying that they are not responsible for you in any way and MAYBE THEN you will be able to pick strawberries. But I highly doubt it.

"Now," the creases in his forehead deepened. Is there anything else I can help you with? I am very busy."

Y and I looked at each other, stifling our smiles. "Uh, no thanks. Bye."

We drove off. Y kept saying, "I don't get it. I remember picking strawberries here when I was a kid. And last year, everyone was talking about going, remember? Why the hell wouldn't that guy explain the potential problems to me?"

"I don't know," I replied honestly. "But I got the feeling we shouldn't press him any further on the chance he'd actually blow a gasket."

We drove around a little, admiring the weather and the scenery and ignoring the persistent questions coming from the back seat about what fun thing we were going to do that day

Finally, we spotted some locals standing outside their beach houses, and we pulled over to confirm the concierge's assessment. "Excuse me," I smiled at the deeply-tanned, too-old-to-have-bleached-long-hair surfer-type holding a rake. He smiled back.

"We're trying to take our kids strawberry-picking. Do you know somewhere we could go?" Smile. If the experience with the concierge was any evidence, this might be a touchy subject.

"Pick strawberries?" Surfer began to laugh, as if he'd never heard of anything as ludicrous in his life. "Pick them? Why would you want to do that? Here, you can actually buy a little basket of already-picked strawberries and just take them home! You don't have to pick them yourself!" He laughed and laughed.

"Um. Yes, I'm aware of that," I said, trying to be patient. "I've bought strawberries before. We wanted to pick them for fun. With the kids? Fruit-picking? It exists..."

Surfer turned to his friend, who looked like a misplaced stock-broker. "These folks want to pick strawberries. Have you ever heard of somewhere to do that?"

"Maybe they mean they want to buy strawberries," Stock Broker answered. He turned to me. "There are lots of stands selling strawberries out of the backs of trucks up this block. You'll see signs. Just drive right up this block."

Ah. Thanks.

Y turned to the third member of their coffee-klatch, an ancient woman with flower bulbs in her gloved hands. "Ma'am. I remember strawberry-picking in Oxnard as a child. Did they stop allowing it since then?"

The woman smiled apologetically. "I've lived here all my life. I've never heard of picking strawberries for fun here in Oxnard. They'd probably be worried that you would damage the crops."

It was enough for Y. We thanked them and drove away in silence.

"Are you getting the feeling that we just tapped into some huge strawberry conspiracy?" Y finally asked.

I could have gloated at his having been so sure the night before. But it's happened to all of us. I went with Supportive.

"I know, it's so bizarre. Everyone seems to think we're out of our minds. We used to strawberry-pick in camp in Wisconsin when I was a kid. I know it's not such an absurd notion!"

Y dropped his voice, mimicking the earlier seriousness of the concierge: "Thou shalt not pick strawberry-pick in Oxnard, California! 'Tis a liability of the worst degree! I need not explain!"

I laughed. "Let's take the kids to the miniature-golfing place and forget this weirdness ever happened."

He agreed, and we set off.

Suddenly, Elan's voice cut in. "Mommy? Daddy? I 'hink I know why they won't let us go strawberry-picking."

Surprised, we turned to him. "How come?"

"They are prob'ly afraid that when we are out on the fields the Black Mamba snake will sneak up on us and attack us and we won't hear it coming and it will bite us and we will die."

"Um, yes. That might be it. What snake was that, again?"

"The Black Mamba. I heard about it on Animal Planet." He sat back, obviously satisfied at having cleared that up for us. "It's very venomous."

We glanced at each other again, fighting the urge to grin. Hey, it was as good an explanation as any.