Dr. Strangemom (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog)

I Feel Vancouver in my Socks

Can you feel it in the air? It's coming....

I am not talking about anything other than the Winter Olympics. I am a huge fan, as you know, evidenced by the fact that I wanted to name my dog (Molly) Michelle Kwan because I adopted her (Molly) on the day MK dropped out of the Olympics four years ago. Sadly, the name was veto'ed by Robin who did not think it would be fucking hiLARious to be able to say to people, "oops, gotta crack open a window. I got Michelle Kwan in a kennel in the back of my car".

He's allowed his opinion, of course, but one of us works in sustainable energy and one of us writes a humor blog. I'm just saying.

I love Michelle Kwan and if she knew me she'd love me, too; I am certain of this. Well, I'd have to win her over first, of course, since I probably don't make the best first impression on athletes, what with my stealth muscles (hidden extremely successfully by my layers of fat, if I say so myself) and the glass of wine in my hand at most hours of the day. Plus, I don't exactly have that champion attitude. My attitude is more, say, Eyeore, than Tony the Tiger. But still, I think  Michelle could learn to love me. Especially if I got her stoned and read her my blog posts in funny accents. But not a Chinese one. Oh God, wouldn't that be horrible? There we'd be, getting along swimmingly, scarfing down our pot brownies, and suddenly I break into some offensive, old school "ah SO" Chinese accent. That would be just like me to do it, too, because once my brain fixates on "Don't do it", all my ears hear is the "Do it" part. Plus, then I'd probably have to tell her about the pot in the brownies, as well. You know, as my excuse for the racist accent. And she'd surely reach for her coat and triple lutz her way out of my house.

And then I'd have run after her and yell something self-loathingly anti-Semitic, like, "wait! Do you like my sweater? I totally jewed down those Schnozzolas at Nordstrom to get it half price" just to prove that I do not hate Chinese people; I merely lack appropriate boundaries.

Oh God, and then, I just know it, somehow my Mom would hear my Jew remark, even though she lives a thousand miles away, and I'd have to reassure her I am not a self-loathing Jew and repeat what I told MK about my having no appropriate boundaries. Of which, being a therapist and my mom, she is already quite keenly aware.

Well, that's all conjecture. Right now, I have bigger things to think about. The Olympics are but a few weeks away and you know what that means:

Sock Figure Skating in my bedroom.

My floor is polished and slippery, my socks are clean, furniture has been moved against the walls, I have been carbo loading for, oh, forty years or so; I am ready for my short program. 

Wait. Maybe just one more brownie. You know, strictly for creative purposes.

Stay tuned.

Oh, and btw, it only took me six fucking weeks and I had to give up coffee breaks, but I finally learned how to add the "share this" widget at the bottom of each post. So if you like me, if you care about me at all, if you have even a drop of the milk of human kindness in you and care that my people suffered at the hands of the Nazis, you can let your friends know about this blog. Much obliged.

Confessions

I must mention that my friend Claire thought up the name, "Dr. Strangemom" for this blog. It's not that I didn't want you to know; I just never seem to find a way to weave it into my posts. And I feel bad about it every time I talk to Claire. Or as I am falling asleep. And, as you know, although the motto of my family is, "the important thing is that you feel bad", I want to cross this off my list.

Claire.

Hmm, I don't feel totally cleansed. Maybe it's time for a few more confessions. Let's see....

I didn't make up the word "tanorexic" although I do not correct people when they presume I did. I think my sister first coined the term, but then again Karen swears that she invented the expression, "no way, Jose" so her credibility is pretty much shot, don't you think? And, really, how does one prove something like that? She should have written the words out on a piece of paper and then sent it to herself, Certified Mail.

That is called the Poor People's Copyright. And, from what I hear, it's practically worthless. I heard that from the lady at the Writer's Guild but then again, she had a little something to gain by scaring me. My friend Jacky and I had just written our first spec script ("Kate and Allie") and knowing for certain we were on the precipice of stellar success, we raced to the Guild to register it, lest, I don't know, Larry David or Gelbart or someone stole our hiLARious plot of Allie accidentally getting locked into a closet while dressing for a blind date, and having to conduct the entire date from inside the closet.

I will give you a moment to catch your breath and wipe the laughter tears from your eyes.

So there we are, Jacky and Ann, game faces on, dressed in our "we are not housewives from the Valley" ensembles, walking through the doors of the Writer's Guild as if we did it every day. We were feeling slightly kickass already, having just finished a meeting with an assistant to an assistant to a junior agent at William Morris, and we are talking Beverly fucking Hills, baby. We did not, could not, know then that nothing notable would come of that meeting other than it turned out to be the first day I got my period again after having my second baby; this, I discovered on the toilet of the Writer's Guild bathroom and, having nothing in my purse for this surprise, was forced to pull a sort of Menstrual MacGyver and fashion a pad out of toilet paper, a loose thread off my skirt, the business card of the William Morris agent and two Mentos wrappers.

As it turned out, it was the only thing that fucking business card was ever good for.

I waddled out of the bathroom and we found our way to the registration desk. Now, when I am nervous, I tend to lose track of details like names, directions, and instructions to register sitcom spec scripts.

The instructions at the desk read that members of the Guild pay $20.00 to register a 30-minute sitcom script, and non-members pay $40.00. There was some small writing beneath that, but I just perused it. Jacky took out her checkbook.

"Wait!" I yelled. The entire room waited.

"Why don't we just JOIN the Guild today?" I asked Jacky. "It makes sense if we are going to be registering a lot of scripts, right?"  You know, like opening up a Macy's charge to get 10% off your first purchase.

Jacky distanced herself as far from me as a person can who is sharing my chair.

"Honey," the Guild lady said to me. She spoke slowly and succinctly with hand gestures, like I was underwater. And really, really stupid. "Honey, you can't just join the Guild. You have to earn your way into it. By being a real writer." Then she stood up and pointed to the small writing. Her fingernails made a click, click, click on the sign, which, now that I paid better attention, described the complex rubric to gain entree into the Guild. Basically, someone has to actually buy your script. Hunh.

Well. If Macy's ran their business that way, there wouldn't be a line for the day after Thanksgiving sale, I can tell you that much. In other words, when it came to joining the Writer's Guild, no way, Jose. (copyright, my sister Karen, 1986)

We slunk our way back to the Valley. I should have just used the Certified Mail way.

Or I could have just asked Claire. She's been a bona fide Guild member since way back.

Of Cake and Kegels

I rarely have empirical evidence - or evidence of any other kind, for that matter -  to back up anything I say. I mostly make shit up, as you know. But every once in a while, there is a harmonic convergence of the smoke I blow outta my ass and actual bona fide clinical research that supports my thesis.

And God, I wish that were the case right now. But it's not. Well, it is a little. But not much.

In one of my parenting classes this week, one lone dad showed up amid two couchfuls of moms. Knowing how skittish the lone dad can be in an estrogen-laden environment, and not wanting to spook him, I approached cautiously when we all sat down for discussion.

"So," I said, "only one dad here today. May I ask you a question?"

He laughed nervously. I might have seen a small tic appear under his right eye. He nodded.

"Okay, then" I smiled, "so tell us...HOW COME YOU ARE HORNY EVEN WHEN YOU ARE PISSED OFF AT US? WE ARE NOT HORNY WHEN WE ARE PISSED OFF AT YOU!"

Sometimes, you just gotta go for it.

The baby gate was up so I knew he couldn't bolt. Only babies can work that fucking gate. One day I fully expect a jailbreak coup; the kids make a run for it, shut the gate behind them and head off to Denny's for the Grand Slam, leaving the adults in the classroom jiggling the gate's child-proof latch and calling out to their children in a very stern voice to stop running away. Right this minute. I said, stop! Or bring us back some French toast, at least.

The lone dad cleared his throat. This could still go either way. I've had parents drop out of my classes or stop coming to me for private consults because I tend to cross some boundaries, talking about blow jobs and such, not sticking to the more catholic topics of parenting. I didn't want to lose this dad, however, because he was very good looking and one cannot underestimate the value of eye candy on a rainy Monday morning.

Thankfully, he was up to the task. Didn't even flinch when I reminded the moms to begin our 25 Kegels while he answered. (May I suggest you do the same while reading this? Your lady innards are inching their way down this very moment and may well pop out, unannounced, by morning, landing in a neat little pile by your pajamas, did you know this?)

The first 7 or 8 Kegels were done in silence while Lone Dad collected his thoughts and helped himself to a slice of coffee cake. That was okay, because as far as I am concerned from now on, the double buzz of looking at both a cute man AND a warm coffee cake is the only way to get through Kegel exercises. Surely, any other way will be denouement.

Lone Dad cleared his throat again.

"It's easy," he said, "we compartmentalize. We don't get distracted by other things."

He talked quite a while about this, even citing a few studies that prove how women gather a little bit of a lot of ambient information and men gather almost all of one point of information and nothing of the rest. Or something to that effect. I didn't really get all of what he said; I was kinda distracted.

Because just then I noticed that the cake had tiny chocolate chips hidden in the struesel.

Adventures in Clusterfuckistan, Part One

You can't find it on a map. It has no capital city, no national anthem, no Olympic team. But it's there. Squeezed in between your audit notice and the puppy barf you slipped on. Surrounded by the broken washing machine when everyone has the stomach flu and the Hooters receipt you just found in your partner's pocket. With a phone number on it. 

And your kid's teacher sends home a note asking for a parent conference as soon as possible. And suggests you bring a checkbook. And an attorney.

Yup. You've arrived in Clusterfuckistan. Where the air is murky, the food has e-coli, none of your pants fit and everyone you've ever met is doing better than you are.

There's no quick way out of this town. Well, heavy drinking can help you forget where you are and watching reruns of "Sabrina, The Teenage Witch" can temporarily ease the pain (when isn't having a magic finger the perfect answer to life's vicissitudes?) but you aren't leaving this place any time soon.

You don't belong here if you've merely lost your wallet. Or if your debit card is rejected at Trader Joe's every once in a while. Or even if your kid tells you he hates you. You go to Clusterfuckistan when all the shit hits the fan at once. And then you get your period.

When my baby left for college I had a wee breakdown. Couldn't bring myself to get back on the plane in DC and Robin had to drive me, drugged, weeping, needy, all the way to Portland. And when we got there, my beloved thirteen-year-old dog died. And Robin left his job. And my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And my car was stolen. Everything was fucked. Clusterfucked. They don't make a General Mills International Coffee flavor to make that moment all better.

So I found a nice studio apartment in Clusterfuckistan and moved in. I sat there every day and cried, leaving only to stumble out to my back deck (and cry) or to drive through Burgerville for a caffeine free Diet Coke (and cry). I became a devoted resident of the town. I ran the city council. I was the fucking queen of Clusterfuckistan. My sash was too tight (clothes only come in size 0 and -0 there. And the salespeople are thin and judgmental) and my tiara gave me a migraine but I served my kingdom tirelessly.

It's inevitable, I suppose, that just when things are really awful, when you are exhausted and done, sometimes things will get even worse. I have found that when this happens, it's best to pack a few things, head straight to the Fuckistans and ride out the shitstorm. Bring a book (Calvin Trillin is good) and Newman's Own Honey Mustard Pretzel Rods (the official snackfood of Clusterfuckistan). Wear only cotton  muu-muu's or extra large dashikis. Eschew anything with the Kirkland label on it. Never, ever watch Sarah Palin on her new Fox TV show. Be kind to yourself.

Speak only to people who have recently lost their fortunes or gained more than 50 lbs. Avoid all friends who are in love or exercise regularly. Rear-end all minivans that have bumper stickers extolling the virtues of their children or that tell us that marriage is between a man and woman. Clusterfuckistan is full of those assholes. Do not patronize any business that misspells its name in an attempt to be cute. 

Defriend everyone on Facebook who has more than 400 friends. Nobody has 400 friends.

When your stay is over (you will know it's time because you will regain your taste for coffee, and you will not want to bitch slap Valerie Bertinelli every time she gushes about Jenny Craig. Well, you'll still want to bitch slap her but you won't need to) leave the apartment clean and tidy for the next guest. The last thing new arrivals need to deal with are your funky sheets.

Welcome back.

Oh, and no one cleaned up the puppy barf while you were gone. You don't mind, do you?

Surrender, Dorothy

There are some fights I am just not going to win, no matter what.

I bowed to this inevitability when one of my kids was in preschool and his innocent query about doorbells ("why doesn't our car have one?") resulted in a two-and-a-half hour battle that ended with one of us sprawled out on the driveway, snot-nosed, screaming, and the other one of us thinking that if we had just put the fucking spermicide in the fucking diaphragm (instead of Preparation H, which looks a lot like Ortho Gynol. At least, in the dark. If one has taken out her contact lenses so as to appear more attractive to one's partner - as I was wont to do back in those days -  which, I realize now, is ridiculous. Just because I cannot see without my contacts doesn't mean the guy couldn't see me perfectly. Clearly, what I need to do is temporarily blind my partner before I get naked, perhaps a quick squirt of silver nitrate or something into his eyes while I distract him with, oh, I don't know, magic tricks. Or maybe a nice bagel with schmear), if I had only blocked the sperm that night, I wouldn't be in this hell.

"Where is the doorbell? WHERE IS THE DOORBELL?? WHERE IS THE DOORBELL??? " my son shrieked. 

God, I hated my life at that moment. I hated our stupid Honda Civic which did not have a fucking doorbell. I hated my stupid neighborhood with all the stupid moms outside watching my horrible child. I also hated Robin who, as I saw it, was the reason our child was thoroughly unlovable. I mean, the issue of only my tissue would totally have gotten over the fact that cars don't have doorbells.  This behavior surely came from Robin's side of the family.  The Browns are nothing if not a completely reasonable people.

My proud heritage of reason, however, got me nowhere with my four year old that afternoon. It was about 170 degrees in the LA summer sun and I thought I was going to have a stroke. So I drank my son's grape Kool-Aid, I allied with my captor, I joined the Symbionese Liberation Army and robbed the damn bank. I slept with the enemy (so to speak. Yuck). I sold my soul to the devil, just to make my child shut up.

"Honey, the doorbell on the Honda is broken. I sent it to the doorbell fixer."  Fine. He won. What the fuck. I'd figure something out when he asked about it again. Maybe he would forget. I mean, he was a smart kid about dinosaurs and shit but I could probably still get away with a few lies.

"Oh. Okay, mom."

He got up, dusted himself off, climbed cheerfully into the car and asked for a fruit roll-up. I ate an entire pound of Trader Joe's chocolate covered espresso beans (which I kept in the glove compartment for crises such as this) as I drove my son to his playdate.

Another successful day of parenting. And a lesson not lost on me. I cannot always win.

So I suggest we fill our courts with four year old attorneys. They are kickass litigators, they can find loopholes in anything we tell them, and they are virtually tireless, going nonstop for hours fueled only on juice boxes and strawberry Go-gurts. I bet opposing council, after rifling through their briefcases for anything to stop the throbbing in their temples, even funky, fuzzy old Advils that had fallen out of the container years earlier, would finally just give in to them, just to make them shut up, and the judge would lurch to her chambers and take to the couch with a cold compress on her forehead. Such is the power of a child with an opinion.

However, my kid might have had a point back then.  A doorbell on a car would be kind of bitchen.

Following Through with Follow-Through

I've been trying to come up with a theme for this post, a thread that will tie my story to some larger point but it's already been four minutes of trying so I give up.

Perhaps as I tell the story, a point will come to me. Or you.

So Robin and I are walking Molly the dog this morning. This is our new plan since Thanksgiving - Sunday morning walks together. Good for the heart, good for the marriage, good for the dog. So far, we've done it once and, frankly, the future of the plan remains to be seen. I expect it will go the way of the plan we had when the kids were young - the Saturday Morning Family Chores.

Yeah, that was a bang -up idea. Every few months, Robin and I would decide that we were horrible, slovenly, slacker parents when it came to the whole practice of family chores and we'd vow to get our shit together, call the kids to a meeting and hand out assignments.

I don't need to tell you that it was an abysmal failure. Life got in the way. The next Saturday there was a birthday party or someone had an ear infection or existential angst or a phone call to make. Cleaning out the entire garage gave way to "okay, well, put that box of old clothes at the garage door", which gave way to, "okay, just move out of my way while I put the box of old clothes at the garage door", which finally devolved into, "Hey, bring me a beer while I take a nap on this box of old clothes. Oh, and then close the garage door. I don't want to be disturbed."

It's all about the follow-through. I know that because - and this cannot be said often enough - I am a parenting instructor by trade. And despite my son once saying to me when he was around 9 years old or so, "people actually pay you for parenting advice? Because you know you suck at it" I do know enough to recognize the importance of follow-through with raising kids. Even though, personally, I was far too tired to do it when raising my own kids. Plus, I had my other issues getting in the way of being a good parent back then, what with my fear of getting lost, my fear of eating food from other people's houses, my fear of having one of those random chin hairs sprouting and growing to be a foot long before I notice it, my fear of Olga discontinuing my favorite bra, and my inability to drive a stick shift, it's always been a pretty full 50 minutes at the shrink. Follow-through with Saturday morning chores never really made it to the therapy agenda.

So when Robin and I pinky-swore last Thanksgiving to do this Sunday morning walk thing, we weren't kidding anybody. Even when, about a half hour into it, one of my sons called to say hi (I always have my cell phone with me on a walk because you never know when your arteries are gonna finally call it a day and you might need to call for help. In fact, on days when I've consumed a particularly worrisome amount of trans-fats, I just keep the phone dialed to "911" so all I have to do is push "send" when the tingling first begins in my fingers and I have only seconds before collapsing. I realize that it might be safer to just stop eating the shit that will kill me but are you paying attention at all to my point? I have no follow-through) and I told him that Dad and I were on a walk, he politely glossed over that fact ("uh-huh")  as if he knew I was lying but didn't want to embarrass me by making a big deal about it.

 You know, I do believe those years of failed Saturday family chores paid off. I raised a great kid. 

I meant to tell him that but my attention was diverted to the fact that Robin was suddenly involved in a very animated conversation with two teenagers coming our way on the path. As my son told me - into one ear -  about his plans for the week, I listened with my other ear as Robin commented to the teenage girl that he hadn't seen her in so many years, she was so grown up, what was she up to now, her hair was still long and curly, how are her parents doing, had her dad's shoulder healed, and on and on. Since Robin and I are not joined at the hip, I don't expect to know everyone he knows so I finished my phone call with my son and Robin and I kept walking after he said goodbye to the teens.

After I hung up the phone, I said to Robin, "who were those kids?"

He said, "you know her. That's whatstheirnames daughter, you know, the Levine's kid."

"No it's not" I told him, "their daughter is, like, 21 years old. She lives in Seattle."

"Oh" he said, "then I guess I don't know that girl." We kept walking. Robin was very, very quiet.

Then he perked up. "Oh! I do know her! She was a student in that high school class I visited last month to talk about sustainability!" He was visibly relieved.

I was confused. That was the end of it for him? That he had a conversation with a young girl he met only three weeks ago and said things to her like, "what's it been, over a year since I've seen you?" and "you still have that curly hair!" and "HOW'S YOUR DAD'S SHOULDER?" was no big deal? All in a day's happenings?

I am still stuck on it.  He saw her three weeks ago and said, "what's it been, over a year since I've seen you?"  How can Robin not be mortified?

And that girl. She never said a word. Never corrected him. Never ran away from him. What's with that???

I bet her parents had no follow-through when they raised her.

Bend and Stretch

I may have mentioned I have this little, er, quirk wherein I imagine kicking the butt of a man near me. As I said before, I believe this is solely a function of wondering about my own strength and not a sign of any latent violent tendencies within me. Still, I am not unaware of the reaction my confession evokes. I see you scooting your chairs away from me as you read this.

And I feel a need to explain myself.

I read somewhere that the most important thing women over fifty can do to keep themselves healthy is stretch every day. As a woman over fifty, I generally discard the advice I read because so much of it  centers around changing my negative attitude about aging and, frankly, my negative attitude about aging is all I have left of my youth so I want to hold on to it.

But this stretching thing got me to thinking. They're right. We rarely stretch ourselves. We don't use all we've got.

After The Revolution, when we all live on my commune in side-by-side yurts and grow hemp, stretching ourselves to our limits will be a regular part of daily life. I mean, just chopping wood and folk dancing to the water hole will fulfill the 10,000 steps a day quota that the makers of New Lifestyles pedometers warn we all need to stave off premature death. And I bet our children would be perfectly well- behaved because after a day of using up all they've got, they'd be tired. In fact, we'd all be tired. The good tired. Not the tired I usually am, bitchy and distracted by afternoon, licking the morning coffee grounds from the compost pail for a buzz, and updating my list of transgressions the world has committed against me (most recent: water in my ear that is making me dizzy when I look down to type. Ow.)

I took a lot of dance classes in college. Mexican couples dances, Indonesian Gamelan dancing, Greek dancing, every day was filled with dance classes. (Note to the college bound: be an Ethnology of Non-Western Music and Dance major. Totally rocks. And when you graduate, the world will offer you a smorgasbord of jobs. Bitchen jobs. Like, once I sang Jewish folk songs in a maximum security prison in Tracy, California. Try to land that gig with a degree in, say, medicine.)

What was my point?

Oh, right. Dance classes. At the end of a day, I was wonderfully, satisfyingly, deliciously spent. I slept like a log (as opposed to these days when I sleep like a baby: wake up every two hours and cry until I eat). I believe that when we move to the commune, there will no fighting, no bitchiness, no whining, no interrupted sleep because we will all - children, adults, parents - be well used up. Also, because we can smoke our hemp tunics when life gets stressful.

But in modern life, here in suburbia, we live such contained lives. We have to share armrests in movie theaters. We have to refrain from jumping onto the moving clothes rack at the dry cleaners and taking a ride. We are not even allowed to finger wrestle prospective employers when they shake our hands. And we are left with a bunch of leftover energy that has nowhere to go. We are left wondering just how strong, fast, loud, obnoxious, fearless and mighty we can be.

So I check out the men in my classes. I take in their upper body strength, the contour of their forearms, their overall look and I fantasize bopping them on the nose, kneeing their groins and, occasionally, swinging them over my head and twirling them round and round like Brutus used to do to Popeye before the can of spinach magically appeared.  I have no reason to feel threatened by men. I've never been in a situation that would warrant a need to hurt them or get away fast. Well, once a guy forgot to pay me for a parenting consult but he remembered as soon as he got home and he came back. With a ten dollar tip, as apology. No need to break his kneecaps.

 My point being, there is no rational reason to fantasize about this. And, let's be honest, unless a man was in the middle of a serious heart attack, I'd probably not be the victor. I mean, I am no weakling but my 45 minute daily stroll in the park with my dog and the occasional foray into Curves isn't gonna get the job done against a forty-something dad. I suppose I could just sit on him and that would be that, but I am too vain to use my weight as a weapon because what if he lived, and told everyone, "she fucking sat on me and she weighs a ton. I thought I was dead" and then the papers would sleuth out my actual weight and report it and, yikes. Yikes.

Still, I crave real-life experience. Tae-Bo with TV Billy Blanks in my bedroom is like practice- kissing your pillow, you know? So with my late-fifties around the corner, I am going to do a little more stretching in my life.

I believe I will begin by reaching over my computer to that glass of wine.

Ow, my ear. Damn it.