Posts from — March 2010

Why yes, that is a human tooth inside a ring.  Isn’t that what everyone has on their desk?

Wait, let’s start over.

Last week, I noticed that the ChickieNob’s tooth was loose.  For whatever reason, this one milestone didn’t bother me at all.  I wondered if it was the milestone itself or the fact that it is the first one we’ve hit since giving away most of our baby things.  You would think I’d be more of  a wreck.  But I was really excited to play tooth fairy.

I’m sure both of my parents were the tooth fairy at various times (um, I hope I didn’t ruin that for you), but one night, I woke up to find my father in my room.  He mumbled something about “just checking” on the tooth, but I remember opening my eyes and seeing him rooting around in the tooth fairy pillow and I knew that I had two choices–I could let him see that I was awake and that I knew the truth or I could close my eyes again and pretend fairies existed.  I went with the truth because it felt like the right thing at the time.  Which is not to say that I haven’t had regrets and wish that I still believed in fairies.

The ChickieNob’s tooth fell out while she was with my parents, a fitting ending to my tooth fairy story.  They were playing rummy and my mother asked her for a card and my daughter handed her a tooth.  She told me that it had been annoying her because it was wobbling about so she pushed it out–with her tongue? with her finger?  And we stepped over to the other side–the loss of baby teeth.  The start of her permanent adult teeth.

I was thinking about her tooth today in regards to blogging.  I have started and stopped various projects throughout the years.  Some have been on-going for years–the Roundup will be 4 years old this summer and IComLeavWe has been going on for almost 2 years.  And others have come and gone after a few months or years.  I let Barren Advice drift away a while back.  The Emoblopedia hasn’t been updated in ages.  Every once in a while, something disappears and then it strikes me to resurrect it.

The loss of the tooth made me realize that now was the right time to put Show and Tell to rest.  Not permanently, perhaps, but at least for a while.  I considered letting it go to 100 posts just to keep things even (it’s currently at 97), but I think that I would like the post about “Country Roads” and West Virginia and Lori to be my last Show and Tell for a bit (or, perhaps forever).  It is fitting to end with her because I got her into blogging so she should be my bookend to the project much in the same way my parent’s role as the tooth fairy has transferred to me.

I could let this project go quietly, but since others participate in it too, it felt like closure needed to be mentioned.  I’ll leave this last one open until Saturday night as always, and then close the participation box.

Baby teeth fall out to make room for new teeth, and I have to admit that part of me has felt that Show and Tell went from one of my favourite parts of the week to a bit of a drag to find something to show.  When her tooth fell out, my thought was to hold the picture another week instead of blogging it organically after it happened because I already had my Show and Tell chosen with Lori.  And that’s not what Show and Tell was ever about.  And so, for the sake of organic blogging, it’s time to let this project fall out to make space for the next idea (at least for the time being).  Because I’m sure there is one rattling around in there, something beyond the new space for the Mondegreens.  There always is.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

Last Friday, Lori came for a visit (I thought I was being all clever in the Roundup but…er…everyone guessed it on the first try).  We’ve gotten together two other times, but this is the first time that we had almost five days just to relax and have fun without other things we need to attend.

Her online name is Lavender Luz (which, by the way, I have always pronounced as “luhz; rhymes with buzz” rather than “looz; rhymes with booze.”–Mondegreen!), and it perfectly describes the light that is apparent in her and around her.  Lori brings the peace into the room.  Being with her is like sitting in the sunshine with a slight breeze.

And that’s what we did: we sat in the sun and ate a shitload of cake and teased Josh and met up with other friends.  We had girl time every night and played with the twins and watched Jamie Oliver cry.  It was this amazing visit and I cried leaving the airport.

On Saturday, I took her out to West Virginia, which is one of my special places.  I shyly told her that I like to listen to John Denver as I drive there, and she told me that she likes him too.  Right as we crossed over the Potomac River into WV, with Harper’s Ferry peeking out on the right and the bridge over the Shenandoah in front of us, we got to Denver’s “Country Roads” on the CD.  It was literally a perfect moment of being in a happy place and hearing a happy song with a happy person (as in, she makes me happy–Lori is not perpetually in a state of giddy clappiness).  It was a convergence of three things that mean the world to me: West Virginia, this song, and Lori.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Three years ago today, Bea challenged me to make a film and I did.  It’s still going strong with over 20,000 views.  That’s a lot of assvice.

I didn’t know it was the third anniversary of the film until I got a note from YouTube about it.  Since making it, I have learned a lot more about film-making via Microsoft Paint including how to make the pictures less blurry.  I have toyed with the idea of redrawing the film with crisper pictures and adding an additional verse.  But what advice did Aunt Jane miss?  Feel free to leave your best assvice below and I will try to compile it into an anniversary verse if I can get Josh to lay it all out for me again (pretty please, Josh?).

A friend recently apologized on her blog to her readers about being a broken record.  She felt as if every post was the same, that she was just repeating the same sad thoughts over and over again.

I told her not to apologize.  The people who didn’t want to read it didn’t have to stick around, and beyond that, it was important for her to write it again even if she has written the same words forty-five times before.

Blogging is a lot like nose blowing–you do it to clear the stuff out of your body, sometimes to simply toss it away and sometimes to examine it (oh, come on, don’t throw up in your mouth–you know you’ve done this).  And no one would apologize for blowing their nose again when they just blew it five minutes earlier.  We recognize that our body is always producing more gunk that needs to be dealt with during a cold.  Why don’t we recognize that our minds are always producing more gunk that needs to be dealt with during an emotional crisis?  And that gunk may look exactly like the gunk we thought we just got rid of with the last blog post?

So thank you to everyone who reads this blog, for being my virtual Kleenex to which I can blow all this verbal snot out on.  That may not sound pretty–bodily fluids rarely are–but I can’t think of a softer, kinder landing space.  Thank you for all the times you’ve let me blow the same crap out fifteen times in a row and left unique comments on the same circling thoughts.

I hope I have been a free therapist for you as much as you have been a free therapist for me.

March 16th started like any other day: we overslept, we cursed a lot, I jumped into the shower and washed my face two times because I couldn’t remember if I had done it the first time two seconds earlier.  Oh, and Bronner returned.

Bronner is the ChickieNob’s imaginary friend, who first came to live in our house when the ChickieNob was three, remained a pretty constant companion through the rough transition to school, and disappeared in November or December of 2008.

Bronner has been our friend in times of high-stress.  For instance, when the ChickieNob was balking at potty training, Bronner was right there beside her, equally cranky at the idea of sitting on the toilet.  When the ChickieNob was having a shit time at school and came home crying daily, Bronner was there to occupy her thoughts as she quietly waited for pick-up time.  Bronner is sometimes a difficult additional child, what with the fact that I have to bathe her, feed her, and clothe her lest the ChickieNob screams that I don’t have enormous love for her.  But overall, Bronner is a good friend to have around–one that gives me a lot of time to get things done while the ChickieNob chuckles at Bronner’s silent jokes.

Imagine our surprise when in a time of low-stress, when things are trucking along nicely for the twins after the Great Binky Giving-Up of 2010, the ChickieNob woke up to solemnly tell us that Bronner made her eat monkey.  Eat monkey?  Bronner returns after a year-long absence only to force my daughter to consume treyf?

Later in the morning, the ChickieNob rethinks this and giggles to herself, “I made a mistake.  I misunderstood.  I did not eat monkey.  I only watched monkeys eat bananas.”

There was an audible sigh of relief that Bronner has not started dropping PCP in her sabbatical.  But there was a strange knot in my stomach all morning, especially as I informed her teacher of Bronner’s resurgence despite the fact that I made the ChickieNob promise to leave Bronner in the car so I could have a chat with her during school hours.

Was there stress that I didn’t know about?  Am I so overtired that I’m missing the fact that stress is sitting in our living room much in the same way I wash my face twice every morning because I’m too stupid to remember if I washed it the first time until I’m midway through the second washing?

Or perhaps Bronner is back not because anything is wrong, but because everything is right and it’s nice to have old friends visit sometimes.  The Wolvog was also happy to hear that Bronner has returned and while he never had his own imaginary friend, informed us as he looked out the window that he is now seeing “crowds of people outside” who all want to be his friend and could we help him name them.  An imaginary friend caretaking neophyte.  By the time he had named the first one, Bronner had already gotten dressed, eaten Life cereal (and not monkey brains), and played with her own imaginary friend, Ursula (yes, our imaginary friends have their own imaginary friends for the times when we’re just too damned busy to play with them).

My mother picked them up after school and they bounced out of the classroom gleefully. “I have given 100 friends your address and they will all be at your house!” the Wolvog informed her.  I had already warned my mother of Bronner’s return so she took it in stride until they reached her house and the Wolvog looked around at the emptiness outside the car.  “I don’t know what they’re thinking, but my friends have all brought weapons.”

Wait, scratch that, we don’t have imaginary friends.  We have imaginary Orcs.

After calling me and attempting several times to relay this story (my mother was laughing so hard that on the first few tries, I kept hearing that the friends all brought tampons), she let them free-float through their play and finally asked the ChickieNob why Bronner returned.  “She comes when we’re lonely,” the ChickieNob stated, as if she had read this fact in a clever New Yorker article.

It sort of begs the question, how can twins be lonely?  Ones who share a room and go to school together and play endless rounds of Strawberry Shortcake at the Monster Truck Jam.  Ones who have several playdates a week, a wide circle of friends, and two activity classes?  Ones who move easily between togetherness and natural separation as they run with their individual friends.  Being lonely in a crowd of people is an adult concept.  Feeling isolated within a relationship isn’t something children can comprehend.  Loneliness exists for the preschool set, but the concept of loneliness when surrounded by people comes much later.  So how can a child who spends every waking moment interacting with a peer–either her twin brother or a friend–be lonely?

I’m really not sure if she knows what the word means or if she has been reading Josh’s clever New Yorkers.

We’re not sure how long Bronner is staying.  If she’ll still be here in an hour, tomorrow, next week.  If she’ll stay through Pesach and disappear back into the ether.  If the ChickieNob will forget about her or if she’ll be sad to see her go.  And if she does leave, will she return again, monkey meat in hand.