Henna and our kitchen ceiling caved in, yay!
He made that — visualized the red background, then created it and willy-nilly threw in some purple, cut out his school picture (crouching next to my desk as he did so because, as he told me, still scissoring, he was afraid I’d get mad at him NOT AFRAID ENOUGH APPARENTLY), then taped the picture to the background and put it all in this frame. And this Instagram post from fellow parenting writer (way smarter and way more successful, and deservedly so) Melinda Wenner Moyer cracked open what I thought about kids who do things adults might find boastful: They believe they’re being HELPFUL. Look at my baby, and his helpful picture of himself. Why shouldn’t he be proud of himself and love a picture of himself? It definitely helps me.
Gargantubaby: Mommy, let’s play doctor. (Looks serious.) What is your problem today?
Jenny: I have a son who won’t get out of bed.
GB: (Whispers) Pause. Mommy, doctor is for when something’s broken or you’re sick.
Jenny: Oh, OK, I’ll do it right.
GB: (Looks seriously at me again)
Jenny: I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I’m tired all the time.
GB: I think we should squeeze your boob. (Squeezes my boob)
Jenny: Oh, thank you, I have so much energy now!
I cuddle him and kiss all the parts of his face as I name them so he won’t notice I’m scooping him up and taking him to the kitchen for breakfast.
Gargantubaby (holding part of a PB&J sandwich at the kitchen table): Mommy, my hand is shaking, which is why this is shaking.
Jenny (alarmed): Why is your hand shaking??
Gargantubaby: Because I'm doing a lot of hand business!
Strong Jawline finds the plastic squeeze bottle of Hershey's syrup in the back of the "pantry" (a shelf unit I bought from Lowe's and lined with baskets, since we live in a house slapped together with duct tape and no storage). I share that when I was growing up, Hershey's syrup came in a can that we popped open on both sides with a can opener and put it in the fridge.
SJ: We can refrigerate it.
Jenny: That's not why I was saying that, it's made of corn syrup and brown food coloring, it won't go bad. I was asking if that's how you remember it. You're Finnish and you're nodding, which could mean yes, no, I don't remember, or something else.
SJ (born to hippies in 1967 in Portland, Oregon): That is not something we had in either the [father's last name] or [mother's last name] household because it wasn't either bulgur, nettles, or smelt.
*
Working for a news station during the state's second-worst storms in recorded history, rapidly followed by three mass killings in eight days, has been hilarious and fun. But not nearly as much fun as our kitchen ceiling caving in!
I wasn't home when the sheetrock above the table finally succumbed to the crack that had been widening after weeks of atmospheric river storms, but my stepdaughter sent me a text message at work:
Did you know the kitchen ceiling just fell in.
Everyone is safe
It's a minor inconvenience
There was a 50% chance she was messing with me, so I demanded proof, which she sent.
SJ said later he thought for a panicked moment the cats had been crushed beneath it, but no such luck (see "our cat is in heat because I forgot to get her spayed," below).
Lucky for us, since we are rich, we had contractors in the house already THAT IS A PHRASE THIS CHILD OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS NEVER IMAGINED SHE’D WRITE, and one of them kindly made the hole larger to cut out all the damaged sheetrock, then cut plywood pieces in a jigsaw to fit over the hole. It took him a mere TWO HOURS. It would have taken me I never would have been able to do it. I remain in awe.
The long and short of it: We need a new roof. We are not THAT rich. We are not THAT rich at all, so SJ and I have been collecting professional advice on how the fuck to pay for this. I spent an entire day learning about home equity loans, home equity lines of credit, bank loans, online loans, and credit union loans, and spent way too much time on websites such as NerdWallet and Forbes learning stuff I do not care about AT ALL.
Ask me about interest rates. ASK ME. (Don't ask me.)
*
GB is so genuinely moved with gratitude when I tell him I won’t be with him for his first slumber party that he attempts to give me a hug from the backseat on the freeway. I have mixed feelings about this. I love to see my kid happy but never before has he melted with gratitude at the idea of being separated from me for 24 hours.
A few days later I’m trying to brush GB's teeth. We left his strawberry Crest toothpaste at the sleepover so he’s been having to brush his teeth with baking soda the last couple days. He’ll do it with his dad, but his dad is at a late meeting and GB won’t do it with me.
Jenny: For fuck's sake!
GB: You said a bad word.
Jenny: OK, how about this, for Christ's sake.
GB: That … sounds like a bad word. And if it sounds like a bad word, it counts!
Strong Jawline has a gig working an evening performance with some improv. I abhor improv and am generally suspicious of anything not planned out weeks in advance.
On Saturday morning, after a late Friday night, he stumbles out of GB's room, where he slept. GB is still asleep in the big bed, in our room. I'm drinking tea and reading a magazine on the couch.
Jenny: How was it?
SJ: (Crosses arms, daft and spiky-haired with just-woke-upness) It was kind of a weird show. I recognized a bunch of people but I didn't know their names and couldn't remember what I knew them from. It was very white. Like, everyone on stage was white.
Jenny: Yep. It's like that. And all men. Or maybe there's one woman.
SJ: There were two women. But the comedians were all in a band? And they did a bunch of covers, like Born to Run and Stevie Wonder.
Jenny: Like, making fun of them?
SJ: No. Just singing. One of them had a good voice. But mostly it was people with strained voices, singing entire songs. And then they did improv in the middle. There were two backup singers, and the main guy never introduced them. It was totally obnoxious.
Jenny: You really noticed all that stuff.
SJ: Yes! Because of you. At least I got to be in a roped-off section so I had a lot of elbow room. To give you an idea of how bad it was, in the middle of it I started counting all the people I know who've been murdered.
*
Our younger cat, now about a year old, has had so many medical problems I haven't gotten around to getting her spayed, and also I guess care of both cats is 100% my responsibility? So definitely this is all my fault but whatever.
A couple days ago, this cat who is NORMALLY annoying — CAN'T STOP, WON'T STOP, meow, meow, pee, poo, barf, meow, meow — woke me out of a dead sleep from the other side of a wood door MULTIPLE times by yowling. Then, in the morning, after peeing on more things than usual, she started slinking along the carpet after me, looking up at me hopefully and raising her little tuckus and I was all NO ARE YOU SERIOUS NO.
This is the best proof I have so far that my cat has a pea brain. FIRST OF ALL, there is ANOTHER CAT, of the MALE VARIETY, ALSO IN THE HOUSE. Yes, he's spayed/neutered, but it's not like I'm giving off pheromones he's not? SECOND OF ALL, this cat came creeping after two entities: ME, and my 13-YEAR-OLD STEPDAUGHTER. NOT SJ. NOT GB. NOT THE OTHER CAT. This cat prefers female humans. I definitely feel bad for her but SHUT UP ALREADY EWWWW.
*
If you're 46 and have dyed your dark brown hair only once in your life and you suddenly have 24 hours to yourself because another parent has taken your child for the entire day plus an overnight, and you take yourself out to brunch at the Beach Chalet by Ocean Beach with an Elena Ferrante novel, where they seat you next to the PIANO PLAYER the PIANO PLAYER with a view of CRASHING OCEAN WAVES and you order the deviled eggs and Caesar salad and two glasses of PINK CHAMPAGNE, and eat so slowly every table in your section turns over and they STILL don't give you a dirty look and actually you're wondering if they've forgotten about you, and after paying you tromp outside in the drizzle among fallen trees at the butt end of Golden Gate Park amid poppies and a historic windmill and then take a NAP a NAP in your CAR beside the ocean listening to rain on the roof then drive home and decide you have two hours to sit in one place watching Better Things on Hulu with two cats sitting on you, you might decide to dig up the henna you've had for a year and do something with it.
This is what you need to do (first stepping back in time):
Buy a packet of henna at the hippie store in Bolinas one easy, hopeful day, because your friend dyed her hair with henna and it looked great. You’ll do the same thing!
Put it in your bathroom.
Let a year pass.
Get 24 hours of child care.
Put on gloves from the packet and make a paste with henna and water. Being careful not to dye the tips of your ears and your forehead, put entire contents of packet into your hair. All of it ALL OF IT PILE IT ON.
Sit on couch for 2.5 hours watching Better Things on Hulu.
Rinse in shower. Enjoy subtle change to personal appearance, which either no one notices or no one likes since no one comments on it. But enjoy the slight, surprising difference every time you look in the mirror, because with the ceiling literally caving in the little things will get you through.
(If I ever have to go back on OKCupid, I’m thinking about using the second picture from the left for my profile. Thoughts?)
