Lemme Stand Next To Your...

Just recently I realized that every important thing that happens to me doesn't necessarily need to be shared with my parents. I know, I know, perhaps a little late at the tender age of 41, but...yeah.

As the product of a closely-knit family of oversharers, I've typically told my family EVERYTHING. Not sure why, but I feel like every weird, wonderful, humiliating or painful event isn't really and truly HAPPENING to me until I've broadcast it to my mom and dad.

It has come to my attention, however, that it isn't necessarily appropriate to pick up the horn and impart absolutely everything to my parents, who are 3,000 miles away, retired, and after spending their lives validating everything I've ever done, might actually deserve a little down time.

I'm realizing that not every milestone, be it good, bad, or terrifying, needs to be passed on to the elders. Like, say, for example, when your house catches on fire.

I guess I can say I've had my metaphorical housefire-cherry broken. As a child, having my house go up in flames was absolutely my biggest fear. Well, next to cobras. Also, the white witch from Narnia. Escalators, for a time. And my sister being abducted by a serial killer.

Anyway, fire safety being paramount, I would vigilantly palm closed doors 'just in case' they were hot before I entered a room, and would be the first to knock over the family dog in order to reach the nearest exit if dinner got a little smoky on the stove. Funny that, given these proclivities, the only thing I felt when my fire alarm went off the other night was irritation.

My house's fire alarm system is a little high-strung. It's been known to whine if the back door is open and the grill is going in the yard. It doesn't like certain scented candles. Generally, when I hear it, my first instinct is to want to smack it with a bat. So when I lit an incense and went into my bedroom to savor my few kid-free moments (Lil was down the street at her friend's house), I didn't exactly hustle out to the living room when the alarm started to chime. "Fucker," I muttered, trudging out to see what the trouble was, grumpy as a teenage boy whose bathroom masturbation time has been cut short by his kid sister's need to pee, like, now.

I saw the smoke just as the ping of the alarm graduated into an urgent wail--I'd never heard it do this before, and the siren was deafening, like a hundred foghorns and ambulances converging on my living room at once. In minutes, the room had filled with gray, turbid smoke, curling furiously toward the ceiling from a fire -- A FIRE -- that was fast leaping up the wall.

You'd think this would be the time when a dramatic 'impending danger' soundtrack would play, wouldn't you? But it's shocking how utterly silent a fire really is. The only sound was me yelling, "OH MY GOD THAT IS NOT HAPPENING", over and over, which I tend to do when the fight or flight instinct is supposed to kick in for normal people.

I don't remember every detail of the next few minutes, but I do remember thinking briefly (if not absurdly), 'What would Michael Landon do?', since I generally look to Pa Ingalls as my go-to crisis guru. So I grabbed a blanket from the laundry room and hastily threw it over the fire. The flames retreated beneath a cloud of smoldering black vapors, rising up to the ceiling like hateful spirits. They stained the wall and ceiling a sticky black and coated my nostrils and throat in the savagely toxic odor of THINGS THAT ARE NOT MEANT TO CATCH ON FIRE.

As the alarm continued to wail, I suddenly thought, I should probably get the animals out of the house.

Oh, and probably me too.

Somehow I grabbed my phone and gathered the smoldering blanket, eyeing a melted plastic picture frame in the rubble. I realized that the incense stick must have somehow set the frame on fire, as it was no doubt a cheap-ass Family Dollar purchase, painted with a ridiculously flammable shellac probably not legally manufactured in this part of the world.

Stumbling outside, I called 911. Have you ever actually had to do that? punch in the numbers 9-1-1? I hadn't. I always wondered what it must be like to be the poor person on the 'actual 911 recording' you see on reality crime shows, and now I do. It sucks. I felt like someone else was talking for me, giving my address, describing the situation. Yes, a fire. No, it's out. Yes, I'm outside. Within minutes I heard sirens in the distance-- such a commonplace sound, really. I tend to hear sirens outside and feel a sense of comfort that they aren't coming for me.

Except that now they were.

Three fire trucks pulled in front of my house and men started streaming out. It's weird, but my first instinct was to hug one of them. "THANK YOU!!!" I wanted to cry, "THANK YOU FOR COMING! OH MY GOD, YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE! THIS IS SO SO NICE OF YOU! ARE YOU THIRSTY? HOW ABOUT SOME FLAVORED SELTZER??"

They marched inside and thoroughly inspected the entire house, even going into the attic to see if some residual smoke/damage had spread (it hadn't). They brought in giant industrial-sized fans and blew the caustic hate-smell out the open windows (and with it, 2 inches of black ash that covered everything in the living room. Amazing how even a small fire can cause SO much damage). By then neighbors had started coming out of their houses, rubbernecking to see if there might be anyone passed out on the lawn or trying to jump to their death from an open window. My friend Khipi pulled up and I crumbled into her arms. Jeremy arrived a few minutes later and I pulled him close, so grateful to have people in my life willing to just come and BE with me.

I caught the reflection of my tear-and-soot-smeared face in a window and sob-laughed. "Do I look hot right now?" I asked Jeremy. "Like, in a Little Match Girl sort of way?"

We all cracked up because it felt like the right thing to do.

In the end, there was only cosmetic damage to the wall and a small part of the ceiling. The firemen told me it was lucky that I acted so quickly and put the fire out before it spread. The dog was panic-stricken but safe in the yard, and the cats, I don't think, even noticed a thing. Lily was safe at her friend Molly's house, and it seemed, for now, we had dodged one very hot bullet.

As the firemen were leaving, I still felt compelled to throw myself at them in gratitude. Maybe I could send them a fruit basket or something, I thought. I mean, really. They deserve it. A bottle of wine, a thank you card. Something.

I got through the rest of the night with the help of my loved ones and a large jug of wine. But it was everything I could do not to call my folks. It seemed unnatural, wrong, to keep this from them.

But I didn't call.

I'll tell them about it at some point. They'll probably read this post and go, "WHAT THE HELL?? A FIRE?!?!" but by then the danger will have long passed and it will be just something that happened, no big deal. I'm ok not sharing this with them, because they've spent their lives trying to protect me from unpleasantness and pain and worry. And I think it's time I start doing the same thing for them.

Those aren't really skinny jeans; they're too-tight jeans that don't look good on your butt

My daughter actually said this to me today when I was getting dressed. I am living with an insult ninja. It seems that every morning lately I must steel myself against a varied and colorful barrage of indignities, hurled like Chinese throwing stars, not from an abusive partner or bitchy co-worker or vindictive celebrity gossip site, but a from a knock-kneed ten-year old sitting cross-legged on my bed. She turned double digits and the filter button on what comes out of her mouth just sort of broke.

It's not bad enough that I'm my own worst critic – after a weekend diet of nachos and wine and an exercise regime consisting of draping myself across the couch and watching "Glee", my jeans DO feel a tad like sausage casings, so I choose a flowy top that will be sure to cover my puffy midsection. Also, I will admit that I tilt my full-length mirror against the wall at an angle that makes my reflection look a little bit thinner and taller, because it helps me start my morning off in a proper frame of mind. What do you want from me? I do what I can.

But now my daughter, speeding down the luge to adolescence, feels the need to critique everything about me, and it's like living with Joan Rivers and my bathroom is the red carpet. No area is off-limits, being it my outfit or my boot-heel-height, the age-appropriateness of my hair color, or appalling lack of eye-makeup.

And don't even get me started on Lily's critiquing of my child-rearing style. ("Haley's Dad lets HER watch Freddy Krueger! Molly is allowed to Facetime on HER IPOD TOUCH!!! UGHHH!) Always I am reminded of my shortcomings in the Momming Department, these sentiments constantly punctuated with requisite eye-rolling and shoulder slumping that really drive home the point that her life, like, totally sucks.

I read an article today that likened tween (I hate that word) girls to folks suffering from multiple personality disorders. I laughed out loud when I read that, because it rang so terrifyingly true. Over the last few months I have treaded very lightly around my daughter, worrying that too much sarcasm or the wrong question about a boy in her class might embarrass her right into having her first period all over my kitchen floor.

It's as if suddenly Lily woke up and found herself with such an overdose of emotions and opinions that she had no choice but to release them constantly and without any filter, for fear of absolutely imploding. She suddenly is experiencing life with such an intensity I worry sometimes that her head will pop off her body from all the drama-tinged adrenaline.

So I try to talk to other moms. Seems that this is a relatively new but all-too-common trend: our girls are growing up a lot faster than they used to. One mom frowned, "Oh yeah, she tells me I ruin her life just about every day." A co-worker with two teens suggested her behavior could be fueled by hormones in flux. So we went to the health food store and bought some overpriced "Power Teen" vitamins. The hot pink label on the bottle boasts lightning bolts and a sexually ambiguous girl skateboarder. Seemed like a good place to start. But god forbid anyone know that she's taking them. Though it's great to think about being older and cool, Lily is horrified by the things that are about to happen to her body. She's looking forward to growing up, I think, but scared of it too.

That makes two of us.

I Miss Writing

I miss writing so much. It feels like I'm missing an appendage, maybe something small, like a finger...not so big like an arm or a leg. Nothing you absolutely cannot survive without, but something that makes the day to day seem easier, more fluid, somehow.

I have been so busy trying to keep my head above water I maybe forgot how to swim a bit. I definitely forgot how to float. I would give anything to just sit back on cool lapping waves and just drift. On a purple blow-up floatie. That'd be divine.

Lately I have been feeling my heart pounding a little harder. I worry about high blood pressure but probably I have about ten years before that's really gonna be a problem.

I literally start to panic when the sun goes down b/c I know that the day is going to be over soon and I have only completed a portion of what's on my 'to do' list.

I probably need to slow down.

I have been taking my dog for a walk at night with Lily and those are my most serene moments...those and the times we spend piled up in my bed when we get home from work and school and I strip off my clothes an slip into yoga pants and the three of us just jump onto the bed and grab at each other...the dog, who is all mouth, tries to get a hold of us in any way he can. He is so excited for the attention and contact. Lil, still in her plaid uniform, does a silly dance and tucks her head down so Ted can nuzzle the hell out of her. These are the moments I am trying to hold on to. These are the things that I need to keep me tethered when I feel like I'm just going going going and I don't see any end in sight...

Sometimes You're Just Mrs. Bucket

Hey moms: do you sometimes find yourselves feeling like Mrs. Bucket? Not the quirky, buck-toothed, Tim Burton Pixie played by an extra camped-up Helena Bonham Carter; that one never resonated with me. I'm talking about the greasy-nosed, red-straw-haired Mrs. Bucket from the 1960s, the one who slaved all day washing strangers's clothes in a hot steamy vat of something resembling cream of celery soup for probably a dollar a day. The one who wore a scratchy-looking, worn-at-the-elbows sweater and made cabbage water to feed her extended family of parents and in-laws who all shared a bed in the living room/kitchen. The one who called a loaf of bread 'a real banquet'.

THAT Mrs. Bucket. Ever feel like that?

I do.

I did today, in fact. Scooping laundry out of the washing machine and dumping it into the dryer for the seventh time since I got home from work (OH, how many times have I walked away without remembering to turn that motherfucker on, only to return the next morning to a sodden, musty pile of dank towels and school uniforms?!!)

I clutch my aching back and hum REM's "Finest Worksong" while simultaneously calling out spelling words to test the kid, and keeping one eye on the stove to make sure dinner isn't getting more burned than usual...

That woman, Mrs. Bucket, that is, seemed to me the epitome of every failure a woman could possibly face, all rolled into one overwrought, exhausted wretch of a human being.

Mrs. Bucket days are the worst. I think the only bright spot in this whole miserable scenario is that there is, luckily, a tomorrow. I can pack it in and get a good night's sleep and there will be coffee and a sunrise in my future, and clean hair and a worn pair of jeans and my favorite boots and tomorrow I get another shot at doing this all over again...

Here's to keeping Mrs. Bucket at bay.

Things I learned this summer

Man, I cannot believe the summer is practically over. My summer, anyway. The rest of y'all still have like a month of it left. Actually, we down south have about 4 months of it left actually, so I win.

Ever since Lily and I moved to Louisiana - gasp! - four years ago, her dad and I concocted a harebrained yet workable arrangement which allows her to spend the school year with me, and the summer with him in New York.

It's a good deal, I think. Since I chose to take my kid and hightail it thousands of miles away from all of our family, I inadvertently put myself in a situation where I don't get a lot of relief at those times when I'm ready to lose myself in a single mama pity-party, so the summer, for the last three years anyway, has been a bit of a respite for me. OK more than a bit. It's fucking ruled.

Lil gets to go and live in the mountains and hang with her cousins; she enjoys healthy activities like swimming, tending her grandmother's vegetable garden, bonding with her dad, and generally cavorting the normal kid-in-the-summer way that our subtropical climate does not allow. I get to read more, not buy groceries, and join my boyfriend in bloody-mary-soaked brunches that sometimes extend to dinner time on Saturdays. My batteries get recharged and by the time fall rolls around, I've undergone a much-needed attitude adjustment and am ready to take it all on again.

The time apart is hard, make no mistake. It's very strange being a full-time single mother who is joined at the hip with her adored, possibly overindulged, attachment-parented offspring, and then suddenly being allowed to act like I did in my early twenties for a summer break. I go through the self-flagellation that goes along with letting ones nine-year old spend two months away from her. However, I think given the choice of a summer spent riding bikes outside and catching lightning bugs vs. two months sitting in some poorly air-conditioned rec room at the Y while the temperature outside verges on deep-fry, any fool would want the former for their kid. Since I work full time, and we live in a part of the country that has absolutely inhumanely high summer temperatures, it really is a no-brainer. New York it is.

The summer is also a nice time for me to reflect and allow myself to learn lessons that I otherwise might be too busy sticking my head up my own ass during the school year to figure out. Lke:

1. It's okay sometimes to drink alcohol at brunch, come home, take a nap, wake up, eat dinner, and binge-watch Netflix till bedtime. THIS IS GOOD FOR YOU.

3. You can make all the 'must do over the summer' lists you want in order to create the illusion of some sort of control over your life, but you will never get to everything. Maybe two things. One.

4. Since you have a kindle now and are all fancy and shit, and suddenly find yourself with a little extra time on your hands to read the 85 books on your Goodreads list, that doesn't mean it's wise to download a shit ton of them over the course of one month. Amazon ain't the library, dumbass . That shit adds up.

5. No matter how much you will it , your ex still isn't going to get his shit together and at least once in the coming school year you are going to be more than tempted to engage in that inevitable, icky exchange of hate-texts because he hasn't paid the school tuition. Try and stop yourself. Just pause…see if you can find that floating-in-a-sensory-deprivation-tank zen you reached this summer when your morning routine consisted solely of hitting snooze several times, slapping on some eyeliner, and driving to work while listening to NPR.
You can do it, girl. I know you can.

That's it for now. I get my little one back in two days. See y'all then.

Talking to God in my car

I suppose I'm what you'd call a Recovering Catholic. I was raised in a culture heavily saturated in good white people christian values; I spent every Sunday morning confused as hell as I tried to decode the important lessons in scripture readings while trying not to end up getting physically separated from my sister, who always started out sitting next to me, but ended up somehow making me laugh uncontrollably at some point during the mass.

My ass bones ached from being planted on splintery pew, and I gazed dreamily at a stubbly-chinned statue of a half-naked man whose alabaster skin was covered in blood and whose rib bones stuck out in a way that I was shamefully envious of. This man, I was told, knew everything. He was the only child of God and Mary, who for whatever reason decided to come together on this one and only occasion and create a superman who would come and go in the blink of an eye, with the sole purpose of cleansing us of our earthly sins by dying a brutal and grotesque death and then coming back in his human form to save us all.

Well, those of us who believed all that, anyway.

Catholicism still confounds me. My relationship with faith has been meandering and complicated; once I got to college, I began to question the things I'd been taught. I had an atheist roommate whose family decorated their Christmas tree with flowers and pictures and had a Pagan sun sitting on its top, rather than an angel. I dated a Lutheran guy. I stopped going to church. It just didn't make sense to me anymore.

I remember having an argument with my mother on the phone after I'd graduated college, but hadn't actually gotten around to leaving my college town just yet. I was working at a hotel and was being forced to work Christmas eve and was trying to explain to my family that no, they didn't have to wait to go to church with me on Christmas day; I was only going to be driving home for the afternoon and they liked the midnight mass on Christmas eve with the candles and shit, and it totally wasn't a big deal if they went without me. My mother wouldn't hear of it.

"Of course you're going with us. We'll just go on Christmas afternoon."
"Mom..." I began, feeling conflicted but also stupidly self-righteous and every bit as know-it-allish as a 23 year old with an English degree working in a hotel in her college town.

"I'm... not going to go. I'm...I'm just not Catholic anymore."

After a stunned silence, my mother responded, "Well, of COURSE you're Catholic! I mean, you were BORN Catholic!"

I considered this and decided not to engage in what I knew would be an argument I'd regret having. There was no point in explaining to my mother that while I was born Italian and Irish, Catholicism was something that I was free to choose, and I was now choosing not to be a part of it anymore. Unlike to me, religion made sense to her. It was important and part of who she was. My turning my back on it was like turning my back on my family, on her, on what she'd taught me. I think I ended up doing something passive-aggressive like coming home way after all the masses were over, just so I wouldn't have to have the conflict. Now I understand more what it meant to her to have me go to church with her.

Anyway. I've spent the last 20 years being really okay with my decision to abandon the Catholic faith. I didn't baptize my daughter but instead chose to have a hippie-inspired naming ceremony in a public park in Queens, serving vegetarian food and listening to latin music from a the boom box of a homeless guy who wouldn't go away til we gave him a plate of food.

Despite my lack of taste for organized religion, I've never stopped believing in God. Or a higher power. Or the Universe. Whatever you want to call it. I don't even know what to call it, really. I have always had faith in a greater plan...maybe some divine blueprint for every person's life that we can't be sure of but can help explain things like pain that seems pointless but ulitimately teaches us something. Or the unadulterated love we can feel for another person. I talk to God a lot. Mostly in my car, when I am alone. It's like free therapy and no one tells you you're actually fucked up and should change things about your life.

For me, it's all I need.

Home Improvement

Sometimes I wonder how it is that the universe saw fit to approve me for a mortgage.

I'm not exactly what you'd call handy.

In fact I'm a girl who, years ago, managed to completely clog the industrial-strength toilet in my NYC pre-war apartment; this building had a septic system that had seen the likes of giant rodents, probably, and chicken bones, childrens' toys, and all manners of assorted trash. Yet with one tampon I managed to bring the efficient superflushing of this well-oiled system to its knees. My super was regularly knocking on my door with a frozen 'Ima Kill yous' hate-smile twisted on his lips (he was from eastern Europe. Please excuse the crude attempt at an accent coming from his face). In other words, I was not a person who should be trusted with her own real estate.

And yet, here I am.

Two years and I've managed not to flood or blow up or burn my little house down; in fact I've even managed to keep it in rather good working condition, save for a few minor repairs I've had to pay the good people of Louisiana to help with, since I tend to look at two wires coming out of a machine and melt into an overwhelmed heap of anxiety.

So when I decided it'd be cool to take up all the stinky wall-to-wall carpeting in the bedrooms of my house, I thought, hey. Here's an opportunity for me to learn how to do household-y things and get that sense of satisfaction that can only come with knowing you did it all on your own (with the help of my boyfriend, of course. Ok, he did most of it).

All in all, it went great. The carpets came up and we hand-laid some very convincing-looking faux-wood laminate in each room. The cats fretted at now having no viable places to revenge-urinate and I learned what it was like to sleep without being violently awoken by dry-coughing up whatever dusty parasites had been living in the rugs for the 20 year lifespan of my home.

All I needed to do now was buy quarter round. For the layperson (because I'm all home-improvementy and shit now), this is that little wooden stick thingy that goes between the wall and the floor and makes it seem like maybe a professional actually installed your floor. I took measurements of each room and brought them proudly to Lowes so that I could purchase the final leg of this very impressive project.

But when I got there, it was awful. I'm not even sure what happened. Suddenly I felt like a small child lost in a giant city, looking up at these impossibly tall skyscraper aisles, packed floor-to-ceiling with HARDWARE. I wandered, mouth slack, praying that no one could tell how confused I was and figure out that I actually did not belong there.

I must have stumbled around for a good ten minutes before a kindly teen employee asked if I needed help. I nodded and mutely palmed my sweaty sheet of measurements into his hand, looking up hopefully. The kid had to do a bunch of conversions from inches to feet on his iphone (DUH, why didn't I think of that?!!) and finally pointed me in the right direction.

But when I found what I needed I realized I would need a special cart to carry the 8 feet pieces of wood to the cash register, and then, omg, get it in my car somehow. A beefy, red-faced contractor in a dirty LSU tee shirt looked at me mockingly and asked if I was actually going to put install all the quarter-round myself. What I heard was, 'Hey there, little lady. How's about you walk those tits next door to Target and buy yourself a nice tea kettle and leave the man-shopping to dicks like me".

I urgently needed to get out of there. And so I did.

I literally speed-walked my humiliated girl-legs out the sliding doors, leaving behind all of my haughty, do-it-yourself gumption behind to rot with the sawdust in the store.

Ashamed, I jumped into my car and sped home, feeling like a world-class asshole.

I'm not sure what came over me. I just got so freaked out.

Anyway. A couple days have passed, and I'm ready to try it again.

Gulp. Wish me luck, y'all.