Material

The "Top 10 Emailed Articles" on the New York Times web site today:

1. An Immune System Trained to Kill Cancer

2. In Study, Fatherhood Leads to Drop in Testosterone

3. If It Feels Right...

4. A Child's Nap Is More Complicated Than It Looks

5. The Stone: The Meaningfulness of Lives

6. The Trouble With Homework

7. In Suburb, Battle Goes Public on Bullying of Gay Students

8. An Impeccable Disaster

9. A Squirt of Insulin May Delay Alzheimer's

10. Well: Is SpongeBob SquarePants Bad for Children?

America, I think we may need to up our meds.

Pretty for you

Not to take the place of words, but sometimes you just need pretty.

This is a picture I took in 2003 in Barcelona of the floor in a house designed by Gaudi.  The shadows are cast from a lace curtain.

Old moon, new moon?

Last night, at 10:38pm, I was quite a sight to see.  Sitting on the leather couch in the basement, wrapped in blankets, a giant metal bowl which had contained my dinner-- 10 cups of popcorn dusted with nutritional yeast-- sobbing.  

Sobbing because I was tired and didn't know how to just go to sleep.  And because my husband has been gone almost a week to a conference in Poland.  And I know it shouldn't make a difference where he's gone to, but the further away he is, the harder gravity pulls the tides up within me.  

I am always shocked by this occurrence: it seems so out of character for me.  But I actually know it very well.  It's the straw widow peeking out.  The straw widow comes out only when the moon is new, and everything is quiet and dark.  

It always seemed strange to me that the new moon is called just that-- new-- because we experience it as an absence.  New suggests, somehow, presence.  

Then again, sometimes for the new to appear, room must be made.  Reminds me of the haiku by Mizuta Masahide:

Barn's burnt down --
now
I can see the moon.

Sobbing by yourself in your finished basement while watching an episode of a teenage musical drama while your two beautiful, perfect children sleep two floors above you is inane.  Yes, I was sobbing because I was tired.  And overwhelmed.  And unable to let go.  And missing my husband desperately.  

Which is actually, in a sense, redeeming.  I was crying-- stupidly, gulping for air and (though it was dark and I was alone) with a speckled, hottening face-- because in that stupid, stupid teenage love, I could feel the stupid feeling that I needed to feel.  Out of control and desperate for the love of someone I could not have (at least for the moment).  

It's embarrassing to feel you've become untethered.  It's embarrassing-- even in your own basement (perhaps especially in your own basement)-- to let go.  To sob.  

But, to my surprise-- I did just that.  I let it go.  The sobbing did something for me.  

Should that surprise me?  Actually, maybe it shouldn't.  Funny, that thing.  It's like as a baby, all you know is unravel unravel unravel and need the world to swaddle you in.  Then you become that binding for yourself; you become the binding for others. 

Sometimes that unravel unravel unravel is okay.  I really am OK.  Sad, but OK.  I can unravel sometimes, even if just to the floor.  Then I can be retrieved.  I can retrieve myself.  Weave, unweave.  Weave.

Rainbow Connection

In this blog post, MamaH exposes her bedtime tropes, which include mash-ups of AA Milne stories and the Three Stooges, as played by vegetables.  Very small vegetables.  

Baby Broccoli (whose name was a sad attempt at trying to get my son to respect vegetables) cohabits with Pooh and Piglet in the Hundred Acre wood.  Baby Broccoli's sidekick is Baby Corn, and the two little imps are always off on some adventure that Pooh and Piglet have to extricate them from.

Usually, the stories end up in some sort of slapstick race where one unlikely thing happens after the next.  My son thinks they are hilarious.  In fact, they are so hilarious that he ends up jumping up and down in the bed, squealing at the twists and turns in the story, and waking up his little sister who had inevitably *just* settled down to sleep.

I haven't figured out exactly what these two "boys" look like-- do they look like broccoli and corn?  Because that's sort of creepy.  Anyhow, my son doesn't seem to mind. The main thing is that they are funny, single-word-with-exclamation-point-screaming boys.  They appeal.

However, they don't necessarily serve the purpose of a bedtime story to CALM and RELAX.  At the end of the story, my son is inevitably:

a) Belligerent

b) Crying

c) Shouting continuations "...and then they get in a rocket ship and go up up up to the moooooon!"

d) Crying from having laughed so hard

Tonight was "movie night", so that necessitated a shorter version of events, and preferably one that did not involve keeping up the already-past-her-experation-date sister.  

Tonight Baby Broccoli and Baby Corn witnessed a quadruple rainbow in the field across the street, and ran over to catch it.  They ran and ran, feeling like the closer they got to it, the more it receded.  Until they stopped and looked around and realized that they were actually IN the rainbow.  The rainbow enveloped the entire field and became a sort of glowing blanket that skimmed over the surface of the ground.  

The two boys found that they could run and slide on it; they could arc around as though ice skating; the slightest of pressure with their hands or feet could steer them one way or another, as if swimming, or weightless in space.

There need be no end to this story.  No closure, no resolution.  Baby Broccoli, Baby Corn, my son and the rainbow.  Sublime.

I came, I saw, I said too much

Even though my days as a poetry graduate student are far, far behind me, I still seem to have some of the self-perception issues that plagued me in the day.  You see, the job of a poet (at least as I see it) is to say something essential; say it with an economy of words-- only the right words; transmit messages that are encoded and decoded, so they are sort of an app that shows up and opens itself to the reader-- enacting, running the program. 

 

The problem is, I don't have the will to be a poet.  I have the ideas; I have the language; I have the spiritual desire to make things.  I am just afraid.  I am also inconstant.  I distract easily.  I am a magpie of ideas and images.  Oooooh!  Look at the pretty over there! And zap, moving on.

Except, recently, after a long blogging hiatus and exorbitant facebooking, I signed up to audition for "Listen to Your Mother".  LTYM was started last year by Blogstress with the Mostess and Jewish Humorista Ann Imig, who also happens to have a son with the same name as mine, and who is a parent at my son's former preschool.

Last year I did not read at LTYM.  I feared "I am woman hear me roar" or, worse, Hallmark theater.  When I dared peer into last year's video of LTYM, I was blown away.  Nothing of my fears.  But fierceness.  FIERCENESS.  And people I couldn't have imagined listening to, I listened to.  They had something to say to me.  

So when I saw the call for auditions this year for LTYM I said to myself SHIT.  I don't want to do this I do NOT WANT TO DO THIS.  But my mother self said Screw you it'll be good for you.  Mother knows best, doesn't she?  Crap.

I struggled and struggled.  What did I have to talk about?  What DIDN'T I have to talk about?  Fret fret fret frette.  Frette is a bedspread.  A yucky bedspread.  Write anything.

So, on the urging of a friend,  I wrote a poem.  I fell back on writing a sestina, because I love sestinas (I particularly love this sestina from Elizabeth Bishop called "One Art").  I love the repetition of the end words.  So, here was my sestina.  Not perfect, but not half bad:

Sestina for Six AM

I woke up at six.

Through the monitor, my daughter was having a serious word

 with the assembled animals in her bed.

 What I understood was only a fragment,

 some misbehavior.  Some laughing.  Stop!

 The wards were getting restless.  I the mom! I mom!

 Then the rankling, like a cup against metal bars.  Maaaaaaaamiiiiiiiiiiii

 as if suddenly she were reminded of my existence as the six

 o’clock alarm clicked on at five past to stop

 her machinations.  She utters THE word

 which makes all things happen; which lifts her from her bed

 into the morning which continues like a fragment

 of some conversation from the night before, not rested, but embedded

 and continued.  Even Dora calls out from the infernal talking dollhouse, “Hola, mama!”

 as if we must be surrounded by things that fragment

 our thoughts to not let us get too deep; The six

 year old slumbers on.  Sometimes I can hear the murmur of unintelligible words

 through his door, a flow that doesn’t stop

 even when it seems like all motion, all thought should stop.

 It’s like constant traffic, even in bed.

 Syllables being hatched and born into words.

 What is that like?  To be born into words, like mom

 came to mean ME six

 years ago (I have to count on my fingers), as though even that fragment

 of control, of time, escapes me.  I peel fragments

 of the orange and place it on the tray, in front of my daughter and stop

 in thought.  Or out of thought.  Then she counts back to me-- to six

 though she does not-- cannot-- understand numbers.  She sings No more beeeehd

 because it makes sense, doesn’t it to her? Mom

 is the beginning of word.

 Words

 are just a convenient way of taking fragments

 and making sense.  Yes, slivered, mom

 is elemental, full-stop.

 Developed or grown from seed in the world’s flower bed.

 In the beginning, God created six 

 days and rested on the seventh. Mom has a word

 for Six AM.  It is eternal.  It does not rest; it fragments.

 Stop.  Go back to bed.

But that was just what got me started.  Now I was furiously trying to find something else-- I was NOT going to read poetry in front of an audience again.  N-O-T, as in NOTHANKYOU.  Then a friend-- Jen over at the Checkered Chicken-- encouraged me to write about my relationship with my mother.  

So apparently that's how I ended up reading on Mother's Day in front of 350 people at the Barrymore Theater in Madison with 12 other amazing mothers.  I still can't believe I did it-- mostly because I can't believe what I said IN FRONT OF 350 PEOPLE, including, apparently, former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold.  Really?  Did I really have to clue in the Feds in front of Russ freaking Feingold?  

I guess I did.  I will post the video as soon as it is up.  In the meantime, believe me that it was great and awful and freeing.  And now I'm here doing the blog thing again because what more can happen to me if I don't try?  Nothing.  Nothing will happen if you don't try.  Things may happen TO you, but they won't happen FOR you.  

So listen to me.  Pretend I'm your mother.  I'll make you eggs.  Now get out of here.

Sweden, You Taunt Me So

Sweden has given the world IKEA and Astrid Lindgren and Meatballs.  All things that are somehow so elemental, so simple and smart you can't help but slap yourself on the head and say, "Now why didn't I think of that?!?"

Yes, Sweden is, to my mind anyway, the gateway to the collective unconscious.

It's also an absolutely absurd language which seems to at once make sense to the native-English speaker and also make total nonsense.

Exhibit A:

From the Swedish Website Barnvanligt  (If you want to see the English website, click on the British flag at the top left of the page).

Simple.  Iconic.  Functional.  Swedish.  They call it a Nyckering.  Well of course they do!  Not sure what the heck it really means (probably key ring holder, I suspect) but Nyckering really satisfies, doesn't it?

Just like all the names of products at IKEA: Malm and Halsa and Barnslig Randig.  All those umlauts dancing atop vowels like the bouncing ball in a child's sing-along video.

I guess it also doesn't hurt that Swedish maintains more than a passing resemblance to Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.  To wit:

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Okay, perhaps I should have rather said, "Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky maintains more than a passing resemblance to Swedish".  Still, there's truth to it.  

So yes, Sweden.  You are home to my linguistic and design unconscious.  And I deign to say, your meatballs are irresistible.

What I do when I'm trying to avoid meaning

Knit
Trim cuticles
Put too many books on my library queue that I will never have time (or energy for that matter) to read
Woot-off!
Come up with Byzantine plans for:

• The next social gathering that I am going to host because I love being around people but hate hosting but will host anyway
• An art project that will go awry, perhaps in the planning stages, but after having purchased all supplies
• The yard, including an orchard, a pagoda, 1000-lb. boulders and no weeding
• Controlling the unstoppable decay of my house, car, and everything I touch
• How I can best torture myself about some social commitment that I really don't want to fulfill but can't say no to.  Because I can't say no to it, OK?

Oooooh!  Recipes from the New York Times!  I'd LOVE to try and use pomegranite molasses again.  

People.comUsmagazine.comTMZ.com-- OK, that makes me disgusted.  There's avoiding meaning and there's gossip-porn.  Let's not go THERE.

Baby Gap.  Because your baby looks cuter in clothes that have been assembled by her contemporaries.

Doesn't it seem like it's been an awful long time since something was recalled?  I should check and see if the crib/medicines/toys/clothes/food has been recalled.  It HAS!  Oh crap.  I'm a bad mom.  I shouldn't waste time on meaningless things and I should hug my children more.  Really, what's more important than a hug?

Cereal.  In front of the computer.

File Not Found

I've been MIA from the blog for-- scarily enough-- almost two years now.  In-between I've been busy gestating and then raising my adorable baby girl... a worthwhile cause, as you can see.

Did I mention that said baby girl hasn't been the most stellar napper in her almost 1 year of existence on this planet?  I mention it now because, like clockwork, she has awakened.  Babies must hear some special high-pitched frequencies when their mothers sit down to do anything of meaning.

And so, there goes my start.  At least I've dipped my toesies in the pool again.  Oh, and at least while I finish typing this sentence the baby's syllables sound slippery-sweet.

Welcome back to the world...

VOTE for all GET-OUT!

Just a quick note to say that I'm feeling excited, uneasy, crazy, wild and hopeful (with a dash of cynicism) about tomorrow's election.  The one thing you have to give to Obama-- even if you're not an Obamaniac like we are in my family-- is that his campaign is ORGANIZED AS ALL GET-OUT.  

They've been calling us, we had a knock on the door this afternoon, we've had emails and facebook updates galore.  GOOD!  I hope they bug all of us out of our Bush-induced lethargy.  It may take years of therapy for the people of this country to come to grips with all the nastiness that has gone on the last eight years.  I can think of no better leader than Obama to help us back to sanity.

Now, if you'll excuse me, my husband and I are going to raid my son's sidewalk chalk bin and chalk the streets in our neighborhood for Obama.  Part of me wants to do it naked as an ultimate act of defiance, but I'll spare everyone the sight and thought of that ;)

GO OBAMA!

MOTHERlode

I've composed this blogpost in my head probably fifty times in the past week or so, so here goes.  You, my dear blog reader, whoever you are still (and who are you, by the way, who burns the candle at both ends and checks back with me even though the last lame thing I posted was a Matt Damon video in September?) will surely excuse my delinquency in posting.  I'm keeping it on the down low (as should you, ahem, fellow facebookers) that I am now 9 weeks preggo.  Assuming I make it through the next three weeks (which I sometimes doubt), I will be due to drop another youngling into this world in May of 2009.

You see, I've had so much time to contemplate this blog post because I've been nauseous (AGAIN-- I know, I can't believe it either) as all get-out.  Luckily, apparently all get-out is still not as nauseous as I was with the last one, so that's good, right?  Anyhow, a big shout out to mommy brain for me conveniently forgetting how boneachingly boring and annoying and, well, sickening being nauseous all the time is.  Seriously.  How could I have forgotten?  

Anyhow.  Beside the point now.  I'm fighting it as best I can with the cooperation of my baby-daddy, the professor.   He makes me only the food I ask for, never makes any suggestions, cleans the kitchen, loads and unloads the dishwasher (which makes me very funky and gaggy).  In short, he's been amazing.  What a godsend.

My son, still clueless, has been very sweet as well... coming into bed for cuddles; making me wooden sandwiches from his play-kitchen.  Nodding without complaint when I tell him that Tootsie Rolls and Starburst are special mommy-tummy food.  

Still, even the second time around I am really struck with how foreign my body already feels.  I feel like I am one day away from being announced as this year's newest balloon for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.  I feel like my breasts alone could take over an entire Manhattan city street, buffeting up against the skyskrapers.  

Anyhow, enough about me and my bosom.  I have to go find something to eat before I get nauseous again.  

Remember... shhhhh!

Walkin' with the Dinosaurs

OK, you gotta love Matt Damon for this:

Counting to 4

Love. This.!

Mc... Mc... Mc...

Thanks to Ted for unearthing this little gem.

Wordle

So now you can create a word "cloud" of all the most frequently occurring phrases in your blog.  I just copied my whole blog pageview, and this is what I came up with (click on image for larger view):

...guess I talk about chocolate a lot!

As is

I woke up early this morning (before the toddler voice screamed bring me juice! through the monitor). Not sure exactly what woke me up-- be it the veritable Everest of blankets, tossed on top of me by an overheated husband-- or the annoying cat mouthing his grievances from the playroom downstairs-- or a fleeting itch, forgotten in the waking.

However, I think it was probably far less poetic than that. I think it was the subconscious remembering-- today is the annual McMansion neighborhood garage sale. Garage sale!

Most of the year, those two words hold no sway for me. I have so many of my own outdated knicknacks nesting in my closets, why should I go and browse those of others? And, might I add, those "others" inevitably are of the dried-flower, not-my-taste variety.

Last year my girlfriend and I packed her minivan full of stuff that has actually been very useful this past year-- the kids' table and chairs, the pop-up tent, the train table, the cardboard bricks. In one fell swoop I populated my giganto-basement with things that make the toddler heart go boom-boom. And somehow, in it, is some measure of pride.

I have thought about this a lot recently... I've caught myself bragging about how good of a deal I got on something.

Beautiful necklace. Yeah, $10, can you believe that? With matching earrings, too... though I wouldn't wear the earrings. I don't like matchy-matchy.

Nice chair cushions. Where did you get them? Homemade. A deal on the fabric, too.

That shirt is really flattering on you. Thanks. $4 on total clearance at Target. You can't beat that, can you?

And the list goes on and on and on... What does it say about me-- am I deflating myself? Or am I somehow trying to make myself look smarter, i.e. I'm no schlub and I won't pay retail?

I'm not sure that it's either. Or perhaps it's both. All of the above. With a little dash of hunter-gatherer thrown in for measure.

Whatever it is, I'm not sure whether I inherited it genetically or via conditioning by my mom (she who spends 2-3 hours mozeying around Target humming and talking to herself and getting "ideas"). (Translation: these "ideas" usually cost money, be they expensive or cheap.)

Yes, buying is the opportunity to add a little patch of something onto reality. It's just important to realize it's only a small patch (ergo, it should probably be as inexpensive as possible), lest one become convinced that it actually changes something.

***

When I finally hit out for the garage sales (after the child was at school), it started to look ominous out. Ominous, quickly followed by torrents of rain. I made mad dashes in and out of the car. I found a few cute little odds and ends, but not large victories like my friend, who pulled up with her minivan packed to the gills again. Her "scores"? A drum set. A small motorized ride-on jeep. (Excuse me, but what the f%#k was she thinking? These sound like mother torturing devices...)

Then, as she drove away, I swore I could hear the drumroll. Man those things are loud, I thought, and was disappointed when I realized it was only the thunder.

Cuckoo

I loved my psychiatrist in Germany.  He was a tall, thin man with a long, white coat and short white hair.  The kind of glasses you push to the tip of your nose.  

In Germany you had to go and see a psychiatrist if you wanted your health insurance to pay for therapy.  I had an American therapist (Jewish to boot), but I had to go to this German psychiatrist quarterly to have him ask me the kind of questions I thought were once reserved for eye doctors: Better, worse or the same?

But usually he wouldn't get to those until the end of our 20-some-odd minute appointment.  Once my German became proficient enough, we talked art.  We talked politics.  He was a fan of Woody Allen movies (should this surprise for a shrink?) and wanted to know if Woody's voice in English sounded like his dubbing actor's voice.  (It doesn't).

During one of our conversations, I told him that I had started to realize a pattern: when spring started to spring, I started to get anxious.  My two major depressions both started late-spring.  Just when the flowers popped and the leaves popped and everything got that intense color of green they only get in spring.  Was this normal, I asked?  I mean, what time of year, generally speaking, do most people go nuts?  Spring.  Apparently.

I've always considered myself a sensitive person.  Most things I've ever found a talent at doing in my life have been an exploitation in some way of this sensitivity.  I'm a soft-shell gal who has to sometimes walk around with very heavy coats to keep from sucking up my environment too directly, too liberally.

So there are things that I have learned not to do.  I never watch the local news, no matter where I am.  Never.  My friends have to call me and tell me when school is closed for a snow day because otherwise I will have no clue.  

I won't go to movies where there is violence or suspense because it gets me spinning.  Whenever someone mentions Harry Potter my husband has to mention that we were reading it aloud to each other for a time but had to stop in the middle of book 3 because I started having nightmares.

Obviously, though, there are some things in life you can't control, you can't select out.  And for me, the highly, so sensitively cat-gut strung that I am, I cannot stop the earth's rotation.  I hibernate like it's nobody's business and then springtime comes and, even with all the devices in the world, I go anxious.  My energy goes furious.  Everything goes spinning faster, as though the little cuckoo inside the clock must come out every fifteen minutes instead of the hour.  Every hour is fifteen minutes and are we crazy yet?

Perhaps this is the way we humans are supposed to be after a long winter.  There's shit to get done, you know?  Though, life and weather not always cooperating, without the survival push, it is almost an autoimmune disease.  Fifteen minutes until the next pecking.  Anyone hungry for a little bird?

Creepy, Crawly, Crawdaddy?

Via an article in the NYTimes today, I found this amazing illustrated book-- The ABCs of Invertibrates.  It was illustrated by a mathematician who had a rare progressive brain disorder which, amongst other symptoms, manifested itself in a heightened artistic drive.  

Since I'm all excited about brain disorders in general (I think I nurse some myself), I of course find this fascinating.  Reminds me of a lot of the writing of Oliver Sacks who, by the way, is an avid collector of all sorts of weird stuff himself (and not just stories!)

Anyhow, go and browse these interesting and creepy illustrations.  Perhaps it will inspire you (or someone, anyone, please!) to do something about the doggerel rhyming texts.

Bye Bye Birdie

Well, it's official: Green will come. The tulips are pushing their dumb little heads up through the crusty gray surface of the earth. The garden hose, left out to freeze, is now uncovered. If it still works?

We all are beyond cabin fever. We take every small sign of spring as a miracle. We may believe in the eventuality of the calendar, but this winter tested our faith in it.

Should that hunger for spring lead us to the aisles of the grocery store, however, we must beware. The fruits of springtime are not yet here.

To wit, this article in the NY Times today tells of a disturbing connection between all those healthy, fresh foods we crave even on the darkest and shortest of days, and how they are killing songbirds. Yowza.

So, regardless of whether you think it doesn't matter for your health if you buy an organic or a conventional banana (after all, it's peeled anyway, some say), take a look at this article. Then, if you're so price conscious that the extra 10 cents a pound kills you, go buy your organic produce at Trader Joe's, which won't sting so much as buying at Whole Paycheck.

Half past Easter and down the path to Passover, it's a particularly a good time to think of those eggies that we love, dye, coddle and roast: don't let the hype fool you. The birdies, they not so happy with your spring.

Domestic (and otherwise)

The sun is shining today.  The temperature gauge in my car reads a desperately hopeful 59 degrees.  I kept the sunroof popped (except when driving by the two-day-old skunk roadkill, which requires a hermetic re-sealing).

Mostly idyllic.  Yet somehow, the domestic discontent has come home to roost.  

Last night, my husband sported home one of those white parcels which I know-- the second he walks in the door-- is from my mother-in-law.  Don't get me wrong.  I love those parcels.  In terms of gift-giving folk, my mother-in-law is tops on my list.  Always thoughtful, never in bad taste.  Most often using chocolate as packing material.  What could be wrong?

The package was addressed to my son, who almost leapt from his skin in excitement.  We opened it to find a cartoony, old-style dinosaur lunch box.  Inside, full and I mean FULL of easter candy... Oh, of course the good kind.  All those deliciously multicolored, foil-wrapped little swiss eggs-o-love.  A Lindt chocolate bunny.  On a bed of wood-spun, naturally-dyed easter grass.  Beautiful.  Stunning.  It's 6:15pm, my son's hungry, and I haven't started dinner.

We tried a sneaky approach.  We said "Oh, those are dinosaur eggs."  (Hey, not totally improbable... we had just been playing with dinosaurs expertly crafted out of Play-doh who were sitting on a nest of dino-eggs.  Anyhow, not as outlandish as you would think.

My son cries out, as if in pain, "That's chocolate!  Those are chocolate eggs!"  

Do you think he could smell the chocolate through the wrapping?  Jesus.  OK, plot failed. Three-year-old cannot be outwitted on this count (and, sadly, on fewer and fewer occasions). 

We let him have one, with the promise that we will bring them out again in the morning.

He isn't having any of it.  He's tugging furiously at my husband's leg as my husband robs the proverbial easter nest of its loot and transfers it into a ziploc bag.  My son begins to bay and squeal: "They're stealing my chocolate!  They're taking it from me!"

At once so desperate, so unjust a situation.  I couldn't not see it from his perspective.  I have to admit: I am the bad guy.  My husband looked at me with a sad, yet entertained look and I said, "OK, one more, and then they are going away until tomorrow morning."

And here I sit, evil mother.  Sometimes I don't seem to know when it's right to give in, and when it's right to stick to my guns.  I mean, come on!  My heart (and eyes, and thighs) delighted at the haul just as my son's had.  But then, being the adult, I had to say no.  I had to make the wise decision that if I let my son eat to his heart's content he'd bounce around like a baby on crack and then get so wound up that at the end of the evening there would be a giant temper tantrum, tears, and my feeling like I needed to be checked into a mental institution.

And in the hopes of avoiding all such occurrences, I reined him in.  I keep everyone on even-keel, even though half the time I'd like to join them on a bender or two, be it staying up late or playing the music loud or shoving my face with chocolate.  

I could tell you that it all probably stems from my childhood, and it probably wouldn't be wrong.  Still, somehow I feel like I have to find a little more of an erratic balance sometimes.  I don't know-- maybe it's the weather, the little tulips workin' hard for a livin', the promise of tomorrow's backhand slap of snow-sleet-crap.  

Or maybe it's the smell of that chocolate that's got me all worked up-- and, if you'll excuse me, hold that thought.  I must attend to my moronic cat who is trying to barf up a little piece of foil he found on the floor.  

Oh yes.

"Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well." -- Barack Obama 3/18/08

'nuf said.