My madeleines

For those who aren't familiar with it, the author Marcel Proust wrote a whole big-ass book about taking a bite out of a cookie (a madeleine) and experiencing a flood of instant, intense memories, just from the taste and texture of the cookie.

I have a million, bajillion little things like that, and they always take me by surprise. Sometimes I purposely avoid them, so they keep giving me those big rushes of memory (I mean, if you smell something every day, it weakens any associations you have with that smell, until it all goes away). And, I mean, some are the same for everyone- dry fall leaves go with the start of the school year and Halloween, pine needles and Christmas, spring mud and the end of the school year, stuff like that. But some are ours alone. These are my favorites:

Carambars!



Proust has his madeleine and I have my carambars. When I was in fifth grade, a whole class of French 5th graders came and stayed in Park Ridge for a month. We hosted one of the girls in the class, her name was Isabelle. She brought us a whole bag of Carambars, and I loved them. The following summer, I spent a month with her family, in a suburb of Paris. We lost touch in high school, although recent google-stalking has me convinced I've found her. She worked for Louis Vuitton before she opened her own boutique in Paris. I think. I'm pretty sure. Anyway, Carambars are one of those random candies you really can't find around here. I ordered some off the internet a few years ago. They taste just the same.

Sun-Ripened Raspberry


I brought sun-ripened raspberry shower gel to England when I studied abroad in college. A few months after I came home, I sniffed it, and WHOA. I'm not even sure they sell it anymore, but I stopped using it so that it would always remind me of staying at the Y and in dirty hostels on the weekends;) Good times, good times...

Leapfrog Spin and Sing


G and I played with this outside all summer long. All of the songs make me think of warm sunny days, outside with my happy baby. It was one of her favorite toys, and she just recently outgrew it. But while she liked this toy, we had SO much fun.

What are your madeleines?

Ha, April Fools!

Hey there, Gracie here.

ZOMG. I played the BEST April Fools joke on my mom. It took some serious time and planning, but oh man, it was worth it.

All last week? I pretended I was going to start sleeping! I slept past six am every single day and took super long naps. It was rough, yo. The joke wouldn't have worked without it, though. I had her CONVINCED.

Then? This weekend? I started inching my waking time back. And today? I woke up at 4:50! I am teh awesome. Oh man, you should have seen my mom's face. She is so gullible. Hey mama! Did you know gullible's not in the dictionary? Yeah, that's right, go look it up....

Time to start planning for next year. I'm never gonna top this one....

Gracie out.

My parents' living room

My house was the house where we all hung out in high school. Mostly because my parents were night owls and didn't mind ten teenagers crammed into their living room, watching movies and banging on the piano all night (and by banging, I mean, "guy who would grow up to work for Elton John and Disney on Broadway playing goofy songs", but that is another story for another day). All of us coming and going, eating junk food (Taco Bell. ALWAYS Taco Bell), fighting over movies, playing video games, stupid hurt feelings, dumb inside jokes, endless games of truth or dare (which morphed into Truth because none of us ever took Dare. The boys really loved THAT game...). Every weekend, and almost every night in the summertime. When I think of high school, I think of that living room, all of us. Never one or two of us, always the whole group, every night.

And now one of us is gone and it doesn't matter that she's been physically removed from the group for so long, that we've all lost touch with her, rarely hearing from her, not even exchanging Christmas cards, barely interacting on facebook. She was still THERE, and now she's GONE, and that shit just isn't right.

And it is such a lame, completely hackneyed thing to say, but it's like she knew she'd be the first to go. The way she withdrew, the way she lived every single second of her life and didn't ever seem to waste her time worrying about what she was supposed to do, it's like she knew. Not that it matters, she'll never have her first child, or complain about the indignities of getting old or retire to Arizona or...reconnect with the rest of us.

And so today, I am sad. And I don't really have anything profound to say about it.

Mommy Bliss

Before Gracie was born, I hated lazy vacations. The kind where you basically do nothing, you don't see any sights or eat any new food or climb mountains or figure out the subway in a country where you don't speak the language. I did it a few times, and it was fine, but mostly because I was also drunk at the time. heh. yeah. anyway. My point is, I like to be busy on vacation, and I hate the feeling of going home from a trip and realizing there were a million different things I didn't see.

But now?

Oh man.

My dream vacation would involve lots of lying around, stacks of magazines, sleeping, eating, running (but only so the sleep would be better and I could eat more), taking a two-foot deep bubble bath, sleeping, and have I mentioned THE SLEEP? In other words, a vacation I would've hated a year and a half ago.

It's like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: Vacation Style!

Swimming

Gracie loves swimming. She loves swimming possibly more than anything in the world, including her blankie, this weird spaghetti that Stephen makes for her and she inhales by the fistful, and waking up at 5am. And people, G LOOOVES waking up at 5am.

Our last class was at a YMCA on the border of the city and the 'burbs. It was a teeny class, just Grace, a set of twins, and a little boy who only came two or three times, tops. The teachers were great, the water was warm, and G was in heaven. When it was time to register for a new class, they had changed the times around, and there were really no GOOD times for her sleep schedule. I was bummed, but decided to chance it with the saturday morning class...which filled up with members before it opened to the general public. I seriously agonized over what to do next, like my decision would make or break her Olympic dreams. I finally decided to sign up for a Sunday morning class at the Y down the street- not as nice, the time isnt' as good, they lump together all the parent/child age groups, but they had an opening. Okay then.

...aaaand I promptly missed the first class. Because the new session started the very next day after our last class at the old location, she would have had back-to-back days with swimming. Which, for the record, she would have loved, but I just didn't think it through. Woops. Combine that with the fact that we're not going next week and I assume we don't have class on Easter, and we are only going for five classes. And that probably seems like it should be disappointing, but...it's not.

The class is bigger. The pool is smaller. It's LOUD in there, sooooo loud. The water is positively FRIGID. The teacher is...fine. Not very nice. She walked up to us as we got in the water and said, "OK, you weren't here next week. what's her name? How old is she? OH. Is she afraid of the water?" She asked as Grace plunged her whole face in and cackled with glee. Right. Where our other class was songs and games, this class is drills. "Time to float! Make a circle! Have them jump!"

The other parents are not very friendly. There is one nice mom, and a nice enough dad, but the other parents, well, yeah, they're not friendly. I miss our old friends!!

I checked, and we can't get our money back. So we'll go. Gracie was the only baby NOT bothered by the icy cold waters of the pool, and even though her mommy wasn't as happy, you know what? She totally didn't notice a difference. She smiled and kicked and clapped just like she did at her old class. And I'm pretty sure the swimming lessons aren't for me.

Coping Skillz

For all my shmoopy, sappy, "I love being a mommmmmyyyy" days, there are still some days that just suck. You know the days, when they wake up at 4:30, take lousy, short naps, and are totally uninterested in any activity that doesn't involve sticking a fork in a socket, pulling heavy objects onto their heads, climbing bookcases, or other life-threatening activities? And you think, how the HELL am I going to make it to bedtime? I cannot do this. Not today.

We had one of those days on sunday. Fortunately, I knew EXACTLY what to do.



(Taken from the archives. Since it's, you know, freezing cold outside and also she has a lot more hair now.)

She's fourteen months old today. She still doesn't walk, though she loves to swim. She doesn't reeeally talk, though she jabbers like crazy. Most importantly, with notable exception above, this baby SLEEPS:)

Nature is Weird

When I was in high school, I got dive-bombed by a bird. I did not do anything to said bird. I was just walking down the sidewalk and it buzzed me. I was completely freaked out. My dad told me I probably walked too close to its nest and it was defending its babies. I said the bird was an idiot, because what the hell could I possibly want with her stupidass babies?

Today I was loading groceries into the back of the car while Gracie sat in the cart, when a creepy old man came walking across the parking lot. I swear he was walking directly towards us. He never even made eye contact with me, and walked right past us into the store. He probably didn't even notice us.

We'll never know for sure, though. Once he was past us with his back turned, I jumped on his neck and pecked his fucking eyes out.