The Magic Position

I've had a migraine for seven days straight. A new personal best! One of the things that helps when the drugs don't is hanging out in what I've come to refer to as The Magic Position. I stole the name from Patrick Wolf. I don't really like his song, but appropriating for my own purpose amuses me.
The Magic Position's real name is the Static Back position, and I got it out of a book by Pete Egoscue. I would post a picture of what it looks like, but then it wouldn't really be magic anymore, would it?

Patrick Wolf - "The Magic Position"

I'm already looking forward to Autumn

And no it's not because I can't stand stand the heat.

According to Pitchfork, Of Montreal is scheduled to play a show at The Tralf on October 10!

One of my favorite bands, in Buffalo's only semi-historic venue (with seats!). What could be better.

My Brother the Robot

1. Coming off a night of brutal insomnia. The last time I looked at the clock it was 1:45 a.m.

2. When Lucy woke up, she trotted off to the potty like a good little girl, but she spotted something she wanted out of the trashcan. She stood up so abruptly that the potty chair stuck to her legs. Pee was everywhere. (I didn't actually let her get what she wanted from the trash either --used dental floss!)

3. Before we even left the house Henry and Lucy were locked in the throes of a vicious argument over whether or not Henry was a robot. The more Henry denied it, the more tenaciously Lucy insisted it must be true.

Fortunately for me coffee, the gym, and the half price perennial sale at my favorite local garden center can fix practically anything.

Two points about better music

1. This year's Rockin' at the Knox bill is truly appealing. Now I just have to start scheming so I have proper babysitting. If my kids were just a tiny bit older I would bring them along -- Lucy digs those Feist videos with all the people dancing.

If you are unfamiliar with the premise of Rockin' at the Knox, once a year for the last three years there is an outdoor concert on the grounds of Buffalo's amazing art museum. Previous bills included Wilco and Blondie.

2. I have another review up on Venuszine. You can read it here.

New dumb things

1. I left the water running on the hose that runs from inside the garage. I rest the sprayer on top of a storage unit where I keep gardening gloves, tools, plant food etc. As I was rushing Henry off to soccer yesterday I noticed that area seemed wet. The hose had flooded the entire area. I made time to turn to hose off, and curse. But I haven't made time to clean up the gardening debris that's sitting in a huge puddle. Not too sure when I am going to get around to it either. But I completely forgot about it until today when I went to water my plants again. How long will it take to evaporate?

2. I am incapable of buying a week's worth of groceries, or keeping appropriate staples on hand, but that doesn't stop me from trying. I ran out to the Italian grocery for meatballs earlier in the day, but didn't discover that I didn't have any Spaghetti sauce (or the constituents to make it) until the water was boiling for the pasta and the meatballs were browning. Since Cary is still recovering from having a wisdom tooth removed (and was sleeping at the time) I had to take both kids with me back to the same grocery -- Henry was already in his pajamas -- and buy some sauce. But I was rewarded for my efforts because Lucy ate a meatball!

Two points about bad music

1. Let me be the last person on Earth to weigh in on Live Earth. Cary had the bright idea of recording it on TiVo. We sped through two different largish chunks of recordings of bad, bad performances in under two hours. Billy Corgan looks like he just escaped from a cult. I did enjoy seeing who had been exiled to play at the smaller stages, like Snoop Dog in Munich, and Lenny Kravitz in Rio. And Cary and I were both perplexed about the Police-John Mayer-Kanye West performance of "Message in the Bottle." It didn't quite translate from the planning committee's vision into another "We are the World Moment."

2. Another review up on Venuszine. Check it out here.

At least it wasn't a dead cricket

I found a hunk of wood in my salad today. Actually it was more like a wood chip. I thought it was a crouton until I realized that I hadn't put croutons in the salad. Unfortunately this was the third lunchtime salad I had made from this particular bag of lettuce. But I think the worst part was that I felt obliged to throw out my lunch when I really wanted to keep eating. What harm could a wood chip do? It's not like the time we lived in Watertown and our next door neighbor found a dead cricket in her bag of salad. That made the nightly news.

Bad Mama Files

A new blog featurette where I reveal a questionable parenting decision
(It's like the Rockford Files, but without the ex-cons and the Firebird...)

Last weekend I discovered a caterpillar clinging to my Helenium. I had visions of the entire plant being devoured by morning. So I decided that instead of disposing of the insect it would be fun to put it into a jar and watch it turn into a butterfly. Needless to say everything I know about this process comes from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Henry and Lucy were excited by the prospect, so we found an old salsa jar, and some maple leaves. Cary said, "If you want it to turn into a Butterfly you need a stick." So we added a stick. I dutifully pounded some holes in the top with a nail and waited for the childhood memories to take hold.

After a couple of days we added some more leaves, and Henry and I agreed that the caterpillar looked bigger to us. It had definitely eaten some of the maple leaves. We managed to keep Lucy from shaking the jar like a snow globe. So far so good.

But by yesterday I noticed that its size had shrunk considerably. It had a dark sticky spot on its side. Preparation for the chrysalis? Nope. It needed water desperately. By the time I figured this out it lay at the bottom of the jar. I added some water, and man did the poor little shrinking caterpillar drink. When it climbed up back onto one of the maple leaves I held out a sliver of hope. Half an hour later it was shriveled on the floor of its jar, a dessicated hairy spiral.

I didn't know exactly how to handle it with the kids. Henry still hasn't asked to see it but we're having friends over for dinner so I felt compelled to dispose of the remains. Lucy asked to see it this morning and it turns out that she enjoyed the dead caterpillar just as much as the living one. I said to her, "Honey, the caterpillar isn't ever going to turn into a butterfly." "OK," she replied, and danced off to grab a toy pony.

So if I see another caterpillar, am I going to try it again? Probably. Maybe with some instructions this time. I really want to see a newly hatched butterfly.

You see there's nothing that's behind me; I'm already a has been.

Henry's at camp. Lucy's asleep. It's the perfect time to do some writing, only I don't have any to do. Which leaves only housework.

Here's a favorite track from my high school years that sums it up.

The Buzzcocks - "Boredom"

I Broke My Crown

1. The kittens finally have names my dad can remember. Kitten number one is now Teddy, and kitten number two remains Twoey. My mom has suggested that she might name them Tedric and Toulouse, but use the other names all the time. If that happens I don't think anyone but the Vet's office will know about it.

2. It looks like my Croscosmia Lucifer is going to bloom for the first time ever. This is the third year I have had it but the deer ate it, and it has taken awhile to bounce back. One of my Canna Lillies also has a very large unopened bloom on it. If either of these plants look good at some point I will post pictures. I am sure you are all waiting expectantly.

3. Most of Cary's family got together yesterday. His parents, 6 (out of 8) siblings, 5 spouses/boyfriends, and 15 (out of 17) grandkids. Nothing went wrong; it was really fun. My kids had a great time with their cousins. The cupcakes that were intended for dessert were gone by 3:30.

My father-in-law staged a wine tasting that included some red wine from India. We all concluded it was horrible! Not even safe to add to your curry.

Although at one point Lucy tripped and fell. My father-in-law started reciting Jack and Jill to her while my Mother-in-law went to grab a band aid. Now she will look at me gravely at random intervals and say, "Mommy, I broke my crown."

I just want to chew gum

It was the kind of summer day I always thought I would have with my kids ...

1. Henry wanted to learn how to blow bubbles with gum. We were at Target, so I tried to get some traditional Hubba Bubba or Bubble Yum. The closest thing I could find was Hersheys chocolate flavored Hubba Bubba. Even humble chewing gum is a boutique market.

Henry couldn't wait to pop the first piece in his mouth. I said he needed to chew it until it got soft. A gob of chocolatey spit escaped his mouth -- it was a big piece of gum! I suggested he sit down at the kitchen table. I told him to flatten it into a circle. More spit escaped. I got my own piece (sour apple Trident) to demonstrate. See, it's flat in my mouth. Now poke your tongue into the flat circle. He gave it his best shot and out popped the gum. I demonstrated blowing a bubble. Wow, you're good, mom. He tried again. Giggled. Out popped the gum again, an unflattened slobbery mess. And so ends lesson one of what will probably be a life long struggle for our dear Henry.

2. Lucy peed in her pants while I pushed her on the swings at the playground. I was not too upset; I can only imagine the act of swinging stresses the bladder.

3. When we arrived home she insisted on wearing the rain boots that I had purchased for her (on sale) for the rest of the day. I have to admit that they almost looked cute with her denim mini skirt and her Threadless kids T.

Here's a track to celebrate Henry's oral spazziness and Lucy's questionable fashion sense:
Annie -- Chewing Gum (Headman Vocal Remix)

Cabin Fever

The children and I have cabin fever, something not usually seen in these parts in the summer, but with temps in the high 80s, and Henry's behavior in public pools remaining untrustworthy, we are forced to stay inside.

Henry eats his way through the day. I can't tell if he's bored, having a growth spurt, or reacting to withdrawal from the hidden calories in the school lunches.

Lucy punches, pokes, and otherwise annoys him any way she can. A summers worth of time out awaits.

Once they go to sleep at night I spend the rest of the evening saving my poor plants from complete dessication. I am a slave to the garden hose.

I have another review up on Venuszine. You can read it here.

Found at the end of our driveway yesterday

One bright orange can of malt liquor, empty and imploded, as it had been shotgunned.

One water bottle which its owner had used as a make shift spittoon.

Overheard in our household today

Me to Lucy: "Put your underwear back on and stop spitting on me."

Henry to me: "I ate all of my lunch. Now I can have my chocolate caramel cookie bar."
(Referring to the Twix bar he got from a birthday party that he had been begging me for since 9 a.m. which had completely melted from being handled by his sweaty little fingers.)

Updates on the last post and the last year

1. Just like Auntlyh, I have now been blogging for a year (thanks for the reminder) but stuff has been going wrong for a whole lot longer. Just thought I would mention a few highlights that predated and led to the inception of the blog:
* The summer day that the entire basement filled with bees.
# The day that I learned from the furnace cleaning man that the previous owners used to house at least 250 guinea pigs in our basement.
$ The six long months we spent potty training Henry.
! The time in January when Henry locked me out of the house when I was ten months pregnant and not wearing a coat.

Sweet, sweet memories.

2. A few clarifications about the last post. Because LHM and Auntlyh both seem curious, here is a picture of the grill:
As gas grills go it really isn't all that big, but compared to the last grill I purchased (a Smokey Joe), it seems huge. I purchased the Smokey Joe at Ann and Hope in Boston in 1994, and I must have brought it back to my apartment in Brookline on an MBTA bus because I don't think I could have ridden with it on my bike.

Kitten number one is no longer "Sugar Ray" because my dad can't remember that either. He is in some sort of name limbo between "Puffy" and "Stubby" and my mom is trying to tell me that she has settled on his name being "Sugarpuff," but she will call him "Puffy." I am find this incredibly funny, but feel sorry for the cat. And I am not going to call him anything at this point.

I also wanted to clarify why we were trying to get Henry into a gifted and talented program in Kindergarten. We aren't crazy parents. Other kids in the Henry's school who are a tiny bit ahead of him academically are in the program, or are getting to go read with the first grade class while he languishes because his teacher doesn't give a shit. I don't care how his reading needs get met at school so long as they get met.

Plus we have friends whose kid is in another school, same district, who is in the program and has gotten to do fun things like put on plays in a small group setting. Something that would be great for Henry, or any bright kid. I also think ANY parent wants what is best for their kid and hopes the teacher does too. Sadly I have yet to find this to be true in any of Henry's classroom settings. We chose to live in the suburbs for their supposedly good schools and I have been nothing but unhappy with them this entire year. And then I have to listen to the school tell me how great they are.

Having said that __ ending my rant __ Cary felt the letter from the gifted programming specialist was less of a brush off, than I did. And Henry's teacher is nasty, but she didn't give some kids gifts and not others. She also didn't bother to help us figure out where they were from or choose to explain any of this to Henry.

3. If anyone is still reading, I have a new review on Venuszine.com, and you can read it here.

Wrongest day in recent memory

1. We were due to arrive at Henry's classroom half an hour early to listen to him read from his journals and "book box" before taking them home. I forgot to set the alarm. We arrived on time but barely. Henry had very little interest in reading these books to me since none of them were ever very challenging for him. He did point out that his coloring has gotten much better since September. Lucy was extremely interested in sticking her face directly in front of mine while I tried to pay attention to Henry.

2. Unfortunately a few people in the room were leaving with gifts. Henry became obsessed with the location of his gift. He concluded that he had to read his entire book box to receive the gift. Declared he didn't want the gift. I still don't know what the story was, but there was no gift. The teacher, in her ever unhelpful way told him only, "I don't have a gift for you, Henry." At that point he started to cry inconsolably, just as everyone was starting to leave, of course. And Lucy continued to stick her face in mine, "What's wrong Henry, Mommy?" Then I noticed Henry's friend B was crying too. I did my best to calm Henry down rather unsuccessfully. When I left both boys were still crying, B silently, Henry rather loudly, and I heard the teacher mutter aloud, "Well, we could get started now if everyone would stop crying." She is retiring in three days to teach pre-school. I wish her all the best.

3. If that wasn't bad enough we got the package we had sent to the gifted programming specialist back with the glibbest, most unhelpful note. We wrote a letter asking if Henry could be considered for language arts programming for next year because he is reading second grade books with no help and third grade books with a little help at home, while in school it is all monosyllabic nonsense. I do not harbor any illusion that my son is a genius, but his teacher this year has done nothing to nurture him. The gifted programming specialist wrote back that there is nothing she can do because he is at grade level in his class room. Christ on crack! That's why we wrote the note in the first place. I am so tired of this school.

4. And then, I went to pick up our grill. A huge thunderstorm broke out. Did I mention that it hasn't rained more than a drop in months? I had to back the minivan up 40 feet and wait while three very helpful guys placed the grill (which is HUGE) inside. The thing barely fit. At one point they were giving the kids large pieces of metal to hold. Then Henry had to get out twice so we could move up his seat. He was standing on his book box (of course I hadn't taken it out of the car yet) asking me if I could get his umbrella. Both of us got soaking wet.

5. And now I have to rethink tonight's dinner: hot dogs and hamburgers.

Gone Wrong Miscellany

1. Kitten Update: Mo has now been officially re-christened Twoey after I admitted to my mom that my dad and I were referring to him as Twoey in private.

2. I have had migraines three out of the last four days. So, not surprisingly I have been extremely distracted by the white noise inside my own head. I now have an appointment with the M.D. neuro as opposed to the P.A. that I usually see since I no longer think that my treatment is going the way I would like. Hopefully by early July I will have some answers. But I will do just about anything to avoid another transfusion and the drugs that followed it. At least now I know.

3. Cary and I spent the weekend trying to buy a grill. Normally such an inane domestic purchase would not be worth blogging about but we are so hopelessly inept, even at shopping for something like a grill, that even though our hand-me-down grill has been broken for a year, and we have been planning to buy a grill for over a month, it still took us more than 24 hours to choose a stupid grill. We have concluded that we like getting household items given to us for free (duh) not just because its cheap but because we have so much trouble making a decision. This is why most of our furniture used to belong to someone else, and some is held together with bungee cords. It's much easier than picking out something new. Thank god they put it together for us.

4. I spent a portion of the afternoon spraying homemade insecticidal soap (rubbing alcohol, dishsoap, and water) on much of my garden because I have a pretty serious four lined plant bug infestation. It is more of an annoyance than anything else, but they were all over my asters, which were struggling as it is. Hopefully they will still bloom this fall.

5. This is the last week of Kindergarten.

What Went Wrong: The Kitten Edition

Last week my parents adopted two male Ragdoll kittens after losing their cat Jezzie to cancer earlier last month. We adopted Jezzie from the SPCA when I was in high school and Ethan was about Henry's age. I think she was just shy of her nineteenth birthday. Unfortunately I don't have any digital pictures of her, but she was an affectionate cat who practically never caused my parents a minute of worry (except for the time she spent the night outside under the deck), but I digress. I just feel a little sad plastering the entry with these kitten pictures without saying a few words about Jezzie first.
















I had trouble getting a good picture of the kitten on the left because he never stops moving, but not as much trouble as my parents have had giving these cats names! As I type supposedly the kitten on the left is Sug (short for Sugar Ray) and the kitten on the right is Mo (short for nuthin'). My mom was originally going to call Mo Moby, but that didn't seem right. I liked it for the 1990s silly pop-rock connotations. Then she was going to name him Balboa, since Sug is named after Sugar Ray Leonard (my parents don't even like boxing, but the name suits him). But my dad couldn't remember the names. He kept calling the kitten on the left Stubby and the kitten on the right Twoey because Stubby has a stubby body and we got Twoey second. Yeah. And you thought stuff went wrong at my house.

My mom won't leave the house yet because the Mo cries when he is in his room (my old room), and she can't leave them to their own devices yet for fear they will scuffle. So today I got to stay with them for an hour or so. Kitten sitting beats the pants off chasing my kids around, that's for sure.

My mom hasn't had a decent night's sleep in a week, and when we are on the phone, I hear her yelling, "No. Stop that! Oh, I gotta go." It is as if she has created an animal bizarro world where kittens are infants but neither of my parents is truly up for the pace of caring for an infant for too long (neither am I, really), so I hope things settle down soon. We miss you, Jezzie.

Fragile, like an eggshell... I'm mad as hell

So last night Cary and I went to see The Mary Timony band. We used to see Mary's old band Helium play all the time when we lived in Boston, so more than wanting to hear the new album, I was excited to see her play live again.

Mary looks pretty much as I remember her, though the v. cute navy Tretorns were a new addition. Cary said hello, reminded her how he used to play tennis with her old beau, Ash, who also played bass in Helium (and Polvo) phenomenally well. She had no memory of Cary, which makes sense because I think we met her once. But hey, you gotta be friendly when people come to B-lo.

I thought I remembered reading that her drummer had been in Fugazi. As a whole the band was incredibly tight. It was great to see Mary, who had always seemed so inhibited on stage, totally rocking the guitar solos, and then throwing in these little flourishes, like a kick. Then she would kind of smile like, "hey, I am rocking out." She also kept shaking out her hand after the solos, like it had gotten really worn out from playing so much.

And while the audience didn't piss me off which was nice there were like no other women at the show. Which means it was nothing but the creepy freaks who secretly worship Mary and probably drive her nuts at all the gigs.



This video is a little old, from the Helium days, but it shows off JP, where I used to live in Boston, really well.

There were people and girls and beers and hair, but there was no one that I wanted to be near.

Just a few comments about the Voxtrot concert on Sunday. The lead singer, Ramesh Srivastava, announced he had a "terrible cold" and then later mentioned that he had a "fever" and said "three of us will be leaving at 6 a.m. to fly to Austin for a funeral tomorrow." He mentioned this after telling us what a great audience we were. And I thought: Worst Audience Ever. The "Hey, Look at Me" dancers were out of control, vying for my personal space wherever I moved.

The best part of the night was when some mom came in and demanding to retrieve her kid and he looked about eleven. A true all ages show. But it wasn't the younger members of the audience that were obnoxious, most of the worst offenders should have known better. I think they need to get out more.

In spite of the illness, Ramesh sounded OK, though having to follow Favourite Sons singer Ken Griffin, who has an incredible voice, would be tough on anyone.

Fortunately Voxtrot didn't just play stuff from the new record. They played one brand new song that isn't on the album, which was pretty good. And what the hell, I'm going to give them some advice: you guys aren't an angry band. No one wants to hear you sing songs with the words "conflict" or "blood" in them again. Stick with what you know and you'll change anyway. You are frighteningly young.

I think this is the first time I have seen a band where all of the members are easily younger than my 23-year-old brother. And definitely the first time I have seen a band where the bass player looks like the spawn of Rowan Atkinson.