the modernity ward

At Least I Have My Hands Free Now

Well, we heard back from the landlords, who are proposing a grand total of $500 plus security deposit as an incentive. Because of the tax credit, you see.

And the owners of the house we're interested in sent a "final-for-now" counter that's about $5,000 below asking, and about $12,000 above where we want to end up.

I've looked at EVERY house in our price range in three sections of town, and not one is The One. Unless we are talking about The One that Smells Like Sewer Gas and Has Suspicious Paint Bubbling Beneath the Upstairs Toilet, or The One Where Someone Clearly Smoked a Pack of Cigarettes Immediately Before You Arrived at Nine A.M and Every Morning Before For the Last Twelve Years., or The One That Is Not a Duplex But Nonetheless Boasts Two Kitchens (And No, Is Not Kosher).

So all those balls I had in the air are going thunk thunk thunk around me. And frankly all I feel is relief. Well, there's some minor irritation but nothing a soothing ointment won't fix (hey, the tax credit was extended!). So without ado, my recipe for the finest soothing ointment of all:

Cheaper Dairy-Free Vegan Low-Carb Pumpkin Spice Latte

Brew up a cup of coffee, very strong. While it's going, take the following ingredients:

3-4 TB coconut milk (regular or light)

1-2 TB unsweetened vanilla almond milk

2-3 TB canned pumpkin

pumpkin pie spice to taste (clove, cinnamon, ginger)

stevia to taste (I use English Toffee flavor)

...and mix them all up in a giant mug. Heat it in the microwave for 30 seconds or so, and taste it -- should be kind of like pumpkin pie batter.

Pour your extra-dark coffee in there and stir. Sit back, drink it, and count your chickens.

Of course if you want to use cow milk or soy milk or sugar or agave nectar or a nice mild snake venom, it's none of my nevermind.

Well, Bust My Buttons

Youall are just too nice. I really didn't intend it as a please, please compliment me or I'm taking my keyboard and going home, but I guess in retrospect 1) it could have been read as such and 2) I kind of needed the boost. Like a Vivarin for the soul! Or some of that scary asthma-pill speed you used to be able to buy at the Shady Grady!

So here's the deal: I'll keep on keepin' on, and spit-shine the ol' resume so that I can apply for sketchy phishing writer job postings on Craigslist. And then I'll write about that.

Also, I may actually post a picture of one of my grocery lists. They look...well, they look insane. I spell things all crazy to entertain myself (AIGS -- CHEEDAR CHEZ -- CAT FUD --) and then I draw a million tiny little lines all over the list, which has invariably been written on the back of a credit card statement or a note from the gynecologist.

So, let's see: the big things. Right now, my top concerns are as follows:

1. Goddamn Frontline-resistant fleas

2. Keeping up with my dad's activities (seriously, I could just cut and paste from my aunt's emails and call it done; they're rich in both entertainment and shock value)

3. Waiting on counter-offer re: Very Nice House

What's that? I neglected to mention the last one? Yeah, well, we decided things were WAY too boring around here, and we just happened to find a beautiful house for which the owners would like just a smidge more money than we have to give, so, yeah. We're waiting on that.

On the upside, it's a stunner, with a lot of things in really good shape and relatively new. Great block, walking distance to elementary, nice neighbors. On the downside, nobody can promise me we'll get into that school (it's a lottery school, long story if you aren't local), and also, we'd be house-poor. And the water heater is kind of old.

In the Neutral column we have the fact that the house is a hundred years old. Which is very cool and also a little nail-bitey from the perspective of repairs up the road.

I love it, but I'm not going to pine for it if we don't get it.

Eeeeeee.

Joanna Leery Polyp...

is feeling kind of...irrelevant.

For fun I Googled myself with the word "hate" hoping to turn up some nasty trollin' action, but nothin'. And pretty much anything re: Jo Leery Polyp surrounds those halcyon days of infertility, early pregnancy, and finally Sophia's rollicking good time of a birth story. After that, it's all dead air.

I think I may have cashed in my fifteen minutes. Which is a little bit of a relief, as it was utterly painless and largely unremarkable save for the cadre of friends, in-person and online, that now surrounds me. Net gain: neato.

What now, though? What makes an interesting blog? I started in the enviable niche market of infertility blogging, and then I had to go and kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Yes, I'm being flip, because oh my god, those days were torment, and I have no wish to return to them. The blog quite literally kept me sane; it funneled all that energy that, left to its own devices, compelled me to purchase thirty pregnancy tests from the dollar store and then use them...all...in one weekend.

It seems crazy unless you've been there. Then you know it's crazy, and you know exactly how it happened.

Anyway, I'm kind of blundering niche-less through parenting bloggery. I was thinking of making a career of writing insulting letters to local newspaper columnists criticizing their grammar and including a copy of my own resume and a suggestion that I be allowed to replace them, but, you know, meh. There's already a "mom blog" column in our paper (yes, that's right: a print "blog". That is indistinguishable from a "column". A "really dull column". That reads like a retread of the Parents magazine letter from the editor.) and honestly, in this town, if Keith Urban isn't somehow involved, you ain't getting far. I don't know, he kind of has mommy hair. Maybe I could make money off that somehow.

So, internets. What would you suggest? What would you like to read about? Should I shut things down until I hit nursing school and crowbar open some new niche for myself? Keep on keepin' on? I guess Mimi Smartypants blogs about nothing-and-everything and is, like, totally famous and shit now, but she is Mimi Smartypants and I am me. I'm the middle school basketball coach in Hightstown, New Jersey, and she's Shaquille O'Neal. He plays basketball, right?

I guess I really don't want to shut down, if only because I'm not ready to burn up my diary, especially since this diary periodically compliments my writing. It's that aimless time of life, when the ambition starts gearing up again but the babies are too little to do anything sustained. Where's this whole internet thing going, folks? What do you think?

Skree! Blaaah! Raaah!

Those are Daphne's big words right now. She sounds like a pterodactyl having a chat with Godzilla. I forgot how nine months is kind of the zenith of cuteness for babies. It also happens to be the nadir of Personal Baby Safety, which means she spends most of her waking hours attempting to backdive off the bed, stick one hand in the dog's water and the other in a socket, and eat tiny poisonous chokeable things, preferably all at once. Because the nasty, it wasn't enough -- why stop at a wad of cat hair and dead leaves when you can also have something that is either a pill or a mint? While you are rolling down a flight of stairs?

As I recall, it's all downhill from here.

Anyway, so what's new with you guys? Nothing much here. Just, you know, trying to process the whole Terrible Illness of Parent thing while simultaneously absorbing the news that Your House, It Is To Be Sold and Torn Down and looking for a new house. And, look, I know that it's a sensible investment and blah blah equity but Holy The Prophet Elijah in a Rhinestone Golf Cart, that is a LOT of money. And if you don't pay it, well, then you end up on the news in the financial version of the Headless Fatty, with close-ups of your big old Foreclosure sign and a rain barrel with suspenders where your pants used to be. 

The good news is, I stand to win a sizable cash prize in the secret blogger contest of How Many Stressful Life Changes Can You Undergo in Six Months Without Anybody Actually Dying?. If my horrifying face surgery goes as scheduled, I'm just laps and laps ahead of the competition.

BOO!

Yesterday: a very lovely birthday courtesy of many, many people, both near and far

Today: Halloween!

Tomorrow: a real post.

Back. And, A Question for You

I just don't even know where to begin. The default setting seems to be eating toast and watching Pomplamoose videos on YouTube, so...yeah. I guess I should start with the overdue library books and the baskets of clean folded laundry, the diapers waiting to go in the dryer, the breakfast dishes. I should start with the real estate agent who's waiting for me to schedule viewings (on which subject more below). I should start with getting some things together to send to the people who were so generous while we conducted our whirlwind tour of Tornado Alley. But all I really want to do is sit in a quiet tidy place and not do much of anything at all.

Visiting a gravely ill parent is sort of unspeakably difficult, especially if you missed out on a lot of the intervening decline. Emotional tectonic shifts combined with the riptide drag of a bunch of little kids who want you right in the here and now, providing crackers and strawberries and little plastic toys, they cause you to kind of lose your train of thought permanently. That train derailed and rolled down an embankment and took out a rusted old water tower on the way down.

It was way harder because Sean was away until the day before we left -- I've been on solo parenting duty for nine of the past eleven days, I think. Boo frickin' hoo, I know, but it contributes to the overall...wha? (Although there was a high point: Jenn came to visit, and Sophia has requested her immediate return.)

So that's what's going on. My tether to the right-now is pretty thin, so I have to do just one thing at a time: put a dish in the dishwasher. One folded shirt in a drawer. One email. One library book in the car. Making the choice to be here, to stay here, that's the thing that can keep you alive.

* * * *

In other news: I need your wise consult, internets. We recently learned from our landlords that the house we live in is going to be sold to someone who will most likely tear it down and build new on the site. Our lease will be honored through its end in July, but not renewed. There is also, the landlord mentioned, the possibility of the buyer providing some sort of financial incentive for leaving before the lease runs out.

Hmm.

What kind of incentive, we asked -- and got back "Well, what were you thinking?" as a response. And what I'm thinking is that the buyer is hoping that we'll open the bidding pretty low. And I want to make sure we get as much as is fair out of this, because we were really not as ready to buy now as we were going to be in a year (we'd thought about renting for 2 years to save up a down payment).

So we're wondering what to ask for. One suggestion was to ask for the amount of our rent per month, for each month that we leave early. So if we left six months early, six months' worth of rent money goes to us. No, it's not entirely logical, but it's a starting point. Clearly we'd want to prorate it so that the sooner we leave, the more we get, but how much per month is fair? 

For reference purposes, if someone is buying a house in this neighborhood for a teardown, the lot alone will run you upwards of $200K, and probably closer to $300K. Our rent is $1350 a month (and we will NOT be buying in this neighborhood, as much as I love it -- gentrification hath progressed too far). Would $1350 per month early be too much? $1000? What do you think?

It's a Rich Man's World

Man. All it takes is one whopper of a credit card bill to make me awfully antsy about the financial situation. Yeah, it's an outlier (a conference, trip to see Dad including airfare, hotel, and car rental, and the deposit on my braces) and yeah we can pay it in full but whoa Moses it makes me queasy.

So I started looking at job postings.

Fifty-seven SALES OPPORTUNITY, Chipotle cashier, Earn Money From Home Typing Medical Things! and Wanted: Pediatric Oncology Researchers later, I am remembering why I am planning to go to nursing school.

Half of the posts were for RNs and NPs and LPNs. Full time, part time, take your pick.

And all I have to do is take the GRE and about 16 credit hours of prerequisites for which I will have to take out loans and oh yeah wait for the baby to get a little bit older and get straight As and do really well on the GRE and...

Piece of cake, really. Ha ha ha.

In the meantime I will just feel antsy, I guess. Although I am seriously considering applying the Chipotle job, or package handling for UPS -- something for a few post-dinner hours each night, or maybe on weekends. The library jobs I'm qualified for are all full-time, and we aren't in dire enough straits for me to be ready to leave Daphne all day. I'm embarrassed to admit I don't have the faintest idea of how to parlay this internet-writey thing into any kind of paycheck.

Anyway, that's enough of that. Feel free to judge me as I visit Target to purchase a $5 DVD for the plane ride on Friday.

Skeletons

Every time a picture of Zachary Quinto pops up on my screen (why, internet? I haven't seen a movie in years and no, I do not want to receive his "tweets," unless that is a new slang term you kids are using for Thin Mints) all I can think is "Skeletons of Quinto." For the rest of the day. You're welcome.

BUT it's nearing Halloween, and there are skeletons everywhere, including in my own family. Nothing about which we didn't have a general idea, but urgh, the specifics. Anybody who's dealt with an addict for a loved one probably knows the combination of gut-drop and forehead-slap when you kinda knew, but you didn't know. You didn't know about that.

I hate it when people allude to fascinating prurient details and then won't share, because why the hell did you bring it up if you weren't going to deliver? Come on! If there's anything the internet is for, it's the divulging of humiliating specifics! Well, that and YouTube videos of people lancing their own boils. So, um, sorry. Even I have my limits.

And you know what I like to do when I skate too close to my limits? Distract myself! Yes, I like to distract myself with fun, shiny, twirling pinwheels of sparkles and harpsichord music! Whee! This time around the pinwheels are made of real estate listings, and boy howdy, can they suck up an afternoon. Boring old settled married folks like myself can get about real estate, I am learning, like freewheeling single ladies get about the dudes. 

I never stalked a guy, but I drive by houses of interest on a daily basis.

I check their online profiles obsessively; I zoom in on their pictures to deduce key information from the background detail. I pay attention even to the ones that are taken already -- hey, you never know. Somebody might take a job out of state. Somebody might go to a nursing home. Things happen. When they do, I'll be there with my earnest money.

Yeah, yeah, the analogy kind of has its limits. What crazy thing have you done in the name of real estate?

Reality Bites

Should be: meal planning

Am: making fake poop (recipe at bottom)

Should be: plotting GRE plan of attack

Am: watching Wife Swap

Should be: doing laundry

Am: eating fake poop

Should be: singing lullaby to tired baby

Am: singing hostile words to lullaby tune in sweet voice to baby who will not goddamn go to fucking sleep

* * * * *

Fake Poop Recipe:

6 Tbsp peanut butter (use chunky for realistic chunkiness)

2 Tbsp each of:

-nonfat dry milk

-powdered sugar

-cocoa powder

Nuke the peanut butter just enough to soften it; mix everything together until it's the consistency of play dough.

Roll it up and leave it somewhere special, or eat it in front of your kids.

Fun with Dirk and Jean

Up until a few weeks ago (has it really ended?!), Sophia was...not herself. Same whale-tail hairstyle, same chirpy little voice piercing the silence of a car ride to inquire whether we could stop at a drive-through, or what it might feel like to be a dead chicken. But she wasn't Sophia.

She was Amelia, dammit. Or Maria. Not Sophia. And never Sophie.

It was probably three solid weeks where Sean and I were corrected every time we used the hated original moniker; we thought it was cute, if a little aggravating because she would yell at us every time we screwed up. But she took it to the next level. Nice lady in the store wants to know your name? It's Amelia.

She even managed to keep it up after surviving an assault in the stupid McDonald's Playplace tubes; the mother of the offender, in enforcing an apology (and doling out several of her own), asked my daughter what her name was.

"Ah-huh-mee-huh-lia," she said through sobs. "Amelia."

So the little boy apologized to Amelia, and his mother apologized to Amelia and Amelia's mommy, who was trying to rein in the gape-jawed look of astonishment she'd given her kid. Kid was serious.

* * * *

When my sister Gretchen was maybe five, we watched some Saturday morning show involving the San Diego Chicken. Gretchen adopted the name, and informed the children at the pool, when they asked her to play and what her name was, that she was called "Sandy Eggo Chicken."

She also wore invisible underpants and a plastic Tom (as in, And Jerry) mask on a regular basis. But I digress.

Me, I always wanted a more solid, somewhat androgynous name. Jean, maybe. Robin. Possibly Joan. I don't know what glamorous life I envisioned living with this newer, spiffier name, but that was the dream. I was able to work some of it out by naming all my baby dolls Jeff or John, and thankfully my children today are not saddled with matching four-letter "J" names, Duggar style.

* * * *

Amelia has fallen by the wayside, though Maria still puts in an occasional appearance. It's Sophia most of the time now, and to hell with your baby nicknames, Ma -- there's no more Phidie, there's no more Beetle. Sean and I were talking about it, this weird impulse to craft some other identity besides the one you're given, even at an early age, and I asked him if he had a name he always liked better.

Oh sure, he said. There was a clear favorite. Left to choose his own name, he would be -- I would be married to one Mister Doctor --

Dirk.