50 Things That Make Me Happy

December, January, and February are very terrible months. I thought that writing this list might help.

50 Things That Make Me Happy

1. Throwing a baseball with my sons, the afternoon sun blinding me for a moment
2. Shoveling snow, pushing the planes of whiteness ahead of me like surf
3. Finding a hidden pane of winter ice in a wheelbarrow and pressing it with my hand until it cracks and the cold water floods out onto the surface
4. Snipping scallions
5. The accidental tangle of my five-year-old's hand in my hair and his gentle efforts to pull it free
6. Writing a paragraph that I never saw coming
7. Writing an entire book that I never saw coming, either
8. Birds wheeling in symphony over the buildings
9. Early crocuses, confused by temperature changes but startled up alive nonetheless
10. I have recently noted that my Christmas lights, still hung, look rather like droopy breasts

11. The scent of lavender
12. Thinking of packing for summer camp. Which happens in July.
13. My child threw a gobbet of bubbles at me from his bath and it stuck in my eyebrow.
14. That same child needed help with his undies because his skin was "sticky."
15. He also said he had to "port-a-potty" his troops ("fortify") during a game of Risk.
16. There is a small leaf-shaped birthmark on my right calf; it is something constant and unchanging. How many times have I changed over, like water, and still that birthmark remains?
17. Green olives with pimentos inside them
18. The same olives inside a chilled martini
19. The taste of a grapefruit, cut into slices

20. Kneesocks that don't fall down
21. The softest blanket in the world ( I OWN it!)
22. A fresh shipment of The Hundred to my doorstep, to be sold and given as gifts
23. The cashiers at the Larchmont Trader Joe's, ever cheerful
24. Capture the Flag with my boys, the territories Upstairs and Downstairs in the house. Front and back stairs neutral ground. High stakes!
25. Very, very small turtles—especially peevish ones!

26. Uni, especially at Hajime in Harrison, NY
27. The Hundred: Book Two (Working title: The Vision and the Clock). Every word I write is a surprise to me.
28. Playing "Karma Police" on the antique Chickering Baby Grand piano. And then playing "Gavotte." And then maybe "Minuet in G" followed by "Jet Plane."
29. Extreme weather events. Provided no one gets hurt.
30. Hot showers in my 54-degree FREEZING FUCKING COLD SIEVE of a house
31. This. Note the date, people. JANUARY.
32. I'm having a hard time getting to 50 things on my list. Did I mention that it was January, and people generally just keel over and die with despair during this most awful of months? Okay...thinking hard...how about lemons? They are fine. And they are yellow. They smell nice. Fuckeroo. I am getting desperate.
33. This morning's poo was well-formed and attractive. (It was not my poo, it was my son's. But I was pleased to find it floating in the toilet exhibiting gleaming evidence of good health on its pelt.)
34. I only hyperventilate in certain places. I totally stop hyperventilating as soon as I go to the Caribbean.
35. When I went to make my tea this morning the teabag stayed intact.
36. Cheese is nice.

37. Somewhere in this world, a child may be having a birthday party right now. With ponies! And atop the ponies are clowns. But I dislike clowns. Now I am having a panic attack. This 50 Things list sucks.
38. I have two kneecaps.
39. I have never been to Abu Ghraib.
40. My middle name is not "Marmaduke," "Ton-o-Lovin'," or "Pol Pot."
41. I don't own anything that poos on the ground. Mwa-ha, poo scoopers!
42. The mosquitos are all absent. But there are crickets in my basement during the winter! Bad bad bad.
43. I didn't accidentally hammer any nails into my duodenum today.
44. Butter atop a slab of lobster
45. I did not name any of my children "Oofhy," "Unmentionable," or "Tudleriffic." Including middle names.
46. Tiny....turtles? No, I already mentioned them, the lil' fuckers. How about tiny OWLS! No bigger than a thumbprint. Or tiny cattle? Bonsai cattle? Or tiny goats!

47. I have not started any fires nor burnt myself on an errant grilled cheese sandwich today.
48. Beans cause gas.
49. Little shirts and suits for tiny turtles. Sewn by arctic maidens wearing lovely wool sweaters and playing zithers.
50. I am still alive. I am waiting for the thaw, and I will never, ever give up.

90 Minutes a Day

Instant gratification via the blog quickly becomes a drug of sorts.

Choice A: Work on new novel, which may take 184 months to ever see the light of day.

Choice B: Dash off a blog entry which can be published…now!

This would be easier if I had more hours in the day to write. Here is my so-called writing schedule:

7:04 am: Wake to the snuffling movements and thrashing vagaries of Second Son, who has crept into our bed. He often mutters to himself and tells knock-knock jokes in loud whispers, making sleep impossible. He also makes noises out of his anal aperture. Oh, Second Son! One day you will be great!

7:30 Breakfast for three sons. Sometimes involves a great deal of buttering of flat, inanimate objects.

"Moah miwk pwease!" Jellies are spread. Many jellies wind up on the face and lap of Third Son, who announces: "Clean my hands and face and I am all done!"

8:15 Sons off to school. Involves much gesturing and stern talk and not much any writing.

8:32 Train to NYC (or, if working from home, to the email!) Sometimes can get writing done in small, wavering notebook on lap. Eye on fellow passenger who may or may not be about to slump into me with gaping, drooling maw.

Lunchtime: Gym class (when possible). At best, dreaming up plots and ideas while on bike, elliptical trainer, or during kickboxing class. No notebook available to jot down ideas. Great angst that they will be forgotten.

5:30-7:30 Boys' dinner, games, books, bed. Told to fold more paper cranes for Japan by Second Son. Pulled into "secret discussion" with First Son in which he tells me (sotto voce): "Did you know that there are three books in Pullmans' His Dark Materials series?! Can you imagine how cool that is?" Yeah, I suppose I can! Third Son (age 2 and 3/4) wants me to dance to Salt 'n' Pepa circa 1993, which he has yanked off the CD shelf: "If I/ wanna take a guy/ home with me tonight/ it's none a ya bidness!" Um....

7:30 Time to write! Briefly distracted by large, brimming martini set down next to laptop. Thank you, Husband!

9:00 It’s all over, baby. I need to eat dinner.

10:00 Sometimes a resurgence and a slew of writing until late-late, which will usually lead to grogginess and angst when 7:04 item (above) repeats itself, as it invariably will.

When the hey do you all write, anyway? I am curious to know!

So anyway, here's a neat Charlie Rose video with Stanley Fish and Roger Rosenblatt about writing, which I watched tonight while eating dinner. Watch it! It's inspiring. I am dreadful tired. Beautiful sentence after beautiful sentence after beautiful sentence....

Fatso, Silly Bits, and Sneakypants told me to write this

I would like to share the draft of Chapter #5 in my new etiquette and self-help book, tentatively titled "Stop Buttering My Crumpet For Me, You Asshole."

Chapter 5: Thou Shalt Giveth Amusing Nicknames to People

There is nothing that people love more than being given a cute nickname. It means that they are "in the club." So go out of your way to bestow nicknames on everyone you meet. It will give them a charming touch that they would not have achieved in their current state of hiding in their attic. Imagine if someone had nicknamed God "Fatso," Jesus "Silly Bits," and the Virgin Mary "Sneakypants." These guys would have been totally popular. They do like the nicknames that I gave them, and for my witticisms I have received a goat, a ram (neutered), and a pie.

Here are my super-nice and therefore famous-making nicknames for some folks I have encountered in my gym, workplace, church (I don't attend church so this a lie, but I will explain in Chapter 7, Why Lies Are Nice), grocery store, and temple (I am not Jewish but I will explain in Chapter 12, How Faking Various Religious Affiliations Can Get One Free Sweets). The names:

T-Rexopolous
Stretch
Chawface
Sally Piddlepants
She Who Chews Soup
The Oompa-Loompa
Droopy Dawg
The Mushroom
That Miserable Wretch
The Tanned Lizard
Reptilicus Vaginicus
Me, Me, Me!
Snackus Adorous
Johnny Laid-a-Turd
Blinky
Stinky
Cockroach-i-ka!
The Eggy-Eyed Robotic Humanic Impersonation (EERHI!)
That Child Molester
Fat
Breath of Doom
Punkin Head

All these people were boring and bad before I gave them super-duper nicknames. Now they are better than bad! Their miserable fuckness-ess has been transmogrified into perfectitude. I want to write about each and every one of 'em. But I can't. I have had two martinis. Tomorrow, Johnny Laid-a-Turd and She Who Chews Soup, I will tell of the beautiful moments that gave you your beautiful names.

Wandering the Halls in a Stained Nightie

In my usual spirit of telling stories creepy enough to curdle the fur on a poodle, I was reminded today of my last experience with birthing a child. It's a little story I like to call "Wandering the Halls in a Stained Nightie Looking for My Baby." (Soon to be released on Lifetime Movie Network.)

The place: Lawrence Hospital, Bronxville, NY. The story of the actual birth event is not so exciting. Everything went grandly. So grandly, in fact, that I recall slurring in a drug-induced stupor, "The baby is crowning? Reeeeeaally?" Now that's a good birth experience. When the baby (soon to become My German Changeling Child) was handed to me, I did have this ominous thought about his looks: "Well, we'll love him anyway." But the little mite is now 2 1/2 and really terribly cute, despite his propensity to gnaw the noses off stuffed animals and speak in a guttural German accent. So if your newborn baby is ugly don't despair.

It was after the birth that things started to go downhill. I was moved to a shared room with a nitwit who had just given birth to a 5 1/2-pound nubbin named Johnny. Although hospital policy prohibited more than a few visitors at a time, this woman had people come in tour buses to troop through her room. They came in batches of 10-15 people at a time, with all their kids in tow, to ooh and ahh over wretched little Johnny in his bassinet.

When the loutish kids walked in they all tracked mud through my side of the room, despite the flimsy "privacy curtain." They dropped candy wrappers and got in mock fights over my bed while I tried to get the baby to latch on. Some of them opened the drawers and rooted through them (looking for free used blankies or nighties?), or took the rubber gloves from the box on the wall and snapped them at each other like slingshots. Some of the commentary from their awful parents went like this:

"He's a precious, poifect angel!"
"What a dawwwllbaby!"
"Bet you can't wait to have a Corona, honey!"

A frickin' Corona? How about a double dirty martini with three olives, stirred please?

Little Miss Twatlet was not nursing, so she fell blissfully asleep while the nurses took Johnny away to feed him bottles all night long. I sat there awake all night long and struggled to nurse my own baby; it was not going well. When the nurse arrived I asked plaintively, "Is there a lactation consultant on staff?"

"A what?" she wondered.

"A lactation consultant. Someone who can help you with problems nursing."

"Um, channel 5 on TV," she mumbled."Everything you need on TV."

The TV channel showed some dowdy, fat-breasted women blissfully nursing their infants with no troubles at all. No one else could help. I struggled on mightily, only feeling happiness when the girl next door awoke in the night groaning in pain.

"I towaah [translation: tore]...I towaah!" she hissed to the nurse. "When the baby came out I towaah down theeeaah. It hoits!" Apparently, her 5 1/2-pound lumplet of a baby had shot out so fast, right through the air into the doctor's arms, that he tore her stem to stern, as they say. Hehhehe.

She whimpered like that for the next day or so. Meanwhile, I was suffering even more. At about 4 am I rang for the nurse and asked her to take the baby away for one hour so I could rest.

"Give him bottle?" she said sweetly.

I knew this was a bad idea, but I was desperate. "Yes, just one bottle! And then bring him right back!"

I woke up about 4 hours later and asked for the baby. No one knew where he was. "Find him!" I said, but no one could seem to track him down. He was either with the doctor, or being weighed, or being fed another bottle. "No...no more bottles!" I cried, but the nurses stared at me blankly. After more time had passed, I determined to find him myself. I dug around in the drawers but the Twatlet's evil visitors had stolen all the clean gowns. So in my still-bloodied gown I got up and shuffled down fluorescent hallways, seeking my baby. "Where's my baby!" I shrieked to the nurses. No one knew.

I peeked into the nursery, which had its shades drawn so I couldn't see any babies at all. Finally someone stopped me and asked me what I was doing wandering about. I was escorted back to my room and told to wait and the baby would arrive within seconds. At least an hour or two later, he was finally returned, fat on formula and good as new. I, however, was ready to kill 'em all, especially the Twatlet, who had just received a fresh tour bus of visitors who trooped past my bed, paused, and stared at me as I resumed my painful and humiliating attempts to nurse the baby. Yes, some of them just stood there and stared. I got on the phone with a friend: "My room is filled with ASSHOLES," I said, loudly enough for them to hear. Pretty soon everybody left in a hurry.

When my own 21-month old visited with his daddy, we encouraged him to scream his loudest...for any reason at all. "Go ahead, let it ALL out," we said wickedly, as he howled like mad, and little Lumplet Johnny woke from his slumbers with a piercing cry.

Baby Three is due for release on or around May 10, 2008. The very day that someone will be mixing that ice-cold martini for me. You might as well make the second one while you're at it.