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April 28, 2006
i am lobster hear me click
Snap snap snap went the mandibles! Crunch crunch crunch went the claws! What is that sound you hear? That is the sound of a lobster, totally shredding the crap out of a shamrock and eating it. The potential move to Ireland has been cast-off like the too-small shell of a recently molted crustacean. Now the creature, timorous in this, his most vulnerable state, hugs the rocky coast of the Eastern seaboard with brave hopes for the future despite the sucking vastness of the sea and all that wish to consume him therein.
I love how when I use a metaphor of myself as a lobster, it’s got to be a BOY lobster. The same is true when I do cartoon voices (which is, um, probably too often), they are always men, at least in my head. Imitate the cartoon lobster, unleash the male within!
We are officially taking the month of May off from thinking about stupid shit like where we’re gonna live and instead we’re going to enjoy Spring Fling 2006. I really want to use a blink tag for that, do those still work? Yes, they do! is going to rule: it involves lots of fishing (husband), buying ocean-themed tchotchkes and doodads (me) and consuming many jellybeans for using the potty (everyone). Also, I am once again determined to have fun in this frigging uptight, moneyed sinkhole of a bedroom community and thus Spring Fling 2006 also involves inviting all of the kids at the Bean’s grim daycare for a Backyard Party X-travaganza. My husband pointed out that most likely, no one will come. But we can try - we simply will not go down without face-painting and water balloons, people!
In other news, I had coffee in Seekonk yesterday with the lovely Jen from jenville.com, which proved that coolness is alive and well in the greater Rhode Island area. She informed me that Seekonk means "black goose" and lo! It is true. This gives even more meaning to one of our favorite family games "Seekonk/Cranston", where one person says "Seekonk" in the most nasal voice possible and someone else says "Cranston" equally nasally and then everyone laughs and eats a lobster.
Viva spring! Viva Seekonk!
Posted by Max at 10:14 PM | Comments (4)
April 21, 2006
transatlanticism
in the taxi
I’m in a country I don’t know hurtling the wrong way down a freeway, weaving in and out of traffic while the taxi driver curses and pounds the steering wheel with a meaty paw. He tells me he’s been an Olympic-level judo athlete and then, later, a coach. I tell him I won’t pick a fight with him, but he doesn’t laugh. He says he liked coaching, but coaching girls was impossible because they were too emotional. “The brothers, the fathers, the boyfriends, they all hate you. You know, you get too involved, too emotionally involved, with the girls…” He stares sadly out the window and the rest of the ride continues in silence.
at the hotel
The lobby of the hotel is an oasis of white, with enormous chandeliers suspended from the ceilings, artfully set on Lucite tables and resting haphazardly on the floor. I check in to my room and then order coffee from the lobby bar, launching an unwinnable fight with jet lag. Ambient techno music plays softly in the background, making everything seem cooler than it is. I attempt to slide unnoticed into one of the over-sized white leather beans functioning as chairs and knock the table with my knee, spilling coffee everywhere. I frantically wipe it up with a tissue I find crumpled at the bottom of my purse, used days earlier and on another continent by the Bean.
on the tram
The Luas doesn’t rhyme with cows and it doesn’t rhyme with mouse. It’s pronounced “Lewis”: the locals call it the “Daniel Day”. It’s clean and convenient and eminently navigable even by someone who’s easily flummoxed in unfamiliar cities. Downtown is alternately splashed with rain and lit by sunbursts and there are flowers in every window box. A girl waiting across the platform is a vision of spring. I love the Luas, also known as the Daniel Day.
interviews
I’m picked up at 8:30 am and the day begins. By 2:00 pm, I’ve interviewed with five people and am still unfed. Jet lag sandbags me, making my sentences long and incomprehensible. Someone gets me a sandwich; a turkey wrap with shredded cheese that showers my plate in bright orange confetti while the hiring manager watches me. I then meet with the Boss of Everyone, who stops me mid-sentence if I’m not answering questions to her satisfaction. She is brilliant and terrifying: I am fearful and smitten. I’m sent back to my hotel in a cab, which I pay for with my own money. On either end, no decisions have been made.
coming home
On the plane back, I sit next to a kindly, snow-haired man and we drink together. He is eloquent and well traveled, a professional musician who’s lived in the States for thirty years but who is ready to return home. He invites me to a music festival at the end of the summer and, as we are leaving the plane, hands me a copy of his CD. That night, at home, my son and I listen and dance.
Posted by Max at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2006
I am Zygone from Planet Franthrop
I'm sad to report that my child has been taken over by aliens, who now use his adorable little shell of a body to throw his dinner on the floor, put his foot in poop and then try to kick me with it, and punch his dad in the eye when they don't want to get out of the tub.
Also, FYI, aliens do not like bedtime so don't even think about trying to tuck them in with their special blankets after reading them five books and singing "When the Red Red Robin Goes Bob Bob Bobbin' Along" three times. My son used to like that song. The aliens have pronounced it "not good".
We busted the aliens conducting this little "defiance ceremony" in the Bean's room when he should have been sleeping. Notice how some of his stuffed animals are actually alien sentries, guarding the neon tubes of toddler power.
Stupid, stupid aliens. Bring me back my baby.
Posted by Max at 10:02 AM | Comments (2)
April 10, 2006
irish eyes = smiling!
That’s all I can say on that topic right now. Tá brón orm faoin moill.
If I were in Seattle now, I would be repeatedly hoisting a glass in honor of my good good friends, who just purchased a very cool bar. If you want to visit an intimate, neighborhood-y bar where people are nice and interesting and friendly, and you also wish to consume delicious cocktails mixed by an ace mixologist, you should go there! Yay friends!
This past weekend, my sister-in-law was here and we had girlish Good Times, which included her reminding me of a story about my brother Ruby. When Ruby was about six years old and I was seven, we got new squirt guns. Ruby decided he was going to squirt my dad. Squirt squirt squirt. My dad got pretty steamed and told him to stop. But Ruby didn’t stop – squirt squirt. My dad said if you do that one more time, I’m going to chop that up with an axe! Ruby and I glanced at each other and with a look of detached scientific curiosity, he pulled the trigger once again. S-q-u-i-r-t. Four-foot horns shot from my dad’s head and froth flew out of his mouth as he snatched the squirt gun from my brother’s hand and sprinted for the garage. Incredulous, we ran after him. He proceeded to set the squirt gun on a two-by-four and chop it up into a billion sky-blue plastic shards WITH AN AXE. Dude gets major points for drama, less for “being cool” vis-à-vis the raising of the offspring.
I understand that moment more now that I have my own child. The Bean is currently in an extremely challenging phase in that he sucks to be around about 80% of the time. He yells “No!” in your face, he spits, he falls down on the ground when the snacks you’ve given him are insufficient. Yesterday, he refused to nap and instead walked the house crying for three hours while my husband and I took turns trying to soothe/feed/comfort/threaten/cajole him. At last, in defeat, we put him in the car and drove six inches down the road, where he promptly fell asleep. When he woke up, he announced he would henceforth only be napping in the car. Good thing my husband and I had driven to the axe store. That car seat doesn’t stand a chance.
Posted by Max at 10:16 PM | Comments (1)
April 06, 2006
slim pickings
Another day, another chance to tell a stranger over the phone that I’m innovative, bold, and customer-centric. Because I am! That ain’t gonna change, no matter how many people ask me! If nothing else, I’m sure my growing application file says, “She’s remarkably consistent.” So, no news yet on whether or not we’re trading quahogs for tam o’shanters. I like both equally, so things could truly go either way. We shall see.
In South Beach news, I’ve lost about ten pounds, whereas my “Rules Rules Rules McKenzie” husband has lost twenty-five. The guy is quite simply: a freak. He goes to the gym five days a week, he doesn’t eat bread or pasta anymore, he says his body feels wrong if he doesn’t get exercise every FRIPPIN day. Is this the guy I married? No, it’s not. The guy I married called me once, early on in our courtship, drunk and passed out in his own front lawn, yelling about imaginary lesbian monkeys hassling him from the street. The guy I married was burly and could drink twelve beers in a sitting. This new guy I’m now married to swishes around our home in checking the carb content of granola.
We’re not so much on a “diet” anymore as a “participating” in a “lifestyle”. I remember being a kid and opening up one of my friend’s parents’ fridges and seeing low carb this, no fat that and thinking “That my friend ain’t living.” Now I am older, fatter, and wiser and it is my fridge that is stocked with the diet sodas and the sparkling waters. It happens, kids, it happens. It will happen to you, if you're are not careful. Or maybe, if you are.
Posted by Max at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2006
sentimental case
Even though there is nothing really specifically going on, I feel the need to post a few updates in case anyone is wondering. First: are mine Irish eyes smiling or not? This is the 20,000-euro question. After a frenzy of phone interviews, there was a long period of not hearing anything. So much so that my husband and I decided that rather than making ourselves crazy over any move-related decisions, we’d just start doing home projects.
Spring has arrived to the EC with precious little fanfare. One minute you’re locked outside your house with wet hair freezing to the side of your head and the next there’s daffodils all over the place except in your yard because the previous owners were TOO DAMN LAZY to plant a single bulb. My husband is ripping apart our ghetto sun porch/playroom and tricking it out into a tropical wonderland complete with bamboo floors, taxidermic fishes frozen in eternal pursuit of non-existent bait, and built-in benches just the right size for toddler slumber parties.
You know what comes after spring? Summer. East coast summers, though humid, are what have driven this particular train across the country and pulled it into Suburban Station. We now live four blocks from the beach. There’s rumored to be a clamshack there in summer that sells whole-bellied clams in paper cones. Mean ladies in green and yellow trucks peddle delicious shaved lemon ice to kids on bikes. You can dig holes in the sand here, fill them up with lobsters and corn and coals and clams and a couple hours later, dig everything up and gorge yourself on butter-soaked sweetness. One emerges from the sea sun-browned and salt-stung to rinse off in freezing outdoor showers. And fireflies fill the night sky blinking out phrases like “Aw yeah” and “Bring me another beer, bitches.” It’s the flip side of six months of cold, wet, snow and scowls, loneliness, Republicans.
The thought of leaving now, when all of that is just beginning, to move to an actual foreign (rather than perceived) culture makes me a bit heartsick. I’m hopeful that, if and when I do go to Ireland for the next round of interviews (and it is looking pretty likely), somehow I’ll know one way or another what we should do.
In the meantime, there is a bird here now that sings a particular two-note song: the first note high and quick, the second one note lower and longer. Hearing it the first time, I told the Bean the bird was singing “Good morn-innnng!” On Saturday, he ran into our room yelling “Mommy, Mommy the good morning bird singing to me!” In contrast, this morning, he woke me up by standing next to the bed and projectile vomiting onto my chest. God I love that kid.
Posted by Max at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)