Vows...

I don't have time this morning to give the vows-n-vittles play-by-play, but it was a dreamy day all around. Folks keep asking for copies of our vows, so I'm posting the ceremony here. It's a hodgepodge of a couple options provided by our JP, Christine E. Speight, a Unitarian service I found online, and our own words.

Jessica & Michael’s Vows-n-Vittles

August 28, 2010

CONVOCATION:

We gather together today not to mark the start of a relationship, but to recognize a partnership and a family that already exists. We are grateful for this miraculous day, for the fulfillment of love we see before us in each of you, Jessica and Michael, and for the joy of sharing this happy occasion.

We’ll now have a moment of silent reflection, to include in spirit the family and friends who couldn’t be here today or are no longer with us.

Each of you here present has been invited because you are a special person in the lives of Jessica and Michael. You have come to rejoice with them; to hear their vows, their hopes, their plans... to extend good wishes as they continue their journey together and to be reminded of the loves and commitments that are a part of your own lives. Will you, therefore, do all in your power to uphold these two in the marriage they are about to undertake?

All gathered:  We will.

Michael and Stellina, you are a part of this marriage. We hope that together all of you will find ways to comfort, understand, help and challenge one another, and that you will make your home a place where all are safe, happy and encouraged to grow. Will you do your best?

Children reply: I/We will.

MEDITATION ON MARRIAGE:

Ultimately, two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage is itself something which has to be created. To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling.

We’ll now have a few moments of quiet reflection, during which, as you feel inspired, you may say aloud your own advice, well-wishes and thoughts to the couple.

Thank you.

EXPRESSION OF INTENT TO MARRY:

Jessica and Michael, you have carefully considered the beauty of the obligations assumed when lives are wed. You come before me today to be joined in marriage. Are you both ready to declare your commitment to one another?

Reply: We are.

EXCHANGE OF VOWS:

Please face each other and share the vows you have written together.

I, Jessica, take you, Michael, as my partner in life, love and law. I promise to be quick to love you and slow to judge you; to express kindness more, and criticism less; to turn first to humor and last to anger; to support you in being the man you aspire to be; and to do all I can to bring my best self to our marriage and our family, every day, for the rest of our lives.

I, Michael, take you, Jessica, as my partner in life, love and law. I promise to be quick to love you and slow to judge you; to express understanding more, and impatience less; to turn first to humor and last to anger; to support you in being the woman you aspire to be; and to do all I can to bring my best self to our marriage and our family, every day, for the rest of our lives.

EXCHANGE OF RINGS:

May I have ____________’s ring, please? [officiant holds ring in hand] This ring is a symbol of unity, in which your two lives are now joined in one unbroken circle of love. May your ring(s) always call to mind the freedom and the power of this love.

Bride places ring on Groom’s finger as she repeats the Justice’s of the Peace words:

As the sign from my heart that I desire to live with you from this day forward, and that you may remember forever that I have chosen you above all others, I give you this ring as a symbol of my love. Michael, with this ring I thee wed!

Groom places ring on Bride’s finger as he repeats the Justice’s of the Peace words:

As the sign from my heart that I desire to live with you from this day forward, and that you may remember forever that I have chosen you above all others, I give you this ring as a symbol of my love. Jessica, with this ring I thee wed!

(The parties are now directed to join hands.)

By the act of joining hands you take to yourself the relation of spouses for life and solemnly promise to love, honor, comfort and cherish each other so long as you both shall live. Therefore, in accordance with the law of Connecticut and by virtue of the authority vested in me by the law of Connecticut I do pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss to seal your vows.

CLOSING:

May these two find happiness in their union. May they live faithfully together, performing the vow and covenant they have made between them and to their children; and may they ever remain in sympathy and understanding: that their years may be rich in the joys of life, and their days good, and long upon the earth. 

happy endings

We are foregoing a wedding cake and its $5/per slice price tag and spending that $$ on an ice cream truck. That was actually the first thing I booked when we set a date -- before the JP, before the caterer. Dave and his flamingo-pink ice cream truck will park in the driveway for an hour or two, our version of a free bar.


Then last week Michael said he wanted a cake after all. Our magical and nomadic friend Laura, whom I see rarely but always right when I need an infusion of enthusiasm, happened to be passing through on her way from Florida to Venus, and offered to not only procure a last-minute cake but also stage-manage our festivities. She is wicked bossy, in the best possible way, a Taurus with bullseye focus, and a fantastic dancer, which has nothing to do with her organizational skills but is something you ought to know.


We ordered a vintage cake topper from Etsy.com. The homeliest couple to ever grace a pastry, they look like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in 50s wedding garb. 

Psych! Don't want to spoil the surprise...

something borrowed

Our wedding seating will be courtesy of St. Emery's, the Catholic Church around the corner from our house. Once a thriving congregation comprised of the neighborhood's Hungarian immigrants, home to a parochial school and convent, St. Emery's now rents its classrooms to the Fairfield Board of Ed for the town's alternative high school and to AA meetings. Its income is also augmented by "Bingo! Every Thursday night! Air Conditioned! $$!" I've never attended, but it seems to draw a larger crowd than Mass, which gave me the notion that where there's a social hall there's seating, and I tracked down Father Louie.

Whereas a rental company would charge a minimum $154+tax for 8 banquet-length tables and 60 wimpy Samsonite plastic chairs, he's letting us borrow the equivalent (and the chairs are those hardy, if homely,  metal ones) for a donation of our discretion (I offered $50), and we can pick them up Friday and keep them if need be til the following week's game night. Having to transport them is certainly worth the $100 savings. My groom has a pick-up truck, as does his brother, but I bet I could get a couple of the juvie students who throw Yoo-hoo bottles on our front lawn on their way to school to help lug them up the street in exchange for a pack of smokes.

Vows-n-Vittles

I'm fairly lousy at this blog business, or anything that requires taking notes on life while in the midst of living it. I haven't consistently kept a journal for years, ever since an ex (who was in the midst of becoming an ex, which neither of us were handling very nobly) read through and wrote commentaries in the margins. 

I don't have a baby book for my kid; I have a huge plastic storage bin in the basement into which I've thrown particularly cute outfits, her hospital discharge papers, a corsage from her father for my baby shower and the scabby remnant of her umbilical cord. It's terrible -- I know she started walking and talking in the past 2-1/2 years, and that I've been there, live and in person, for all her "firsts" (smile, word, firefly, french fry, tantrum, toilet foray) thus far, but I couldn't say on what date particular things transpired. 

But we're getting hitched in a few weeks and it's pretty all-consuming a process, no matter how casual a manner in which we're doing the hitching, so I figured I'd try to write about the planning while we're planning. 

Like, I'm at the library alternately doing editorial work and Googling compostable paper goods for our backyard shindig, and I don't want to forget the phone message Michael just left me. "You are the girl for me," he said, laughing. "I think that's your dress. I didn't look at it, but that's got to be where it is. In that tiny box!" He guffawed, and hung up, and yes, the Priority Mail package he'd spotted in the closet does indeed store my bridal attire, which is a vintage party dress of a hue other than white, was purchased for $180 from Etsy and arrived in said packaging, wrapped for protection in a plastic Wal-Mart bag. Bridezilla, I ain't, which is fortunate both us both, considering I'm marrying a man who regards the sweatpants without holes his "dress-up pair."

clean slate

Note to self: When everything else mechanical you've laid eyes and hands on malfunctions, don't write a pithy title line about your computer crashing. I didn't back up my laptop, and the hard drive imploded a week after that last post. My Apple tech, bless his heart, didn't scold me for neglecting this chore, and delivered with sensitivity and a Kleenex the news that my hard drive's condition was fatal. He quietly loaded my new hard drive (at least I had the sense to purchase that three-year extended warranty, if not an external HD-as-automatic backup) and wished me luck retrieving data off the old one. The good news is he knows someone with the same error as mine who got nearly everything back. The bad news: It cost her $2,000.

So please back your computer up. And wear a seatbelt, helmet and condom while you're at it.

time to back up my laptop...

I have had a month-long run of odd, mechanical- and electronic-related mishaps. It feels like Mercury is retrograde, if you believe in that sort of hooey. Which I do, because I swear that every time a computer goes on the fritz or a printer runs out of ink or the cable goes off (and we've actually paid the bill), the planets are aligned in this particular way. But that hasn't been the case since the end of May, so I don't know what the deal is. In the month of June our DVD player broke, my car horn stopped working, the garbage disposal literally ground to a halt, our Internet access went out for 2 days, my Bluetooth and Michael's satellite radio were stolen at separate times from separate vehicles, and some other stuff I can't remember right now.

So, it was funny to come across this today on The Daily Fairfield, as I deposit my phone, once again, into a Ziplock bag of basmati rice. I thought the hair dryer/rice combo had worked several weeks back after my fancy, fairly new, uninsured phone fell into the toilet at the pediatrician's office - an unexpected risk of potty training in the mobile age. I believed I'd triumphed over water damage and my own foolishness at having not purchased that insurance plan, when the screen again went white and sweaty yesterday. It hadn't been totally restored to health, but was limping along well enough. I could get by without the letter L (the number 1 works in its place) and the number 0, since the gadget has two keyboards and it worked on one of them, and the "back" button. I was even able to use the GPS feature by switching back and forth between screens and fudging spellings, although getting directions sometimes took longer than actually getting to my destination. I don't know how many lives a smart phone has. I hope 3, at least. I can't afford to replace it, and Sprint has told me water damage is considered "beyond repair"...but I could try submerging it in rice.

P.S. This post is showing up in a font and point size not of my choosing, and I can't figure out how to change it! None of this crap is life-threatening or even particularly interesting, but it's really getting old.

I ♥ DMV

I'm inspired by a recent Facebook post by Starre Vartan (author, Eco-Chick.com founder, HuffPo blogger, and a global-thinking-Fairfield County-residing embodiment of the LLVS spirit) in which she sang the praises of our local Department of Motor Vehicles. That would be "praise" and "DMV" sharing a rare thought bubble. How rare? Google "I love the DMV." One person in Vermont had a positive DMV experience once. There are a few "I heart DMV" links but I think that stands for the DC-Maryland-Virginia area. Now enter "DMV Sucks." This sentiment has its own website, original anthem, monologues on YouTube, and a poll that 77% of those asked agree with that statement. It's easy to understand why:

Indeed, when it came time to register my car and get a CT license, I readied myself for a day spent maneuvering a fluorescent-lit labyrinth understaffed by civil servants who moved at the can-do clip of barnacles, as had been my experience at every such facility since taking to the road in my '77 orange VW beetle at the age of 16. However, I knew this would be an altogether different encounter even as I pulled into the parking lot and beheld the edifice before me, its facade of windows gleaming in the morning sun.

So my day wouldn't be spent in what resembled a fallout shelter, after all. The door opened from the inside. I stepped aside to let the person through, but he waved me in. "Welcome!" said an elderly gentleman. "Can I help you find the forms you need today?" I looked around, confused. Was this a kindly-yet-addled customer who'd spent so long waiting that he fancied himself an employee? And did I smell coffee brewing? The greeter -- yeah, Fairfield County is so fancy that the DMV has a doorman -- familiarized me with the refreshment cart; the cabinet fully stocked with forms in the cubbies for which they were labeled; a plethora of loose pens and pencils; the waiting room with comfortable-looking cushioned chairs in which people kicked back and read the paper and didn't look a bit irate; and the various, clearly marked stations, each staffed by people who looked as inclined to smile and make eye contact as not. They did both these things; the lines moved steadily; the digital counter on the wall announced at a reasonable pace who's turn was next. Within two hours I was out the door with new plates and a decent driver's license photo, and I had the whole rest of the day to sit in traffic on I-95! I have to renew both my registration and license in August, so we'll see if it's as painless a process again then...

The LLVS Manifesto

This spring marks my 10th year living in Fairfield County, Connecticut. I ended up here as much by accident as someone can. I lived in western MA but had spent most of the previous two years in NYC going to acting school. I was now ready to relocate to the city for real, having gotten a few-years' fill of bucolic college town life (which I might add is a pretty awesome combo: country-n-culture!) after a stint in San Francisco. However, in looking for a place to rent in NY, I quickly realized my temporary loft-share in Tribeca had been a fluke of the finest kind--living on the cheap with an insta-soulmate whom I'd known at a distance in SF in an incredible, huge loft her dad had rented since the 70s.

After an earnest eight-month search of Manhattan, the boroughs and beyond (including, significantly, a quick drive through downtown Westport, CT, in search of coffee. My then-partner and I took note of the sea of luxury SUVs in the Starbucks parking lot--and the tiny blonds with the shake-n-bake tans wearing diamonds and tennis whites who drove them--and laughed at the preposterous notion of spending more than a hot-latte-minute in Stepford. I try to remember that sense of culture shock but can't quite summon it anymore. Those ladies are my peeps now, yo. Well, maybe not my BFFs, but I've been in their houses. When working as a cater-waiter.) Our norm at the time was lesbian families in vintage Volvos, hippie farmers and hipster musicians all coexisting in damn-near liberal bliss...and before that, San Francisco in all its tattooed freaky technicolor greatness.

I grew up working class in MA; I went to a monied school, but the college campus was common ground--I never visited the homes or witnessed the worlds from which my friends and classmates came. Any wealthy friends I had in SF were secretly, scruffily wealthy. So maybe I'd been in money's midst before, but never in the sort of ostentatious, "yeah, we're loaded and want you to know it" way of the Gold Coast, the 30-mile beachfront corridor of Connecticut from Fairfield to Greenwich) we signed a five-year lease on an industrial live-work loft on the Brooklyn/Queens line. The catch was it wasn't yet built, so we gave up our place in Northampton, put our stuff in storage and stayed with friends. And stayed, and stayed...our move-in date got pushed back; there were plumbing problems, then permit problems, then the landlord stopped taking our calls altogether. It was March, it was snowing, we'd spent the last year looking for a decent place to live and now this, and we (and our 3 cats) were wearing out our welcome.

So we called a psychic. Or tried to, anyway. But the psychic's ex-boyfriend no longer had her number, but DID know of an open apartment next door to his office, right across the street from the train into NYC, so maybe we could rent it temporarily (no lease required) and get on with our big-city lives while finding a place in the big city to actually live. So we checked it out. The landlady was 97 years old, owned a goodly amount of the town's commercial properties, said we could move in whenever we wanted and gave us a key, never asking our last names. The rent was inexplicably low for that zip code...or any zip code this side of Iowa. (We soon realized this was because neither the plumbing nor the wiring had been upgraded since the 1940s, but as long as we didn't plug in more than one item requiring electric current at a time, we were fine.) It was a mile from the beach and a short walk from a video store, cafe, grocery store, dive bar, a river, a dive bar on the river, several restaurants, a public park, a post office, and so close to the train we could watch it pull in from the living room window and still make it aboard. The apartment itself was adorable: an oddly shaped, slope-eaved cozy abode above an antique book store, ill-tended enough that we could have several cats and create art and not worry about making a mess, yet well-enough maintained for habitation (if one maintained a loose definition of "habitable.") Compared to a pup tent or a prison cell, it was luxe. And it was, of course, in Westport, Connecticut.

I can't really explain what happened next. What didn't happen is we didn't move to NY. I continued acting classes but got rapidly disenchanted with the whole breaking-into-showbiz thing. I liked the craft of acting but not the profession of it. I was catering to pay the bills when someone suggested I give proofreading a try. I'm a nit-picking Virgo and lived within walking distance of the marketing company that was hiring, so just as haphazardly as I'd stumbled into my new locale I began a career in editorial services. (I'd done a bunch of editing- and writing-type stuff since high school but hadn't circled back to it as a profession. Not that I considered proofreading copyright lines on beer posters a "profession" until I found I'd been doing it for, well, going on a decade. The material has changed, but I still wield a red pen for a living.)

Here's the other thing that didn't happen: We didn't gentrify a neighborhood, or contribute to its future gentrification, by moving there. The same week we landed in Westport there was a spate of break-ins and violence in what would have been our new hood in Queens. In SF I'd lived in the only neighborhoods I could afford but where my presence was clearly not appreciated. And I get it: First come the artists, then comes Starbucks, there goes the reasonable rent for working-class people of color. In contrast, we kind of livened up our new setting. We were (and still are) white, but were enthusiastically tattooed and drove a 20-year-old shit box of a car and were pretty obviously girlfriends. In a town with zero visible gay presence, holding hands at the library garnered the equivalent raised-eyebrow response as an orgy might in San Francisco.

Time passed and relationships changed and three years ago my boyfriend (did you catch that?) and I were faced with the decision to either stay in Connecticut or leave. Head to Brooklyn, perhaps. (Other spots we fancied, Vancouver or Seattle or either of the Portlands, were out for now; our radius needed to stay small in order to see his son on weekends.)

So we bought a house, and we got a dog, and because we got a dog we built a fence. And within 4 months his 9-year-old son came to live with us, and 4 months after that I got knocked up. I went from a shack on the tracks full of lezzies and cats to a mortgage with a man and a white picket fence; from midnight jazz shows and tattoo conventions to parent-teacher conferences, diapers and family dinners.

I went into total despair. I felt homesick but didn't know where home was. I loved my family but couldn't shake the sensation that they were somebody else's. What had started a decade ago as an odd and temporary change of address had become a lifestyle, and not an alternative one. And I felt ashamed and petty, ungrateful for this beautiful life I had in fact created. Not just the baby, but all of it.

So I decided to live here. Not just dwell, but live. Let my freak flag fly, as they say, and still love what the burbs have to offer rather than pine for the mythic thing I'm missing out on. We're still near the beach. My stepkid can walk there with his friends. He goes to an excellent, safe, surprisingly diverse middle school. I've found my peeps, finally -- other new parents and transplants and artists and artists at heart who still feel like they're playing grown-up. I have a yard to garden and a multi-culti neighborhood; locking the car is optional even if owning a car isn't; the air's fairly clean (when the wind's right I can smell both the ocean and Pepe's pizza from my front steps) and the downtown is downright pristine. And for golly's sake, I'm only an hour and change on the train from NY, even if it sometimes seems a world away.

What does Livin' La Vida Suburbia mean? Taking full advantage of and joy in where it is my mail's delivered, every day. Finding the humor in it, too, because it's a crazy-funny place. But not in the way I did before. No eye-rolling, no hating on the well-to-do for sport allowed.


Living in suburbia is purchasing a pedigree dog; Livin' La Vida Suburbia is adopting a multiple-pedigree dog from the Bronx.

Living in suburbia is a matching patio set from Pottery Barn; Livin' La Vida Suburbia is a kids plastic picnic table retrofitted with an umbrella advertising Hot Italian Sausages, both procured from the town dump.

Living in suburbia is wearing Lilly Pulitzer; Livin' La Vida Suburbia is wearing Lilly Pulitzer to clean the chicken coop.

I'd love to hear the ways in which you, my burb-dwelling brethren, are LLVS. Please do share!

Hi, Fructose!

Hi, fructose corn syrup! Since you're in every loaf of bread sold at Stop & Shop (besides the sliced cinder blocks in the natural food section), I figured I should introduce myself. I'm the proofreader-turned-label-scrutinizing mother who could spot you on a 4-point-font ingredient panel in a foreign language: jarabe de maíz de alta fructosa, I'm talking to you! If I want sugar, I'll eat sugar, without the side of mercury and Type 2 Diabetes, thanks anyway. No longer will I buy the bread, crackers or soup within which you dwell (and why are you there, anyway?), nor the stuff that's supposed to be sweet, soda and ice cream and crap. You are making us a sick, fat, addicted monocrop monoculture and I, for one, pledge to never again* knowingly buy you.

Sincerely,
Jessica


*Except for canned cranberry sauce. Haven't found one yet without HFCS...but as soon as I do, never means NEVER.

Profiling

In today's mail: the necropsy report from UConn for our hen, Captain Gloria Pecker (final diagnosis: visceral and articular gout and egg-yolk peritonitis);
-an overdraft fee notice from my bank. Fittingly, I overdrafted whilst paying the vet bill;
-my unemployment check;
-the results of my annual ob-gyn exam (I fared better than the chicken). This was actually brought over by my elderly neighbor, Carol. It was delivered to her house and she accidentally opened it. The neighborhood can rest easy tonight about my vaginal health.

I often wonder what the mail carrier gleans about the people on their route. I bet they know more about our financial straits, shopping predilections, habits of correspondence than most people in our lives. Talk about a paper trail.

poultry woes

Last spring we jumped on the backyard chicken bandwagon and adopted a flock of 6 hens. As a fallen vegan who once worked for an animal-rights organization, I'm all too aware of the abysmal conditions in which most "food" animals live, and chickens have it particularly rough. I won't go into details here, but for more grisly info than you can bear, check out United Poultry Concerns or Compassion over Killing.

I liked the idea of bringing a little bit o' country living to the 'burbs and our kids witnessing from whence their breakfast came. Chickens lay eggs regardless of whether or not they'll hatch, which they won't do without a rooster on the scene, so I figured they'd be pampered pets who actually contributed to their keep.

A family up north was moving and selling their 30 chickens. I wanted to get grown hens rather than chicks, akin to adopting from a shelter versus buying from a breeder. (Note: This might be the bullshit rationalization of someone not quite willing to face up to using animals for food.) We had the room to do it and got the OK from our neighbors. Michael is a carpenter and awfully clever to boot, and built a coop under our play structure.

before:



after (but pre-chickens. It will never be this clean again):




There's an enclosed run, and they also roam the yard hunting for worms and bugs, stretching their wings, raiding the garden, taking dustbaths and lounging under the lilac bush.



After about a month of getting used to the new digs and establishing their pecking order, they started laying, and laying, and laying...nearly an egg a day each. Here's our first dozen, aren't they gorgeous? The green ones are courtesy of Chloe Omlette, an ameraucana:



All was well in chicken world, until Rita Layworth suddenly died in July. She was crazy about kale:



The cause of her demise was a mystery. We didn't think to have her examined, postmortem. None of the other hens got ill, though they went on a laying strike after the death of their pal. Then 3 molted--Chloe, Captain Gloria Pecker (black minorca) and Kiki Jones (silver-laced wyandotte)--meaning their feathers fell out and regrew, during which they don't lay, so for a while we were getting maybe 1 egg a day. We decided to adopt 3 pullets--teenagers in chicken terms--while the flock was already in flux, hoping to increase the odds of having eggs through the winter. After a few days of territorial bitch-flapping from the older hens, Betty Bock-Bock (austrolorp), Annie Yokely (buff orpington) and Autumn (golden-laced wyandotte) settled in.



It's safe to say none of the hens like winter. They don't seem to mind the cold--all being breeds suitable for the northeast--but hate walking on the snow. On especially cold mornings I bring them oatmeal with their "tea"--warm water in their waterers.



On the advice of our vet, a seasoned chicken-keeper, we didn't heat the coop. The temperature difference from coop to run can encourage respiratory infections, to which chickens are prone. We did put plexiglass over the windows, so our coop is draft-free but not airtight, and installed a 60-watt bulb on a timer for a tiny bit of heat and 3 extra hours of "daylight" to encourage laying. And lay they do--6 eggs/day these days. But no longer the petite white ones unique to Captain Gloria Pecker, who died on Friday.



I opened the coop for a good cleaning that morning, the balmy 40-degree weather presenting an odious opportunity to clear out all the thawing poop stalagmites and crapsicles. She hopped out of her nest to say howdy but stumbled, then slouched, in front of me. And Gloria is no slouch: She's been the flock leader since day one, earning her rank (so dubbed by my stepson) by bossing around her brethren like a surrogate rooster, always the first to try new things, leading the ladies back to the coop at bedtime. She was the most aggressive hen (hence the name "Pecker") but the most sociable, too, sidling up for a pat on the tail feathers and playing chase with our two-year-old daughter. I picked her up--which she would never allow if feeling well--and dribbled some water in her beak. She drank and perked up a bit, then curled back against me. What to do...she was clearly close to death. Should I wait? Bring her to the vet? What if she was suffering? I called around and found an avian-savvy vet (ours was out for the day), rallied the babysitter and a ride, and brought her in, looking every bit the crazy chicken lady with a hen in my arms, bedhead and a shit-covered coat. He peered in her throat and judged it a virus, and suspects it's what Rita died from months ago. We decided to assist her passing and as he parted the feathers on her neck, revealing her, well, chicken skin, I was struck by what a fine line there is between a $5 grocery item and a $150 euthanasia bill; a dinner and a companion animal. I brought her body to the veterinarian pathology lab at UConn, so we ought to know today if it's contagious to the rest of the flock, or to us, and where to go from here.

RIP Rita Layworth and Captain Pecker.



UPDATE: Cpt. Pecker's necropsy revealed gout and "egg yolk peritonitis" as possible causes of death. Neither's contagious. She had all the symptoms of the latter, including having laid a few weeks back a mammoth double-yoke egg. Ouch.

stepping up

There's a new movie out called The Stepfather. It's a thriller-slash-horror film about Mom's new man who is perfect in every way except that he just may have murdered his previous stepfamily. It's a remake of a 1987 film by the same name. In 1987 I had my very own evil stepfather. He and my mother met and got married within 2 years of my parent's divorce. His name was Daniel. My younger brother's name was Daniel, so people assumed he was his dad. This infuriated me. Daniel (jr) didn't mind. He seemed to understand that having a dad-type guy around on a daily basis when your own couldn't be was a pretty good deal. He gave us rides. He had a big family that immediately included us in all its big-family activities. He took us skiing. He worked with people with developmental disabilities and took them skiing. He was kind of clumsy and goofy in real-life, but on the ski slope he was pure grace, and would practically dance down that mountain, poles swinging with elegant efficiency, a permanent grin under his frost-crusted moustache.

He didn't have a mysterious lock-box full of body parts in the basement. He didn't molest anyone. He wasn't an alcoholic. He was kind and affectionate with our mother. I don't remember him raising as much as his voice to her, or to us, though I asked for it. He chewed with his mouth open and was a bit of a slob and sometimes lacked what might be considered common sense, like the time he left my 6-year-old brother and our stepcousins at a mall by themselves for hours. I forget the circumstances. It was probably a dumb call, but he had no prior experience with kids. He probably wanted kids of his own, but instead got a teenage girl with a rotten disposition who resented him for breathing (never mind chewing with his mouth open).

Dan and my mother split up while I was in college. It was a big loss for my little brother, and for myself, too. I'd recently realized what a great person Dan was -- and how poorly I'd treated him -- and we were getting along for once. (He'd been willing all along.) Years later we met for coffee and I apologized. He teared up and gave me a big hug. Evil man, I tell you.

This psycho stepparent stereotype has got to go. I had an extraordinary stepmother as well, and am so grateful for them both, especially now. I recall their kindness, humor and patience as I stumble along my own stepparenting path with my partner's 12-year-old son, in an only moderately evil manner.

Stop, Drop and Meditate

When I was pregnant I bought a set of meditation cushions -- a zafu (the round, buckwheat -filled one you perch upon) and a zabuton (the flat one for under your zafu to make meditation a little friendlier on ankles and knees). Until then, having "props" always seemed superfluous and silly. Any pillow would do, and I'd also meditated in my car (not while driving), on boulders and benches and beaches and subways and planes, sitting up in bed, anywhere I could be still and close my eyes for a few minutes. But I had a hunch I'd need some reminding about my meditation practice, postpartum, so I shopped for bright-colored gear that would snag my eye. I ended up with orange and raspberry pillows (or "sweet potato" and "plum"), which I placed where I suspected I'd be spending most of my time early on -- in the room of my baby-to-be. I'd settle my spherical self on down, cross my sapling-size ankles, clasp my hands under my belly and make like Mother Earth for a half hour most mornings.

Once Stellina resided on the other side of my skin, things weren't quite so routine, of course. For one thing, despite all that deep breathing I'd done, she was a less-than-serene newborn. I was in pretty much constant motion for the first three months, mostly while straddling an exercise ball, as this was what she demanded in order to not holler her head off. I'd bounce so hard we'd catch air, then she'd calm down, and sometimes doze off. I'd plan to meditate once I had taken a shower and thrown in a load of laundry...at which point, of course, she'd wake up and it was back to the ball...or time to breastfeed, and this I could do on the cushions. We'd sit in a stack -- the baby on the Boppy on my lap on the two layers of padding. In hindsight I think these "medilactation" sessions were beneficial for us both in establishing our longterm nursing relationship (17 months so far). I was mindfully feeding my baby and spirit simultaneously. When faced with breastfeeding challenges like engorgement, plugged ducts or just feeling plain "touched out," I'd remember that uncomfortable sensations that arise during meditation, both physical and emotional, eventually pass -- if I can just stay seated and focus back on my breath, and now, on the breath of my baby, as well.

I also learned to "stop, drop and meditate" when she was napping (if I wasn't sleeping at the same time). Housework, e-mails, paying the bills, phone calls, Facebook, freelance work could all wait. Sometimes I'd open my eyes every couple minutes, watching the clock, practically having to clutch the cushion to stay put. I had never felt both so tired and wired at once. Plenty of times I gave in to the five little monkeys jumping on my brain and cut the session short.

These days I try to plant my butt on the buckwheat tuffet every night after getting Stellina to bed. It's a quiet corridor of time between my day as a mom and evening as a partner (and writer and e-mailer and dishwasher and watcher of TV and payer of bills...). I will also, when feeling frazzled, drop to the pillows and take the position no matter what else is going on in the room -- what electronic gizmo is trilling, what CD is playing, what toddler is lurching the length of the house, pushing the wooden clackety long-handled toy in front of her like a landscaper in her cups. I'm not there for long before I hear, "Hi!" in front of me, or feel a stuffed animal or bongo drum or board book being stuffed into the bends of my elbows or knees. But even just putting myself in timeout for that minute or three seems to create the necessary space between my feelings and my reactions.

And here's the whole point of this long-winded post. I've meditated in order to remain somewhat sane in the membrane, not to model meditation. But just as Stellina mimics the good (teeth-brushing, hugging the dog) and not-so-good (door slamming, scolding the dog) habits of her housemates, she's caught on to this contemplation thing -- or the mimicry of such. The other day she purposefully lowered her tiny heiney onto the zafu, crossed her legs and grinned. She inhaled and exhaled three long times. Then -- and this was when I wished we'd installed that nanny spy cam, despite not having a nanny -- she propped her babydoll next to her on a little pillow (an herb-filled sachet she'd found while ransacking my bureau and had toted around all afternoon). So, not only is my kid learning to meditate literally as she is learning to walk, but she's showing HER baby how to do so as well. Let's just say the relaxation habits I inherited from my parents involved altering one's mind in an entirely different way. Holy proud parenting moment.

Baby New Year

It's 2009 and I'm writing from my favorite place -- bed. Wifi and a laptop top my year-end gratitude list of 2008. Here are the other eight:

8) Heat when it's 15 degrees outside.

7) Healthy kids. Stellina had a mystery petechial rash last month, tiny bright-red freckles everywhere. That's the rash about which the baby books and websites say, "Rush to the ER," unlike the other 99% of no-need-to-panic infant skin eruptions. After a round of bloodwork and two visits to her perplexed pediatrician, we were referred to the scariest of specialists -- the pediatric oncologist. Cancer is an awful enough condition, but put "cancer" and "baby" together in the same sentence and it's double-up on the Prozac time for Mommy. Which I wasn't able to do at the moment, as I'd just gone off of said medication due to it's remote, remote possible side effect of said rash. I'd only been on it for 10 days when she had her first outbreak, so I was sure it was the cause and also a little heartbroken. By day four I'd felt better than I had in, geez, a year and a half? Two years? 14 plus 10 months. I knew I was depressed, but that's the thing about depression -- one doesn't realize how low they've gone until they get a leg up. I'd gutted it out without meds since getting pregnant, despite all the assurances that SSRIs are perfectly safe for the lil belly-dwellers and breastfeeders because...well, how do they know? Long-term-like? This particular class of medication has only been around since the mid-80s, right? And I was already on two other medications that weren't optional. I don't know how optional antidepressants really were, either, in the scheme of things. I've been graced with total patience with Stellina, through colic, even. It's bizarre, really -- I have not lost my patience or heart-filled sense of humor toward her even once. BUT...oh, her poor father, half-brother and the dog. Yes, even the dog. I've lost my shit on them all, too many times to count, not to mention the self-haranguing harridan in my head. She's not a nice woman. No one I'd be friends with, and she's me.

So it was back to Prozac, the first and favorite of ADs I ever tried (after two years on it, starting 14 years ago, it up and stopped working, but I guess it's been long enough of a break that it's again doing the trick). So, anyway, I went off after 10 days but the butterbean had another rashy outbreak a week later. Which was when we went to the baby cancer doctor -- the baby, her freaked-out father and freaked-out-and-unmedicated mother. And you want to see a freak out, try taking blood for the second time in a week from a baby with no apparent veins. It took three nurses and me to hold her down, all 21-pounds of her. (Her father was busy out of hearing range doing paperwork.) Where she didn't already have petechiae before the visit, she did afterwards from all the thrashing and screaming. Well, two weeks, a battery of blood-disorder tests and no new rash later, she's been given a clean bill o' health. Thank god/dess/hp/powersthatbe. And I hurried up and got well, as the junkies like to say, resuming Prozac about 30 seconds after getting off the phone with the doctor. And no more rash to date.

And, the stepkid is steadily, ridiculously healthy, despite his curious refusal to wear a winter jacket. Drive by any middle-school bus stop and you'll see what I mean. At least he's not wearing Uggs and a miniskirt.

6) Obama.

5) Baby-daddy and I became engaged. You'd think raising children together was engaging enough. But truthfully, as cart- before-the-horse/load, fire, aim as our relationship's been, though I've felt unwaveringly committed to the kids, I've been ambivalent at moments about their sire. Or at least to the notion of getting formally hitched. In large part, I think, because my queer brethren couldn't. But now they can, in the Nutmeg State, at least, and we are, too. And the ring's reeal purty, too. High-conflict diamonds for our high-conflict coupling.

4) CT legalized gay marriage. Because, as Bill Maher said, gay folks deserve to be as miserable as heterosexuals.

3) Unemployment's been extended again. Thanks, recession!

2) My freelance job(s), and having a babysitter who's as flexible as my part-time work schedule. And I only have to give her half, not all, of what I earn!

1) Healthy kids, and Prozac, and Obama.

"Baby!"

Every time Stellina sees Barack Obama's smiling face, whether on TV or in photos, she grins, points and says, "Baby!" Is it his hairstyle, so similar to hers and that of her contemporaries? Her vocabulary thus far, at 13 months:

Baby -- herself in the mirror, other children, dolls, presidents-elect
Beebee -- small stuffed animals, birds, the dog
Mama -- started as "Mamamamama!" while reaching for me and crying, but now it's pretty clearly the two-syllable moniker
Dada -- not sure if she's connected this to the person. She's said it when she hears a noise coming from another room of the house, but not to his face.
Bye-bye -- coupled with a open-closed-fist wave. Last week she waved side-to-side, fingers splayed, but just one time.
No -- but pronounced "Nyo?"
Nana -- might or might not have been in reference to her banana. There are lots of those words so far -- ones she mimics us saying, but not repeatedly. Also "abble" (apple) and "sweebee" (Sweetpea) and "away" (when putting any object into a container that will hold said object. We practice putting things "away" a lot.)
Poop -- uttered once, very clearly, as she was doing so.

Back to babies. She has three dolls, all gifts. They all have molded plastic bald heads. One blinks, another smells like the cloying, sneeze-provoking powder I'd never let near her tiny heiney, and the third can be filled with warm water so it "feels just like a real baby!" Except real babies don't have leaky plugs in the center of their backs (one would hope) or a heart-shaped tattoo on their bottom. Baby #3 has been relegated to the bathtub for obvious reasons. I thought it was a bit ridiculous, this baby barrage. Isn't she a little young for a doll? I'd kept her toys thus far non-gender-specific (not that babydolls are necessarily for girls). But she loves them, one and all. She hugs them, carries them around by their necks, pats #3 with her washcloth, and "feeds" them with her sippy cup and the tiny bottle that came with the powdery one. That's the craziest part -- Stellina has resolutely refused a bottle from the first (second, fifteenth...) offering, but she immediately knew to hold the hard, plastic, liquid-less, vaguely bottle-shaped thing to her little one's hard, plastic, entry-less lips. It was the first thing she did after bringing the doll close to her face, sniffing it and crooning, "BAYbee!"

Free Snacks

When will I stop falling for the $5 plastic crap gizmos? First-time mothers must be the biggest suckers out there. It's so embarrassing. I bought Stellina this stupid plastic cup thing called a Snack Trap. It has a lid with slits in it so babies can put their hand in and pull out a snack treat but the snacks won't spill out. Well, after filling it with organic Os and handing it over, she turned it around and around in her hands, stuck her paw in, pulled out an O, ate it (at which point I thought "wow! She figured it out! How precious...") Then she crawled around with it on her fist like Captain Snack Trap, then pulled back one of the lid flaps and shook the Cheerios facsimiles all over the floor. Snacks, untrapped.

Transformation

The day after tomorrow I'm altering a piece of art I've shouldered for 14 years. It's my ex's name, which I had done by Mike Malone at Sailor Jerry's old shop in Honolulu's Chinatown. I was 24 and thought it was forever, and it might have been, but she didn't want to have a child. That was the deal breaker, finally, and we broke up six years ago. I was ambivalent about changing the tattoo for a long time -- it's a big part of my past and represents who I've been and continue to be. But it's time. I'm having her turned into a mermaid.

Window Seat

Goin back to Cali...

Stellina Imelda Marcos

Her feet have barely touched the ground and the kid's already outgrown her first shoes -- incredibly cute brown Robeez slippers with cherries on them. They served to keep her socks on and helped people ID her as female. "What a cute..." they'd say as they scanned her bald head and yellow & brown monkey outfit. Ah hah, cherries! "...girl." These apparently connote infant femininity. Lately they've served as teething fodder as she attempts to cram both feet at once into her future (cherry) pie hole.

As a recently fallen vegan, I wouldn't have bought her leather shoes, but they were a gift, and I've guiltily loved them so much that I've been in a quandary. Do I size up and contribute to the hideous hide-stealing industry? I decided I could live with buying them second hand, and found a ton of them on eBay. I don't know what came over me. Perchance it's that I haven't shopped for anything besides maternity pants, baby gear or groceries in the past year. I've been shuffling around in my pilly yoga pants, nursing tanktops and generic Converse kicks, unaware that a lil' shopping spree was needing to take place, with or without my consent. I went into an altered state when I saw all those Robeez on the electronic auction block. Cupcakes! Lady Bugs! Butterflies! Flaming guitars! I intended to buy one pair. I won five. Five pairs of shoes that will fit for maybe three months, for a kid who isn't yet walking, as we go into bare feet season. And yes, those are two identical pairs.

spy-cam

I'm watching a tiny TV monitor on which Stellina sleeps. Her back is to the camera set up at the bedside and still I'm transfixed. I watch to be sure her shoulder rises and falls and to be sure she doesn't roll far. We share our bed and when I'm in it she's tucked in next to me, the same place she's been since her first night ex utero. The bassinet at the hospital seemed too far away; the same with the cosleeper we'd set up at home, in which extra pillows, a heating pad, back issues of Brain, Child magazine, a burp cloth and my vibrator now reside (at Arm's Reach).

It's kind of like watching the ultrasound. The picture is blurry and black and white, body parts a bit amorphous. I'm only certain that's her head because I just smooched it goodnight before slowly extracting myself from the bed, to attempt to get something non-baby-related done. Like staring at and writing about the baby.