ever-fixed mark

I left for California this morning, and as we speak I’m chillin’ in the O.C.  I’ve never even seen that show.  Is it about office parks and strip malls? That’s all I’ve seen so far.

I flew into LAX, so I could fly direct.  The flight was OK, but I kept experiencing those little moments of cognitive dissonance brought on by crossing time zones, and severely exacerbated by my fellow passengers.  One young woman, for example, was wearing a black dress over black leggings tucked into cowboy boots, forcing me to do a little mental check:  We’re going from New England in August to California in August, right?  We’re not crossing the international date line into the post-Labor Day clothing season, are we?

Then the guy directly in front of me ordered a vodka and cranberry, which made me check my watch:  9:00 a.m. Eastern time, 6:00 a.m. Pacific time. It’s always cocktail hour somewhere, I guess.

As we touched down in Los Angeles, I was finishing Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and wondering what California-based book I could find to enhance my travel experience.  The peculiar smog-filtered light reminded me that I had never seen the end of Shopgirl, a movie set mostly in LA that I was watching when my plane finally got the hell out of Goose Bay last winter and they turned off the in-flight programming. I’ve been wondering how it ends.  I hope they don’t pair off Claire Danes and Steve Martin in a Pretty Woman happy ending.  Steve’s older man was far too smug and entitled for her. But as much as I’ve loved Jason Schwartzman (since Rushmore, naturally), I thought he was too flaky for her as well.  The movie seemed too smart to go for one of those forced resolutions, so I’m hoping for something a little more intelligent and nuanced.

What does it say for the genre of romantic comedy when you’re constantly rooting for the girl to get a Master’s degree or a better job and dump the suitors?  Seriously, have you seen a romantic comedy in the last ten years where the pre-destined couple seemed like they had anything at all in common?  Serendipity and Maid in Manhattan are two horrible examples.  Kissing Jessica Stein is probably the warmest, most genuine romantic comedy I’ve seen in ages, and it’s about two straight women who fall for each other.

*Speaking of kissing, I finally Googled this line from Joni Mitchell’s “California.”  I’ve been singing this song to Aitch at bedtime for years now, and I would have never put that together on my own.

Work on our new office is nearing completion, although progress reminds me somewhat of limits in math: you can approach a limit, but the closer you get, the slower it goes, and you never actually get there.

Still, working on the assumption that we’re going to be moving in at some point, Husband has been looking for office furniture. This is what he came up with.

I fear the only reason he suggested it is because he didn’t happen to notice this.

And I’m just waiting until he suggests that we install one of these so we don’t have to be bothered climbing all those stairs.

I have to work.  On a weekend!  Starting at 8:00 a.m.!  Both days!  In Washington!  In Washington in August!

My outrage is slightly tempered by the fact that the hotel is luxurious, and there are worse things, I suppose, than two nights’ sleep uninterrupted by midnight feedings.

Some highlights from the trip:

• Item:  On the plane, I sat behind a man who was the living embodiment of Dwight Schrute from the American “Office,” with a little bit of Gareth Keenan from the British “Office” thrown in.  He was wearing a replica of a Union soldier cap. He was on his way home from Ireland, where he had been sent by “the government.” Next time, the government is sending him business class.  He claimed that Irish breakfasts were “amazing” and then listed, at length, the morning menu at his hotel (”Breads:  white, wheat, soda, sourdough.  Muffins.  Bacon, sausage. Fruits:  bananas, apples, you name it.  Oh, I forgot the scones”), a list that did not seem to vary much from the buffet on offer at any mid-priced hotel in the Western hemisphere. His seatmate, who must have been a therapist, was incredibly patient and polite.  I was straining to hear the “ding” that would signal that approved electronic devices could now be used to DROWN OUT THE TALKING.
• Item: My talk was a disaster. All the other presenters used the audio-visual guys’ laptop in the back of the room, with a control for advancing slides, but I was demoing some software in addition to slides, so I needed my own computer.  When I got to the front of the room to hook it up, I found a 15-pin female connector that did not fit any of the male ports on my computer. The AV guy gave me a strange look, like, “What kind of mutant laptop are you carrying, you Communist?” although it’s a standard (non-exploding) recent-vintage PC like 98% of the business world carries. He found the adapter quickly enough, and I plugged it in, hit Function + F4, and watched my first slide explode into a riot of sick purple on the two colossal screens behind me. The presentation was a little rough, because the lights were blinding, and the audience wasn’t miked, leaving me unable to hear any of the questions. I got through all my slides and said, “So, let’s take a look at the software” when the audience let me know that the screens behind me were frozen on the first slide. My laptop had shown all the slides advancing, and was now displaying the software login screen, but the displays were stuck on the first slide.  Husband informs me that this is not technically possible, as projectors have no memory. All I can think of is that the AV guys happened to bring up my slide presentation on their system at the exact moment that I Function + F4′d my computer, and that my computer was never really hooked up to the projector. But wouldn’t they have said something?  The AV guys, all atwitter, said, ”It’s a serious malfunction!” and took about 10 minutes to replace a cable, while the audience talked among themselves. I looked like a complete technodork.
• Item:  I was able to work off a few of the Godiva truffles (meeting swag; why not a pen?) I ingested in despair after my talk by running around the Tidal Basin. It’s probably the unhealthiest running route in the country, because jetliners fly mere hundreds of feet overhead on their approaches to Reagan, and a security helicopter makes a menacing run, even lower, every ten minutes. Still, it was very scenic, and I got to take in the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, and the FDR Memorial.

Another talk to look forward to tomorrow, then home.

Yesterday, Aitch was delivering his usual running commentary (e.g., “The popsicle is red. The popsicle is not purple,” etc.) to which we were giving our usual amount of attention (i.e., minimal). Suddenly I heard him say, “Daddy, it’s hot. It’s wicked hot.”

Husband and I almost fell over laughing. Due to our enthusiastic reception, “wicked” is now a permanent part of Aitch’s vocabulary.

“Wicked” as an adverb (”wicked hot,” “wicked tired”) is a staple of the local teenage argot. Husband and I don’t use it because we weren’t raised here. So at the tender age of three, our son is learning slang on the streets and bringing it home to try out on his astonished parents.

When you adopt from Korea, the adoption agency makes you attend a class to explore issues involved in transracial adoption. But when you move to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, no one makes you attend a class to prepare you for how you, a non-native, will feel about raising a little Chowderhead.

In last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, Joe Queenan wrote,

Like many children growing up in crummy neighborhoods, I honestly believed that if I read enough books, I would one day possess a gorgeous house with two cars, two children and a white picket fence. This is exactly what has come to pass.

This made me laugh out loud, because it’s exactly how I feel about reading and my life. The neighborhood in which I grew up wasn’t (that) crummy, and my current house is not (at all) gorgeous, but for me reading was tied up with aspiration. I aspired, therefore I read; I read, therefore I aspired. In some cases, you can trace the links directly. I read The Right Stuff and signed up for flying lessons; I read Pride and Prejudice and pressed my e-mail address on the nice man at the bar who swore he would never, ever get married. And here I am on the wrong side of forty, with most of my aspirations fulfilled: an education, the opportunity to travel, a good marriage, children, central air conditioning. Oh, I’m still saving a few things for retirement, but basically I feel like reading got me where I am today.

I wonder what aspirations will shape Aitch’s and Minor’s reading lists? Will it be typical boy stuff — adventure, magic, sports? Will one of them turn out against all odds to be an admirer of Austen or Brontë? (Not so far-fetched: my brother-in-law likes Austen, and an old boyfriend turned me on to Wuthering Heights.) Will they indulge in prep-school lit? Will they turn toward Asian writers, or become obsessed with tales of orphans?

I would love to hear from some other people on this. How did what you read shape what you wanted? And how has it turned out for you?

Babies don’t really have much to offer as conversational fodder. The younger the baby, the less there is to say about it. Thus, Baby Chit-Chat tends to expand upon one of the following themes:

1. Baby’s age

2. (in absence of pink or blue clothing) Baby’s gender

3. Baby’s size, in relation to age and gender

4. Baby’s cuteness (alternatively, if baby not cute, baby’s “alertness”)

5. (advanced topic, in rare event both parties are not yet bored by previous): Age-appropriate milestones that baby has reached

Minor is fat. This must come as a relief to all who approach us intent on idle conversation, for all remark upon it. They all use euphemisms: chubby, pudgy, hefty, “doesn’t look like he misses too many meals,” and “Jesus Christ, only six months?” But of course what they mean is “fat.”

I’m not offended by this conversational gambit. When you have an adopted child, your offensometer gets recalibrated so that only the most noxious of racial slurs will set it off. And he is fat. He is fat like an adult is fat. It’s not so much the delicious baby arm and leg rolls and the puffy cheeks, like Aitch used to have. Minor is solid, a baby constructed on John Goodman design specs. His belly hangs over his lap. His back is fat. His chin and jowls meet his chest, obscuring his neck. Each butt cheek is full and round, forming a wide base when he is seated. When I give him a bath, I have to marvel: he’s sort of breathtakingly fat.

(Full disclosure: Despite my awesome running regimen, I’m not so svelte myself. So please don’t construe my remarks as fattist.)

The doctor says not to worry about this, so I am not. Minor is still within normal bounds for his age and height. Like a lot of Korean babies, he was fed frequently, every two or three hours, so he is accustomed to eating frequently, but he only takes 4 to 6 ounces at a feeding. We’ve started him on baby food, which he loves, but he doesn’t consume a lot of it. He mouths everything; I’m not sure he distinguishes between things that happen to slide down his windpipe and those that don’t. I’m not sure where the tipping point is, where your kid goes from being a cute fat baby to a potential life-long combatant in the war on obesity. When should I worry?

For now, I’m just enjoying it. Cute and fat. How often do you hear that in life?

Yesterday, the heat index went up into the hundreds, and the TV news was filled with warnings about avoiding heat stroke.

I ran our town’s annual road race.

I wasn’t going to. After all, it was damn hot, and I was the only person on my high school’s cross-country team who wasn’t a classic DSM-IV-definition masochist. But then I remembered Doctor Mama saying that the heat was NOT a good excuse for skipping a run. (Doctor Mama, you should be impressed that this stuck with me for almost three months. However, I still reserve the right to sue you for any damages to my person as a result of my run.)

Also, another post of Doctor Mama’s has been on my mind. Recently, she said,

Run because a fat runner is much healthier than a skinny couch potato. Run because it makes you strong. Run because it makes you happy in your own body, whether it’s lumpy or flat, tall or short, square or round. Run because you’ll live longer (and no, you won’t wish you were dead, ha ha). Run because when you’re out there running (as slowly as you can stand to, remember), you will have the experience of being alive in the world with your body doing what it was designed to do.

Excellent advice, all of it, and I’ve been thinking of another reason to run.

Because I still can.

Husband doesn’t get this. He’s never felt the encroaching ache of arthritis in the back or the rub of knee bone against bone. He doesn’t understand that I’m terrified that if I stop running, I’ll soon be incapable of running. He would argue that running actually causes those ailments, and I’m willing to concede that in some cases, this is true, but only one of my many relatives with diabetes is a runner, so I’m sticking with my method.

The run was fun. Slow, but fun. People lined the route with hoses (hence the wet t-shirt). I spotted several people that I knew (but no Jogging Jesus — in this heat, he’s probably running on water). Not every single person pushing a pair of twins in a stroller beat me this time. I ran the whole damn way, and even though I passed by many people who alternated running and walking, at my age that counts for something. Doesn’t it?

I’m glad I ran. I didn’t have anything to blog about, and now I do. Bloggo, ergo curso.

“Vacationing with children”: an oxymoron.

We just got back from a week at a lake in Maine. Vacation kicked our asses, took our names, threw sand in our faces, and called us Nancy.

Sure, there were some good parts. Aitch and Dog had a fabulous time at the lake. The whole family — Dog included! — had fun riding the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad. Minor discovered a little independent streak and was content to sit for whole minutes in a restaurant high chair, mouthing a piece of bread, while the rest of us — Dog included! — ate a civilized meal.

But the sleep deprivation! I suppose we could have anticipated that sleeping in a strange place would throw Aitch and Minor off their strides, but we didn’t realize that the clock would strike ten and then eleven with us whimpering, “Aitch, please fall asleep.” We couldn’t know that Minor would suffer a bout of diarrhea just as the hot weather hit, making it nearly impossible for him to fall asleep or, once out, to stay asleep for more than two hours at a stretch. And then, the one night when we actually did get both of them down before 10, and Husband and I managed to choke down a dish of ice cream and start to unwind, Aitch had night terrors, a feat he repeated again last night.

Aitch has woken up in hysterics before, but he has always perked right up once his demands for juice and late-night infomercials were met. This time, he just let out pre-verbal shrieks whenever we talked to him or touched him. The more we tried to comfort him, the more he cried. It was awful. The internets tell you not to wake a child with night terrors, because “he is likely to become scared and agitated.” As opposed to…how scared and agitated he is while asleep? Although that sounds like nonsense to me, some old wives’ superstition about waking a sleepwalker stuck with me, and I was afraid to wake him. Both times, he seemed to wake up gradually after about half an hour and then went back to sleep.

After seeing Aitch’s performance, I’m pretty sure that all those kid-possessed-by-demon books from my childhood were inspired by children with night terrors. The Exorcist, The Omen…remember Audrey Rose? Those weren’t evil spirits, just sleep disorders.

These days, I’m pretty much living for the moment when I can check the dual video monitor and see my own little night terrors tucked into bed, asleep.