ever-fixed mark

Minor said his first word–”‘nana”–naming the fruit for which he has an almost unnatural passion. He requests bananas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Whenever he spies one of those yellow beauties, he cries “Nana! Nana! Nana!” at top volume until he receives one or cries himself senseless–whichever comes first–leading us to hide the bananas in the cupboard and spell out the word in casual conversation. His love does not discriminate between peel and fruit, and he’s been known to eat the bitter skin when left unmonitored.

The cure for this, of course, would be to peel the banana BEFORE I give it to him. I’m not an idiot; this is what I used to do. At some point, though, he started demanding the banana half-peeled. One day he spotted the leftover peel on the counter, and cried and pointed to it; Husband let him play with it. The next day he cried for it while we were peeling the banana. A few repetitions later, and he would only accept bananas with the peel on.

This reminds me of a story I read in a dog-training book about a dog who would only eat when his owners stood outside their apartment and rang the doorbell. The trainer observed that it was a pretty neat trick for the dog to have taught the owners. It turns out that preverbal creatures are masters of operant conditioning, which is why Minor found it so easy to train me, against my better instincts, to give him unpeeled bananas.

I think I’m going to rename his playpen the “Skinner box.”

I am spending the week in Munich. There is so much down time on these trips, so I try to find something productive to do (besides watching “Battlestar Galactica” DVDs) to relieve the tedium . Last night, I decided that what my poor stiff jetlagged body needed was a yoga class, so I inquired at Reception (translated from the German):

Me: Is there a yoga class in the area?

Hotel worker: Yoga? Yoga? There is no yoga here!

Me: In all of Munich, there’s no yoga class?

Hotel worker: Well, sure, far away in another part of the city, but not HERE.

Me: Well, where is it located?

Hotel worker: How would I know?

Me: Thanks for the help, there, Heidi.

So I downloaded a yoga video podcast from iTunes and did yoga alone in my hotel room. It’s not my preferred method of working out. I’ve tried yoga videos before and have found it hard to get motivated. I also am bored stiff by their overproduced quality, with Rodney Yee posing soulfully on the beach and so forth. (BTW, I just saw his wedding announced in the New York Times Sunday Style section. He married one of his yoga students; they left their respective spouses for one another. What kind of karma is that?)

This Yoga Today podcast, though, was one of the best yoga classes I’ve ever taken. It was more of a videotaped class than a “yoga video.” The focus was forward bends, and the teacher spent most of the hour on exercises stretching the lower back. I felt that for the very first time I really understood how to do a forward bend without crunching my spine.

It was a free download. You can subscribe to their RSS feed, which contains a link to a new one-hour class every day, or you can subscribe through iTunes. At nearly 400MB a file, I don’t want to download the podcasts automatically, but since they’re free I can download one whenever I need it and then trash it when I’ve achieved a state of Yoga Nidra.

Maybe you should try it, Heidi.

I’m currently in the middle of a two-week world tour, if for “world” you would accept “Denver, Atlanta, and Munich,” punctuated by Boston, Boston, and Boston. When I make frequent trips to and from the airport like this, I prefer to use a car service rather than drive, especially in the winter when I’m likely to arrive at Logan to find my car buried under a four-foot drift of snow.

When I was doing the Chicago-to-Philly commute, the same car service drove me to and from the airport for three years, and I never had a problem with them. When we moved here I thought it would be a piece of cake to find a similarly reliable driver, but I had to use three or four at a time because they were all frequently unavailable.

Finally I found one guy who was there most of the time I called, so I started using him exclusively. I called him “Conspiracy Theory Man.” He told me that he used to work for Big Technology Consulting Company, but he blew the whistle on their shoddy accounting practices, a la Enron, and subsequently he was fired and had to drive to make ends meet. He was waiting for the government to bring its case against BTCC, when he would be vindicated as a hero, but of course the Feds had been bribed to hold off. He was full of ideas about other government plots, on which he held forth at length.

Because he was the only available driver for miles, I held my tongue, until one day he told me with authority that the pharmaceutical companies were sitting on cures for all kinds of diseases, like cancer and AIDS, but they weren’t releasing them because if they CURED disease they would go out of business. Then the absurdity of paying money to listen to this crap hit me, and I snapped and told him that was ridiculous, that the drug companies wouldn’t know they could cure cancer unless they did huge public clinical trials, and that no company would turn down a blockbuster even in the relative short term to preserve the revenue streams of other companies whose drugs treated the same indication. And he got kind of upset that I contradicted him, and after that I was a little scared to be alone in a car with him because the aliens were probably tracking him closely, and so no more Conspiracy Theory man.

When the next spate of winter travel rolled around, I was moved to try my luck in the Yellow Pages again, and I happened upon a car service owned by a nice woman who was usually available to take my bookings. All was well until a new driver, a rather nervous man, picked me up. Or rather, he didn’t pick me up; he sat in the car in front of my house until 15 minutes past the pickup time, when I decided he wasn’t coming and went out to get my own car and noticed him sitting there.

“Weren’t you going to let me know you were here?” I asked when I figured out what had happened.

“I always wait out front until the customer is ready to come out,” he said.

Good to know. Unfortunately my flight was now leaving in an hour and forty-five minutes, and he decided to take the scenic route to the highway. Fifteen minutes later I breathed a sigh of relief–now we could open the throttle, still plenty of time–when he settled into a fifty-three mph pace.

After fifteen more minutes I was a bundle of nerves. “Could you please, uh, drive a little faster? My flight leaves in a little over an hour.”

He boiled over. “Listen, lady,” he began, and then proceeded to castigate me for not coming out to look for him at the appointed time and not planning on arriving at the airport two hours before my flight. I confess I didn’t hear much after “Listen, lady.” We had words, and after my flight landed I called his boss and told her not to bother sending him to pick me up.

So, twice burned, I tried one more listing. He turned out to be the perfect driver. He was always available, always on time, and always courteous, but in a friendly, casual way. He had grown up in Port City and new everyone and everything. Most important, he was one of the few people I could stand to chit-chat with. One night I told him at midnight that I had just fired my housekeeper; by 9:00 a.m. the next morning I had a call from a friend of a friend of his who arranged me to meet the sister of a friend of hers whom I hired later that day. Everything was going splendidly until I e-mailed him about this round of travel. He never e-mailed back.

I called his number. A woman answered and said that she and her husband had taken over his business for six months, because my driver was suffering from exhaustion and had to take a sabbatical. Exhaustion. You know, like Mariah Carey or Liza Minnelli.

Could they take me back and forth to the airport six times in the next two weeks?

They could. So far it’s been working out pretty well. There’s just one small thing; whereas my old driver usually picked me up in a sedan or SUV, the new guy picks me up in a stretch limo. A huge (but yet not particularly luxurious) Cadillac stretch limo. It’s not that I’m complaining that my limo isn’t luxe enough; it’s more the idea of a limo itself. A limo is a poor person play-acting Donald Trump. A limo is to cars what gold lamé is to clothes. When this leviathan turns down our alley to get to our driveway, I can just hear all the good Yankees peering out from their kitchen curtains saying, “Who does she think she is?” (I can hear them saying, that is…I can’t hear them peering.) The juxtaposition of the words “limo” and “alley” pretty much says it all. I am but a trumpery Trump.

We hosted a Tol celebration for Minor this weekend, and even though it was a bit of a frat-party atmosphere, with fifteen small children chugging soda and their assorted parents trying to ignore their excesses like so many house mothers at Theta Chi, it was a fair success.

I am always reluctant to throw a party, because it seems like a supreme act of arrogance. Who am I to demand your time and attention? The extortion of a suitable gift is only adding insult to penury.

I’m also hobbled by the fear that everyone will have a lousy time and leave early, or worse. As a child I was greatly affected by one of those girl-detective novels with a fateful party as the centerpiece. The sleuth was trying to solve the mystery of the ghost of a girl who had died in the 19th century. She had invited everyone in town to her debut. It was to be the event of the year. On that dark and stormy night, she waited for hours in her formal dress with the food and musicians in readiness, but NO ONE CAME. Distraught, she wandered out into the storm and caught brain fever or drowned in the swollen creek or died of exposure, as disappointed girls do.

The townspeople were horrified by her death and NEVER SPOKE OF THAT NIGHT until the modern-day detective discovered that the dead girl’s jealous cousin had NEVER SENT THE INVITATIONS. Which begs the question–did no one note the lack of RSVPs? Or did people not respond in the nineteenth century? They got the post twice a day back then, so if not I want to know why.

Trust me, that would have never happened with Evite. You can even see the time and date that your guests viewed the invitation, so they can’t even beg off with the excuse, “Oh, that must have gotten diverted to my junk mail!” But then, so many literary plot twists are lost forever, thanks to technology.

At any rate, Minor had a wonderful time at his party and chose the calligraphy brush, which signifies that he is to be a great scholar. Unfortunately the whole thing was lost to posterity when we turned the camcorder over to a friend for the Tol ceremony and she turned it off, thinking she was turning it on. (I suppose technology giveth as many plot twists as it taketh away.) Upon discovering this, I of course dashed out of the house into the gathering storm and caught brain fever, which is now, to the detriment of melodrama, easily treatable with a little NyQuil.

Happy birthday to my sweet boy. I will always remember your big day, even if there is no iMovie to play for you.

When I was in the Peace Corps, getting together with other volunteers was a significant source of entertainment. Even without phones or e-mail, we managed to organize pretty efficiently, and if you got the word out that you were hosting a party, you could count on 20-odd fellow volunteers showing up at your door with bedrolls and bottles of homemade wine. People traveled long distances on short cash reserves, so any gathering alwyas turned into a sleep-over. Sharing floor space with friends, you quickly learned about everyone’s odd sleep habits: who talked in her sleep, who snored to wake the dead, who slept lying on his back with his hands folded over his chest like a vampire.

One night, a bunch of us were sacked out in my friend B’s apartment by the beach. He had a little basement flat that was three rooms leading one into another, with no hallway. The kichen/bathroom combination was just off the first room. There were three or four people in each room, most of us sleeping on mats on the floor. I was deeply asleep when I woke suddenly to the sound of screaming. First one person, then two, then five or six. I had just read In Cold Blood, and my first thought was that we were all being murdered like the Clutters in our beds. Naturally I started yelling too. Finally, someone turned on the lights to reveal ten people shrieking, “Aaah! aaaah! aaah!” for no apparent reason.

Eventually we figured out nothing was wrong; one person’s bad dream had just started a chain reaction, a kind of mass somnolent hysteria. Once we were awake, we were SO awake; we couldn’t stop laughing about it.

No one tells you that when you have more than one kid, that’s pretty much what every night is like. You can’t really call it an evening until the baby’s scream has roused the older kid, whose crying wakes the dog, whose barking wakes the mother, whose nudging wakes the father.

I hate being awakened suddenly from a deep sleep. I guess no one likes it, but I actually fear it. That split second between hearing the noise and being capable of evaluating it: Poop explosion or home invasion? I dread it.

I dread it so much that when Husband’s away, I can barely get to sleep at all. Somehow it’s OK when there’s another adult in the house to help me negotiate the night terrors, but when I’m alone I sit in front of the TV half the night, putting off sleep to put off that horrible moment. I’m currently running a three-night sleep deficit, and it’s starting to show.

Well, I suppose I can sleep when I’m on the road. I have a two-week three-city tour coming up.

I do miss everyone when I travel…but not at night.

I got a pedicure the other day and was attracted to a dark purplish-black color that looked very much like Vamp, a hue much-loved by Goths that Chanel put out in the 1990s. It wasn’t Vamp at all but a new polish by Opi named “Lincoln Park at Midnight.”

Opi puts out new polish lines once or twice a year, and the stress of coming up with evocative names for colors must be getting to their marketing department, because “Lincoln Park at Midnight” is not their strongest effort. Lincoln Park is a neighborhood in Chicago. Husband and I lived there right after we got married–when Vamp was still popular, in fact. It’s a nice enough place, but it doesn’t really have the elegant cachet of the Gold Coast (”Ooh! I just saw Oprah at the Whiskey Bar!”), the hipness of Bucktown (”Ooh! I just saw Wilco at the Blue Note!”), or even the raw appeal of Boys Town (”Eww! I just saw a drag queen taking a leak in the alley!”). For me, the phrase “Lincoln Park at Midnight” conjures up a bunch of DePaul students emerging from a late show at the Biograph saying, “Dude, let’s get some smoothies at the Bourgeois Pig.” Not so very Goth.

On the other hand, Dillinger was shot in front of the Biograph, so maybe that’s the dangerous edge that Opi was going for.

Or perhaps they were thinking of Linkin Park.

Convertible with top down? Check.

Little kid in short pants eating ice cream? Check.

Old Harley Davidson dude sunning himself on parked bike? Check.

Leftover Christmas decorations? Check.

Must be January in New England.

Today, I became both an aunt and a great-aunt. No, it’s not one of those brain teasers (”the old surgeon was…his mother!”). My brother’s wife and Husband’s eldest niece both gave birth on the same day. My nephew was born in the early morning in the heartland, and my great-niece in the afternoon on the coast. Both of the little blighters missed my birthday by a day, but they’re close enough that I’ll always be able to remember their birthdays.

Poor things. Let me tell you about early January birthdays, my little chickens: not only are you screwed out of good birthday presents, but everyone is too depressed from returning to work or school on your birthday to celebrate properly. Happy birthdays!

(Great-aunt. Doesn’t that sound bizarre? “Great-aunt” is generationally equivalent to “grandmother.” How is that possible? I’m the mother of an infant, for God’s sake. No one who is still getting up to tend to children in the middle of the night should have to bear a “great” or “grand” appellation.)

Today is my birthday and the two-year anniversary of the day we started paperwork for Minor’s adoption. Coincidentally, three bloggers on my blogroll (PWP) have just received or are about to receive referral news. Congratulations to all the new parents!

What a wonderful birthday present–the knowledge that the pain and uncertainty of a long wait is soon to be replaced by the joy and relief of new additions to THREE families.

When I got Aitch’s and Minor’s referrals, I walked around smiling for days. It almost makes me want to start the process for another baby.

Wait…what’s that I hear? I think it’s Husband, shredding all my documents. It’s the adoption equivalent of a secret vasectomy.

I came of age in an era of high-waisted pants–“mom jeans” for everyone. It was a tragic look even for the lissome, but especially so for those of us with thick waists, who found our pouches all too accentuated by encasement in yards of denim. I happen to have a waist that’s several sizes larger than my hips, but vanity forbade me from buying pants that fit around the waist, because then they were too big in the hips and thighs. Consequently, for years I thought that ache in my back was a pulled muscle. It wasn’t until the advent of low-rise that I realized it was just the tight waistband exerting constant pressure on my spinal column.

Low-rise jeans were a revelation. But soon after they arrived, Aitch arrived, and I quickly found out why all the moms were sticking with mom jeans: to avoid showing their mom asses. All the kneeling and bending you do with a baby makes those low-rise jeans shimmy right into plumber’s butt territory.

I went shopping for new jeans. “You’ve been wearing the wrong size,” the saleslady told me. Even though I haven’t lost a pound, since my waist is so much bigger than the rest of me I was in the habit of buying everything to fit it. With low-rise pants, you don’t have to dress your muffin top, so it was an instant size reduction. But now I just had tighter jeans that were threatening to drop trou spontaneously with every deep knee bend.

What to do? Revert to mom jeans and suffer a vise-like grip around my waist, or stick with the low-rise and risk the indignity of my pants falling down?

I complained to Husband. “Don’t you have a belt?” he asked.

A belt!

I did not own a belt, because keeping my pants up had never been a worry with the high-waisted style. Putting them on, yes; keeping them on, no.

He gave me a belt for Christmas. It works like a charm. All my new low-rise pants stick right at my hips, like they’re supposed to. No more mom jean or plumber’s butt.

I love a low-tech solution.