family

We have successfully moved into our new home. It’s in the South Hills area of Missoula, Montana, which is about ten minutes from downtown and on the edge of town (and obviously in the hills). More importantly, the house has a front and back yard, a patio, a fire pit, a basketball hoop, and a dishwasher. Even more importantly than that, it has three bedrooms, which means that Ben and I each have our own office now. Oh - and there are closets! Seven of them! As compared to the zero closets we had in our New York apartment!

We’ve spent the last two days buying furniture and putting furniture together (note that Target seems to have the clearest directions of anywhere and the least likelihood of missing parts). We’ve also spent the last two days constantly grilling things (for example, tonight we had salmon, bell pepper, and pineapple skewers on a bed of brown rice). In the evenings, after our one-on-one basketball games, we gather round the fire pit and say things like, “I can’t believe we’re here!” and “Look! Remember stars!” and “This is so much better than the city!’ and “I can’t believe you made that jump shot!” I wonder if it will wear off.

Ripley is now an outdoor cat again, which she loves. She has a kitty door that she learned to use after Ben showed her how just once. I know it’s a little more dangerous to let her outside, but I really do think that it improves the quality of her everyday life so much that it is worth the added risk. Plus, it is just adorable to watch her roll around in the grass. Outdoor Rippy pictures will follow in the coming days.  I’ll also post a few pictures of the house once we’re a bit more set up - like the panoramic view of the mountains you can see from the toilet.

I should also mention that our internet connection for the next week - a connection we are temporarily stealing from the neighbors until the cable guys come - ranges from “poor” to “piss poor.” All internet activities will be spotty until next Monday, but I’m trying hard to post once a weekday.

There’s so much more Montana culture to catch you up on - in the coming days I’ll write about our time playing in the river, our glorious return to our favorite bar, Flippers, our experience at the infamous Testicle Festival, and… pain.

My friend Nora Rocket brought the following article from Philadelphia Magazine to my attention: Pretty Babies by Carrie Denny - a report on a new trend that is honestly terrifying to me. Like, worse than puppy mills.

The article focuses on the new phenomenon of pre-pubescent girls - some as young as eight - showing up with their moms at the spa for treatments ranging from manicures to eyebrow plucking to Botox treatments to dye jobs to bikini waxes. These girls may never see their awkward stage, may never understand that not being perfect is okay, and may never feel comfortable in their bodies unless they are tanned, waxed, and made up.

Now, I don’t want to sound like a grandmother here, inching along in her walker and commenting on kids these days, but I’m pretty sure this is a serious problem for women. I’m not going to quote from the article - it’s too quotable for that - but you should read it, especially if you have kids or are even considering reproducing.

I’ve seen the same types of things in New York, which is probably the world’s motherhive of utterly ridiculous consumerist culture. Just last weekend, as Ben and I were eating at a restaurant, a girl at the table next to us threw a temper tantrum about getting her “mani and pedi.” I’m guessing this girl was seven. And although I know I’m not supposed to judge people or tell people how to raise their kids, but that ain’t right. At seven, your kids should only be throwing temper tantrums for popsicles.

I’m not sure what is worse about the scenario: the fact that these girls are learning to be utterly self-involved and self-conscious or that these treatments are so out-of-this-world expensive that they are learning pampered lifestyles that they won’t be able to support if mom and dad ever disappear. We might be raising a generation of girls that will continue to be dependent on their parents far after they should be and perhaps until they can find another viable source of income to pay for their spray-on tans.

Of course, I’m not exactly a poster child for “taking care of myself.” I don’t wax or pluck or dye, but on the other hand, I don’t brush my hair or require a bra. I might do more if I had the cash, but I’m guessing I wouldn’t do much. I think my awkward phase was an important if not pleasant time in my life when I learned that you should work on being things other than pretty, because pretty doesn’t always show up when you need it. And I think that altering our bodies to look like an airbrushed magazine covergirl and consuming expensive things as a major facet of entertainment in our lives is a slippery slope of emotional and financial troubles that won’t disappear with an hour-long massage.

I know these are old ideas and I know I’m preaching to the choir, but damn. What is even the point of giving an eight year old a bikini wax? The only thing that will accomplish is fucking that girl up for life.

Here’s what I hope: I hope that like all the generations that have come before us, these girls will rebel when they hit 18. That they might realize that looking natural and aging naturally is pretty great (and easy) and that there are scientific and evolutionary reasons that we have hair where we do. They might also realize that they are drowning in spa bills and wasting hours a week on the state of their blonde highlights. They might run rampant in the streets with no eyeliner and no bras, without blow-drying their hair or pumicing their feet, like a new generation of hippies.

And their mothers, who tried so hard to train them to be beautiful, will be horrified - only no one will be able to tell from their faces because of the Botox treatments.

An acquaintance of mine from college, Jen, brought this great link to my attention: Postcards From Yo Momma. Despite the dumb name, the site manages to be both hilarious and sweet at the same time. The concept is simple: it’s a collection of reader submissions of emails they get from their moms. I know I found myself laughing one minute and missing my mom the next. It’s kind of like Chicken Soup for the Soul mixed up with Overheard in New York.

After reading through a couple of pages, the eerie similarities that apparently span all moms start to emerge, which makes you realize that although all of our moms are special in their own quirky ways, there are some things that seem to be utterly universal.

For example, all moms are a bit more interested in the weather - both where they are located and where you are located, as well as the exact highs and lows and possibly the humidity — than any other humans. And all moms seem to have adorable and vague words for gross bodily functions, such as “Your Cycle” and “Your Tummy Issues.”

More importantly, all moms seem more concerned about you than anyone else in the world, and sincerely, truly, want you to be safe and well.

In line at the grocery store tonight, there was a woman with a toddler standing in line beside me. The toddler was a girl in her terrible twos - she was having tons of fun taking candy from the checkout aisle and then putting it on the ground. The mom was busy trying to get the groceries on the belt and having trouble doing two things at once. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I asked the toddler about her Dora the Explorer mittens, which then turned in to a silly mitten game that I cannot explain the rules to.

The mom said, “Wow, you’re really great with kids,” and I smiled and went on my way. Little did she know that I, a former nanny, had unlocked the secret to rearing and controlling all toddlers, regardless of class, temperament, race, or location.  It is simply this: treat children as you would a drunk.

Think about it: toddlers can’t walk in a straight line. They cannot consistently find their nose when their eyes are closed. They struggle with the ABCs. If you are looking after a toddler and get distracted for a few moments, chances are the toddler has thrown up in a weird place.

Once I had this solitary commandment of toddler care down, nannying was a breeze. I simply started to pretend that my charge was nothing more than a friend who had a few too many and now needed my assistance. Anything that I couldn’t manage, I would just think, “How would I get my drunk friend to do this?”

Having trouble getting your toddler to cooperate? Distract them. They won’t remember a thing in five minutes.

Trying to stop your toddler from crying? Hold them close and say, “It’s okay, I’m here and I love you. You’ll feel better in the morning, and maybe we can make some omelets.”

Trying to get your toddler to put his pants back on? Deliver a short lecture mentioning the temperature and the general importance of pants. Then force the pants onto their legs while giving a nervous smile to passers-by.

Having trouble getting your toddler to bed? It’s okay, they will eventually pass out anywhere, sometimes in odd positions, often in the middle of sentences.

Trying to stop your toddler from driving a car? DO ANYTHING YOU CAN TO STOP THEM FROM DRIVING A CAR!

As you can see, I’ve thought this through and tested it extensively. Sure, the two aren’t exactly the same (I’ve never had to stop a toddler from hitting on my roommate, and I’ve never had to punish a drunk by taking away their Little Mermaid DVD except for that once) but I think it’s a valuable lesson for parents and nannies everywhere.

I watched snippets of Superman Returns tonight on HBO, after having seen it in the theater last summer. I’m not going to waste your time by pointing out the terrible special effects, the gaping plot holes, and the baffling ending that I am sure cannot be explained to me logically by anyone.

But I do want to talk about this one thing, because I’ve seen it a lot lately and it is driving me crazy: why are female love interests today getting younger and younger while the male leads stay the same age?

I think Superman Returns is the best example of this phenomenon, since this movie supposedly takes place five years after the original Superman movie (which was released in 1978. Now, in the original movie, Lois Lane is painted as a no-nonsense career women - a reporter high up on the ladder at a big city paper. Margot Kidder (below left), who plays the original Lois Lane, was 30 when the movie was made and might even look a bit older than that in the movie. It might be a stretch, but it’s somewhat believable that she could be writing big articles for the paper at that time.

Now let’s fast forward to Kate Bosworth (above right), who plays Lois Lane in Superman Returns thirty years later. She was around 23 when the movie was made, and she looks around that age in the movie. But she’s got a five-year-old kid and it’s been five years since Superman was around - this should land her in her mid-thirties, at least. Instead, she looks a solid ten or fifteen years younger than she should.

I might be able to suspend my disbelief that some 23-year-old has landed a huge job at a city paper, but now I’m supposed to believe that she got five years younger instead of five years older during a five-year span of time? Is she also from a different planet? And am I also supposed to believe that, if she’s 23 now, that she was 18 when she got the job at the paper and originally met Superman? That’s harder for me to accept than a guy who wears a cape and blue tights and carries around commercial jets.

Even more than that, am I supposed to believe that she’s gotten more glamorous, less charmingly odd, and less practical after the birth of her bastard child and as time passed?

Who knows, maybe this has to do with the fact that I’m a brunette. Who tends to photograph weird. Or that I am not nearly as skinny as either Bosworth or Kidder. But seriously, I think it might be a scary sign of our times. For a long time we’ve know that actresses tend to “lose their value” as they age much faster than their male counterparts, but this is getting ridiculous.

I mean, we’re getting a strong, quirky, smart, career-minded character in Lois Lane, but in today’s standards we have to also make her barely legal? What do we tell the girls in this country, who are going to think that they and their aspirations expire right before they’re old enough to rent a car? That they should hurry up and get married before they become invisible at 25? That they should skip college and get to man-finding?

And don’t be that one guy who mentions that Juliet was 12, because I don’t want to hear it. Juliet might have been 12, but she was also dumb and immature enough to kill herself over a dude when she should have been pursuing her own dreams, taking guitar lessons and gossiping on the phone, had phones been invented.

One thing that I didn’t mention in my post yesterday about New Year’s Eve gym resolutions is that I’m terrible at NYE resolutions and resolutions in general. I don’t even make them anymore. You might recall that time I attempted NaNoWrMo and only tallied 16,000 out of 50,000 words - no more or less than I usually write in a month. Or you might recall that time I vowed never to order more than three rolls of sushi ever again, only to find myself sidling up to the Happy Samuri bar days later and stuffing my face with spicy tuna rolls and washing them down with miso soup like I was on my way to the electric chair.  

It feels like when I make an official, on paper, resolution to do something, the unruly jaded teenager in me appears - that dark, Hot Topic part of my personality who thinks seatbelts are stupid and unprotected anonymous sex is kind of cool - and she makes it her New Years resolution to thwart anything responsible that I have in mind.

It’s that part of me that rolls her eyeliner-smudged eyes and says, “So - why don’t we quit now, since it’s either that or doing this for the rest of our lives. It will only hurt more if we quit in mid-June than if we quit now. You know, before we’re emotionally involved.” It’s a strong point, and I crumble to it every time. This is why I can never smoke a single cigarette - there would be no going back and I would be dead in days. The doctors would be baffled - they would have never seen anything like it - who knew that a single Newport Light would be a gateway drug to heroin, gambling and prostitution?

My economics buddy Seth over at The Blog of Diminishing Returns, has an interesting post on whether reward or punishment is more effective in sticking to promises we make to ourselves. In a NYE mini-experiment, a Yale econ professor tries punishment over reward - he gave $1,000 to a friend, telling him only to return it when his goal was accomplished and keep it if he failed.

It’s not so much the monetary loss that intrigues me about this idea, but that of having to answer to another person. Being accountable to someone else, other than me and my alter-ego, might be the answer. Sometimes it’s hard to go home and write at night (that’s a lie: it’s hard to go home every single night and write) but it’s a lot easier if either 1) Ben is in the next room typing and making me feel bad or 2) I can start typing first and make Ben feel bad. I mean, once we start writing, everything is great, but opening that laptop each night can be excruciating.  

In any case, for me, the trick is to not make official resolutions. Instead, I drop them casually in conversations, knowing that next time I see the person they’ll ask me how I’m doing. So, they’ll say, have you made $5,000 more freelancing this year than last year? Have you completely eradicated girly push ups from your regiment? Have you succeeded in being less of a jerk to people?

Mostly, though, I’ve got to constantly keep irresonsible Hot Topic Sarah from sabotaging my grown-up plans. I’ve got to keep her in the dark and confused. Maybe I’ll go feed her some sushi.

This morning, something very strange happened: I woke up naturally. I stretched out in bed, rubbed my eyes, and tried to put my finger on the strange feeling I had. Even though I felt more rested than usual, something wasn’t quite right.

The apartment was quiet - all together too quiet! With a start, I realized that it was past seven and the kitty alarm wasn’t going off. Usually by 7:01 AM, the kitty alarm has her paws on my chest and is howling in my face as if the world is going to end. Usually, the kitty alarm is nipping and pawing at any exposed body parts that she can find, although she greatly prefers toes.

Surely, I thought, sitting up and jumping out of bed, Ripley is dead. No other force in the world would keep her from harassing me for food.

I speed walked to the kitchen, noticing well that Ripley wasn’t tripping me up and jogging ahead of me like she should be. Upon inspecting her food bowl, I saw that she hadn’t eaten her dinner from the night before - a phenomenon that is simply unheard of. I called her name and started looking under things to recover her corpse.

Alas, she was in the bathtub. Obviously sick and not wanting to be bothered.

Later that day, at work, I began receiving a string of emails from Ben, chronicling the different places and variety of unfortunate ways he had run into cat vomit. “On the couch,” he would write. “Don’t worry, I flipped the cushion.” And, later, “Everywhere!”

When I got home from work, I found a few new batches myself - under the coffee table, in the kitchen. It was some sort of terrible Easter egg hunt, if you replaced Easter eggs with enormous globs of something that used to be a Grade D chicken dinner feast with gravy.

Ripley seems to be doing a little better now - although the kitty alarm didn’t go off around dinner time like it usually does, she is back to hanging out with us and stealing Ben’s seat on the couch every time he gets up for something. We’re guessing it’s some sort of passing kitty stomach bug.

Seriously, though - how can she just throw up somewhere and then just walk away to throw up somewhere else?  Shouldn’t kitties throw up by kneeling over their litter boxes? I could even hold back her whiskers for her.