MNM is no more, but Pen lives

Hello MNM reader – Pen and Buns have continued our conversations in private, but Penelope has started a new joint blog with another friend, the gorgeous and witty Model Hubby.  Come with!
http://nowpronounce.wordpress.com

It’s a neighborly day in the beauty – would you be mine?

Yesterday was seriously the nicest day of the year. The weather was clear and fair, so everyone who lives in my neighborhood really made the most of it.

Brandine and I enjoyed our afternoon walk. The woods are best this time of year because the canopy hasn’t grown in yet and the sun reaches the forest floor. Meadows of wildflowers look like yellow and white carpets. Also, it is not humid and there are no mosquitoes yet. Brandine romped with two other retrievers and splashed around in the creek. The other dogs’ owners were both women about my age, so we socialized when the dogs did.

Later, I walked to the community center for Spanish class. On the way there, I passed a woman who shook a cherry branch, showering cherry blossom petals over her little boy, who spun around and tried to catch them. It was such a sweet moment that I think even Jimbo’s cynical cone-heart would have warmed up.

In order to get to the community center, I have to walk between a baseball field, where a team was warming up for the season, and a playground, where little kids pretended they were on the baseball team. Again, it was ridiculously cute and the kind of “All-American” scene that you want to show to people from other countries.

After class, during which I told my instructor that “mi grammatico esta como mierda,” (or is it “es”? See what I mean, Buns?) I walked home during that “golden hour” that moviemakers like, when everyone looks younger and prettier. When I walked by the elementary school, the field was full of grownups and children. They were playing soccer and softball, laying out to catch the last bit of sunshine, or training their dogs. There was a couple in their twenties sharing an ice cream cone. Birds chirped. A sentient trolley whistled. King Friday XIII issued a decree. And this lady got some football players to dance in the “Neighborhood of Make-Believe”:

If I wasn’t on such a seratonin high, I might have been just a little nauseated.

Bloody brilliant!

Bunny, many many congratulations to you (for your new job and new eco-friendly car) and Jimbo (for publishing, not perishing) and Yolanda (for being supercute and adorable in childcare).

Monty and I are feeling the same way as you – like there’s change in the air. Or as Monty put it, we’re both commencing at the same time. Me, from the most expensive school in the country, which is a dubious distinction to be sure, and Monty, from his former job of 9 1/2 years. It’s kind of exhilarating, ain’t it? Makes me think of all those great 80s movie graduation scenes. Like in Back to School or Say Anything. But hopefully not Less than Zero.

I for one am pretty thrilled. After my defense, Monty threw a party and a lot of people from different areas of our lives showed up to wish me well. I felt all this great good will and booze, which is a lovely combination. And to top it all off, Kitty took the train from Philly! So awesome. There was one moment where we were in the office and one of my friends saw the picture of you, me, Monty, and D. with the snowboard and the banana in Whistler Village. I said to Kitty, “You took that picture!” and we both started explaining to the other people in the room the sheer folly of taking seriously uncoordinated girls from Florida to a world-class ski and snowboard resort in Vancouver.

I suppose the euphoria’s wearing off a little bit – I’m kind of getting into the “what the hell now” phase. A while back, I met with my old boss to talk about careers and her advice was to have children in order to even out the political playing field. Yes, she wanted me to have babies so that there would be more Democrats around.  (I decided not to tell her that I’m a registered independent.  It would have hurt her feelings.) And that is what happens when you live in DC.

Bloody well done!

The other night I told Jimbo that I felt like this was a our lives are changing kind of time. I got a job, Yolanda will be starting a new child care arrangement, we bought a new car, Jimbo got published. All in the same month! Aren’t these things supposed to happen in cycles, like menstruation? If so, then we are so on the rag, but in a good way, without all the blood. And speaking of new good stuff without all the blood, congrats to you, Penelope! Or would you prefer I call you Doctor P? I’m so happy that you finished that mammoth assignment! I don’t even know what it was about even though you’ve told half a dozen times, at least. This proves you are way smarter than me and I’m okay with that.Now you and Monty can move onto other things in your life… take up dressage or something.    

Creepshow bus shenanigans

I took the bus to campus today to pick up a library book and my cap and gown. (Huzzah!)

When I took my seat, I felt someone touch my hair and turned to scowl at the person. I hoped that said person was a woman who was holding on to the back of the seat for safety purposes. But alas, it was a man who said something, thereby forcing me to turn off my tiny digital boom box. He told me that he thought I was beautiful and what did I do? I should have scowled or told him to never touch a strange woman’s hair again. But because I was a bit frightened that he’d follow me off the bus, I just said “thanks” and put my headphones back on, stared straight ahead, and hoped for the best.

The thing that peeves me about incidents like these is that a bizarre combination of fear and flattery always drives my responses. Never anger, which I think is the most appropriately feminist way to deal with them. And now that it’s spring, all the horny joes start blooming like crocuses.

Clinton, Obama, and the “making history” narrative

I’m in the very last stage of the dissertation! Hurrah! Anyway, in order to keep from freaking out like Jack N. in The Shining, I’ve got the cable news networks on to keep myself company. I’m so very lonely!

The narrative that this is is an historic election comes up often, and the dialogue about the Democratic candidates always makes me think of the title of the 1982 book “All the Woman are White, all the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us are Brave.” Twenty-six years later and that statement still seems true.

Anyway, I haven’t thought about it too deeply, but I keep coming back to it. I’ve got to get back to work – there are some dangling modifiers to correct.

Wish me luck, Bunny!

Free Your Child and the Rest Will Follow

Jimbo and I had our first parent panic epidsode yesterday.  Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Here it go.     So I drive a shitty mom-mobile. Pen, you’ve never seen my car but believe me, it’s shit-taay. One of the shittier things about it is that it cannot be locked. Well, the car can be locked, but once locked, it cannot be unlocked from the outside.  I think you know where I’m going with this. Yolanda got locked in the car while I was outside of the car. The keys were in the ignition and the car was running. But I was outside and she was inside and I couldn’t get to her. I was also locked out of the house because my keys were in the ignition. It was probably negative five degrees outside when all this was happening, but little Yo was warm inside the car with the heat on. Oh, did I also mention I was a little worried about fumes and carbon monoxide and the like? So I called Jimbo and said something like, “Yoyo is in the car and it’s locked and she’s fine but what about fumes and I’m scared.” Jimbo called a locksmith and came right home. Meanwhile, I ran to the garage and grabbed a brick in case I had to break a window or do something drastic. Within ten minutes the locksmith had arrived and opened the car and liberated Yolanda. I took her inside the house and it was over.     What’s funny is that the whole time, Yolanda was unphased. She just sat in her car seat and looked out the window at me, smiling. We played peek-a-boo to pass the time. I pretended not to be freaked out. I guess I’m kinda proud of myself for not really panicking. It was so strange though… to have this physical barrier between us, to find myself suddenly unable to touch her, to actually visualize horrible emergency scenarios and the dramatic rescues they would necessitate. The good news is that I’ll soon be turning in my shitty mom-mobile for a, uh, less shitty mom-mobile. Hopefully, this one will be a station wagon. Cuz wagons are so sexy. I actually really do find station wagons sexy. 

Brandine smells like hoof.

Yesterday I walked Brandine in the woods so she could romp around in the snow. We walked down the trail and I noticed that she took a peculiar interest in a branch that was lying there. Then I noticed the branch had a hoof at the end of it.

It was a dismembered deer leg. And now her head smells. But thank the stars she didn’t chew the nasty thing.

She Can Say Stuff!

Over the past two months, Yolanda has gone totally verbal. She starting talking at a pretty early age, six months or so, with the basics– dada, mama, baby, socks. And her vocabulary has grown steadily ever since. Then right around November, she really hit her stride. She starting busting out words right and left. Play, blocks, down, nose, eyes, diapers, wipes, cheese, puppets, downstairs, boots. And because she’s bilingual– agua, mas, cuchara, gracias, zapatos. Now she’s all about repeating what we say. Some of her newer words are awesome, please, pizza, sushi, and alright.
Of course her pronunciation is off and there are still a few letter sounds that she can’t say, but overall, I’d call Yoyo a regular chatterbox. Here are some of her funnier pronunciations:

Ah Daiiii: All done

Oh-dirt: Yogurt

Du-Du: Choo Choo

Aaaoats: Oats

Oppy: Open

Shishue: Tissue

Dees: This (we think; it’s what she says when she wants something, as in “dees! dees!”, while she points at the desired object. )

and our favorite, Bata Bata: Belly Button

Here’s a picture taken just before Christmas in South Florida:

We are teaching her to say “plumber’s crack”.

It’s cloudy in Cap city.

I just want to record two conversations from the weekend.

1) I had the misfortune of watching an unbearably cheesy modern rock band that encored with…….wait for it ……….. “Time After Time.”  I turned to the woman I was talking to and said, “I have a friend who played this song in order to get first chair clarinet in middle school.  You know, toot toot toot!”  She looked at me blankly and goes, “I don’t know what you just said just now, hama hama blah blah.” Then she said, “Who sang this again?”  I told her, and she said, “I got a Cyndi Lauper tape and a Chaka Khan tape the same year for Christmas…..I was like in 3rd grade and…. because my last name is Khan, you see, and……..” And then she wandered away.  And scene.

2)  Monty and I shopped the local mattress district yesterday and settled on a nice firm mattress we liked.  As we were ringing up the sale, the salesman looked at Monty’s credit card and said, “There are so many different types of Amexes.”  He then opened his wallet up to display the many varieties of American Express he carried, and two gold magnum condoms threatened to drop out of it.