While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

Mount Rushmore closed, Thomas Jefferson hangs his granite head in shame

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Last week my Oma left Buffalo with a group of senior citizens on a trip to Mount Rushmore.

She has been more excited about this adventure than for anything in the last umpteen years. It was her first big getaway since my Opa died in January. She had to fight to secure a seat on the bus because the trip sold out within weeks of being announced.

One of her friends fell ill and turned her spot over to Oma. It was a bittersweet turn of events, but Oma was grateful for her friend’s ticket. (This woman had also recently lost her husband,  so she knew how important the trip was to Oma, who for the last seven years cared for my grandfather 24 HOURS A DAY.)

This Mount Rushmore journey was a BIG DEAL.

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Pure imagination: Is technology killing or cultivating creative thinking?

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Henry’s toy collection is all over the place, as in it’s (figuratively) diverse and (literally) scattered all over the house.

He’s got stuff that talks and moves, beeps and flashes. He’s got a workbench filled with tools that look and sound like the real deal. He’s got a train that whistles and rolls with the help of a AAA battery. He’s got a guitar that doubles as a keyboard and a set of John Deere tractors that double as throwing stars when hurled in fits of rage.

He’s got a hand-me-down tricycle, a hand-me-down kitchen set and a hand-me-down horse on a set of squeaky springs. He’s got Legos and blocks and puzzles and books. He’s got a toy rocket, a wheelbarrow, a lawnmower, a leaf blower, a trampoline and a vacuum.

Wait. He’s got two vacuums – an upright and a canister.

He’s got a dog that won’t stop talking, a bear that won’t stop singing and a baby doll from the Goodwill that wont stop threatening to stab me in my sleep.

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Upon meeting a blog reader for the first time

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I’ve got this fabulously funny blog reader in Ontario, Canada. Her name is Sara (from My Mother’s Daughter) and she’s been a loyal reader pretty much since I launched the Lance five years ago. Our relationship began over a boob cake, but more on that later.

We didn’t know each other prior to blogging. She simply started reading my stuff and I started reading her stuff. From there we became good ‘ol fashioned internet friends bound by what I can only describe as identical sensibilities, a crude vocabulary, a compulsion to share crazy ass stories and a love of the song Shoop.

We’re goofballs separated at birth.

Mutual blog affection led to random email exchanges. Sara’s emails usually began with sentences like, “Warning: the following story is gross.” Or “My friend is going to be on TLC tonight with her daughter who has dwarfism.” Or “I dyed my hair really dark last night and a girl at work told me it gave me a crazy look in my eyes.” Or “My mom just told me old age is causing her to lose the ability to control her farts.” Or “You make my ovaries dance.”

Sometimes she’d write nothing and attach a red carpet photo of Tina Yothers, whom she resembles. The subject line: “Jennifer – Family Ties.”

For Christmas one year Sara mailed me my favorite Tim Horton’s coffee, complete with a Timmy Ho’s mug. The package arrived ON Christmas. (I still don’t know how this happened. The mail doesn’t come on Christmas.) And soon after Henry was born she mailed me a children’s book about a bear in tighty whities. Does she know me or what?

So when I learned that she and some friends were renting a vacation house this month in Palmetto, we immediately made plans to get together and meet face-to-face. Her friends thought this was nuts.

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Why does everyone seem so perfect on the internet?

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I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Let’s call it the real reason my knees are bruised and torn up in this picture.

It’s something I’ve thought about for years, something I once got so passionate about I pitched it two years ago as a cultural think piece to a magazine that didn’t quite grasp the concept. It’s since been articulated by other writers in important magazines and newspapers all over the globe, which hurts my writer’s ego, but let’s not dwell. (Dear Editors of Publications I Pitch, I have good ideas.)

Here’s what I’ve been thinking: social media has created the maddening illusion that everyone’s lives are perfect.

Facebook is the virtual equivalent of your high school yearbook. Everyone is vying for space on the page and no one wants to look like a loser. So what do we do? We post pictures of our lives at their most exciting. Jet skiing in the Bahamas with my bestie! Front row at Jay-Z! Climbing Kilimanjaro. The view is auh-mazing!

Even the boring stuff seems exciting when photographed from the right angle. Shopping for bananas! The laundry is done! Look it’s my belly button lint!

We upload our best photos. We broadcast our most joyful news. Sometimes, despite our compulsion to put only our best face forward, we share our miseries. Why? Because misery loves company and eventually you need your virtual friends to provide virtual support.

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A subtle hint from my toddler

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Today while loitering in ransacking my office, Henry pulled down a stack of books and tore out a page at random.

“Here Mama,” he said, handing me page 143 in an old Sark book. I was too tired to lecture him on the sanctity of books, so I tossed aside the paper and moved on. Tonight as I was picking up the house I came across the orphaned page. This is it.

My child is a sage, no?

Cheer up sleepy Jean

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What has got me so emotional right now? Could be 100 things. Could be the fact that I’m listening to a long, slow cover of The Monkee’s Daydream Believer. Suppose it could be something about the lyrics.

I could hide beneath the wings
Of the bluebird as she sings.
The six o’clock alarm would never ring.
But six rings and I rise,
Wipe the sleep out of my eyes.

Could be the heartbreaking realization that my beloved dog is not getting any better. He’s blind now. He spends his nights panting and grunting. Pacing. Begging for more food and more water because the drugs he’s on make him more hungry and more thirsty than his usual ravenous self, which means he has to go to the bathroom ALL THE TIME.

I carry him down the stairs. I carry him up the stairs. At 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. I’m outside with bare feet guiding him to a tree so he can pee. Sometimes this reminds me of when he was a puppy and I used to carry him down my apartment steps because he was still too little to do them on his own.

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Why I love my husband in three examples

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Today is my wedding anniversary, the celebration of which took place last week at a little-known resort on a little-known slice of local waterfront no one seems to visit. Stay tuned for an un-sponsored (ie: truthful) review of the resort. I started this post on the balcony of my hotel room. I failed to finish it because I was too busy eating and drinking heavily, losing midnight games of Rummy and lounging poolside for hours with highbrow (and lowbrow) literature.

Example 1: He dreams about our son.

Last week Joe woke up with a memory of a dream. This was especially noteworthy because Joe never remembers his dreams, which I find sort of sad since I remember every ridiculous plot line from every one of my ridiculous dreams.

Joe dreamed that two-year-old Henry ate a “pellet” that turned him into a full-sized adult male. In his dream, he watched our son swallow the pellet and like a character from out of a comic book, morph (disconcertingly fast) from a toddler into a hairy, lumbering man.

This really freaked him out – Joe not Henry. According to his recollection, Henry was calm, but “still slimy” from the transformation. Joe’s use of the word “slimy” caused me to CHORTLE.

“Slimy?” I asked. “SLIMY sounds disgusting.”

“It was disgusting,” Joe said. “You don’t change from a toddler to an adult in three seconds without some residual dew.”

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The bright side of things, or how to stand in the rain and stay dry

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Oh hey September! You’re here. I’ve been waiting for you.

Due to last week’s cantankerous post, I feel I owe you an upbeat story, minus the sarcasm, salty language and snarling.

So here goes it:

A funny thing happened after I pouted about my Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad August.

Things got better.

The last seven days have been a testament to the old annoying saying this too shall pass. Since airing my dirty laundry (and by dirty laundry I mean my gratuitous references to swamp ass) on the internet, I’ve felt a lot less like Charlie Sheen and a lot more like his toothy, hapless counterpart on that sitcom I’ve never seen, Two and a Half Turds.

It would appear that our August hex is over. The Pig-Pen-like dirt cloud that has hovered over our house dissipated about a week ago, giving way to a bright blue sky with puffy clouds that resemble ukulele-strumming unicorns. Not really, but I’m inclined to see unicorns in all clouds, so maybe.

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Finding Joy in the Dog Days (Or Not)

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Editors note: If you’re able to get through this entire post, you deserve a gold star and a Book It! pin.

To my husband, my mother, my sisters, my friends, my neighbors and anyone else I may have barked at, scowled at, sulked away from or cried to during the last … oh, let’s call it a month:

I’ve been a surly bitch.

Unappreciative and crabby.

No scratch that. I’ve been downright beastly. My outward appreciation for life’s little gifts has been snuffed out lately by sadness, strife, underarm sweat, sleeplessness and the care and keeping of a tantrum-prone Henry.

It’s 800 degrees every day in Florida. In the morning, it’s 600 degrees. At night, it’s 700 degrees. During the day? It’s 800 motherf**king degrees.

More than once I’ve exclaimed out loud to anyone within ear shot, that August can suck it. The bugs are at their biggest. (Thank god the 902-page September issue of Vogue arrived so I can annihilate cockroaches three at a time.) The ozone is at its thinnest. The grass is at its brownest. Homeless alcoholics are at their rankest and the general public is at its meanest. (Last week a woman at Target stormed out of my line because I had 11 items on the 10-items-or-less belt. “So much for the EXPRESS LANE!” she snarled. “Lady, you’re shopping at Target not diffusing bombs. Chill the eff out,” I snapped IN MY HEAD. In real life I glared at her while Henry reached for the candy display and tore open a package of peanut M&Ms. “HENRY WANT CANDY MAMA!”)

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