It's Never About the Hairband

So, Bean and I are spending a lot of time together these days. A lot.  I planned this summer of much time together mostly to assuage my guilt for having been out of town for three months.  Pretty sure Bean has completely forgotten I was gone.  I'm left trying to be a one-woman-summer-camp for three months.

Today we had ballet in the morning and a playdate in the afternoon (still hate that term with the white hot heat of a thousand playground slides--can't we come up with something better? Play appointment? Play coffee?).  My apologies again, NYC parks service. The kids were just planting those blueberries. I realize you will no doubt need to close that section of lawn and reseed.  I will provide the chicken wire.

So by the time we got home, Bean was good and muddy.  Sent her directly in to the bathroom for a shower. She had to go potty first.  Can't remember if she flushed or I did (come on, it was me, of course) but just as I flushed, I also reached down to remove her pink squishy ponytail holder.  And like something out of a movie, it flew out of my hand like a rubber band shot by a ten year old boy, and landed square in the toilet just as the final swirl was circling around the bowl. And gurgle slurp glug glug glug.  It was gone.

I started to laugh.  Insane timing. No possible chance to fish that thing out.

Bean promptly lost it.  Inconsolable, snotty, naked sobbing for about forty minutes.

Did I mention the hair band came from a pack of identical hair bands? She has five more EXACTLY like the one that went down the crapper, in the plastic befeathered carrying bag.  Along with about 40 others in various other pleasing colors.

"But this was my most SPECIAL hairband!!!" naked sob sob snot wipe sob "Can't you call someone to get it back?"

"Well, who could I call, honey.  It went down into the sewer with all the poopy.  You wouldn't want it back now anyway. And we have lots more."

"But what will it do down there?  It will be LONELY!"

sob sob snot.  still naked.

lame comforting from me while I lay on her boppy and try not to fall asleep.

Bean looks up at me with big bluey hazely teary eyes.

"Can't we call the firemen?"

Of course, this isn't about hairbands right? It's never about the hairband. Just like Doc Hubby and I are never really fighting about the dishes.  It's about loss and things going away and never coming back and her dawning realization that life itself implies death and the horrible moment a few days ago when she looked at me and said "Mama I don't want to die." My grandfather and possibly ghosts and you know.

So I said to her, "Are you feeling sad about things getting lost?  Other things that are gone forever?"

And she wiped her snot on her towel and sobbed angrily, "Nooooo! I am just very sad about my very special hairband!"

Make note to discuss with non-slacker mothers who actually read about parenting during the Bean's next playsummit.

The Thrid and Final Installment of my Viral Campaign to Get Doc Hubby to Be the Onset Doctor at the Daily Show

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Cameron Diaz
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Really, Daily Show?  Really really?

Cameron Diaz. Nice girl and all, but really?

Rubbing alcohol.  Tweezers and Craft Scissors?????
Really really?

In case you missed it, Cameron Diaz, beloved star of There's Something About Mary just kind of removed stitches from the inner aspect of Jon Stewarts WRIST!  Jon Stewart, host of "The Daily Show".  I'd venture to guess Comedy Central's most valuable asset.  But I don't know that assertion would stand up to PolitiFact.

Please tell me you had a doctor on set when Cameron Diaz started cutting tiny threads on the underside of Jon Stewart's wrist with a pair of blunt scissors.   Maybe just watching on the monitor in the Green Room?

Doc Hubby is a former physician for the New York Yankees.  You wanna tell me, Comedy Central, that Jon Stewart is any less valuable to you than Derek Jeter is to the Yankees??  You wanna tell me that the Yankees would let Cameron Diaz near Derek Jeter with craft scissors and a tweezerman?

OK maybe don't mention that whole Yankees thing to Jon Stewart himself.  Doc Hubby only did that for one season anyway. On second thought, don't hold that against him. He got the hell out of that den of snakes before they started handing out World Series Rings.

Please, Comedy Central.  Not for me.  Not for Doc Hubby.  But for the Alumni Association of William and Mary.  For fans of "Death to Smoochy." For Liberia. Call Doc Hubby and get his ass on your set.

Part 2 of My Viral Attempt to Get Doc Hubby to Be the On Set Doctor at the Daily Show

So...apparently Jon Stewart went to Mt. Sinai to have his wrist stitched up.  All well and good.  It's a fine hospital, Mr. Stewart.

But perhaps you haven't heard that "AMAZING" things are happening at New York Presbyterian hospital, where Doc Hubby is employed and has been for nearly 20 years?  So yeah, Mt. Sinai is all well and good for stitching up that wrist wound (and sorry to hear about the kid who needed a new face but yeah, kids are resilient), but you're gonna want the guy from the "AMAZING" place right there for the next elderly member of a former presidential administration who has a heart attack or hemorrhoid on set...or god forbid the moment you go into anaplyactic shock after inhaling whatever it is that makes Donald Trump's hair defy all the laws of physics.  First Aid, Mr. Stewart.  First response.

Doc Hubby remains available.

Call me.

My Viral Campaign to Get Doc Hubby Appointed On-Set Doc at The Daily Show

Here's what you people at Comedy Central should know.

Doc Hubby is a rock star. In medical school he was a Gross Anatomy savant. He is regularly made privy to butt lesions by distant cousins and he does not faint. And he wins conferences all the time. Didn't know you could win an academic medical conference? You totally can.

During the taping of the show yesterday, Jon Stewart received a near mortal wound to the wrist during a Weiner sketch involving a blender, a margarita glass and a podium. Based on the fact that a producer handed Stewart a towel, like, ten minutes after he cut himself (and only after Stewart showed America the blood that was streaming down his arm and pooling in his cuff), I'd venture a guess you have no on-set doctor. Let's be frank. Comedy is dangerous. Jon Stewart is comedy. I'm guessing that Walker Texas Ranger had an on-site physician. You need one too.

Not to mention insurance.

And the fact that Doc Hubby will laugh at Jon Stewart's jokes but still maintain a steady hand as he bandages his wounds.

Call me, Comedy Central.  I think we can work something out.

Parenting Heroics

Doc Hubby is a hero (a hero minus a giant fish but still a hero).  Doc Hubby agreed to take on 11 weeks of solo full-time childcare so I could come to one of the most beautiful spots on earth and act in one of the most beautiful plays ever written with one of the loveliest bunches of people ever.  So there.  Thank you Doc Hubby.  My friends and family, rightfully so, are pretty amazed by him.  Impressed by his generosity and patience.  He deserves a medal.

Well, 9 weeks.  They were here in the Bay Area for two weeks. Right at first preview and opening.

Well, 6 weeks.  My mother did three weeks of childcare.

Well, we had a full-time babysitter for those 6 weeks.  So Doc Hubby did weekends and early morning and bedtime.  And of course, bore the primary responsibility for meals, discipline, and decision-making.  He limited his workday to 9 - 5...for 35 days.

You know, come to think of it, remember last fall when I was doing the play in town?  Yeah that was a 16 week commitment.  We had babysitting while I was in rehearsal, but once the play was up and running (the final 3 months or so) I was home all day taking care of the Bean.  And then I'd make dinner, and then Doc Hubby would get home and I would go and do the show.  The show was nearly 3 hours long...a five hour commitment when all is said and done (warm up and wigs and getting laced into corsets take some time--not to mention getting out of them).  Times 8 shows a week...that's 40 hours.  I was working full time. And taking care of the Bean all day.  Oh and remember the fall before when I did that other play?  Pretty much the same thing.  Only Bean wasn't in school so we really had every minute of every day together.

Doc Hubby definitely deserves a medal. He's been heroic.

I haven't had too much time to write lately.  I'm working 40 hours a week.  But here's my question.

Why is it that when Daddy does it, it's heroic and when Mama does it, it's just parenting?

My Rock Star Godson

Today, May 16th, 2011, I predict that my godson will eventually be class president.

Let it be so.

Time Will Pass

"The Three Sisters" is a play about time. Time passing. Time lagging. Time spent waiting for real life to begin. It's about memory and longing. About trying to recapture something beautiful from the past. About hoping hard for the future.

I have thought a lot about how I'll prepare before the play. This doesn't seem like one to just eat a burger, show up, and do. Although given that it's Berkeley the odds are much greater that I'll end up eating a gluten-free veggie patty and drinking kale juice and then getting laced into my corset. This play is full of secrets and private dreams and somehow I need to get inside those before we start each night. I think. Otherwise the first act (in which I speak the very first words) will be more about warming up than actually flying.

So I have created an Olga playlist and loaded it onto my ipod. I went to the new "Jane Eyre" movie and lost myself in the moors. I remember reading that book in the back of my Dad's 1979 camper van while we drove across the country in the early 80s. I have been thinking a lot about my own childhood, and searching for memories--particularly of my grandparents and time I spent in their house as a girl. And then I was moved to go on YouTube and watch videos. Of my husband's college acapella group. Yup. The Zumbyes appear to be part of my prep to play Olga in "The Three Sisters."

There's a particular feeling I'm searching for. A raw, yearning, sense of possibility. A melancholy ache. The longing I remember feeling when I was on the verge of the rest of my life. The sweet melancholy is right there when I look at these videos from my senior year of college. I almost think I can hear my roommate laughing in the audience. Six weeks after Doc Hubby and I had started dating. In May. When the forsythia was blooming and he brought me boughs in a watering can early in the morning. Our play begins in May. The restlessness of Spring. It's already Spring here in San Francisco. The flowers are unfamiliar. No forsythia. No lilac. Large almost too bright blossoms under palm trees. It's strange. For part of the day today I was pretty convinced San Francisco is the best city ever. I certainly can't imagine a city with more spectacular views.

And so I listen to Billy Joel and Mary Chapin Carpenter and Joni Mitchell and John Denver and James Taylor and Nanci Griffiths. And I watch my 20 year old husband wearing a silly tie bouncing around a stage and singing songs he arranged. And my grandmother is in assisted living and my daughter dances ballet around her room.

Time will pass.

And Doc Hubby is third from the left at the beginning of the song and in the back row on the left for most of the rest.