Shhh...

Musical genius at work:

The Way You Do The Things You Do.

I love...

- The way your morning bedhead looks:






- The way you started calling your rubber ducky "Baba" one day and then started calling everything you like "Baba." This can range from toys to food to Stormy.


- The way you stick your tongue out of the side of your mouth when you're concentrating:




- The way a slow smile of recognition creeps onto your face when you hear the opening whistles of "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Then that slow smile becomes a full on grin and we both sing along to our favorite parts.


- The way you have fun in the bath:




- The way you kick your legs, wave your arms and squeal delightedly at the little things in life...like when we pick you up or when we're bringing food to your highchair or when we bring you downstairs and you first see that we're going to your new playroom.


- The way you're always caught red-handed in front of Stormy's water and food bowls when she's not around...and how you usually dump the water bowl all over the floor (and almost dunked Daddy's cell phone in there today):




- The way we ask you to say words when your mouth is full of banana and then we laugh hysterically every time you say a muffled "Nana!" or "Mama!" or "Dada!"


- The way you make clicking and lip smacking noises while you putter around the room or bath:




- The way you fake laugh loudly to get people's attention, and then you grin and bat your eyes at them when they're looking at you.


- The way you "help" us recycle:





- The way you find something small and choke-worthy on the floor and when I step towards you or come in from another room, even if I don't know you have something small in your hand, you automatically hold out the small object to me. It's so very Honest Abe of you.


- The way you love to ride on your new car:




- The way you get punchy, drunk and silly when you're on the couch, no matter how tired you are. You twirl and giggle and stand up and fall back repeatedly.


- The way you shove two pieces of food in your mouth, one in each cheek. You're an amazing eater and I should be alarmed at how fast and furious you eat, but it's never been a problem:





- The way you say "uh oh!" every time you drop something to the floor, and how you often drop things on purpose just to say it again and again.


- The way you're learning to walk so proudly and how you took five steps in a row today (without the hand you see here):




- The way you can't take criticism. When I say "No" to you, you yell "No!" right back at me and shake your head furiously and slap your hands at the air.


- The way you wave to cars, whether you're outside or watching from the front window:




- The way you call me "Mum."


- The way you smile so big when you're dancing in one of our arms:





- The way you make monster noises on command and how you grunt with exertion when you're puttering around the house.


- The way you have two very cute front teeth:




- The way you beg for food like a dog, whining and kneeling on the floor in front of the eater.


- The way you get high on life constantly:




"Well you could have been anything that you wanted to,
I can tell...The way you do the things you do."

Next up - the same themed blog about Cassidy!

Story Time Friday.

Several months ago, I started writing story ideas on a few scraps of paper. The idea was that I'd gather true stories from my own life that I found funny, inspiring, happy, sad, poignant or that highlighted me as being a wicked awesome heroine (few and far between!). These are the stories I whisper to Scarlet before she goes to sleep at night. One day they'll make sense to her but in the meantime, I'll publish them here. This is not my first mini story post so if you're inclined to look back in the archives, I've already used some good material. There's no rhyme or reason to what gets told on any given day. I just look at my crumpled bits of paper and choose what I'd like to tell her today. Bless this little blog for keeping track of the early days of her life and what I want her to read one day. This is what I'm thinking about today:

1. I'm thinking scary. As many of you know, I delivered pizza for two years in college. It was...awesome. The first year, I delivered at a casual place run by a misogynist, (easily) 400 pound man. It was truly the summer of love as the temperatures were high and the hormones were flying throughout this co-ed-staffed Jersey pizzeria in this nothing town.
...It was a dark and stormy night - no, really. I was delivering to what I was told was an old, brilliantly lit farmhouse out in the back woods, or as back woods as you can get in NJ. What I found was a dark and gloomy farmhouse - guess someone forgot to turn on the lights. I really didn't know what to do. I should have gotten back in my car and driven away. I had a "Saved by the Bell" style cell phone that miraculously dialed the number written on the pizza receipt but no one answered the phone. Again, I should have left. I went around the house until I found a porch, tripped over a branch that made a loud noise, and was suddenly jumped by FOUR German Shepherds who were very focused on protecting their owner. The pizza went flying and I toppled backwards on the ground while they all looked down at me. Suddenly the floodlights did come on (way too late) and a very apologetic owner called off the dogs and helped me up. I didn't get bitten but the impact of one of the dog's bodies left a very disturbing series of bruises on my arms for months. I think I lost ten years that day. I'm not sure why I'm not as afraid of dogs at this point as I should be. I guess because it's mostly human error. Those dogs weren't so bad but the sight of four large animals charging you on a dark and stormy night will stay with me forever.

2. I usually like to switch genres but since it's a brilliantly sunny day, I feel secure enough to tell another scary story. I'd like to talk about THE SIXTH SENSE, that Bruce Willis movie that started "I see dead people" jokes long after it should have.
We were visiting my grandparents in Florida and my mom had seen the film and decided to take us to see it one night when my grandparents were safely at home. I have never been this affected by a movie and it's probably because I don't take enough cinematic risks anymore to let myself be this affected by a movie. After the first ghost scene, I stood up and tried to leave. My mom told me to sit back down and give it a shot. I literally felt physically ill from fear the whole film. When I tell this to people now, they look confused and say they loved it and it was a thriller, but not a horror movie. Whatever it was, it nearly ruined me. I saw BLAIR WITCH a week after THE SIXTH SENSE and it was like child's play in comparison. Nothing has ever troubled me as much as this movie. We went home that night and I couldn't sleep for a week because I kept thinking I was seeing and hearing ghosts walking up and down the hallways. It got better when we got home to NJ and I started sleeping soundly again in my own bed. I think I was mainly so upset because I was away when this happened. I kept blaming the extreme fear on my displacement from home. I was 19, though. Not five. 19. Damn you, M. Night Shyamalan. I still can't watch even a second of it. Ten years later.

3. So this next story is part humor/part disaster/part breathtaking. A little background is that Cassidy had found the place we got married at on the internet and after spending a night there to see if it would work, I decided it wouldn't and we looked elsewhere. We soon ran right back to this place - Mountain Top Inn and Resort in Chittenden, VT because they were flexible, kind and could work with our quirkiness. So in December of 2007, they invited us and our families to spend a weekend there. The only thing we had to do business-wise was sign the contract and do the food tasting. The rest was up to us. Our parents and my sister and Cassidy's two brothers all came along. We had to fly in from California and when we all got there and settled in, we were all giddy and tired and completely immature for the tour of the place. I think we were all lying on the pristine beds and making dirty jokes about our wedding guests using those beds while the staff was leading us around. Then came the food tasting in which they worked so hard for us and we were all laughing and some of us were drinking and a few of us were yelling, "Blah! Cilantro! Barf! Puke! This is NOT being served at the wedding!" I feel badly in retrospect. I was one of the cilantro haters.
I can't remember the time frame of any of this but Cassidy and I went on a romantic dog sled ride. I'll never forget the sound of the sled taking off in that cold, silent night and turning back to see my mom and Cassidy's mom waving us off on our journey. Then we entered a hilly winter wonderland. Every curve was dramatic and I kept thinking that the sled was going to tip over, but those dogs knew exactly what to do to keep us safe. It was awesome and smooth and surprisingly warm to be on that sled letting the dogs lead us around.
Later that night, the "kids" all stayed in The Jewel - one of the resort's prized cabins. This house was built for a party. We had our own bedroom with a huge flat screen TV, king-sized bed, remote controlled fireplace and a huge spa bathroom. We all hung downstairs playing games and at one point, Lindsay, Cassidy and I were outside for a meteor shower. I hadn't seen many shooting stars in my life and I think I almost doubled the whole of what I'd seen in this one night. Every time we saw a shooting star, we'd scream. And then we'd laugh. And we'd all see different ones and sometimes all see the same ones. All I remember is screaming and laughing repeatedly standing out in the middle of nowhere in the 8 degree weather. That cold weather was signaling something bad...which we woke up to the next morning.
I think this might have be my only true blizzard in life. It was bad when we woke up and only got worse. Some of us went sledding to breakfast. After breakfast, the power gave up in the Jewel and we got kicked out of our awesome dwelling to go in the main house. They had also lost power and we all huddled at the main lobby fireplace. There were plenty of other guests there. They did a pasta dinner in the dark - I have no idea how it was cooked - and we all gathered and talked all night. At one point a pipe burst and soaked some rooms and the staff had to get in there with flashlights. We were without power for 24 hours and it came on some time in the middle of the night. Of course, we had to get up at 3 am to somehow drive our Pt Cruiser (Loser) off of a huge mountain in the still falling snow where we had to get a small plane out of Burlington into JFK where we'd catch a large plane back to San Francisco. By some miracle we got to the airport and the flight took off, but it wasn't pretty. New York City was getting the blizzard winds now and we had to land in that. The plane was so violent that several people were puking. Me, being phobic of violent planes and violent puking, blasted my iPod to drown out any noise and felt sorry for those silly idiots who didn't take their Dramamine. Then we boarded the big plane where I briefly had the middle seat, and then we were off and back home, knowing that we had made the right decision about where to have our wedding. The Mountain Top staff wrote to us after that weekend to tell us that they had finally bought a generator. Good thinking.

The Littlest Scarlet Knight..

I ever saw... (Set to the tune of "The Littlest Worm")







And of course, every noble knight needs a trusty steed:

Highlights and Lowlights.

Highlights of the last few days:

- My brother Aaron stayed with us for a few days and we showed him some of Northampton's finest - Sierra Grille and Hillside Pizza as fine examples. Cassidy bonded with him at a Phish show, I bonded with him staying up until 3 am talking and Scarlet bonded with him deeply and instantly. Scarlet really likes to go to sleep to people and wake up to them the next morning. I believe it solidifies them in her mind and then she's enamored from then on. She had four sleeps that woke up to Aaron. They're forever friends now.

- Scarlet took her first little step in front of me and Aaron. She was standing and dancing and laughing all at once and then we held our breaths as she took one tiny step and then fell on her padded butt.

- Last night at my parent's house, Scarlet walked across their carpeted living room pushing her walker over and over. She looked like a little old lady pushing a shopping cart and we were all amused and impressed with her tireless walking. My cheeks hurt from laughing so much.

- This morning I had brunch at Perona Farms with my entire immediate family to celebrate my parent's 25th anniversary. It was the first time we've all been together since Vegas two years ago. And Scarlet was a laughing, hugging, kissing, yelling part of the crazy get together.

- The Poached Eggs special at Perona Farms.

- We got very good news from the surgeon who stitched Scarlet's cheek. He had gone away for a few weeks the morning after her surgery and we had taken her to another doctor for check-ups in the meantime. It was good for him to see it and we got a glowing report and much needed peace of mind about the state of her face now and how much it will heal in the next year. A pediatrician who has decades of experience also told us how great Scarlet looks and how flawlessly it will heal in the next year.

- Scarlet said a nearly perfect "Matt" to her Uncle Matt. Twice!

- Staying up late with my brother and sister talking about wedding music. It was fun and got me so much more excited for my sister's wedding in October.

- My husband is hot.


Lowlights of the past few days:

- Scarlet sort of peed in the laps of three of my family members. I'll pay your dry cleaning bills!

- Sharing a room with Scarlet last night after having forgotten to pack her sound machine. Yeah. Not good. One little sound woke her up and then she tormented us all night. She climbed on our faces, bit my nose, tried to climb out the window, tweaked our nipples (TMI? Nah), and at one point was sitting on Cassidy's neck and pulling my hair repeatedly. It was a rough night.

- Driving back to Massachusetts in a ridiculous downpour. You know that kind of heavy rain in which you can't see two feet in front of you and many people pull over, but it's usually ok because it only lasts ten minutes or so? This lasted for over four hours.

History of an Anxious Mind.

I was born anxious, or at least that's what I love to tell people. I'm pretty sure it's true, though. I used to blame my anxiety on 1984. That's when my father died. Not long after that, my mom remarried a man with three kids and we moved in with them and became the Brady Bunch and renovated the house and had a new town and new neighbors and new friends and new family and new grief. That would drive anyone to anxiety but I think I had it before then.

I used to "rock" from sometime not long after birth until my later childhood. Sometimes it even happened as a teenager and in my 20s. "Rocking" was what my parents called my intense tossing and turning that used to literally move my crib across the floor. Or maybe that's the way it was with my father who was also reported to rock his crib as a baby. I also used to whine and hum a specific tune that I can still conjure up today. If I was feeling particularly needy, I'd use that tune to whine, "Mommy, mommy, ma ma mommy." I can still do it today. Just ask me next time you see me. (I can also hum the pre-programmed tune from my sister's old recorder type instrument)

I also would rock rhythmically in a couch or chair while sitting. This happened before his death and after. My siblings loved to make fun of me for it. I mean, how could you not make fun of the rocking, whining, humming girl? I got the last laugh, though. I believe my pediatrician even told my mom that the rocking wasn't dangerous. It was a form of self-soothing not unlike thumb sucking or hitting your head against the wall. I was rocking through my childhood and teens and I never once reached for alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs. I never self-cut, had an eating disorder, needed any kind of medication, or had any violent or antisocial tendencies whatsoever. So what I did in the privacy of my own home (and sometimes embarrassingly at sleepovers and a few times in front of college roommates and boyfriends) was pretty damn cool. If Scarlet starts doing that one day, I'll probably be ecstatic that she figured some things out. However, Scarlet is a champion thumb sucker so it looks like she's already covered in that department.

So as I was saying - anxiety. I also remember being afraid of loud music and fireworks when I was really young. I suppose that's not uncommon for young children. The uncommon stuff is coming...

Around the time my father died, I was deeply obsessed with and terrified of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Many phobias followed that time and it's hard to say if the phobias came from his death, from the movie, or from the horrid combination of both. Before he died, I was afraid of the Wicked Witch of the West. After he died in the years that followed I went through phases of being deeply phobic of: being spun around, (Dorothy's house spins), tornadoes, (this tie-in is obvious), lions (Cowardly Lion), loud noises and earthquakes, (he fell when he had a heart attack and the floor shook) and then oddly - a killer whale in my closet that seemed to have no bearing on the film or his death. Anyway, phobias are irrational as these were. However, I was faced in reality with even the most ridiculous.

Once I woke up to the sound of my younger brother screaming bloody murder in the street. I "knew" exactly why he was screaming. Lions, of course! Actually, it was just from my older brother tormenting him. Oddly enough, a lion did escape from a zoo in southern NJ around this same time and was seen in a local park but luckily I never got word of that back then. I was so afraid of tornadoes that I tried to get my parents to take down their wind chimes that were outside my bedroom window. They didn't budge but living in NJ, you'd think tornadoes wouldn't be a real fear. And lo and behold, I was faced with my worst phobia at my grandparent's house in Westfield, NJ. The umbrella stand loudly blew away and under other circumstances, I would have laughed at that. Instead, I was huddling petrified in the basement. No one ever knew how scared I was that time. No one ever knew how scared I was in general. I don't like showing weakness or fear. I don't like appearing to have lack of control. My ultimate phobia must be lack of control because every other fear that comes and goes seems to relate to that. I never once had a bad vomiting episode (or a good one), and yet I'm phobic of vomit - other people's and my own. And I barely threw up as a kid. Maybe five times in my life. No lie. I remember the last time I threw up (I was seven) and I told myself, "Remember this - it's not that bad." And yet, I became completely petrified after that. I once read that fear of vomiting is ultimately a fear of losing control. That, I can work with.

A brief conversation with a therapist as an adult revealed only one interesting thing to me:

Her: "What happened after that tornado at your grandparent's house? Were you still afraid?"

Me: "No, actually. I've never been afraid of tornadoes since then. In fact, I think they're awesome and I'd love to see one (from a safe place) one day."

Her: "So why do you think your fear went away after you faced it?"

Me: "Because my worst fear came true, which was odd in NJ, and everything was fine afterward except for the umbrella stand. We all survived."

Her: "Yup. That's why you conquered THAT fear. Everyone survived and everyone was ok. That time, anyway."

Me: (thinking of my father) "Ohhhhh.....oh. Jeez. I gotta go."


Children feel pain. Children fear. I probably would have been just as strange had my family been shiny, happy, normal. However, I do think the sudden changes around four and five did give me the intense separation anxiety I felt with my mom. I know all kids get separation anxiety so why is mine so special? Probably because it got bad not when I was really young but when I was nine and ten and I'd get upset from...going to school for the day. Yeah, those were bad times. I was also afraid of movie theaters around that time which might have something to do with the loud noises problem. I was also afraid of sleepovers around that time because if I couldn't even go to school, how could I leave my parents overnight??

Beyond some hard phases, I had a really happy childhood and I was socially adept always, despite being afraid to go to sleepovers and movies, and despite crying in the hallways of school for my mommy sometimes. I guess my classmates and friends were very forgiving.

The aspect of my anxiety that gives me the most bewildering confusion has got to be my stomach panic attacks. That's what I call them. I've only had a "real" panic attack once in my life a few weeks before I moved to California. I was driving and had to pull over because my heart was pounding and I was experiencing shortness of breath. It sucked but it was over fast. For me, my stomach panic attacks are when I get a random bout of nausea out of nowhere and it disappears as mysteriously as it came. It can last anywhere from three minutes to hours. It averages around 20 minutes. I have gotten them enough in life that anytime I have a stomachache, I assume that it's in my head and that I can make it go away. This is awesome. This either means I've never in my life had a "real" stomachache (not likely) or that I use mind over matter for stomachaches no matter what the origin. These stomach panic attacks have followed me into adulthood and go with the flow of my life. If times are tough, I can get them daily or weekly. If times are great, I can literally go years without even one stomachache. Not one.

It wasn't bad in childhood - just odd and without explanation. Once I was digging into these clown cupcakes that someone brought over and then my brother told me there was rum in them and I freaked out thinking I was drunk and went to bed with a stomachache. Another time, my brother threw up at this Mexican restaurant we were at and I decided that it must be the food and I must be sick too and I felt queasy until the next day! It then magically went away when I came home from school because I don't think it was real to begin with. The food was fine! (You can all relax and go to El Coyote in New Jersey.) A few times when I was young - once at a waffle restaurant and another time eating burgers and fries at the dinner table, I just randomly felt really, really nauseous suddenly and ran to the bathroom where I wasn't sick and maybe wasn't physically sick to begin with. I don't know! It's not abnormal for little kids to feel nauseous and I'm describing only a few times but knowing what I know now, I do think they were in my head. The one or two times I was ever truly sick to my stomach (strange, I know) felt very different. A last anxious example I can think of was in 4th grade and I suddenly felt VERY ill but I had to sing in a school musical. I told my teacher and she told me I was probably nervous about the musical and that I shouldn't make myself so sick like this for minor things, because one day a major bad thing would happen and I wouldn't be able to handle it. She was right. And wrong. I sang in the musical but as my brother said, "You had no enthusiasm." Then I went home and I was fine.

Why am I telling you all of that? I really don't know. I hope it's valid. It never came up again until I was 16 and a boy asked me out and I nearly lost my lunch on the spot. I talk about that and a road trip that followed here.

After that trip and all of that getting high on life that followed, I would feel so much, so fast that I'd get stomach panic attacks even while happy. They weren't terrible but truly a sign of anxiety that I'd have butterflies in my stomach all the time. I had a college roommate who once said, "I have such bad anxiety that I literally ALWAYS am sick to my stomach. It just fades into the background of my life. It's always there." And I relate to her. However in my case, I've gone through phases of life where I don't feel any kind of sick for years or, like her, I may feel it every day for a month or so. Sometimes people give me these minor attacks and I wonder if I'll ever know why. I've met people before and they made me so nervous that I spent our first meeting using my anxiety coping techniques - deep breaths, pacing, talking, writing if I can, happy thoughts, dogs, thinking of calming people. All of this works, by the way...I didn't know how to do any of that in my childhood but I had to learn during stressful times when I was older. It was why I never had to resort to treatment for anxiety. I have thought about it but ultimately, I think I worked out a lot of it on my own and I'll continue to do so.

These stomach panic attacks haven't happened with any kind of severity in almost two years. Maybe it will come back and maybe it won't. What I'm left with is a lot of unanswered questions. Why do they happen? Where do they come from? None of my triggers make sense, really. Sometimes it seems to be the most subtle thing that someone says that makes it happen. And sometimes it's the nicest people, who I often still form a friendship with even after our panicked first meeting. I guess people I know today are very forgiving as well.

A lot of you reach out to me with similar stories and comments about my posts. I appreciate that so much. Please feel free to share your own anxiety, lack of anxiety, or coping mechanisms. If it takes a lifetime to figure this out, so be it. I bet I will someday.

A Funny Face Kind of Day.

On Sunday we met two of Scarlet's six grandparents at the Coventry Farmer's Market in Connecticut. It's definitely the best farmer's market I've been to on the east coast. I can't say it's the best one that I've ever been to because there are a few in Northern California that could bring me to my knees just thinking about.

Anyway we ended our outing at Worchester Pizza in Storrs, CT. This college town pizzeria made it into the top 100 pizzerias in America and after ten years of applying to be in the Connecticut building of the Big E, they finally made it and will be there next month! New Englanders know what the Big E. For everyone else, I'm just too tired to explain. Let's just say I suffered a metal slide burn there last year.

So this is a picture post, detailing the funny faces Scarlet was making all day. And she wasn't just doing it for the camera. She was grimacing, squinting and staring into space all day. It was just that kind of day. In fact, when Amma Peggy took her into a drum circle and gave her an instrument to play with, I could see her squinting and glaring face from across the field.

She had a giant bandage on her face all day too. This wasn't because she needed one to stop bleeding or that her wound is still open - this is strictly to block the sun from her face at all costs. This is something we'll have to do for the next year so that she heals fully.

And now I present to you my glaring, squinting, confused, unsure, maybe gassy toddler:

(At least Grandpa and Amma look good here)





Is she saying "L" for loser or "L" for Grandpa Larry??



Post-pizza food coma:



Deep Thoughts in a Highchair:



"What the hell are you looking at?"



Nom nom nom:



Now these next two photos are more like it:






Thank god for picture posts. Writing in this blog post was like pulling teeth. I'll get it together soon.

Home.

Last night we drove home from a Bluegrass Festival through sweeping hills, farmland, and clear sunlight shining through the tall trees. I said, "The weather couldn't possibly be any nicer" and then realized that statement was 100% true and I wasn't exaggerating as I often would in saying that. I actually can't imagine better than 73 degrees, pure blue skies and no humidity. And in this picturesque setting with award winning food in my stomach and Scarlet talking to her rubber ducky (his name is Baba) all the way back to Chapel Street, I started to seriously think about the concept of home to me, and how it has changed dramatically in the last ten years or so.

I feel like I'm at home in my house. That's not a feeling I've always been lucky enough to feel. I felt it in my childhood home up until my parents moved to their new farm in Blairstown when we were mostly grown up. I never felt like I was home in their new house. I moved to New Brunswick when I was just turning 23 and although I loved my apartment and my roommates, it was three people sharing a bathroom and we were all at that point in life where things could change very fast. So there wasn't enough stability (and bathroom privacy) to feel like home. After that year or two (and I can't believe I can't remember how long it was), I lived alone in Highland Park in a crappy, gloomy apartment which perfectly matched my crappy, gloomy mood. Both lasted about a year. Then I moved into a completely character-less, yet totally clean and shiny townhouse with my little sister. I had money back then and I had her. And we had three bathrooms for two people. And the a/c was blasting and I had a TV at the foot of my bed - the only time I've ever had that in life. And the master bedroom had double doors and a walk-in closet and a bathroom with two sinks. We lived in walking distance of two Dunkin Donuts and a large grocery store. I was happy. I did feel like it was home and I couldn't wait to come home and relax after a night out. It was healthy.

...and it didn't last. I ached to leave NJ and its strip malls, identical townhouses, congested highways, congested sinus cavities...and I ached to be with my love. So I left the only place I ever knew and found myself smack dab in the middle of the Haight in San Francisco, seeing more street life in one month than I'd seen in my 27 years. And it was hard and I never felt that it was home and it's a shame I didn't enjoy myself more before we moved back east.

I always wanted to live in New England. I definitely romanticized it after meeting Cassidy because this is where we first went after we met in New York City and this is where we shared our first moose and our first love. This is also where we went to share our second love but that is a story for another day. When we were apart for two years, I kept coming back to New England to feel that magic again. I couldn't find it. When we had first been together, I had had visions of holidays and warm fires and the smell of wood burning and Cassidy wearing a flannel shirt and hiking boots and having a full beard. And there would be babies and dogs and maybe even goats. When we were apart and he was in California and I was in NJ, every time I went to New England, I'd see the dark side of the North. I'd see lonely, cold nights and no cell phone reception. I'd see widows dragging Christmas trees to the ends of their driveways signifying that the holidays were over and the darkest part of winter was here. I'd see people growing old and cold and alone.

Like I said, I always wanted to find myself here. I felt this way before Cassidy. I used to visit every summer when I was little because my grandparents rented houses in Vermont or New Hampshire. At first, it could be boring for five suburban kids who got tired of the one video store and one pizzeria towns. I just remember there were a lot of mountains and the nights were colder than in NJ. As I grew up, I began to crave that peace we had on my childhood vacations to New England. I liked maple syrup and nature. Moose and tall trees. Log cabins and the sound of tires hitting gravel driveways late at night, telling us we had arrived. I liked comfort. However even as a teenager visiting with my family and as a young adult coming up here to find moose and a magic I had lost, it never felt like home though I hoped it might one day. I found many parts of New England to be depressed and desolate and I couldn't imagine living here after the populated madness that is NJ. I'd come up here but I couldn't wait to get back to NJ and to the faster-paced life I knew.

Then when I left Jersey for good, it didn't take long before I couldn't call it home at all. I had thought I'd feel a good home feeling in California because I wanted to live in California even more than I had wanted to live in New England, but it didn't work out the way I planned and I felt even worse out there. For over two years, I had no home feeling. It took coming here and making a life together with baby in mind to finally find my home.

Northampton is home because our lives aligned into place here. It just happened.

In high school, I belonged to a Literary Magazine club and since I have a photographic memory, I clearly remember poems that we received as submissions. Once we received a poem from one of our own club members and it included a line about how getting something you want and dream about never feels in real life the way it did in fantasy. And I remember her clarifying by saying something like, "Yeah...you know? You want something so bad and when you get it, it doesn't feel as good as you thought it would be." I really think she was talking about losing her virginity or finally dating a guy she had obsessed over. However, the conversation stuck with me. At that point, I'd never experienced an adult-like version of achieving something you only dreamed about. All I can remember is getting a puppy at nine-years-old after having wanted one for life. And let me tell you - that felt every bit BETTER to live through than it had to dream about.

As I wrote about here back in March or April, I've achieved real life goals that I had dreamed about for a long time and it's true - it never feels like I thought it would feel. In some ways, it's better because it's real. In most ways, it's not better or worse. It's just different. Since I'm a little slow on the uptake and since I have done a lot of these dream-becomes-reality things at once, it's happened that I've reached a life dream and didn't even take the time to notice and celebrate it because I was so wrapped up in...life.

Well I noticed last night something big. Umm....I live in New England. Somehow I bridged the connection between wanting to call this place home, and calling this place home. And I've logically known that I live in New England but it wasn't until the startling scenery of last night's drive home that I truly realized - I LIVE IN NEW ENGLAND! I always wanted to. I don't feel depressed or in solitude. I found a place within New England that isn't really city, country or suburbs. It's just...Northampton. And it's surrounded by a vivid wilderness that is 100% New England wild. Yet it has all of the comforts of home. I've been here for a year and a half and now I have to commend myself for wanting to have been here and actually knowing how to be here. Yeah...slow on the uptake.

I'm glad I finally figured it out.

The Feeling.

There's this feeling I get sometimes and I have gotten it for a very long time. It's a feeling that is extremely difficult to translate into words. My mom and my older sister get this feeling very strongly and since it's so hard to talk about what it is and what causes it, it's a wonder that we ever figured out that we all feel it. If you get it, you get it. And not much explanation is needed. I have a few of these little oddities that I've been able to talk about just enough to find kindred spirits that feel the same. They're often people close to me. And then I wonder - are there many, many more of us out there and of course I'd find it in people close to me because I share personal feelings with people close to me? Or is it that I've been lucky enough to find people with my particular emotional complexities. I'm probably not that odd after all.

So this feeling. My mom calls it the "squishy feeling." I think my sister calls it the "mushy feeling." I've never been able to come up with my own name for it but if I did, it would probably be, "The sickening, cold-creeping, beautifully sad, zombie feeling." I'll have to elaborate. I came up with two definitions awhile back. They are:

"The Feeling"

noun

1. A spontaneous heartbreak of mysterious origin that occurs when viewing another person's seemingly mundane actions or belongings. You are touched deep inside in a way that's difficult to convey. When it (mostly) happens with strangers, it's bad and when it happens with people you know and love, it's worse.

2. A quick, minor and recurrent heartbreak that occurs from subtle actions and possessions of someone who's usually a stranger.


Now I feel like I've probably lost you by now. It's impossible to explain this! To put it in simpler words, sometimes I get really sad when I see someone say or do something that I speculate is a sign of weakness or whatever they're doing or whatever I'm seeing makes me see or think I see something deeper in them than is noticed at first glance. Now for my mom, she gets this squishy feeling when she's out in public and sees an old person fumbling for their money to purchase something. That at least makes some sense. I get that feeling when I see someone's glasses fall off. I just get so...sad. And when I see glasses laying on a table without their owner, I get sad too. Glasses are my trigger and I don't know why! Does weakened eyesight make me sad? Did something happen with glasses in my early childhood and now I get sad when I see them?

And sometimes this feeling comes from more obvious occurrences. My first memory of the squishy feeling was watching a film strip (remember those?!) about good manners in one of the lower grades of elementary school. In the film, some "bad" kids run around an old man in a parking lot until he drops his bag of groceries all over the ground. His lettuce rolls away and his eggs crack onto the pavement. One of the kids who is not a "bad" kid and was just yielding to peer pressure follows his heart and helps the man pick up his groceries. Pretty simple message, right? The rest of my class watched the film, got what they needed from it, and ran out for recess. Me? I cried in the bathroom for 15 minutes. I also cried myself to sleep that night. I was haunted by this poor old man dropping his groceries and having them spread out for everyone to see. It was my first major experience with The Feeling. In those same few years, I had a similar experience in the school library when the librarian read us a story about an old woman who loves her pet chicken and this chicken brings her all the happiness in the world and one day it dies and she's alone. (I'm tearing up as I write this) And some time later, she discovers that the chicken left her a basket of hatched eggs and now she's not alone anymore. This was just an illustrated book, and not a close-up film strip, and I was destroyed by this book. Clearly, since it's over 20 years later and I'm bringing it up now.

However, it's not always that clear and that obvious why I'd be sad. It's mostly just speculation. I do think those above examples can better help explain this cold, sad feeling I get sometimes because many people would get those feelings from the situations I described. However, do you get that feeling when, say, you have a house guest and maybe you're putting towels in your guest room for them and you see their beauty bag or suitcase and all of their products or clothes laid out? Or when you see your father's glasses laying on a book on a table? Or get this one - I get sad when someone gives someone else a gift and even if the gift giver is nowhere in ear shot, my heart breaks if the gift recipient says something negative or unappreciative about the gift. I can't stand that! Someone could give me a clearly re-gifted piece of junk that I already have, and they could be 3,000 miles away when I open this gift, but my lips will be clamped shut to make any comment that isn't grateful. You can ask my mom and Cassidy about this one. Maybe we got three toasters for our wedding, (just an example) but I probably wouldn't even comment on it. And if I thought about each person lovingly buying us a toaster, I'd feel all warm and squishy inside.

Does anything I said make sense? I know it does to at least a few people and that's enough for me. I'm haunted by the actions of other people. I'm haunted by the way people do the things they do. I don't know what this means. I don't know if it's projection of my own fears and weaknesses. All I know is that my heart breaks for others sometimes - maybe for no reason at all. Or maybe...I'm able to see a hidden truth about humans in these seemingly subtle occurrences. And maybe it hurts for a reason.

"Did You Ever See Such a Stormy Sky?"

I said something I consider hurtful about Stormy in a recent post. I said if I had known what I was getting into with her, I might have run away. And you know what? I don't think that's true. You see, I did know exactly what I was getting into. The first morning I spent the night on good ole Oak Street in SF, I woke up in the morning to find Stormy staring intently (I thought murderously at the time) at me with her head cocked to the side. She was watching me sleep! Then during the first few months I lived there, she manged to destroy my favorite pair of shoes and eat an egg sandwich breakfast I had gotten out in the Inner Sunset and had been salivating about for the 15 minutes it took to get home. She also embarrassed me in public on a regular basis by snapping at little dogs on leashes on Haight Street. Once she got mad at me and bit a hole in a pillow. We fought endlessly over prime couch real estate.

I tried once to run away from all of it - intense love, change, growing up. I realized my mistake three weeks later and tried to come back. It took me two years to get there, but I did. She welcomed me back the first night I came back after two long years apart. She did this by lying next to me and having our legs lightly touch. It was subtle but it meant the world.

She was jealous of me. And I was so jealous of her. It was hard to get used to sharing our guy. In all fairness, she had him first. I never liked her. I admit it here. However, I fiercely loved her.

Stormy, nothing you've done lately, nothing you could ever do...erases everything you are and everything you have been. Every homeless junkie on the street whose dull eyes brightened when they saw you. Every European tourist out west whose America road trip pictures featured your goofy antics, like sitting on park benches and hugging and kissing your owner. Every "I love you" you barked to him. Every howling session you engaged in with him. Every smile you put on his face. The dark, stormy times you pulled him through. Every door you closed all by yourself.

I'm watching you fading from this world and I can't bring you back this time. Last time you came right back to us when we called. This time, you're too far away. Just know you'll never disappear. You are vividly etched into the memories of every Haight Street regular and every friend and family member who ever knew you. You are difficult and wonderful and wild.

I forgive you.

Little Girl Curls.

Right after Scarlet was born and we were finally wheeled from the birthing room to the postpartum suite, the nurse (Cindy) who helped bring her into the world asked if I'd like a lesson on giving newborns a bath. Scarlet was alternately sleeping and whining while being bathed and as Cindy combed Scarlet's hair, I'll never forget her exclaiming, "Oh! She has curly hair!" And then, "Oh wait, maybe she doesn't!" And really - I didn't know if Scarlet had curly hair or not until pretty recently. When she was an infant, it was short, spiky and black. Around six months, it turned into an in-between wavy mess with a bald spot in the back. I never wanted to admit she had curls. I had very curly hair as a baby and it didn't get wavy until I was four or five. Cassidy also had curls as a baby. I can't speak for him but I like the way my curls grew out into waves and I like the way his did too. On the other hand, my sister had curls her whole life and she will be the first one to tell you that she likes her hair better straight. Every curly-haired actress I can think of straightens her hair. I remember getting a few perms and then anxiously waiting for them to grow out to my normal, tameable wavy hair. And that took years. Scarlet's curls reminded me of my own middle school frustrations and of course, I want everything to be easy for her always. I know it won't be. I was just being a fool.

I have changed my tune on Scarlet's curls. From six months to a year, it was at a very awkward, still-short point and it would stick straight up if we didn't tame it. I called her "Kramer" all the time. Post-bath, we had a very scientific process where we'd half dry her hair while she protested loudly, and then she'd have to wear a cap on her head for 20 minutes. After the cap was removed, glorious, silky hair would be revealed!

And then she got older and wiser. And she'd rip that cap right off her head. And summer came, and with it, thick, sticky humidity - a foe to any girl's curls...except for Scarlet. Her hair is now long enough where the curls fall down around her ears and they're multi-colored and they're soft and they're spunky and they're glorious.

And now a picture show. I call it "Ode to a Little Girl's Curls." (even though it's not a poem):












But I do have to say - she wears pigtails best of all. They change her face to make her look older and more pretty and they go well with a summer dress. The curls are all about crazy cute and are best paired with a Jimi Hendrix shirt and Baby Gap jeans.

True Confessions.

1. I go on petfinder.org daily and torture myself with the local puppy pictures. I have done this for years in search of something specific..

2. I've always wanted a little dog that listened to me and I could take it everywhere and it wouldn't run away. I don't want a purse dog or a little yappy dog, but I do want something trustworthy, loyal, cute and with character. Like a beagle or one of those mini shelties or something. Or something that looks and acts like a Jack Russell but doesn't have the spazziness. I know one day I'll have one and I'll know her the minute I see her.

3. I have a few gray hairs and I've had them for over ten years. I kind of like them. When I do eventually go gray for real, I'm not going to dye my hair the exact color it is now. I'm going a shade lighter because I've heard black dyed hair makes women's faces look older. A make-up artist and a hairdresser both told me that.

4. This is a juicy one. I often have dreams about relations with other men. And I *mostly* mean relationships. I fall in love hard with imaginary people on a semi-regular basis. It hurts my heart a little when I wake up sometimes.

5. I haven't lost the last four or five pounds of my baby weight yet. And I'm fine with it and might choose not to. I was freakishly skinny before I got pregnant - skinnier than I'd been since high school. That's what cross country road trips can do to a person.

6. I hereby swear that I'm not a picky eater! I'm what scientists call a "Super Taster." I call it a sensitive palate. There's nothing wrong with having an extra strong sense of smell and taste...until you offend hosts of dinner parties.

7. When I was really little, I always had crushes on grown men, like my horseback riding instructor, the man who built our house, Michael Jackson, John Stamos, my Aunt's ex-boyfriend, and more. I know this made sense because I had lost my father right before the crushes started. Anyway, I somehow seated two old objects of my young affection at the same table at our wedding. And my mom made some comment to them about how, "Tammy had a crush on both of you!" And I believe their wives laughed, thankfully.

8. When I was pregnant, I hadn't had fast food in at least five years but I wanted it a lot. Everyone talked me out of it..for the most part. One day I went to the Burger King drive-thru and ordered large fries. I felt so deliciously bad, sitting all alone in my car buying something I'd never admit to anyone. (until now) Well after one bite, I realized why I don't eat fast food and tossed them all in the garbage. So I suppose I have mostly retained my clean record, with just a slip-up here and there. (Wendy's french fries did happen ONCE.)

9. The first day I met Stormy, Cassidy took us to Ocean Beach in San Francisco to watch my first ocean sunset. It had all the makings of romance, until Stormy tore off down the beach and began terrorizing other people's BBQs and picnics. Cassidy was gone for a long time chasing her and trying to get her back. I sat alone under a blanket in the frigid, foggy night. I should have known then what I was getting myself into. And I admit - I may have been the one to run far, far away.

10. I want another baby. Badly.

The Power of Negative Thinking.

Last night, I read Scarlet the story of "Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day." While Scarlet was happily distracted with everything but the book, I found myself fully immersed in this story - a story I hadn't read in years. After I finished reading and closed the book, I jokingly said, "I think we can all learn from this story that Alexander was perpetuating self-defeating strategies. Basically he made his own sh*t and then chose to lie in it." And I laughed at myself because I was explaining this to Scarlet who was at the time throwing all of the socks from her sock shelf onto the floor, and then laughing maniacally. This morning, I realized I was the one who needed the lesson.

Years ago I had a friend who seemed to have the worst luck in the world. I was terrified of asking her the simple question of how she was. Literally every day, this could be the answer: "Oh, I'm not that great. My step-mother is dying. My dad's sick too. My grandfather just died. My dog has a cancerous growth. I got fired from my job. I got pulled over and got a $200 ticket. Then I rear-ended another car in a parking lot, ran over a deer on the way home, and when I got home - my house was on fire which didn't matter so much because it had been robbed of everything of value to me." I really don't think I'm exaggerating even slightly with that monologue. Ok...maybe a bit. However after awhile I came to the conclusion that life wasn't that bad and that maybe, just maybe, she was making some of the bad stuff happen by surrounding herself with negative energy. Ever notice that when things are good and you're on fire, a lot of good things happen at once? And when things are bad and you feel disconnected from your life, it seems like a lot of bad things happen at once?

I have to believe we have control over some of the things that happen in our lives. I wish I had more of the answers to this topic, but I don't. I just have a theory that there's great power in both positive and negative thinking and that you can control some of the outcomes of your lives. Maybe?

This morning I woke up like I sometimes do around here. Really, really down. The sun wasn't out, I had to go to work, and there seemed to be a lot of negativity in the house. There are some circumstances in our lives right now that seem dire to me. Somewhere inside I believe we'll get through them all but it's not a feeling I am blessed to feel every morning. Rather, I leave the house and Stormy is whining and Scarlet is crying that I'm leaving because she has developed a pretty significant separation anxiety from me lately. And I'm angry and I take that anger into the car where every other driver pisses me off and then I take it to the parking lot where all of the good parking spots are taken and then I take it to work and want to put my head in my hands but I can't do that at work so I save it up inside but then I get home and I'm so happy to see Scarlet and then I don't know where all of that negativity goes. I *hope* it evaporates into nothing. I fear it is festering inside me, ready to boil over on another bad morning.

This isn't every day. It may only be once a week or once every two weeks. But it's bad. I feel like I'm a walking fireball and people are running from my burning path.

And some days, most days, the sun comes out and I'm hopeful and positive all over again. And that's mostly.

I had heard that when your child is hurt, you want to hurt whomever/whatever hurt your child three times over. And it's true. There is nothing so pure and yet so fierce as a parent's love. However, what if your child was hurt and when you blindly and angrily go swinging back in revenge, you find that the person or animal who attacked your child also happens to be hurting? And maybe dying? For me, it complicates the sympathy I feel for Stormy. How can I be both angrier than I've ever been, but also really sad for her?

Occasionally I know that my relapses of negativity will eventually be non-existent, at least concerning Scarlet's accident. I feel positive about the situation enough to know that it won't be long before I've tackled a lot of the emotional fall-out. The proof for me is in these pictures. If this is the worst of it and she still looks and acts like this, I'd say I'm on an ever-spiraling track upwards:







A fab hair day:



What a face! What curls!




"My mom says some days are like that. Even in Australia." --Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

To Jersey and Back Again.

Ahh...this weekend just felt right in a lot of ways. It was my little sister's bridal shower in New Jersey and it was a packed party! And the food was phenomenal. It was a day about "showering" my sister with love and I hope she really felt it. If she's anything like I am, and I don't want to speak for her, but I remember feeling really overwhelmed and yet not at all unsure about the man I was marrying. It was just...a lot. Love you, Marisa!

I also got to meet her fiancée's (look at my fancy accent mark) family and it was like meeting old friends I already knew. I married a guy with great parents and she is doing the same. It really makes a huge difference.

Traveling alone with Scarlet is always a little overwhelming. This time around, I had a secret weapon for the car ride that I didn't have before - cow's milk. Man, she loves that stuff. She drinks it happily and then burps and acts giggly and drunk for about 1-2 hours afterward. This past weekend and always, I was astounded at the closeness I felt to my daughter. I have never spent one night away from her since she was born. I know my time is coming. Nursing is getting to be only once a day and I want Cassidy to have that alone time with her as well. It is precious. At night she slept on my chest and when everything was quiet I whispered to her, "What's my name?" She whispered back, "Mama." An hour passed and we woke up again. She looked around her at the unfamiliar room and held me closer. It grew silent and just when I thought she was asleep, she whispered to me, "Dada."

She also stood alone for the first time at our friends Leah and Goose's apartment last week. She did it again this morning with my mom. Before our car ride, I handed her a red ball and she looked at it and said, "Ball." Another new thing is that I often say "I love you" to her while pointing to myself, then drawing a heart with my hands and then pointing to her. When we got home Cassidy said to her, "I love you." She looked at him and made a messy heart with two hands! Seriously. Brilliant. One-year-olds are so interactive and amazing. I sometimes joke that I secretly think she's animatronic because the combination of her cuteness, her jerky older baby/early toddler movements and her voice are just too cute to be real. So she must be like those animated robots at Disney, right? Right.

She also does this new thing where if she wants something, she holds her hand out to it, tilts her head, smiles and says, "glee, glick, glee" while making her tongue go in and out of her mouth. Today Cassidy was holding her and I came into the room. She looked at me, held out her hand, tilted her head, smiled and said, "glee, glick, glee" with her tongue poking in and out of her mouth. I think this means she wanted me.

And lastly, I was astounded and amazed by the evolving bond she has with my mom. It is seriously insane. It's hard to say if the bond was built from seeing each other a lot the past few months, or if it's something more. Something spiritual and ancestral - something I don't even understand. All I know is that they are tight. Scarlet gets a little separation anxiety from anyone not me when she's not home and she's surrounded by strangers but she actually reached her arms out for my mom to hold her. She also saw my mom through a glass door and started pounding the glass to get her attention. As Marisa's friend said, "She left baby handprints all over the glass!" The next morning when she woke up, she said, "Nana? Nana!" And when she saw my mom, she smiled and laughed.

And now I'm home with my Trader Joe's coffee and my Trader Joe's hummus and I'm feeling positive about the weekend.