I try to get my blog mostly positive for a couple of reasons–mainly because the negative stuff often feels too personal to publicly broadcast, and because talking about it often just makes me feel worse.

But that means this blog is a mostly one-sided portrait of my life. It doesn’t reflect the full scope of my it, which has plenty of struggles. Obviously. Everyone has struggles. (I used to think that wasn’t true. Like, how could Paris Hilton ever have a problem of any kind? Then I realized people like her just plaster over problems with glitter and appletinis.)

I’m just feeling sad and discouraged tonight. To me discouragement is what I feel when my gratitude for my life gets muted a bit–I’m too weary to dig through the rubble to find the good stuff. It’s not even worth naming the problems, putting packing labels on them like luggage, because it’s where I’m taking them that matters. I try to take them to sunny places, but sometimes my arms get tired. But I can’t put them down because the creepster by the baggage claim vending machine might steal my underwear. Man do I know how to belabor a metaphor.

Right now my husband and daughter and playing hide-and-seek. My house is filled with joyful noise. I just looked out the window and saw a tiny chipmunk diving into a hollow in my favorite tree. Life is beautiful but sometimes it still sucks. Sometimes the weight on the worse end of the Beauty vs. Suffering life scale feels heavier, whether it really is or not. That’s fine. It’s a scale that’s always in transition, much like the one at my ob-gyn’s office.

I don’t know for sure if it’s a cultural thing, an American thing, but I feel like we’re a society that’s afraid to sit with sadness. We lament, or we hear others lament, and we reflexively tack on a “but at least.” At least she’s in a better place. At least it hasn’t spread. At least you have your health. There’s certainly nothing wrong with counting your blessings; it’s essential to happiness–but maybe trying to avoid sadness at all costs doesn’t equal happiness. Maybe it’s better to let sadness visit when it wants to, like a vacation that lets you come back to work refreshed and less eager to murder your cubicle-mate.

So I will sit with it and endure its weird smell and loud-mouthed chewing. And I will not properly appreciate the way dusk settles like a dream on the mountain that stretches across our wall-length office window and usually makes me feel like I can finally take a deep breath when I see it. Because tomorrow, I will. Or next week. Gratitude migrates for the winter, but it always returns.

***

I’m sorry for not responding to comments on my last few posts. I’m going to try to be better about that. I appreciate comments from you intelligent, funny, fabulous folks so much, and usually have a lot I want to say, but time has been getting away from me.

I seem to be suffering a serious case of I Don’t Know What To Blog Aboutitis.

I could talk about Mother’s Day, how I didn’t lift a finger all damn day, the lovely picnic we had in a beautiful local camping spot, how I felt content and blessed in a myriad of ways, not the least of which is living a place teeming with beautiful spots conducive to feeling content and blessed.

I could talk about Jo’s birthday next month, how I’m throwing her a teeny tiny Purple Princess Party (“Puhpuh Pincess Pahdee!!!”) inspired by a combination of her passionate love and devotion to the 1965 musical version of Cinderella and her favorite color. I’m reveling in planning the details, because though it’s a small and unfussy party, turning two is still a big freaking deal and I want it to be special.

I could talk about how my girl gets crazier by the minute and I’ve elevated my crazy to epic proportions to keep up. Her sweetness delights me, but I love her spice even more, though I really wouldn’t mind pressing fast-forward on this shrieking-at-the-top-of-her-lungs phase, holy bleeding eardrums.

I could talk about how I have a doctor’s appointment today that I’m dreading, having long put off confronting a tricky, non-serious but life-invading health issue. How I’m tired of my body failing me. How I cannot wait until we can upload our brains into robot bodies.

I could talk about how we’re taking Jo to the beach for the first time ever and I wish my swimsuit was as cute as her polka-dotted ruffle-butted one.

I could talk about how she’s got them moves like Jagger:

But what I really want to talk about is your favorite blogs. Which ones do you read on the daily? Which ones inspire you and make you feel like a natural wo-man? If you could only read one on a wifi-equipped desert island which would it be?

Yesterday I had a perfect moment.

We were outside in the yard, sitting on the sidewalk that leads from the garage door to the curb that separates the side yard from the backyard. Jo likes to color on it with chalk. (Actually what she really likes to do is bark “COLOR ELMO, MAMA! MORE ELMOS!” at me like a tiny cruel factory boss.) It was a beautiful day. High 60s and sunny with a gentle breeze. Perfection.

Jo was wandering around trying to find caterpillars when she suddenly walked purposefully over to where I was sitting, cross-legged on the ground, and cupped my face in her hands. She looked into my eyes for a good minute. Not searching. Just looking. Then she threw her arms around me and curled into me. I held her and rocked her as birds trilled and trees rustled around us. I thought this is a perfect moment and then got mad at myself because I hate it when I analyze a moment as it’s still happening; it’s totally non-Zen and disruptive but that’s how my annoying book-narrator-that-never-shuts-up inner voice works.

But it was perfect. My connection to Jo is so strong. If I wake up in the middle of the night, she wakes up a minute later. We notice the same things at the same time. We love being together. I can hardly stand to be away from her for even an hour. We understand each other without words. It’s hard to explain. I don’t even understand it on a rational level. It’s more than just love. There’s something in me that is also in her, but it’s unique to just us. Like a matching set of fingerprints on our brains.

And that’s the reason, more than any other, that I’m hesitant to have another child. I’m terrified of many other aspects of that decision, but realistically, I know that we could handle them–I would be tired and stressed but I would manage; money would be tight but we could swing it; our family life would be much different but we would adjust.

But the bond I have with my daughter, the intense mad dreamy love I feel for her, the way I know she is the absolute perfect no-substitutions-or-refunds daughter for me and Tim–what do I do with that? How could Lorelai have two Rorys? How could I possibly get this lucky twice? I know I’m being ridiculous, that parents love their second child just as much as their first–I mean, obviously. Probably Michelle Duggar feels an amazing connection with all 17 of her children. I just can’t imagine it. Literally cannot conceive of it.

I dreamed about Jo forever. I picked out her name when I was 14. My life ever-pointed me in her direction. How could I conceive a second child without having the same kind of longing and dreams for him/her? Isn’t that unfair? To just pick a name out of a baby book? To forego “long wanted” for “seemed like the sensible thing to do”? Why does a love that for other mothers seems so flexible and easily multiplied seem so very singular to me?

I know that other parents yearn for second and third and fourth children the way I yearned for my first. I don’t know why I don’t feel that way yet. On my birth board I lurk on, other mothers are excitedly conceiving and birthing second child like it ain’t no thang. Like it was just their destiny or whatever. I admire them, how freely they can dole out more maternal love like Jesus making the bread and fish multiply. I’m not Jesus. I’m afraid I wouldn’t have enough fish. And the new baby would just be looking at me like “Make it rain, dude” and I’d be waving my magic staff with no luck. (I may have a slightly skewed understanding of the Bible.)

I will probably regret saying stuff this personal out loud like this, but this is where I’m at. I haven’t hung a Going Out of Business sign on my uterus quite yet. I think about it. But Jo is my one true love. And Tim feels the same way. She’s the best, he says. Our life is perfect, he says. But then there are days like today when he announces, “Maybe we should have another kid because in that movie Knocked Up the sisters seem like really good friends.” Sure, babe. Let’s base our reproductive choices on a Judd Apatow movie.

I don’t know for sure what the future of my uterus looks like but I’m grateful that today I don’t have to worry about it. Today there’s just me and Jo and our bicycle built for two, our one fish two fish, the sweet simplicity of one hand in mine.

Megan: What’s the best thing about being a father?

Tim: Watching Jo learn new things. The first time she sings a song or says the alphabet or crosses the wooden bridge by herself at the playground, and the look of pride she gets when she realizes she did it. When she made it across that bridge for the first time she literally spread her arms out and yelled to the sky, “I made it! I made it!” I don’t know what could be better than that.

Megan: What’s the hardest thing about being a father?

Tim:Never not working. Work is work; being a father is work; being an adult is work. Working gets old.

On a deeper level, though, I think the hardest thing is having an ultimate responsibility. All it takes is one, and as soon as you have one ultimate responsibility, everything else in life is burdened with meaning. When the only thing you have to account for is your own life, nothing really matters at the end of the day — it’s just your life, so who cares if you screw it up or throw it away. It’s empty, of course, not having anything you need to live for, but it’s also easy and stressless and free. Psychologically, that was a big change, and I’m still trying to learn how to negotiate that emotionally.

Megan: Is it different than you thought it would be?

Tim:Not really. A long long time ago I thought that by the time I was a father I’d feel like a grownup. Now I always think of an interview the poet Marvin Bell, who was in his 70s at the time, and when asked about what it feels like to get older, he said something that I’d never heard before–that he still felt like the same boy he always was. You look older, so people treat you different, but underneath your skin you’re really just the same kid trying to figure everything out. That seems very true to me now. I don’t feel like I’m a 31-year-old father, really–just like you don’t feel a year older just because your birthday happened to be yesterday. I wonder if everyone else feels they same way–is being a grownup just faking it? If people see me, they probably don’t realize I’m faking it. That’s something I never expected, but it was something I realized before I actually became a father. At that point I already knew it would be like this, a sort of merry fumbling through confusion. That’s life.

Megan: Why do you snore so much?

Tim:I don’t think I started snoring until after you got pregnant. I think it’s a father thing. Like a rattlesnake’s rattle, telling the riffraff to keep away from my kid. Or maybe it’s just neck fat. Probably neck fat.

Megan: Boy, why you so obsessed with me?

Tim:[Redacted for graphic content.] Also because you’re the prettiest, funniest, smartest, and weirdest so most interesting person I’ve ever met.

Megan: What’s the best part of your day?

Tim:Taking Jo to the park after work, because it’s fun, then I get to go home and eat dinner and spend some relaxing time with my wife. It’s the start to the break of the day.

Megan: How do you feel about my crush on Ryan Gosling?

Tim:[Redacted to avoid creating a paper trail should anything mysteriously happen to that poor bastard who has it coming.]

Megan: What would be a perfect day for you?

Tim:Most days are pretty perfect, as long as I don’t have to go into the city. Drinking some coffee, hanging out with the family, doing a little work, going somewhere random and unimportant, pushing Jo on the swings, eating too much of something really good for dinner. I’m boring, which means I like the routine.

Megan: Where do you see us in five years?

Tim:Walking Jo to school and back. You working in the garden, me working in the office. Doing family stuff around town ON THE MOON! Or just right here.

Megan: What one word best describes our marriage?

Tim: Baklava

Megan: Anything else to say?

Tim:I’m hungry what’s for dinner?

Yesterday Tim walked in from having taken Jo to the park and didn’t blink an eye when I announced, “Soup’s ready, but I can’t eat it because the stewed tomatoes look like little octopuses.”

“Oh, okay.” *continues on to check his baseball stats or take the garbage out or another one of those things he always does*

He’s used to it by now, my food crazy. I haven’t eaten sliced avocado since last summer, when I freaked out because a piece of it protruding from my sandwich looked like a lizard tail. I had to give up my beloved fake chicken because one time a piece of it felt tough like muscle, and even though I know logically it’s fake chicken and there is no muscle, it’s forever ruined for me. The other day I was fixing a snack when I saw a piece of lint dangling from the oven and the shape of it and the way it was dangling grossed me out so much I couldn’t eat my snack.

I don’t know what the hell kind of disorder that is, but I’m pretty sure I need therapy. You know that episode of Freaky Eaters where the girl eats nothing but french fries? We joke that’s the road I’m headed down. I do really like french fries…

Anyway. We had a good weekend. (It’s weird to phrase it that way, because we have untraditional work schedules, and thus the weekend is just like any other two days of the week, but.)

I worked in the garden.

That’s not a phrase I’ve ever uttered before. I’ve never gardened. I have no idea what I’m doing. But all I did yesterday was stuff pine needles and weeds and leaves and branches into garbage bags. It’s a mess, and I’m embarrassed about the state of it, but I pushed past the embarrassment and back pain and filled two huge garbage bags in one hour…and I’d only gotten to 1/5 of the garden. Yeah. It’s bad. But I have faith that I can whip it into decent shape.

There’s no denying that it’s spring. There’s putting sunscreen on little drumstick legs three times a day, and washing chalk and dirt off said legs three times a day, and listening to music while I cook dinner and a warm breeze drifts through the open windows.

It’s my first non-L.A. spring in six years. Yesterday there was this magic in the air; I kept getting an intense feeling of nostalgia I couldn’t put my finger on. I finally realized it was Washington state, the little rural town I grew up in there. Spring here feels like summer there. And walking through our backyard with Jo, picking up stray acorns and checking trees for fairies, my childhood comes back to me like a forgotten song, the words just as sweet and right as they once were. And I know that Jo will have the same wild sticky-limbed summers I had. She will roll down hills and name trees and pick flowers.

The thought makes me very happy.

On Monday, we went to the Rainforest Cafe. It’s a cheesy-ass theme restaurant that’s headache-inducingly obnoxious unless you have kids and then it’d AWESOME. We’d walked by it before in the mall, and Jo flipped her lid over the fake animals kicking it in front of the restaurant. “Gowillaaaassss,” she kept crying as we schlepped her through the rest of the mall. We promised her we’d come back soon.

We haven’t gone to a restaurant with her since October. It always just seems like more trouble than it’s worth, and we don’t like being glared at and complained about by other patrons. I know we shouldn’t care what other people think, rise above, haters gon’ hate, etc., but it still kind of sucks.

Anyway, I figured that at the freaking Rainforest Cafe, one has to expect that there might be a kid or too, right? It turned out nobody else was even there. Apparently eating heavy salty food at 11 am on a Monday surrounded by cranky animatronic jungle animals isn’t most people’s idea of a good time. Weirdos.

The waitress gave Jo crayons and kid’s menu. Without a thought, like it’s just totally normal that my newborn is a KID. Which it is, but whoa. We used to just bring baby food jars to feed her from. Watching her color on the placemat and picking out an entree for her from the kid’s menu–you would think I was watching her graduate from college. My BABY is eating FOOD! At a RESTAURANT! What?! I’m crazy, I know.

Homegirl loved the live fish and the creepy robots and feeding herself and Tim french fries. And three days later, she is still saying this every five minutes:

“Gorillas. Elephants. French fries. French fries Dada eat it.”

I think she doesn’t want to let her father forget the extreme act of selflessness that was sharing her French fries. Maybe then he’ll repay with a kindness of equal value, like finding a way for her to pet a hummingbird. (I told her it can’t be done. She cried. Dream-crusher.)

I thought it would be fun to do a little photo-documentation of a typical day in my life. Well, it’s not perfectly typical, but close enough. (This was a really fun little project. I think I enjoyed the day more because I recorded it, weirdly enough–I was more present. It’s inspired to take more pictures of ordinary days.)



Miss Thang wakes up at 6:00. I change her and dress her and shlep her downstairs for breakfast.

Fresh banana pancakes and Elmo. I know I probably shouldn’t let her put her feet on the table but it’s just so cute.

Meanwhile, I have my coffee, looking extremely glamorous.

After breakfast, we play until Daddy comes down. I told him he looked like a hipster so he decided to pose like a hipster.

I get dressed in my typical “not going anywhere today” mom uniform. Now i’m, like, at least twice as glamorous.

why do i look like john lennon?

Jo has her morning tantrum. Usually because I looked at her funny or something.

oh the humanity

And then has to rest and recover.

And then happy playing ensues. Behind her is the reason we can’t play outside today. Boo.

After I put her down for a nap, I do exciting activities like laundry and dishes.

i always look that happy when i unload the dishwasher

Then I do some work. It’s extremely serious business.

Someone is wide awake and ready to party.

We play.

Daddy cut her bangs this morning. That’s why she looks like Ringo. We should start a Beatles tribute band.

We eat lunch and make masterpieces.

She “helps” me fold laundry.

Daddy’s home! (He works at home mostly, so he doesn’t usually come through the door like that, but I made him do this for dramatic effect. I told him to look happy to see us. Apparently he took that to mean “look like you’re about to maul and eat a squirrel).

Then I do more work. Transcribing and editing reviews. It’s so serious and important I couldn’t take a picture of it or you guys would be too intimidated by me.

Then it’s bedtime. Which always means a bedtime story.

Then Tim and I get some alone time. I didn’t take a picture of that either. You’re welcome.





*Disclaimer: I have never woken up in the morning feeling like P.Diddy.

We had a great Easter.

We’re not religious, so Easter is really Spring Solstice to us, just like Christmas is Winter Solstice, but somehow I always hesitate to say we’re celebrating the solstice, because it just sounds so new age hippie weirdo, like “Oh, and do you also celebrate THE FEAST OF THE ELVES?!”

But I like spring. Spring is worth celebrating.

In L.A., spring is nothing more than the 3rd hottest season. I dreaded it the way one dreads Sunday because it’s almost Monday. Here, you can feel it. Life. Growth. Baby lambs and shit. Did I mention it’s mothertrucking SNOWING today?

But last week it was springy as a mattress. And I was invigorated not only by the weather, but by the astonishing fact that this was the first holiday I really felt like a mom, doing mom-like things. I carefully selected the contents of my daughter’s first Easter basket. I agonized over the perfect Easter dress and sandals that reflected its golden hues without being too Florida Trophy Wife. I made pancakes in the shape of a bunny.

I’m not the kind of mom with an innate understanding of and passion for making things festive and beautiful. My idea of a craft is squirting fingerpaint on a high chair tray. I don’t know how to make a cupcake look like anything but a cup of cake. I have no idea what to do with Jo’s hair. I wanted to tie a pretty bow on her Easter basket and cursed myself for paying attention all those years when my mom tried to teach me how to do that thing with the scissors where you make the ends of the ribbon curly.

But I’m realizing that the photogenicness of my efforts doesn’t really matter. It’s fun just to try. And Jo is easily impressed.

She is growing. Her vocabulary blooming, her personality sharpening. I am bursting with things to look forward to. Dress up. Movie theaters. Pretend. Disneyland. What were once abstract fantasies are now nearly plans, so close, right there. I’m remembering, with overwhelming awe and gratitude, all the years I dreamed of having a daughter, a Josephina. I hoped she would have brown hair. I hoped she would be feisty and strong. I hoped we would spend every day together.

And I do. And we do.

Sometimes when she is eating and watching Sesame Street, she silently reaches for my hand, pulls it into her lap without taking her eyes off Elmo. This is what I always wanted, I think, only it’s better, because she isn’t the soft-focus, indistinct daughter of a dream; she’s real, frowning and snot-tinged, gorgeous and wild, enchanting and frustrating, synapses firing and toes twitching.

She is my daughter. I am her mother. Simple. Surreal.

“I Am I Said” by Neil Diamond. Only when I’m throwing myself an epic My-Sweet-Sixteen-style pity party. This song is awesome because the message is basically, “My life is perfect but I feel like crap and nobody loves me.” If Neil was a girl he probably would’ve added, “And I hate all my clooooothes.” It’s vintage First World Problems, basically. And some days you just need to complain about how even the chair doesn’t give an eff about you. True fact.

“Lullaby (Goodnight, My Angel)” by Billy Joel. A friend once told me that she frantically switches the channel every time she hears the opening music for that infamously heart-punching Sarah McLachlan commercial. That’s exactly what I do when “Lullaby” comes on my, um, lullaby station on Pandora. I don’t need to put my tear ducts through that kind of trauma. Just listen to these lyrics: “One day your child may cry and if you sing this lullaby then in your heart there will always be a part of me.” And: “Someday we’ll all be gone, but lullabies go on and on/they never die, that’s how you and I will be.” Particularly waterworks-inducing if you have a baby daughter to whom you often sing a lullaby your mother once sang to you (“Feed the Birds” from Mary Poppins). Well played, Billy Joel. Well played.

“Lightning Crashes” by Live. The melody and vocals of this song are beautifully haunting, but the lyrics really get me. “Lightning crashes, an old mother dies. Her intentions fall to the floor. The angel closes her eyes. The confusion that was hers belongs now to the baby down the hall.” There’s a lot of weird interpretations of the song’s meaning, but I think it’s about the circle of life, how everything that ends comes back in some way. And that image of a life struggling into being while another one is failing only rooms away…gets me every time. Such a beautiful song.

“Hurt” by Johnny Cash. There’s only one reason this song makes me cry, and that reason is Johnny Cash. Somehow every molecule of who he is, the whole collection of his life’s pain and anguish and weariness (god knows he’s had his share of it) is present in every grisly, whiskey-soaked word. I think it’s fascinating that it was originally a Nine Inch Nails song, because it’s so perfectly suited to Cash it’s almost like a musical biography. If you want to wallow to the fullest extent, listen to it while riding a train and staring out at some bleak landscape.

“Beloved Wife” by Natalie Merchant. You have to be a complete masochist to voluntarily subject your ears to this. It’s about an old couple who’s been in love for a million years and then the wife dies and the man is distraught and wants to kill himself. So basically, an excellent addition to any Bar Mitzvah! Seriously, it’s horrible. Gorgeous, but horrible. The heartwrenchingly plainspoken lyric “you were simply my beloved wife” repeats throughout, a perfect portrayal of a husband dumbstruck and frozen in his grief, until you want to curl into the fetal position and look at cat videos for the rest of your life. I think this one also wins “absolute worst song to set to a techno beat and play at da club.”

“Baby Mine” from Dumbo. I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just say that if you can watch this video without looking like Oprah when she met Mary Tyler Moore, you miiiiight be a sociopath.

Please tell me what songs make you cry. Or I’ll make you listen to Christmas Shoes and your ears will cry tears of blood.