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Here we sit, delayed indefinitely in LAX. Traveling during the holidays with two diaper-aged children in the climate of perpetual “code orange” creates such fertile opportunities for the practice of deep breathing.
There are 24 visibly deep-breathing women with increasingly full bladders and bowels shifting from foot to foot in line for the predictably inadequate supply of toilet stalls in the familiar smelling airport bathroom. I am going to boldly guess that most of the grown ups crowded around me on the geometrically patterned taupe carpet are also doing some deep breathing, too – as the airline representatives repeatedly update the delayed flights’ departure times. Wouldn’t want that job.. especially this time of year. A week ago, disgruntled passengers’ angst might have been placated by the swooning tide of holiday cheer and seasonal cultural expectation of good will. But now, on New Year’s Eve, that buffer of glad tidings has thinned and evaporated, leaving bags under eyes, bellies over belts, and credit cards over their limits. We’re all out of holiday freaking cheer, this weary crowd vibes, in response to the rolling changes on the airline reader board.
Though groggy and over-caffeinated, I still feel annoyingly cheerful. My birthday is this week and that always provides a little extension to normal end of the special sparklyness of the american holiday season. As long as I ignore the number attached to this year’s celebration of my birth, I can get a little giddy about it. I’m having a highland games kilt fest to celebrate. Lucky little lass that I am. Wish I had a caber and straw bale to toss right now… it would be a great way for my traveling cohort here at gate 34 to pass some grump-producing time.
The least LAX could do is provide free WiFi for Kuntrywives like me who need to blog at times like this. No such luck.
Baby Nola has just pulled everything out of my excessively packed purse – leaving credit cards, herbal remedies, dirty toddler underwear, melted lip balm, half-eaten crayons, 2 week old string cheese, and mismatched adult socks for all the world to see. I’d better sign off and join my neighbors in deep breathing and innocent airport eavesdropping.
Happy New Year!
I’ve been drafting angry letters to Sears in the middle of the night when I’m up nursing the baby. I’ll say this and then that and something else and something else and then.. the topper. I’ll threaten to talk dirt about Sears on my widely read, very high-profile, super powerful BLOG. That will scare them silly. Their entire profit margin will flash before they eyes just thinking about Jenoa Briar-Bonpane’s blog exposing their dirty laundry along with her own…
Haven’t written the letter on paper yet but here’s a little ditty that made me feel better.
AN ODE TO SEARS
Though my warranty is paid, the bed cannot be made –
for the sheets have joined our dirty laundry parade.
From piles they formed heaps and then mountains – with sheep,
The only thing dirtier are the clothes in which I sleep.
Sears has left us out here, turned it’s head to avert those corporate eyes
The repairman won’t come, despite offers of pies.
Week after week until six have now passed,
I tell them first sweetly then firmly with sass,
the diapers are skunky and my pants are too.
they should pay us a visit, it’s not like we live in Corfu.
It’s farther than some but not as far as could be,
A nice drive, I tell them, plus you’ll get to see me.
Kuntrywife with the kids and the laundry and dishes,
just out here throwing pennies in a sink full of Sears focused wishes.
“Maybe next week says dispatch,” then “maam” to be nice,
don’t maam me, i think but then beg him again twice –
to come see this washer and the family that feeds it,
to come see these socks and these jammies that sit.
The laundromat’s fun when your 28 and childless –
not such a blast when there’s two and your my age.
An hour and a half we commute with the backlog,
the sweatshirts with mud and the turtlenecks with eggnog.
I’m spoiled – I know it as this ode will show
to be honest the stink is not the thing that has to go.
It’s the but it’s my turn-ness –
the waiting in earnest
for the warranty that i bought
so responsibly fraught
with high hopes for a machine that would spin
So, perhaps writing this ODE opened a channel that was stagnant because just this morning, the Sears serviceman came. It was touch and go with last minute calls claiming UPS hadn’t come and the washer was old, then too new, then too far…. but he came here. He did. And we gave him a hero’s welcome.
He plunged his experienced hand into the rubber “boot” that seals around the door. His brow scrunched severely as he said, “you have to really check you pockets cuz nails and things can really mess these things up.” Oh yeah, I said, of course. Then he pulled out a sock hanger – you know those black plastic devices that hang socks on store racks??? Yes, he pulled that out of the “boot” and proclaimed – “this is your problem, right here.” I guess for good measure he swept around some more and produced 3 nails, one screw, a dollar thirty in change, two barrettes and a watch. “Wow, this watch is still working!” he said and we marveled together. Maybe my next ode will be to Timex – they really DO take a licking (and speed spinning) and keep on ticking.
But that wasn’t it… there were more problems. He was shocked and dismayed and vowed to return in a week or a few days. But not before telling me about his drug past, legal run-ins, relationship history, christian conversion, divorces, family estrangement, suicidality, new girlfriend, her drug history, mental health issues, treatment status, and christmas plans. He also told me how grateful he was that he’d been able to change his life after so many hard knocks. I wanted to hug him when he left – I was so touched by his deep concern for my washer and thoughtful attention to it’s needs. Don’t tell Sears, but he’s throwing in new “boot” for free. Sears doesn’t like that, he mentioned.
The clothes are still running around wild but I’m satisfied. I had my visit with the repairman and I know he’ll be back.
Once again, I am up too late, monkeying around with holiday stuff.. any one else on this path to seasonal sleep deprivation??
Ossian is trying to make sense of all that she is learning about this time of year.. how do Hanukkah, Christmas, solstice, and Kwanzaa all relate? which ones are we doing and why? why can’t we go to santa’s house? but where is the solstice? Her most flabbergasting quote this week was, “Solstice and Christmas are both the same joke and it’s wonderful.” I swear to god, she said that over her bowl of maple oatmeal.
She’s also been asking when and how we will do Faucet’s funeral. We hung a glitter glued “F” on the tree in honor of Faucet. A few minutes later, a friend came by and Ossian announced that “Faucet is dead”.
I unexpectedly picked up his cremains today while Christmas shopping in sparkly Ferndale. We watched the santa tractor chug down the main street towing grade school children and a bell ringing, fuzzy red santa. My friend Emily needed to stop at the vet so I asked if she’d check on Faucet’s cremains status. She returned with a condoling expression and shiny white sealed box in her hand that was labeled, “Faucet dog”. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. So surreal. As you may remember, I am not very expeditious about handling the cremains of my loved ones. Review my “dad” post to posit this claim, if need be.
I think I miss him most when I open the front door. He was always there, wagging and shimmying and snorting and exciting around when we returned home from anywhere. Could have been gone a week or a month or just long enough to take the garbage out… he always mustered the same ecstatic and dedicated enthusiasm. I also miss his circling… he had this habit of pacing in increasingly tight circles.. round and round and round until he’d cleared the psychic space he needed to lay down like a dog. It was kind of like what you’re supposed to do when poaching eggs… warm up the water, swirl it around and precisely descend the egg into the eye of the resulting whirlpool. Only he was a shepherd, not an egg. Of course, he liked eggs, though they upset his delicate stomach.
Well, I will sign off before this blabber becomes a whirling yolk, pleasurable only to a long, red shepherd.
A long week of fitful nights with an unusually squawky baby Nola has apparently not been in vain. This morning, tired eyed and groggy, I saw the fruit of our belaboring. A big front tooth. Wide and flat, like a pull-down slideshow screen, it sits proud and unswerving. That brings her total to 6 sharp little teeth. Jack o lanterns, eat your seedy hearts out.
Another fit producing process has borne flat and wide (depending on your screen size) fruit as well. I am now launching my website. Ta da. Check me out at jenoabriarbonpane.com. Soon, I will be a verifiable online merchant, too.
Furious wind and relentless rain rattled the roof and forest all night. I love the downpours.
At 5 am, our double deck doors burst open, filling our cozy bedroom with damp wildness from a hearty gust of late fall storminess.
Up crept the sun and Blase and I climbed into Ossian’s bed to hang out with her as she awoke. Such sweet moments.. that first eye opening, when they’re all hugs and sunshine. It was so calm – the three of us together, just breathing and holding hands. Nola slept soundly in our room, finally tuckered out after a fitfull night of teething, fever breaking, and bed hogging.
Our quiet reverie was abruptly shifted when we whispered “yes” in unison, responding to her question, “do you want to see my cow jumps?” And so the real day began. Footed pajamas now engaged in a vertical leap with kicks and giggles. How do they do that? From sleep coma to race-pace “cow jumps” in the space of one millisecond. And then, when the cow jump was complete, it was time for “skunk tricks.” “Now, I’ll do some skunk tricks. But there’s no spray, no tail actually.” Her fuzz ball peppered yellow footie pajamas now took to scissor kicks and unexpected arm extensions.
Fast forward an hour and we are all downstairs.. having already changed diapers, discarded pull-ups, detangled hair, half-dressed, yogurt gulped, block chewed, coffee heated, oatmeal simmered, laundry folded, faced the dirty dish pile, stoked the fire, paid bills, and watched a toddler show – by now it is 8:04 am. Time to poop. Osh did the old poop and run, routine. Daddy’s coaxing that it was time to transfer the goods from her little throne to the big one for flush time were apparently not persuasive – she was fully absorbed in the work of “putting her monkey to sleep.” I decided to reason with her with reminding about responsibility. Just like cleaning up our play and toys when we’re done playing, I blabbed, putting our poopoo away is a responsibility. This seemed to mildly enrage her and suddenly we had to bear the sound of our 2.75 year old yelling, “POO POO is NOT a RESPONSIBILITY!!!! “. We had to do this without laughing. These are the nearly impossible tasks of parenthood. Not laughing is a big RESPONSIBILITY, too.
well.. you guessed it, I took my filthy self to dance class and let the sloppy battements fly. several generous slathers with the deodorant stick helped. I carefully removed the nearly attached hat from my sweaty head to reveal the aging remains of two forgotten braids. Attempts at unhooking them were unsuccessful so I mashed them together and ruthlessly shoved them into a barrette as though I had intended this for them since their inception. I cleverly applied a little lip balm and a clean shirt bearing the word “impeach” as a diversion and persevered to class. I needed to dance and I did. No shunning has occurred.
Last night, the shower could be neglected no longer. We had an engagement at the Grange. The Malaysian children’s choir had journeyed across the world and over the mountains to sing for our tiny community in the middle of nowhere. The least I could do was bathe for them.
Leading the choir was a short, taut woman who spoke at length between jolly holiday songs performed my disciplined children wearing blue kilts, pink vests, red bow ties, and furry scarlet santa hats. The kids would finish a rousing show choir style rendition of “deck the halls”, replete with synchronized dance movements, and then the leader would remind us that in her day, little girls were drowned at birth. Then they’d launch into “joy to the world” and we’d return to the leader’s lament, this time her statement that Malaysia is a “cultural cemetery”. It was all very confusing and full.
It’s amazing how my perception of self-indulgence changed after having children. Pampering myself used to mean getting a massage, going backpacking, eating out a luscious restaurant, heading for a weekend in the islands, or getting a nice haircut. Now, a seven minute hot shower with two small children making noisy demands of me from behind the steamy curtain feels like a full day at the spa. I should really do it more often.
This week, “take a shower” has been towards the top of my methodically thought about but hastily scrawled to-do list. This item has yet to be completed or crossed off. This is such a routine conundrum that I hesitate to even waste a blog post on it’s description. I guess the idea of waste is really irrelevant given that this blog is free and that I can do little else while holding a lightly sleeping baby in anticipation of a soon-to-awake-and-likely-to-be-grumpy toddler. I could read, I suppose.
Water is plentiful now, after a barrage of steady rain last week. The water heater’s pilot has been re-lit after being snuffed out by nearly gale-force winds. Though today has been rough with two sick little ones and a disturbingly filthy house, my mood is good and I cannot claim depression or lethargy as a barrier to my much needed bathing session. I even have a new, yummy bar of soap. So what’s the problem? Competing priorities with limited resources of time, I guess, and personal hygiene simply hasn’t made the cut. It’s not like I’m running the United Nations or something, so what could these mighty “competing priorities” be? That explanation would be a waste of a blog entry. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
I am in rather desperate need for a break from my blessed children. An ideal solution exists in the form of my favorite weekly dance class (yes, it is the only one in town) which takes place this evening. My hygiene deficit begs the question, “can I inflict my malodorous and matted self upon my dancing peers?” The room will be overheated and bumping with bodies. While I could imagine deluding myself into thinking that a hefty swath of deodorant would camouflage my transgressions, nothing can fool me into believing that my hair mats are insignificant. I will be forced to remove my hat; an accessory that hasn’t left my head in several days. What the absence of hat will reveal is a lot to consider. Is my desperation for a break greater than or equal to my shame about my disheveled state. Will I dance tonight, hair pies and all? Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion to today’s mini-drama, Hat Hair of the Hurried Housewife. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.
P.S. Feel lucky that my camera is still languishing in the hands of the Canon repair department. Otherwise, my tremendous hat hair could be the last thing you see when you close your eyes to sleep tonight.
Last night in our dark car on the way to Monday night football, Ossian was singing. Her songwriting is really evolving as this excerpt will attempt to illustrate:
“I love red.
I love red and blue.
I love red and blue and orange.
I love CRABS! I love CRABS! I love CRABS!”
In bed this morning, Ossian asked why Santa makes that “ho ho ho” sound. I explained that in the Santa story, he has a jolly laugh and that is what it sounds like. She took it in and replied, “I don’t like it”. I asked her if she wanted Santa to come to her house and she answered decidedly “no – I don’t like Santa”. What a relief! The whole Santa thing has been a bit of a controversy around here. We should have just put the question to her first – would have saved me and Blase a lot of philosophical conversation. We could have talked about who was going to take out the garbage and call the landlord about the leaking ceiling instead.
did i mention that during last week’s raucous storm people were driving to town with chainsaws in their trunks? that’s what we’re talking about out here… if a tree falls down in the road before you, you have to be ready to deal with it yourself.
Bring Your Own Chainsaw
Alas, the lights are back on, the winds have moved on, and I am reunited with cyberspace. Somewhere in the midst of 50 knot winds, slamming rain, and two days without power, we also managed to host a little earthquake. For some reason, the earthquake in complete darkness at 4:45 am seemed a little more nerve-wracking then our more run of the mill shaking by nightlight. Oddly, the earthquakes frequently seem to happen in the lull or calm following big storm. Maybe someone with some geological expertise can shed some light on that phenomenon?
Nola weathered a little storm of her own and has produced one more tooth from her miniature mouth. This brings her to a grand total of four mighty little teeth. She will eat anything that she can wrangle into her mouth which makes our toddler-saturated house a bit of a baby hazard minefield. Ossian regularly pulls soggy cardboard, freight trains, and stray shoes out of her little sister’s insatiable mouth.
Which reminds me of a marvel I witnessed last week. Ossian, now 2.75 years old, calmly received two fillings last week. I was so nervous about it that I canceled several appointments in a row. Despite the pediatric dentist’s assurance that he does it all the time on little ones like mine, I couldn’t conceive of how it would work. I can barely keep myself in the chair after years of experience with fillings, drillings, amalgam removal, root canals, extractions, cleanings, and even deep gum scraping. It makes me cringe even to type about it here. Ossian, however, bears none of the dental angst, loaded expectations, and painful memories of previous dental experiences with which I am laden. I watched her lie back, unflinching and completely unmedicated (no local, no gas, NOTHING), and eagerly hold her mouth wide open while strange grown-ups drilled, picked, scraped, sprayed, sucked, and heated up her decayed molars. She watched the whole thing with interest in the overhead mirror and was completely unaware that she wasn’t supposed to like the experience. But she did like it. It was just another notch in her toddler belt of fun new things. It was shocking. It also made me feel like an uber wuss.. with all my, “wait, wait! I think I can feel that, I need more Novocaine, gas, and Valium” whinyness at the dentist.
Did you know that you are supposed to be flossing your toddler’s teeth daily?? Did you know that you are also supposed to be wiping your infant’s gums with a xylitol solution after every feeding – before they even hint at getting teeth?! Did you also know that dried fruit, no matter how sugarless and organic, is a TOTAL no-no?!!! Same goes for juice – even diluted juice fresh from your backyard apples. All of this was outrageous news to me. It’s a miracle anyone has any teeth at all by the time they get to preschool. Feels pretty rough to know that you have already done irrevocable physical damage to your child, doesn’t it? It’s a good thing I didn’t tell Ossian’s dentist how many months it has been since a piece of floss has been strong-armed between my teeth. I might have been jailed as an unfit parent.
The day after Ossian’s heroic dental feat, she asked me to show her my teeth. I gave her a big, tooth exposing smile to which she said, “mommy, you have really crooked teeth.” No one has ever said that to my face.. not even my 8 th grade orthodontist who lost the debate with my father over whether I needed braces.
(Mouth of a river lamprey, a jawless cordate)
life on the lost coast 
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