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- 28. February 2010: Pardon Me...
- 21. February 2010: Several Senses Of Late...
- 11. February 2010: So Sorry...
- 25. January 2010: The Problem With Going Home...
- 25. January 2010: Speaking of Mantas...
- 15. January 2010: Oceans To Write...
- 13. January 2010: Relief For Haiti
- 4. January 2010: Happy New Year! 2010201020102010 etc....
- 25. December 2009: Christmas Break: Pre-Christmas Haircut...
- 18. December 2009: On Things Growing Around Here...
- ANNE LAMOTT
- BOB TYLER & THE RECKLESS HEARTS
- BRIDGET HOIDA
- CHELLA COURINGTON
- CHRIS ABANI
- CRABMOMMY
- DOOCE
- ERIN CLENDENIN PHOTOG
- EVE ENSLER VDAY
- FINSLIPPY
- FOODS EXPLAINED
- FOSTER JOHNSON
- JESCA HOOP
- KAYOTIC KITCHEN
- MARTHA!
- MOM 101
- Mom Bloggers Club
- MOMS IN A BLOG
- MOMVERSATION
- Mother of Three: Baratch Family
- MOTHERHOOD LATER
- MOTHERVERSE
- Nicole Strasburg
- PB RIPPEY
- QUINCY
- Rippey Baby Food Maker
- SANDRA TSING-LOH
- SMART GALS
- SUSAN BUSH
- THE PIONEER WOMAN
- UNICEF: DRC SPECIFIC
- ZACH MADDEN
Pardon Me…
28. February 2010 by PB Rippey.
O pardon me while I procrastinate Sunday’s blog post by listing books I’ve read so far this year, this 2010 stuff-of-life year, here. Right here:
Parenting Without Stress, Marshall
The Lightning Thief, Riordan
The Informers , Vasquez (yep. for book club. yep…almost didn’t survive that one…)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Diaz (I survived, I definitely survivied—barely…)
Finding Wisdom , Bleyl (first 4 pages and then I just———————-)
The Help, Kathryn Stockett (just started for book club)
Parenting Without Power Struggles, (powerless to start)
Dearest Creature, Amy Gerstler (the cover of this book is creepy and wild, the first poems especially thrilling in a thrillingly dark manner that gets under your skin and simmers, even if you’re not sure you want to be so affected…too late!)
New Yorker each week (thanks, Pater)
Toddler Bistro , Schmidt (almost every day, despite regularity of cooking many of the recipes—I should know them all by heart by now! But I don’t sleep much—synapses/firing mechanisms on the fritz—how I love this book, it’s baked tofu and baked chicken strips and baked squash and all those other things I can’t remember, but that are so easy to bake…)
Moving on to:
The Pioneer Woman
Finslippy
The Women’s Colony (I like their rooms)
Facebook (doesn’t count, really—like calling The National Enquirer literary canon fodder)
Tea leaves (actually coffee grounds—not that I discern much from them except horrible-tasting-coffee-crunch bulls*** with my morning Joe)
Multiple lists scribbled on torn-from-crap bits: grocery, daily, weekly, life lists, most mildewing in my infernally bottomless purse with the month old goldfish crackers that spilled there and joined the 1/2 eaten and the wadded and the stuff Suze Orman would chastize me for and the simply too, too scary to ever bring to daylight again—better to throw purse away, into a dumpster with ghastly non-plumb-able depths).
The Sunday LA Times, sometimes–and then mostly the Arts and Whatever section and crossword and——inserts…
And then of course I’m always reading, trying to read, hoping to interpret, obsessively returning to this endlessly fascinating subject that I couldn’t, in my wildest dreams, make up on my own. He’s so, so aliiiieeeeeeve! Dancing around the house with thumps and vocals! Concocting hysterical sentences! Experimenting with spitting! Waking up at 5am! HUGGING me spontaneously! I’m part reader, part fan, part interpreter, part author (!!), part plagiarist (this blog), part editor-in-CHIEF, part cheerleader, part extremely important authoritarian figure trying to get it right, a part of his burgeoning novel. Little guy! S*** he’s heavy.
photo by Rachelle Mama, who is about to have her second baby. Taken in Joann Mama’s back yard, where she has trouble with eagles attacking her kiddie pools.
Posted in Breaks, Vitals | Print | 2 Comments »
Several Senses Of Late…
21. February 2010 by PB Rippey.
WHAT I HEARD…
“When my mom was 23, she had 4 kids, a kid with kids, and the second we were 18 she was all, Okay, outta here, you’re on your own, make your own way, don’t expect help from us and if you have kids? Don’t call us or expect us to do anything about it. We’re done! And it bums me out because, you know, I want my kids to have grandparents in their lives…”
A woman in Trader Joe’s who looked to be in her 30’s was calmly saying all this into her cell phone as both of us perused the cereals/cereal bar section. I hate it when people talk on their cell phones indoors in public places. Like the time the guy in front of me in the Albertson’s check-out line shouted into his cell phone (as he handed the checker money, then scrounged his wallet and pockets for more): “You’re going to need your toothbrush and underpants. Do NOT forget underpants. When they show up at the door to cuff you, tell them you KNOW you’re allowed to bring your toothbrush and underpants. I’ll meet you there.”
But this woman’s story struck home. I was glad she was speaking to someone she could even tell it to. A few seconds later I heard her utter catchwords like, ‘therapist’ and ’self-healing’ as T—ensconced in the shopping cart—demanded another chunk of fresh kalamata olive bread to appease his loathing of going into stores (unless the store is Old Navy with its toddler and big kid mannikins and faithfully-sitting- motionlessly-by-with-a-frozen-grin, dog mannikin—doggikin?). This woman did not shout into her phone. She wasn’t irate, bitter, snarly, or even sad. She seemed to be simply relating what was, as though she’d been working, internally, on this ‘was’ for quite some time. And I just happened to be there to hear it.
WHAT I SAW…
T was alone in the front yard—meaning I was watching him from the front doorway, meaning I was unseen from the pavement in front of our house, where a woman jogged by—slooooooowly. She glanced at T playing with my inherited, heavy pewter ash tray I keep on a tree stump for crude decor (where else does one put ashtrays these days?). The woman glanced at T and shook her head as though disgusted by seeing him “alone” in the yard. But instead of coming to my front door and saying, Hey! Parents! WTF!, instead of checking to see if I was dying of a heart attack on the kitchen floor, instead of checking, SHE CROSSED HERSELF and carried on jogging. She. Crossed. Herself. I walked to the pavement and watched her jog down to Lull Street and around the corner, my mouth, I suppose, slightly agape. Part of me wanted to run after her, screaming: YOU SHOULD SEE WHAT I FEED HIM, LADY! BURNT CRAP AND MCDONALD’S! And how silly. How silly is that. Come on. How utterly, cavewoman-ish silly. Although a cavewoman would have been far too busy for a reaction like mine. She would have had a baby on her back and a baby at her breast as she foraged relentlessly for food, dreaming of refrigerators, Trader Joe’s and gods that understand the importance of an occasional pedicure for a busy mother’s psyche. I’m pretty sure stuff that shouldn’t be is growing along the gaps between the left and right sides of my stove and kitchen walls. Weeds threaten the newly pruned rose bushes. A pile of hard cover books need their covers replaced from T’s book-denuding episode two months ago. I, like the cavewoman, do not have time to dwell on the insensitivity of a stranger. But it felt as if she’d thrown poo at my house and I just happened to see it…
WHAT I SMELLED…
T and I came home from Lowe’s today with lavender plants. He “helped” me put them in the earth in the front yard’s confusing jungle-mixed-with-baldness. I have this idea of planting lavender all over the ponderosa and calling our house “Lavender House”. Yes. I am currently utterly hormonal, emotional, teary-eyed over bees in the blossoms or sobbing over Tide commercials and should probably be fenced in like a poor zoo creature…So we planted the lavender and came back inside and T rushed out back to engage with the sand and water table and I took the opportunity of his absence indoors to vacuum, only there was a SMELL, an awful, choke on your bile type of smell dogging my every move and I thought, It’s T’s diaper, but of course he was outside and then it finally dawned on me that the smell was coming from ME, and I broke out in a cold sweat, looked at the sole of my left shoe—and there it was. Cat poop. I glanced over my shoulder and saw I’d tracked it all over the living room as I was vacuuming and wondering about THE SMELL and blaming my son.
Which all goes to say that I should really look to my own person before judging others, before taking the time and energy to send bad juju to a stranger or blame others for things that happent to me or hate people for talking on their cell phones in public—even if I don’t want to hear it. If you need your underpants and toothbrush because they’re coming to cuff you, it’s pretty awful. If you want grandparents in your life and you can’t have them and the only time you can talk about it—because you’re a busy mother—is in Trader Joe’s on your cell phone, okay. I do have time to forgive someone who doesn’t know me or my son for a rude transgression, but I don’t have time to blame the universe when it’s my own foot meeting cat poop.
And I always, should always have time to count my blessings.
You know? O Lavender House–you are coming along.
Posted in FAVORITES, Ponderosa, Usual Drama?, BABY BABY | Print | 1 Comment »
So Sorry…
11. February 2010 by PB Rippey.
to be so out of touch! Taking a blog break while a nasty computer/hard drive issue is (hopefully) sorted out.
In the not too distant past, a crashed hard drive on my laptop—i.e. my MAIN ARTERY TO EVERYTHING—would have had me weeping and cursing within seconds and for as many hours or days as it might take to fix anything.
However, I am learning from Moot Mommy and Daddy and their recent saga, during which they committed to being positive despite extremely uncertain times…
And anyway, I was able to back up the writing I’m working on to a memory stick before the crash happened. So all of my all is not lost. Yet. iwillbepositive iwillbepositive
Speaking of LOST, I was watching it on my now dead laptop. Weren’t you? Watching it, I mean? Taking your Dharma tee shirt out of the drawer, lovingly unfolding it and wearing it for the premiere? Oh, my. The sets! The lush settings! The acting! Des and Penny and their kid (even though we only saw Des). How I’ve missed it. I’m quite liking the double storyline—but I’m sure there’s more, there’s deeper, there’s all that I will never (as with the other seasons) figure out, especially with a dubiously sleeping toddler messing with the firing of my synapses…Dharma out.
Posted in Usual Drama? | Print | 1 Comment »
The Problem With Going Home…
25. January 2010 by PB Rippey.
That officially unrecorded song by anon (performed only a few times in dark, semi-smoky locations reeking of spilt beer and wrinkled pimientos before anon’s band became snarling strangers to one another and broke up) plays constantly in my head as we’re hitting the beaches, the harbor, the courtyards, the parks in the early a.m.—parks, beaches, playgrounds 5 minutes from each other—running him, showing him, running after him, strolling him:
Heading into Santa Barbara on a 1/4 tank of gas. Dollar in my pocket, you don’t have to ask me if I’m happy. It’s written in my smile. So the highway captured me, well I turned around. Moon is at my back tonight.
Harbor lights are glowing, there’s a sunset in your eyes. With not a mile between us, you don’t have to ask me do I love you. Loved you all this time. Had a fight with the last horizon. I turned around. Moon is at my back tonight.
Sky to Ocean.
Feel my future open.
I have run from this. Leaving you behind. Had a fight with the last horizon. Turned around. Moon is at my back tonight.
And I want you to know: I’ve loved you all this time.
I want you to know: I’ve loved you all this time.
Cheesy little song. Though apt.
(lyrics reprinted with anon’s permission, because even though she forgets to water plants or remove bagels from the broiler in a timely manner, she actually remembered to copyright her songs)
Posted in Usual Drama?, Vitals, BABY BABY | Print | 5 Comments »
Speaking of Mantas…
25. January 2010 by PB Rippey.
I neglected to add this photo to my last post. I’m told snorkeling—which I’m not afraid to do, not really, not anymore—is far more shark-attracting than scuba diving—which I am afraid to do. But gazing at Mark’s photos makes me want to dive. So some day, when my toddler is all grown and married and I have grandchildren and I’m an octogenarian, say, I’ll have them push me into a pool and I’ll get PADI certified and then go on my first dive and maybe feed mantas. And if it’s that day the mako comes along with a liking for old lady flesh, so be it. I’ll have raised my son, I’ll have seen my grandchildren. And my husband—who is not afraid to scuba dive, despite having seen sharks and eels and monster lobsters protecting their monster young—my husband, who will no doubt live to be 100+—will have mandatory down time from his cuckoo spouse.
Until then, I’ll photo-gaze. Or glass-bottom-boat venture. Or snorkel…WHERE IN BLAZES ARE MY FINS?
Posted in ANIMAL DRAMA! | Print | 1 Comment »
Oceans To Write…
15. January 2010 by PB Rippey.
I’ve been getting my fish-facts straight as they pertain to my children’s (middle-grade) novel. Editing for the 50th time (x 50 to the power of WTF) the fish-infused chapters and finding, to my horror, even now, facts I failed to check previously—tucked into my favorite editing place, my bed, while T naps or helps his Dadda wash dishes or is down for the night—editing, editing, gasping when finding an error (fishy, grammatical, or plot-wise)—editing, fingers tapped blue, neck stiffening despite enough pillows to furnish a Harem—still, I realize that apart from being mother and wife, this is what I love to do: Get my brain-screams on paper, then edit them into readable screamage. I could do it for hours. Weeks. Longer.
Fear lurks, though, like a moray eel slowly hunting in color-matched corals: Each time I edit, I make the story better—so even though the novel is ‘finished’, is it ever really finished? I wake up in the middle of the night muttering, GILLS, OF COURSE, GILLS, WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THIS BEFORE, GILLS, GILLS, GILLS! If you were familiar with the heroine of my novel, GILLS would make perfect sense—and had you actually read my novel before I woke up muttering GILLS and inserted GILLS into the story appropriately, you would have thought to yourself: Huh—for the love of sea turtles, why the heck didn’t the author use GILLS in this novel? Yep. Fear.
I suppose there’s more fear, like: My novel never getting published…But that’s such a boring fear. Booooooring. As my friend L, a-real-live-NYC-actress reminds me: It’s a numbers game! You have to hang tough and keep marketing (yourself) if you believe in your material.
In between marketing and responding to LET ME SEE IT PB requests after certain agents read my (freqently more and more) mass-marketed query letter, I edit—I improve my novel and its fish-factiness. And I take my son to the beach and show him what inspires me and what I hope thrills him. I fill his bookshelves with ocean: Have I told you (I ask him, pulling out a well-illustrated, marine science-y little number) about the roughhead blenny? Come! Sit in Mama’s lap and take a look at THIS, my boy, my sweet, my precious love-cup! Ha ha!
Then back to the pillows, until what I read and edit and create loopy marginalia around puts even me to sleep and dreaming about unicorn fish and mantas that sing. To marketing, to marketing, jiggety-jig.
These amazing photos were taken by our dear friend, Mark Snyder, owner of starknakedfish.com. Mark spends much of his life under water, surfacing for the lecture circuit, or to travel to another exotic dive spot, or to hang out on research boats shooting, shooting away into spectacular sunsets. His website is a beautiful place to visit—like stepping into a tranquil aquarium. His innovative way of lighting the world beneath the waves never fails to ignite the imagination of ocean-nerds like myself.
NOTE:
Posted in Vitals | Print | 2 Comments »
Relief For Haiti
13. January 2010 by PB Rippey.
If you can:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/impact/
Posted in World | Print | No Comments »
Happy New Year! 2010201020102010 etc….
4. January 2010 by PB Rippey.
1st morning. Swell, gulls, surfers, boogie boarders. 72 degrees. O Southern California!
And while I continue working on my next blog post, here is an archive from last year when we were barfing like maniacs and wondering how on earth to handle it with a 1 yr. old, also barfing. That was a time indeed.
And don’t forget to read my poems on Chaparral —because of course you have time to read poetry in your busy day, who doesn’t? Ha ha (uttered with more than a tinge of hysteria).
Posted in World, BABY BABY | Print | No Comments »
Christmas Break: Pre-Christmas Haircut…
25. December 2009 by PB Rippey.
This is what happened today. My fault. I panicked as I trimmed. With Christmas family get-togethers just around the hour—I panicked. Voila:
Luckily a Fantastic Sam’s of Reseda is close to us. I couldn’t go. Nerves. So S and his dad took T for his first formal haircut while I stayed at home. Vacuuming. Worrying. They did this:
And this:
The first (inadvertent) Big Boy haircut is hard! I’m glad he can see without tilting his head back to look out from under his bangs (my little sheepdog!!!), but—where is my baby? Oh, the 2’s are filled with a zillion fine lines.
Hoping the grandmas won’t be disappointed. MERRY — MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!
Posted in BABY BABY | Print | 3 Comments »
On Things Growing Around Here…
18. December 2009 by PB Rippey.
If you look closely (since the zoom on our camera has frozen and I am unable to procure zoomy shots these days), beyond the cactus and hibiscus leaves there seems to be green at long last in the front yard. I am hopeful, anyway. During the last rainstorm I was outside hurling grass seed hither and thither frantically, thinking: This is it! This is our chance for a lawn! I did not wake up to a verdant Home & Garden type scape the next morning, nor many mornings since all that wonderful rain, however this morning—well, the yard was full of surprises.
The backyard, too, shows promise—the green sprouting there is quite luscious. I am hoping it will infect all 6,000 sq ft or so of land comprising the toddler’s playground, replacing the spiky, hurting grass currently in residence.
Bottom line, after having been a boat girl, then city dweller for so, so long I am simply amazed—now that I have my own dirt parcels—that things—you know—GROW. You plant them, and they grow! You give them water regularly and voila: they grow. You don’t even need a spectacularly green thumb for the things to grow. They just do! You feed a toddler healthy food and guess what? Sprouting action all over the place. A miracle! Lovely. Life, life burgeoning across the Ponderosa. I continue to be amazed. The only things that grew on my various boats were book-eating mildew and algae—never exciting.
And where there is life there is also optimism—once I uproot the weeds.
Above is what I believe to be a peach tree (sorry about the blur) though we never saw any peaches this past summer. I was told by someone who knows about such things not to panic when the leaves started falling off, that the tree was going to sleep and would hopefully wake up in a fruit-producing mood at some indeterminate time in the next California Spring. I was also advised to “cut back” the branches. After Googling this process, I’ll take it on myself to do the cutting since my husband—advised to “cut back” what we believed to be an apple tree—did this to it:
You said to cut it way down! he protested when I protested. To be fair, what my husband and I know about trees consists of burning them in the fireplaces of vacation cabins…
And so we persevere with cultivating the Ponderosa. In Winter. Spring/Summer will be so interesting, especially if we can build the deck and add the above-ground-swimming-pool. Adventures ahoy, baby! (I tell my baby). Adventures ahoy! (seriously, though, I’m so glad to be a landlubber now vs. the cold, cramped lifestyle chronically swaying sailboats offer one…)
Speaking of growing, S and I will have our 3rd wedding anniversary next week. 3 years, 1 baby and 1 house purchase later, I had no idea I could love him more than I did that day he bent to one knee on guano-spattered La Jolla rock and, as dolphins frolicked in my peripheral vision, proposed. This married-togetherness and parenting stuff—THIS is what my sisters have talked about animatedly in that strange, baffling language, the one formerly-dedicated-Singletons can’t interpret until—until everything.
Posted in Ponderosa, Vitals | Print | 2 Comments »
Blog Break: Tree Ornaments…
16. December 2009 by PB Rippey.
Stuffed snowman! Felt mice! Wooden apple! Ummm—vinyl gold balls!!! Vinyl silver pear!!! Uh—-oh, oh, I know: angel made of shiny material!!!
Er—things, or rather: Christmas ornaments that won’t break when your toddler yanks them from the tree and throws them at your windows? Or the cats? Or your face?
That’s it! Yes! You have won the $20,000 Pyramid!!! (of goldfish crackers—if you’re lucky–now scram, would ya? Mama needs a nap…)
Posted in Ponderosa, BABY BABY | Print | 1 Comment »
Zoo Parenting 101…
3. December 2009 by PB Rippey.
When you make an excursion to the zoo on a saturday and the weather is gorgeous and it’s the San Diego Zoo so in addition to locals you are in the company of a gazzilion off-season tourists taking advantage of cheap off-season vacation packages—when you are all (tourists, locals, families, random human herds) packed together in a zoo that won’t allow you to walk your kids or strollers on the wide streetways because of the double-decker tour buses constantly motoring by—when you’re forced to walk on narrow sidewalks past the animal exhibits, each exhibit creating instant gridlock, the sun increasingly hotter than the weatherpeople predicted and then there are those gnarly hills, there, at the SD Zoo, red-cheek-creating hills—let’s face it: there are going to be scenes.
My husband and I witnessed many variations on the parenting of uber-hyped-out, tantrum-throwing children of all ages. We paid most attention to toddlers acting out, many by toddling deliberately away from their parents, goofy, gleeful smiles on their faces. Some parents controlled toddler-wanderlust by attaching them to leashes resembling tails of monkeys or elephants. Others had cleverly brought along extended family assigned to race after escapees. The biggest fear at the zoo for parents with small children was not the pacing lion and whether its cage bars were sturdy enough, not the elephant lolling its massive, child-attracting weight against fencing, not whether the foamy-mouthed camels lurched within spitting distance of babies, but whether a toddler was going to dart under the wheels of one of those on-coming tour buses, or vanish forever into the hot-tempered crowds. Many times we heard the following:
GET BACK HERE!
or
GET BACK HERE NOW!
or
WE’RE NOT GOING THERE! WE’RE GOING HERE! HERE! HERE!
or the more frustrated version,
NO! NO! NO! NO!
And, eventually, as the heat bore down, as the hills grew steeper, we heard:
GET BACK HERE OR (plus a threat)
or
GET THE HELL BACK HERE OR (plus a threat)
or
ONE, TWO, THREE—(with the threat of counting to 5—and then what?)
or
IF YOU DON’T LISTEN TO ME, I’LL (plus a threat or stuttered gibberish as the parent melted down inconsolably, irrevocably, before God and Man)
The most disturbing meltdown occurred in the Lost Forest, a shady pathway winding past the slumbering hippos in their fantastic 3D pool, up to the tigers (though we couldn’t see them because of the gridlock) in their shady-rocky abode, past the turtles in their glassed-in-pond—hundreds of thousands of swimming turtles—past amazing, colorful birds you’d never see in my backyard (despite the two popular feeders). A woman approached us as we threaded through the crowds. A child was vice-gripped in her arms, a boy (3 years old?) curled to fetal, who knew he was in the vice, had ceased struggling because he recognized struggle was pointless. His mother’s face was bent over his. She was going downhill, we up and somehow this created an eerie time-slow effect so that I heard, clearly, every single word she imparted to her son. As the mother passed me with her large, slow-motion steps, my head turned in slow-motion, my mouth dropped in slow-motion and I watched her land on a bench and keeeeep ooooooon taaaaaalking to that boy as my brain screamed nooooooooooooo in deep, scary, slowed-down-speak. Nooooooooooooooooo.
If you don’t f***ing shut the f*** up you’re gonna f***ing make me f***ing crazy and do you know what the f*** that means?
Like at Granny’s? (responded the offending son)
Oh, you remember Granny’s, huh? YEAH like at F***ING Granny’s, that’s EXACTLY what the f*** I’m F***ING TALKING ABOUT—
And there was more, but I couldn’t listen. I fell back into real-time and sped after my husband and son.
What’s up? asked my husband when, after I made sure T was rapt before the gazzillion turtles, I turned and hugged him—hard. Did you hear that? I stage-whispered into his neck. Did you hear that woman? Hear what? my husband asked and I let it go, told him later, at the hotel, when T was into his pasta and DVD. Oh wow, my husband said and we were quiet, munching our dinner in a shared moment of sadness—and self-reflection.
Because no matter what you witness in other parents, or what horrifying stories you read concerning other parents, stories centered around some type of baby-neglect (like the guy who left his 3 month old in its carrier beside the treadmill in his gym when he was done with his workout and drove on home like he was a single guy and had never been a parent, la dee da, until a phone call from the gym had him screeching the car into a U-turn)—being a parent and therefore experiencing challenges you couldn’t possibly have dreamt of prior to having children precisely because you didn’t have children and couldn’t know, but now that you do know, you totally “get” how a breaking point such as the one I witnessed in Cursing Mama can been reached. You know what it’s like to approach the precipice of a mental-break, to teeter on the complicated cliff’s edge of your sanity, and then scrabble for an alternative—because that’s what you do—you scrabble for the alternative, find it, use it even if it is VERY, VERY HARD to do so, even if it means you CUSS AT A SLOTH instead of your child. I admit that at that awful zoo-moment I wanted Cursing Mama fenced, fenced in, securely, with electrified bars, away from her child—I wanted the zoo’s on-call Parent Meltdown Psychotherapist to whoosh in with her bag of sanity-restoring tips and a zoo margarita sold throughout the grounds. At that moment, I hoped Cursing Mama’s child would make it to 18 yrs. unscarred, because the power struggle occurring between mother and child was too intense and apparently a close second to Granny’s house and whatever the heck went on there. O Cursing Mama! How you scared me, angered me, left me feeling wasted and shaky and grateful for my parenting books—and desperate for a zoo margarita…
We headed for the exit and miniature train ride instead.
And now——this bit more:
Connection Parenting, by Pam Leo
Playful Parenting, by Lawrence Cohen
Parenting Without Power Struggles: Raising Joyful, Resilient Kids While Staying Cool, Calm And Connected, by Susan Stiffelman
Books. They don’t hurt. They can’t help but help, MOST LIKELY.
Tattling Mama over-and-out.
Posted in World, Usual Drama?, Vitals, BABY BABY | Print | No Comments »
Birthdays…
16. November 2009 by PB Rippey.
T’s first birthday was interesting. S could actually take the day off back then, back in the dark ages of simply 1 eon-ic year ago when he also came home for lunch. Every. Single! Day. We took T to an indoor playground and paid for that later by having a sick baby for the rest of the holiday season and into the New Year. That evening, we presented T with a pint-sized birthday cake he scream-cried about because of the lit candle. Then S and I argued because S didn’t want him to eat cake and have the then unspoiled-by-sugar or french fries tot experience a first sugar high when we all so desperately needed sleep. Me? I wanted a photo and argued that since caveman days babies have eaten a first birthday cake with everyone surviving the damn sugar business. S slammed a door for the first time since I knew him as we experienced our first fight since T’s birth. And I was like, yeah you do that, buddy, you go ahead and SLAM THAT DOOR WHILE I BREASTFEED OUR CHILD AND GET UP 25,000 TIMES DURING THE NIGHT AND—S reappeared and we made up and agreed not to give the kid any cake since he was terrified of it anyway. I think we were relieved to go to bed, even though it was another night of broken sleep.
This year, T couldn’t wait to get his fingers—literally—into his birthday cake. He would have rolled in it if we’d let him, slept with it, slept on it. It was a beautiful thing to witness and a scary thing and what you’ve seen in movies and on YouTube and discovered featured on mommy blogs incessantly and suddenly it was our turn to live it. And not only did we live every single moment so passionately we almost forgot to take pictures, but—we enjoyed the whole experience. Not a door slammed in the house. Not a concerned word was uttered about the wrongness of putting a kid on a sugar high. We didn’t fuss and quibble and relate horror stories about hives or chocolate-seizures and we didn’t mention the possibility of a sleepless night. We. Just. Lived.
We’ve come a long way, baby.
Posted in BABY BABY | Print | 1 Comment »
Poetry…
9. November 2009 by PB Rippey.
Chaparral took a couple of my poems for the current Autumn/Winter issue. I am so pleased to be included. Gail Wronsky is in a previous issue. Also Patty Seyburn. Amy Gerstler. Dorothy Barresi. Love them.
http://www.chaparralpoetry.net/
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Hump Day…
5. November 2009 by PB Rippey.
Tipping between lost and grateful; sold-off on, bought into, duped; never traveling with grace or without doubt; raking up luck-bits when the world naps in its stifling old box; kissing the future into strum; healing, the healer; hunkering down—more—down to a pebble’s dropped-star appeal, to strokable; keeping up; keeping all life from peril. World without end: what I whisper, believing some other woman’s fluttered-out lullaby used, used into harmless; discovered.
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Boo Break: Belated…
3. November 2009 by PB Rippey.
Speaking like a giraffe.
And last year: Arrrrrrr! Our little pirate/poet with mega un-sealegs and hair that had no idea which way to grow!
And this year in addition to being a giraffe, a pirate with hair that has figured life out. (same costume! only 12 months later he can wear the pants)
Same goofy parents, though. Poor kid. Arrrrrrr (said like sigh).
Posted in Ponderosa, ANIMAL DRAMA!, BABY BABY | Print | 3 Comments »
Blog Break: Beach Cure For Colds…
22. October 2009 by PB Rippey.
So over sneezing, I decided my son and I needed a Santa Barbara beach cure. I took most of the morning packing: food, clothes, sweaters for the cold, cold North, enough supplies for a week though we were gone only overnight and still I forgot the goldfish crackers, but luckily not the arrowroot cookies and backup sippy cups and extra socks.
In October, my beach is pretty deserted, especially on a weekday. It’s an interesting place to be with no one there—like stumbling into paradise, even though of course I knew exactly where we were going. But the beach is always full of surprises and surprise thoughts and all that beauty—who has time to remember sinus blockage, poor writing habits, pressing goals, housework. All fades when faced with the urgency of beach business.
T busied himself with the rocks we camped next to, later utilizing buckets and a watering can, and then he sat on my lap, snug in a beach towel and munched cream cheese sandwiches as we both gazed at the ocean.
Pelicans dive-bombed the swell. Dolphin fins came and went. Occasionally a beach-walker passed us and smiled our way. The sun inspired a razzle-dazzle from the water. Utterly exciting: all of it.
Next thing I knew over 2 hours had passed. I loaded T into the stroller and we took off up the beach for an hour’s walk. We passed maybe 3 people. The tide was receding into a minus. Starfish were exposed on low, moody-black rock. A small, faintly pink sea urchin was alone in a shallow, sun-warmed tide pool. Crabs shifted in their dark crevices, hidden from the gulls.
Infused with air and sun, I never sneezed. T, already mostly over his cold, sang in his seat. By this time of day both of us are usually passed out in our beds. It was obvious neither of us was going to nap and that neither of us cared.
We stayed until almost 5:30p.m. It’s the best playground in the world, full of constant exploration and the only playground I’ve discovered so far in which my son will come to me for a break, cuddle, content to sit, eat, watch. Beach Magic. I wish it was my backyard.
Posted in Vitals, BABY BABY | Print | 1 Comment »
The Mama Comes Close To Tattling…
1. October 2009 by PB Rippey.
Recently I took my son to an aquarium. He says the word fish now, recognizes different types of fish in books and those in the framed pictures on his bedroom walls. He says seahorse, starfish (yes, I KNOW it’s politically correct in aquariums to say SEASTAR since the starfish is not a fish, but COME ON NOW—the whale shark is not a shark, but who wants to say The Great And Awe Inspiring Whale Fish—the seahorse not a horse, the jellyfish not a—-etc.), and he says an entertaining version of octopus, so I thought it was time we hit the fish-stocked tanks to see those words up-close and swimming around.
What my son preferred more than viewing the marine subjects, however, was pushing buttons on the giant squid that made it squirt water at passersby. He could have done that all day. All. Day. alldayalldayalldayalldayallday…
I was grateful when he agreed to a lunch break.
T never ceases to amaze me: I bought a sandwich and the second we were outside at the picnic tables he zipped into a chair, snatched half the sandwich from me and chowed down as though high chairs and lovingly prepared bite-sized pieces of food have never been a part of his life. I took a chair next to him and marveled over eating lunch with my son. Maaaarveled at his big boy bites that included lettuce, marveled that he never eats this way at home, my mind click-clicking away on new ideas for home mealtimes for my normally finnicky son—like, make EVERYTHING sandwiches!!!—T pointing at the pigeons and finches surrounding us, talking excitedly with his mouth full—when suddenly I noticed: Them.
Similar to the zoo with its Silverback’s Cafe grilling meat within smelling distance of the gorillas in their little exhibit, the aquarium’s Cafe Scuba sells fish and chips. So you can walk around and view the lovely fish and then——eat fish. A group of barely-teens boys sat at the table next to ours, inhaling their cooked fish fare, until they decided it was more fun to throw their fish and chips at the birds, kick at the birds with their feet and make a big fuss squealing (yes, squealing) about the birds milling around our tables. One boy wadded up a piece of bread into a tight pellet and beaned a finch so hard it peeped in shock and no doubt pain.
“No, you don’t hit the birds with your food or kick them, okay? You do not do that.”
The boys avoided eye contact with me. I’d probably humiliated them. I looked around. A table of elders was nearby, totally ignoring the boys. Should I have told their elders? Should I have gone inside and fetched an aquarium security type? Should I have tattled vs. take action? I glanced at my son. He was finger painting his arm with a dollop of mayo and uttering pleasant gibberish. I knew that if it wasn’t for his presence, if it wasn’t for the fact that one day he would be as old as those bird-abusing boys next to us, I would have confronted the boys more directly, in a manner I would never want my son to see or think his mother capable of, as in:
1. Get the f*#% away from the f*%@ing birds NOW! Okay? NOW!
2. You know what, dude? You know how you look, beaning a tiny bird? You look weeeeeeeeak, dude. Weeeeeeeeak. Now get the f*@% away from that finch!
3. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! (the blood curdling kind of scream that brings the whole world running, emitted while standing atop a chair, fists clenched and shaking with rage)
I’m currently trying to teach T not to pull the cats’ tails or sit on Al The Naturally Large Cat’s enormous belly. I’m trying to teach him the joys of live fish and gorillas. All over the aquarium, dedicated volunteers speak daily, tirelessly to the crowds about conservation and respect for ocean inhabitants. Enter: The Bird Beaning Boys. What to do? How to react? How to prepare my son for field trips in his future? How to point out injustice without humiliating young, developing minds? But why are the developing minds committing injustices anyway? Why aren’t they listening? Why aren’t they practicing what they’re being taught? Why will boys be boys? What the hell does that really mean? Why the HELL do I ask why? How can I be a mother and be this clueless?
T and I packed up and went for a walk to the park outside the aquarium, the one with the view of the Queen Mary and that pretty lighthouse. T can say lighthouse. And oose iner for cruise liner. But he wasn’t interested in those things or the kids racing around the lawn, 10/11-year-oldish kids running off their lunches. T was interested in sitting under a shady palm tree and ransacking my backpack. As he did so, I watched the children, unable to imagine my baby that old. Hey, a girl running with a pack (pod?) of other girls declared loudly. Who dares me to kick a pigeon?
Oh dear god, I muttered, glancing around for elders, but my intervention wasn’t necessary this time. The elders blew whistles and children immediatley formed lines and marched off towards the lighthouse.
I confess I don’t ever want my son to bean finches with his food or to kick pigeons or shoot elk or polar bears or 3-legged wolves or take out any aggression on any animal. I want him to love Al The Naturally Large Cat and the entire animal kingdom. I may snuff the occasional cockroach or ant legion, but I have always championed for animal rights, saved birds, dogs, cats, mice, squirrels, or tried to. I know children need to flex control and power muscles—but probably I need to read up on teaching limits, or teaching the benefits of not kicking a pigeon or harpooning a whale. Right? Still, I thought, helping T put everything back into the pack. I’m glad I told the bird beaning boys to cut it out, even if my tone wasn’t—the nicest. Maybe there is no “nice” way of stopping such things, or not from a stranger.
I watched my son find the only mud patch in the park and grind his shoes in it gleefully. I cheered him on. Nearby, a pigeon watched us, head cocked, as though really, REALLY listening.
Posted in Usual Drama?, ANIMAL DRAMA!, BABY BABY | Print | 2 Comments »
Blog Break While Procrastination Continues…
28. September 2009 by PB Rippey.
Over the weekend we attended a birthday party—T’s first. Since he was scared of the only birthday cake he’s ever been presented with in his life, I wondered how he’d react a year later to somebody else’s birthday cake.
And the eat-fest went on from here. (It was delicious cake!)
Posted in BABY BABY | Print | 1 Comment »
Zuma Procrastinator…
21. September 2009 by PB Rippey.
Zuma again. No man with the seagull on his head—too early in the day for him. But the dolphins are here, poking their heads out of the Fresca ocean (remember Fresca?), taking a quick peek at the loungers on the beach, then moving on. T and S kicked the beachball, filled the toy truck with sand, pulled the wagon around and tested the surf’s temperature all in the first five minutes of making camp.
Since it’s post Labor Day, my husband was convinced tourist and schoolkid traffic would be minimal at Zuma. Wrong. It’s Sunday! Everyone is here. Tourists, schoolkids and Valley Escapees like us as the weather again reaches for the 90’s, stubborn as some old-ish family member who refuses to turn the oven down to a reasonable temperature when cooking the Sunday London Broil, burning it every time.
Yes. A definite desperate attempt at metaphor as I sit in a creaky beach chair in Malibu overcast, trying to jump-start my creativity.
And what is the nagging wariness I feel here on the beach? Why do my eyes shy from those friendly rollers, that mildly churned surf?
I like Zuma—at least, I like Zuma down by lifeguard stand #13. I don’t like Zuma enough to name my next child Zuma—just like I don’t like fruit enough to name a child Apple. Or Kiwi. Or Papaya Banana Jr. But it’s beautiful here. I like it here. Very much. Still…
Truthfully, I’d like a house with a Widow’s Walk for daily private meandering—a quaintly gated widow’s walk—an open-aired, partial-turret of peace. The fins and spouts I’d monitor! The storms I’d predict and await. I’d haul a desk up there, visit it when the moment struck, then back to pacing before an ocean moodier than sky, than anything.
Which is all to say that even though Part I of my children’s novel has yet to be published, I need to start writing Part II. Even though Part I has come maddeningly, gray-hair-inducing close to acceptance, I can’t use its not being accepted (yet) as an excuse for avoiding Part II, which is packed with even more ocean than Part I, with all manner of beasts on land and sea, includes the return of Architeuthis Dux and the emergence of the Tasmanian Blobster (in pre-blob form, of course). I have begun the research, but not the writing. When I look at the ocean, I am reminded of this. And I feel nervous.
More dolphins. The Fresca has transferred from ocean to sky. The ocean, blueing deeply, flips a surfer as a pelican executes a perfect dive. When my son laughs, so do I. And the Mama-in-me kisses the procrastinator goodbye.
Posted in World, Usual Drama?, Vitals | Print | 1 Comment »