Lawyerish

When in Doubt, Twirl It Out

Against my better judgment, I am watching this season of "The Bachelorette," and after getting through the first two episodes I feel like the producers may have reached through my television and given me a lobotomy. 

Perhaps all that needs to be said is that there is a guy who not only made it onto the show, but has now lasted through two Rose Ceremonies, while wearing a mask. 

Now, I understand that a lot of these dudes (a) only do this show to bolster their faint hopes of getting a walk-on role on some pitiful soap opera (see: that guy from the Real World Chicago who ended up on Passions), and/or (b) feel like they need to come up with a gimmick to make themselves memorable.  And, of course, the producers will do anything, absolutely anything under the sun, to make this appear to be the Most! Dramatic! Season! Ever! 

So I can only conjecture, if I am giving him the largest benefit of the doubt possible, that Mr. Mask offhandedly or even jokingly suggested in some production meeting that he might wear a mask when he got out of the limo to meet the Bachelorette, and that translated into the producers telling him that he HAD to wear the mask 24 hours a day, and in fact he should forgo interacting with the other contestants in favor of skulking about in the background, as if he were auditioning to be the next Phantom of the Opera. 

And there's no justification I can think of for the Bachelorette keeping him around, other than at the producers' insistence.  Because, I'm sorry, if I were standing there in some sparkly dress, hoping to find my husband through a (ridiculous, contrived) reality show, and a guy got out of the limo wearing a mask, I would first burst out laughing, then look around for the "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes" crew (remember that show?  Along with "Real People" it was one of my faves in elementary school -- I still recall the wacky prank they pulled on a leather bomber jacket-wearing Kirk Cameron), THEN tell the guy, politely but firmly, to please get back in the limo and return to wherever he came from. 

Between the masked man, the guy with a daughter named Cozy (!) who is "not there for the right reasons" (much as they bandy that phrase about with frivolity EVERY single season, this time it appears to be true, since he completely trashes the B-ette behind her back, then cozies (see how I did that?) up with her by the fire as a way of staying in the game), and the MANY contenders who have lost relatives or spouses and/or had other Major Life-Changing Events, it feels a bit like having gone down the rabbit hole.  Send help. 

Or bananas.

Unrelatedly, here are some photos from our long weekend, which was mostly good except for the ten years that were shaved off my life when a technical glitch led me to believe that a brief I'd worked on for many hours had disappeared into the ether.  (Fortunately, some computer genius types recovered it, and I did not have to jump out the window.) 

Aside from that and a lingering cough that has just about rendered Joe deaf (I am super attractive), we had lots of quality family time frolicking in the park, exploring the museum, visiting the animals at the zoo, and trying to introduce Felicity to the fun of playground sprinklers -- she was curious at first ("Water!  Water!"), then skeptical, then clingy as a baby monkey.  Maybe she will warm to it as summer wears on. 

Finally, Felicity has discovered twirling, and it is now one of her favorite things to do.  I believe my work here is done.

 

Friday Baby Dance Party!: Laughing and Singing and Dancing Edition

It's difficult to figure out why kids find certain things hilarious.  Such as the other day, when Felicity went into hysterics over J saying the word "ponytail." 

It's equally unclear why they suddenly get scared of books that they usually love:

And, to sing us into the long weekend (so far I am sick AND I have to work, so...yay?), here's Felicity doing her rendition of "Wiggle, Wiggle" (a chart-topper from her music class) (please note that that is J's pretty singing voice you hear; you've heard mine and it is...not good):

To close, here are some stills of Felicity wigglin' it:

Have a great Memorial Day, everyone!

Weekend: Good and Bad

We had a lot of fun this weekend, letting Felicity loose in the hippo playground and the Natural History museum; in both places, she ran around yelling, "OOOOOOH!  OOOOOOOH!" and "APPO!"  Evidently for her, life doesn't get much better than seeing large facsimiles of animals, whether in fiberglass surrounded by asphalt or in taxidermied form in a diorama of their natural habitat. 

(One day, I might actually remember to turn my phone sideways so it takes the video in letterbox format.  Sigh.)

On the Good side of the equation, I also got to have dinner with the awesomely awesome Jennie last night, and between the burgers and the prosecco and the lively, hilarious conversation, it was pretty much the perfect evening.

Since Jennie and I were too busy gabbing to take photos, here are some more of the sunny-day fun:

There were just a few less-than-pleasant moments mixed in with all this glory.  One was when Miles peed on me.

Yes.  Oh, yes.  He continues to find ways to exact his revenge on me for bringing his short tormentor into our home.  

This time, we were all in the park and I was standing with him and the stroller while Joe chased after Felicity, who was racing up and down a grassy knoll.  Miles was sniffing around me, taking a brief break from pulling at the leash and whining, and I guess I sort of spaced out for a while -- maybe I was wondering what time the Rapture would happen and whether I'd need to make dinner beforehand -- and the next thing I knew, I realized that something warm was running down my leg and pooling into my shoe.   

It still took me a few moments to process what had happened -- mind you, by the time we were standing in that spot, Miles had already peed on every blade of grass in the northern half of Central Park, so it's not like he HAD TO GO.  It was solely a revenge pee.  ON MY LEG. 

After I quietly died, I realized that I had baby wipes in the stroller, so I cleaned myself and my defiled flip-flop off as best I could.  And then, of course, I looked around to see who might have been watching as I GOT PEED ON BY MY OWN DOG.  It was the first nice day in about a hundred years, so there were countless people around, and some of them, no doubt, had stood by and laughed at the dim-witted mom who just stood there and let her dog pee on her.  I am certain that I caught some bystanders laughing and shooting snarky looks in my general direction.  Some of them are probably blogging about it RIGHT NOW.  O, my SHAME.

But Miles was not done with his quest to, rather literally, shit on my weekend. 

That night, I got up to pee around 2am, and I heard him rustling around in the kitchen, on the newspaper that we put down every night since he doesn't always make it til morning without a restroom break (though I can't really cast stones, since I can't either).  I could tell that there was, um, Serious Business going on in there, and instead of letting it fester until morning, I shuffled down the hall.  WIthout turning the light on, I could see the offending Business on the newspaper, so I picked up the paper and crumpled it up and headed to the trash can, and...SQUISH. 

There was a second shooter, if you will.  I quietly died for the second time that day, then turned on the lights, disinfected my foot and the floor, and finally made my way back to bed. 

SIGH.

(Pre-leg-peeing.)

 Keep it up, buddy.  Keep.  It.  Up. 

Friday Baby Dance Party!: Belated Fourteen Months Edition

Well, I am so glad that I'm not in the minority on the baby/bathwater issue.  Sometimes when I first put Felicity in the tub, she stands in the water and pees a little.  I always carry on and try to dip the rinsing cup for her hair in the theoretically non-pee-polluted water closer to the drain.  I realize this isn't entirely in line with the laws of physics, but it makes me feel better.  And pee is mostly water anyhow, right? 

Anyway, Joe saw this sequence of events unfold once and he was all, "We have to change the water!  She peed in it!  You're washing her with pee!" and I gave him a withering look, because there is no chance I'm going to drain the whole dang tub and start over unless there is a Solid Waste Incident (which is obviously, as Jive Turkey said, a gamechanger -- and that hasn't happened since she was wee-tiny).

ALSO:  Completely unrelated, but we FINALLY watched "Black Swan" last weekend, and hoo boy!  It somehow managed to both be rife with ballet movie cliches (dear Hollywood:  not every ambitious ballerina is bulimic and has an overbearing mother who had a failed dance career, OKAY?) yet also blow those cliches right out of the box.  What with, you know, the whole id/ego/superego conflict and the hallucinations and the paranoid delusion and, ahem, the ballerinas getting it on/engaging in hand-to-hand combat.  I was very engrossed by the whole thing, although in a way it almost seemed too over the top to be serious, yet it clearly took itself VERY seriously. 

But!  Natty P. really impressed me.  I usually find her about as emotive as a wooden pole, but she really brought it this time, or maybe the director just wrenched it out of her.  She was so committed to this role, and I believed her in it.  (Although I don't believe she did much, if any, of the technical dancing, beyond upper body work, because the choreography was too difficult for an untrained person to do without looking...well, like an untrained person trying to do professional-level ballet.  But I don't think that takes away from her ACTING work in the role, since she is an ACTOR and I would fully expect a ballet dancer to body-double her for the BALLET DANCING parts.  Yet she did totally pull off LOOKING like a dancer, which a lot of actors don't pull off in dance movies.)

Moving on!  Although this is late, for the sake of completeness I feel the need to do a monthly status update. 

At fourteen months, nothing sends Felicity into a tailspin like changing her diaper.  Hoo boy.  When she is in need of a change, I'll say, "We need to go change your diaper!" and she'll merrily scamper into her room, but the moment I hoist her up onto the changing table, she turns into a combination Tasmanian devil and wailing banshee.  I don't know what it is that she objects to so much, but lying her down for the proceedings is out of the question.  She will no longer be distracted by a toy or whatever random object is within arm's reach; she immediately casts it to the floor and redoubles her distress call. 

I have started putting her diaper on while she stands up on the changing pad and thrashes around, as it's marginally easier than trying to keep her supine, which lasts all of about 0.004 seconds before the cyclonic activity commences.  I am hoping she is going to turn into an early toilet user, because as she gets bigger I really don't see this going well for anyone; either I am going to end up with a debilitating back injury, or she is going to end up going diaperless much of the time. 

Other than that, her personality is usually pretty delightful and she's generally compliant with whatever we're asking of her.  We do get into some battles of will over the stroller, as she would much prefer to walk everywhere these days, which is great except that sometimes I actually want to GET to a destination in this lifetime, rather than changing direction eight thousand times or stopping to look at every blade of grass along the way, but the majority of the time she's happy to ride and point out dogs and birds and whatever "OOOOOOOOOOH!  OOOOOOOOOH!" refers to along the way. 

She continues to love reading, with her favorites as of today being Blueberries for Sal (she looks as astonished as Sal's mother every time Little Bear eats from her bucket); The Monster at the End of This Book; and this kind of random book called Whoever You Are that is about how children all over the world are the same inside (Joe calls it "liberal clap-trap" and for unknown reasons it features a guy wearing a suit with clouds on it, a cowboy hat, and boots, and he flies around carrying a group of children in his arms).  She will have you read each of those books ten times in a row, and then she'll still want to page through them by herself in case she might have missed some nuance of theme or character development.  Then she likes to take them and piled them up in her rocking chair. 

One of her latest things is that, when she's toddling around the house and she sees something she's interested in or realizes she wants to go Over! There!, she does this sort of JAZZ HANDS! move, where she flings her little hands out from her waist and squeals.  It is A-ONE AWESOME and I will try to get it on video. 

JAZZ HANDS! 

God, I love her.   

Threads

Before I begin another senseless ramble, let me ask you:  if a kid peed in the bath, would you drain all the water and start over?  Or would you just act like it didn't happen and proceed?  Would the age of the child affect your answer?  Would it matter at what point during the bath the peeing happened (beginning, middle, end)? 

It should go without saying -- you know me by now, after all -- that there is ZERO judgment here, whatever your answer.  You also don't have to be a parent to answer, as this is a hypothetical, and one's preference can be determined without having experienced it.  I am simply curious to know whether I am an outlier one way or the other (I'll reveal my answer next time I post.)

Separately, do you ever feel like your life has sort of an alternate version that's proceeding somewhere without you actually living it?  One in which you made a different choice at some crucial juncture, or in which Fate took you in another direction? 

When I was a kid, after we moved to Georgia, I felt like there was some other place in the universe in which my life in the Chicago suburbs continued, unabated.  In that version, I went to the neighborhood elementary school that was walking distance from our split-level house and I grew up with the friends that I had, in reality, left behind right after my sixth birthday, when our creaky white Volvo station wagon pulled out of Countryside (our subdivision and Big Wheel proving grounds).  And in that version, no one made fun of me for how I talked or thought it was odd that I wore dresses all the time. 

Of course, I would never actually choose that alternate childhood, for lots of reasons (setting aside the Back to the Future alteration of my current reality), but most of all because it wouldn't have had Allison in it.  And that is to say, it would have been no life at all.   

Other threads of my life that I sometimes believe are dangling out there, somewhere, are the ones in which I came to New York after high school and joined a ballet company; went to Princeton (OH, how I wanted to go to Princeton) instead of a Big Ten school; studied abroad during college and/or law school (my reason for not going, both times? a boy-- lame, lame, lame); went to Denmark as an exchange student during high school (I can picture myself biking along a crooked little street on a rainy day and toasting fiends with Tuborg beer in a cozy, candlelit living room at night); or continued auditioning for acting jobs, and taking acting classes, until one day I somehow Broke into the Business.

I also have these sort of current/future alternate realities, in which -- theoretically -- I could make a series of choices right now and suddenly be living a different life.  Like we could up and move to some small rural town where work would be less of a focal point of our life and we could afford (with what jobs, I'm not sure) a rambling house on a bunch of land. 

In my head, living in that small town and having a big, open kitchen, a light-filled house and a backyard would transform me into someone who always has something delicious in the oven, who knows just what to bring over to the neighbors to make their lives easier, who wears brightly colored skirts and ruffled cardigans and headbands, whose house is a constant bustle of social activity, and who volunteers at the church, the hospital, the Junior League and the local dance company.  And who dashes off a novel amid the general whirl of gaiety that would be this life.   

On some level, this idea/delusion relates to looking at blogs -- part of the fun of reading about other people's lives is trying on their circumstances, seeing what it would be like to live alongside them in their corner of the world.  Some of it is pure real estate voyeurism -- imagining what it would be like to have someone else's hilltop view or rocking-chair porch or Craftsman-style architecture.  Some of it is liking how other people dress and decorate.  Some of it is seeing things from a different perspective -- if I spend a lot of time on The Pioneer Woman, for example, I start to think that my life would be infinitely better if I could just go live on a ranch.  And some of it is flat-out envy (why do THOSE people get to go eat fresh croissants in Paris for six months while I'm grinding away at an office every day like a schmuck?). 

I stopped reading women's magazines years ago because I hated the feeling of wanting that they gave me.  It was almost a form of anxiety, that I had all the wrong clothes and that I could get the life I wanted if only I would spend hundreds of dollars a month on the latest cosmetics.  Reading blogs is very different from that feeling (most of the time -- certainly, some blogs are about selling an image, a brand, or a lifestyle, or even specific products, but I'm talking about personal blogs); it's not a sense of musthave-mustbuy-mustacquire but rather one of peeking into real lives of real people, and seeing threads of their lives that you want to weave into your own. 

Sometimes, admittedly, I do feel inadequate when I see how other people are living (whether in "real life" or in blogland) -- maybe they're working on a book (whereas I just whine about WANTING to work on a book, and I imagine that I would magically have more hours in the day to do so if only X, Y and Z would happen), or maybe they have a perfect work-life balance, or maybe they throw great parties.  Or maybe they're just nicer, in the way I want to be nicer, or whatever.  I'm also very suggestible, so when someone (again, whether I know them personally or through the computer) makes a big change in their life or lives a certain way, I find myself thinking, dude!  I should do that TOO!

What I have to remind myself is that I can take inspiration from other people, rather than having to BECOME those people or carefully model my circumstances after theirs.  I don't have to, say, move to Utah in order to have a prettier life with more of a sense of community, more celebrations, a more present faith, and cuter clothes (and let's face it, wherever I live I am going to have the same boring clothes). 

My life is here and now, and it's pretty damn good.  I am grateful for what I have, but I also want to be committed to trying to make things even better within the parameters of how things are right now -- to do more for the people I love, to do thoughtful things, to create a community for myself, and to find more ways to celebrate the fact that this, this is the only life I've got. 

Friday Baby Dance Party!: Short and Sweet Edition

I was commenting to J the other day when I got home from work that Felicity hadn't picked up on the blowing kisses yet, and we looked over and there was the little lady, air-kissing away.  

I guess that goes some distance toward making up for the fact that, whenever I ask her to give Mama a hug or a kiss, she says, "Nooooo!" 

Action!

Finally, an actual video to share.  Thank you, iPhone!  Please excuse my weird voice and my truly horrible singing.

Yes, my child hangs out in a dog bed.  Doesn't yours? 

That dog bed, by the way, has become one of her favorite things in the world.  She'll walk across the living room and go out of her way to pratfall into it, and then she'll spend up to an hour singing or chatting to herself while she tries to fit her whole body into it in various contortive postures.  She somersaults, she downward-dogs, she twirls, she stretches, she cracks herself up.  Meanwhile, Miles sulks in the corner of the couch and wonders how, exactly, his life went off the rails in such a sudden and dramatic fashion. 

Baby Mama

I was going to kick off my second Mother's Day with a 4-mile race, to make it something of a tradition since that's what I did last year.  This year, however, Felicity slept until 7:30, which means that I did, too (my twenty-something self is busily trying to compute how 7:30 can equate to "sleeping in"), thereby missing the number pickup window.  Apparently taking the little lady to New Jersey for a birthday party yesterday, and depriving her of a nap in the process, knocked her right on her kiester.  She did really well sans nap, which shocked the heck out of me, since she usually becomes inconsolable if she doesn't get at least two hours of sack time in the afternoon; but I guess the exotic turnpike scenery and the novelty of kicking around in a real backyard kept her going. 

I did go out for a run, though it was decidedly less festive without 8,000 or so other runners to keep me company.  Here's a comely shot of my post-race story time with the resident Little House fan -- please note my corona of wild, frazzled hair, which is the regrowth of all the strands I lost in the post-partum carnival of hormones (attractive, huh?):

After a breakfast that may have involved the consumption of an unseemly amount of bacon on my part, we headed out to the park to soak up some sunshine.  It was a glorious day, and Felicity did her part to assist the Parks Department in taking inventory of every twig, stick and rock in the Pinetum.

Her daddy stepped in as her horticultural assistant so I could spend some quality time laying on our picnic blanket, zoning out and restraining the dog from pulling the stroller over in his eagerness to keep track of the baby.

Everyone in our vicinity was grateful for the extra dose of UV rays they got from my exposed legs.  Please note my stellar posture -- those 20-plus years of ballet training really paid off, no?

Later, while Felicity napped, I went out and bought myself an iPhone 4.  Yes, I am a Late Adopter.  I could no longer stand knowing that so many of my friends were playing word games without me.  And, y'all, we live in wondrous times when these pictures come from a PHONE (I know, you're all over it by now, but come ON!).  (The blurred arms are Felicity's flapping to indicate a bird -- she loooooves to point out birds in this manner, and when we pass people in the park they always think she's waving at them, so they're all, "Oh, hiiiiiii!" and wave frantically back, and I don't have the heart to tell them that she is just showing me the robin in that tree over there.)

It was a full day and we didn't have time for everything I wanted to do (like nap and call my own mom -- FAIL) (sorry, Mom, I'll call this week!), and I got to spend it with two pretty fantastic people.  Also, there was Carvel cake. 

Not bad, life.  Not bad at all.    

All About the O

I remember watching the Oprah Winfrey Show in its earliest days when I was in sixth grade, with its 80s-tastic lavender-and-blue set and Ms. Winfrey's impressive shoulder pads.  In fact, I remember seeing promos for the show before it even aired -- the commercials featured Oprah coming out of a theater with a guy in a tux and someone asking, "Opera?" and she would respond, "Oprah!", with a gesture of grandiosity. 

For years, the Oprah show would be on while I was hurrying to get my homework done after school, before I went off to spend the rest of the evening in the ballet studio.  Sometimes the stories were sad, sometimes they scared me (anything about any type of crime, or anything fire-related, used to scare the pants off me), sometimes they were amusing (all those middle-aged women losing their shit over the Alaskan bachelors).  In a way, it was a kind of background noise since I was focused on so many other things and wasn't really watching it to watch it, but somehow a lot of what I saw on that show stayed with me. 

After I went to college and then to law school, Oprah faded much further into the scenery.  Occasionally, I would watch a rerun of the day's episode at 2am, when I was too burnt out to read another word of my Crim Law textbook.  But oftentimes my mom would mention something she saw on Oprah, and then the magazine started and the Harpo empire expanded as Dr. Phil entered the scene with his "How's that workin' for you?" catchphrases.  I thought it was all a little silly, just another bit of fluff set to a soundtrack of Josh Groban, Celine Dion and Michael Buble.

Then came The Secret years, which were not my bag (see also: cleanses) -- all the talk about manifesting intentions and whatnot...it wasn't for me.  Also, around that time, whenever I would see the show -- usually if I was home sick on the couch -- it seemed like it was about five minutes of the guest talking about whatever they were there to talk about, and fifty-five minutes of Oprah talking about herself.  Or it would be her and a Hollywood star gushing over each other -- "You're amazing!  You have such truth!"  "No, YOU'RE the one with the truth! You have a beautiful soul!" -- and it made me want to put my fist through a wall. 

And THEN came the Tom Cruise couch-jumping episode a few years ago, which put Ms. Winfrey back on the map for me.  On some level, it demonstrated to me that her platform was somehow singular enough that someone like TC could cast aside the veil of the Carefully Crafted Public Image and be as wackadoo as he wanted to be in her presence.  You had to hand it to her for giving a celebrity that level of emotional security, you know? 

So now we're in Oprah's final season, down to a handful of episodes left.  For some reason, although I hadn't seen the show in ages, I started TiVoing it after the new year, and I've been watching at night when there's nothing else on.  And I have to say, much to my surprise, I love it.  And I love her.  That's right, I said it: I love Oprah.

Not only has she majorly toned down the all-about-Oprah-ness of the show, but she has this way -- which I know she's always had, or she wouldn't have lasted for 25 years; it just seems more pronounced to me now -- of making you feel like she's right there in the armchair next to your couch.  Like she's bringing you into the world of her studio, and thereby her world at large, instead of just showing it to you -- and that is a crucial difference. 

I no longer feel, as she's interviewing Chris Rock or whomever, that they're having a private conversation about how awesome it is to be rich and powerful.  Which is precisely how I used to feel, once she was in Oprah Empire Mode -- it seemed like there was this energy between her and a guest that said, "You and I are different."  Or else you just felt like she and, say, John Travolta were so weirdly bonded in their mutual, tear-stained admiration that they couldn't let anyone else into their little friendship, that as a viewer you couldn't penetrate it or even remotely understand it. 

In short, I don't feel like rolling my eyes when I'm watching anymore.  Instead, I feel like I'm watching someone who has truly transformed the world -- for good and bad (ahem - giving pseudo-science a platform on multiple occasions - ahem), but mostly good -- and who will probably never be matched in global reach and influence, at least not in the same way that she has done. 

Because despite who she is, she still feels -- through that screen -- like she COULD be your girlfriend, or maybe one of your mom's girlfriends if you're especially young.  She asks the questions that YOU want to know; she doesn't poke, poke, poke just to elicit a certain emotional response (see: Barbara Walters), but she doesn't shy away from the difficult questions, either.  It's like she's asking on all of our behalf what we'd be asking if we were sitting in that buttery leather chair next to Cameron Diaz. 

And she really did come from the most unfortunate of circumstances and built everything she has from the ground up, and I cannot do anything but respect and admire that.  I don't have to have always adored her or take anything she says as gospel to recognize what she's accomplished and to appreciate all that she's added to our conversation for more than two decades.

This might be the most earnest-sounding post I've ever written, but I'm ok with that.  I've had this complicated on-again-off-again/love-disdain relationship with Oprah's show for 25 years now, and that fact alone -- that she could be ANY kind of presence in our lives over that span of time, without being someone that we actually KNOW -- is fairly astonishing. 

So I don't know that I will be devastated when her last show airs, as it's not that much a part of my daily existence; but it is strange to think that we will no longer overhear snippets of conversations that start with, "I saw on Oprah the other day..."  In a way, it's like the royal wedding, in that one can be fairly uninterested in a thing until it happens and it's over, and it leaves you going, "Well, damn, that girl could have been me."  But of course, it couldn't have been; I couldn't have been Kate MIddleton (on whom I have a bit of a girl-crush now, and can we TALK about her total BABE of a sister??), and I sure as hell couldn't have been Oprah.  She has a talent and a drive that most of us just don't have.  And when she's not on the teevee every afternoon anymore, her absence will be felt.