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Committing a deadly sin

Four years ago, I applied for the assistant editor job at The Washington Post's Sunday Source.  It was a tremendously hard application process -- once my resume was picked as a candidate, I had to go through a year's worth of Sources and write an analysis.  I had a journalism class in college that was exactly the same, but this analysis was harder; they wanted applicants to cover lots of issues.  The turn-around time was fast.  I was a dedicated Source reader, so I knew the section backwards and forwards, but it still took days to do.  I didn't think it'd go anywhere; I'd applied for jobs at the Post before.  It's an institution.  You have to be seriously A-game.  But to my surprise, I passed that first round.  And a fairly strenuous second round.  And then an interview at a buzzed-about D.C. restaurant (o taste of the Post sweet life!) and then a tricky third round.  And then an interview at an established-institution restaurant, and then interviews with all the Post features managing editors -- including an interview with one of my idols, then-Style editor Eugene Robinson.  (Try not making an idiot of yourself when being interviewed by one of your idols, and then you'll see how ON I was ... although I did ask him a lot of questions about his career and he said, "Wait, I'm supposed to be interviewing YOU.")  I was doing well.  I was handling the trickiest interviews of my life with aplomb.  I was starting to believe.  I was starting to think I could maybe get the job.  As I was leaving the round-o'-interviews, the boss-to-be called me back to her and asked what salary I would want if I got the job.  I named a figure that was $5,000 over my current salary (which I thought was a pretty awesome salary for a journalist), and she laughed and said, "Oh yeah, we could certainly do that!" in a way that indicated my astronomical figure was low, very low, for the Post.  For the first time ever, I walked away from an interview thinking, "Oh my god, I just aced that."  I was going to be offered a job at my beloved hometown paper, one of the most prestigious papers in the nation, and I was going to be making six figures in a year or two and I was going to occasionally be taken out to sweet restaurants by upper management and best of all I was finally going to be doing the features I loved and not war war military war performance reviews war.

And two days later they told me they hired the other finalist -- Suzanne D'Amato, who was the fashion news editor at Teen Vogue.  TEEN VOGUE.   What, did her in-depth article on prom fashion get her the job?  I was blown away.  I had tasted a pinnacle of success in my field and then had it snatched away by some chick from a KIDS magazine.  I hated her.

I tried to hate her passionately.  But she had good style.  And she became deputy editor at Source and added some good stuff to the section.  Soon I was starting to wish I'd bump into her some day, so I could tell her how I tried to hate her but her sartorial additions to Source won me over.  Plus, I figured maybe things worked for the best -- there was some management upheaval at Source that maybe I wouldn't have survived, and then I had Harper and left newspaper management.  And, buried deeper in me:  Maybe it was okay to try for the top and not make it, that it wasn't necessarily failure but rather fate.

Then, two weeks ago, there was a note from Ms. D'Amato in Source.  It was a farewell.  She was leaving Source to become features editor at Domino magazine.  I love Domino.  It's one of my favorite magazines.  It's such a fabulous job.  I'm extremely jealous.  Yeah, NYC wasn't ever going to be in my future, but STILL.  I think I'm going to hate Suzanne D'Amato for awhile again.  Or at least envy her career.  I know envy is a deadly sin, but isn't a little bit of deadly sin OK when you're feeling old and fat and the only excitement coming up in your life is potty training?   Answer: Yes.  (Hey, at least I get to make the rules now.) 

The disconnect

What is with the media hysteria over Obama being a normal person?  Am I the only person out there who thinks a fist bump is a fairly unremarkable thing?  The Washington Post devoted a whole story to the fist bump, as they did to Obama brushin' that dirt off earlier this year.  I was incredulous over both.  I'm trying to tell myself that this is just the media setting up the McCain-Old, Obama-Young thing, but I'm duping myself -- no mention of age came up in either story.  It was breathless "Barack listens to Jay-Z!  He's so hip!" insanity.

This would be a story if rap/hip-hop was a new art form, or was still controversial beyond grinding-ladies videos, or if Obama was leaning toward really sensational artists.  But, c'mon, rap is older than alt-rock.  It's utterly mainstream.  Jay-Z is a friggin' baby boomer in the genre.  And don't get me started on dap.  My 2-year-old fist bumps, for god's sake.  Yeah, she's a bit hipster -- she like to put on a purple bubble skirt and my trouser socks and polka-dot heels and manages to carry it off -- but, you know, she's a toddler.  So I'm not exactly impressed that Obama fist bumps.  Oh oh, I bet he also has an iPod!  I bet he once called Jay-Z Jigga!  Good lord.  I suspect that some old-fart journalists just need to brush up on their pop culture a little.

Hell Weekend cometh

Hell Weekend is coming, and there ain't nothing nobody can do about it except kiss their asses goodbye.  What am I talking about?  WEDDING WEEKEND, foolish mortal.  For drama this big, I'm surprised it's not on the front page of the paper (below the fold, but still).

My sister is getting married on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.  Sean's uncle is getting married that Saturday.  Lots of family will soon be descending like locusts.   It's like all the chaos of our own wedding without the fun of a honeymoon afterward.  Actually, it's worse -- there's craziness like a rehearsal dinner for one wedding scheduled at the same time as the reception for the other.  And with the baby ... good god.  Demands for Harper face time are already running high.  I actually had to send out a schedule to the primaries yesterday, to say, "Here is where I will be at this time on this day, here is where Sean and Harper will be ... ."  Sean's been working non-stop this month because of some typical-of-there bullshit, so that weekend will be the first time in May he won't be at work.  However, I won't see him much; we're having to split up to cover all the events.  It should be a happy time, but part of me is dreading it.

I think it might be our fault.  We seem to invite wedding drama.  Our own wedding took place a month and a half after Sept. 11.  (In fact, on that very morning I was picking up wedding tasting cakes in Old Town, and afterwards decided to go see what all the smoke was.  In the ensuing hours locked in an abandoned hot car as I totally forgot about them, the cakes melted.  I have a very clear memory of Sean not getting home until very late, eating cake goo while in the daze that everyone was in that day.)  As journalists, we suddenly had to be at work all the time, not leaving much time for putting a wedding together (we had a short engagement, so there still was a lot to do).  The anthrax attacks hit and some of invitations took weeks to arrive.   The airport situation here was iffy so Maine friends and relatives now had to plan to drive down.  Our boss told us it was too busy for us to take leave for our honeymoon (we threatened to quit, so we got it).  And it was just a scary time to think about starting a family.  It was insanity, but we had to just deal with it -- a lot of people were suffering, and complaining about a wedding was just rude.

But complaining about Becky's wedding is perfectly acceptable!  It is also hell, but it is a hell of her own making.  She and Sean (yes, her fiance is also Sean; still copying big sis) have a lot going on this month -- thesis and graduation for him, an in-town move for her, a Philly-to-here move for him -- but they decided what the hell, let's liven it up with a wedding!  The gods are punishing them for their naivete.  All kinds of extra insanity is currently unfolding: The minister isn't actually ordained.  The cat went missing during the move.  The dress suddenly isn't fitting.  Man, there's quite a list.  I would have to giggle if I didn't love her.  Actually, I did giggle when I found out that after several days they ended up having to hire a professional trapper to get the cat, but Sean ended up catching the cat, but the trapper was there so they still have to pay him.  C'mon, that's funny!  If you're not living it, I mean.

She'll get her revenge on me, don't worry.  I have to cross the Potomac River about 800 times that weekend for various wedding(s) events, so I no doubt will get stuck in an hour-long traffic jam on the way to the reception.  She can laugh at me as I tell her how the baby had volcano poop and a tire went flat and the cell phone battery died and it was then that I realized that I forgot my grandmother- and mother-in-law at the church.  Because that's how it goes on Hell Weekend!

The wind of my soul

Because I'm crazy, I decided to take Harper down to the Kite Festival on Saturday.  It was a beautiful windy day, so it seemed perfect.  But this was demented thinking because Saturday was the start of the Cherry Blossom Festival (which the kites were part of), plus the National Marathon was going on.  Fine, I thought, we'll take Metro.  I never take Metro.  I hate Metro.  I avoid Metro like the plague.  But sometimes ya gotta take Metro.  I was pretty sure the kid would be cool with it, so I wasn't sweating it.

And she did.  She LOVED Metro.  She should be the spokesperson for Metro.  As she watched people get on, she'd say, "Everyone wants to ride the train!" and occasionally she'd accost female riders and yell at them, "Everyone loves riding the train, lady!"  She was a big hit, partially because she's very articulate for her age (that's another post) and partially because WMATA-weary passengers were amused by her gilded view of Metro.

The kite festival ... well, not so much.  She thought all the kites were cool, but she apparently thought she was going to be able to chase and catch all the kites and keep  them.  There was a breakdown when I told her that isn't how it works.  (I blame Easter -- she got into a real "all the eggs are for me!" mentality.)  Then there were a couple more breakdowns about other things.  I think she realized that downtown D.C. during cherry blossom time is a shit bomb.  Or maybe Metro WAS the best part of the day (dear god, no!).  We still managed to have some fun, though.  We didn't have a kite, but there was a  station where kids could color and make their own using recycled materials.  Bless you, kite station people!  We made a little kite and Harper was able to fly it for a whole five seconds, which I think is pretty good for a 2-year-old.  I had to fly it the rest of the time, and she chased it and then just danced under it.  For that alone, it ended up being worth it.

Then we rode home on the train, which Mommy thought was a spectacular disaster due to some broken gates and the elevator only working on the side of Metro we didn't want to ride (we had the stroller) and one-way-only-today exits and massive overcrowding at the Smithsonian station.  I was getting pissed.  But Harper loved it all -- she was even good waiting in line for Metro -- so what can I say?  It was a perfect day.

"I listen to the wind / To the wind of my soul / Where I'll end up, well, I think / Only God really knows" -- "The Wind" by Cat Stevens.  Before Cat Stevens hated America, he sure made a shitload of money off of it.  And, OK, he wrote some pretty awesome songs, like this one.  These are good lyrics to illustrate every level of our day, but only because there isn't a song about how the subway is messing with my shi- ("my transactional shi-!") and crazy baby likes it.

Perhaps we are bad parents

Maybe it was when our 2-year-old said, "I like 'The Wire.'"  Maybe it was when a song about sex became her favorite song.  Maybe it was when I realized the three of us ate a whole package of Double Stuf Mint Creme Oreos in 60 hours (but in our defense, it was vacation).  Whatever it was, I've been thinking lately that maybe we aren't exactly the best parents in the world.

I never said I was going to raise a Pollyanna; anyone can take one look at me and know there's no way I could even try.  But I've been wondering if we could try a little harder.  We made sure she didn't see "Eastern Promises" when we rented it last week.  But we did let her watch "Halloween" on Halloween, after we realized she thought Michael Myers was a ghost.  See, right there, TWO layers of bad parenting.  Most of you don't even realize that is a POSITIVE statement.  But it is.  Harper loves ghosts.  Around Halloween, she carried around a glowing skull and called him Buddy Argh.  We thought it was cute, but I will admit that most well-adjusted 2-year-olds probably don't have a glowing skull as a best friend.

This wasn't a concern until this year.  We're freaks; so what?  Someone has to be.  But I've been touring preschools recently, and I was starting to think that maybe we needed to dial back some of the freakishness.  Because Harper's preschool teacher might not be down with Flight of the Conchord's "Business Time" being Harper's favorite song.  She might want to discuss with me why Harper thinks milkshakes can talk (and if you watch "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," too, you know they CAN talk ... and cuss, and flip the bird, and cause mass hysteria in Boston).

I had almost talked myself into normalcy for the kid's sake.  But then I finished reading "Julie & Julia" today.  It's by a woman (named Julie) who decided to make every recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1" in the course of a year.  Well, that's the simplistic description; the book's really about a lot more.  It's partially about parenting, for example.  I'll explain:  Julie wrote a blog about her efforts during that year.  At one point she broke down and decided to quit, and her readers tried to encourage her in various ways to continue the project.  Except for one reader named Clarence, who said, "If only you wouldn't use f*** so much -- it adds nothing."  Those of you who know me know I snorted here; I happen to be a big fan of "fuck," and I think it adds a lot depending on emphasis, placement and usage.  Plus it's just fun to say.  I've run into some Clarences in my time, so the episode stuck in my mind.  Several pages later, Julie realized a little angst shouldn't derail her and she got back into the project.  Julie's mom, who up until then hadn't understood the project, posted a comment on the blog thanking the readers for supporting Julie and making her (Julie's mom) realize why the project is good for Julie.

Some nice parenting, right?  Well, that's not what I'm talking about.  What I'm talking about is the postscript Julie's mom adds to her comment: "PS -- Clarence, who fucking cares what you think, anyway."  It took my breath away.  The comment was good parenting, but the postscript was complete acceptance coupled with a mama-bear instinct of swiping at anyone messing with her kid.  I loved it.  It struck me as funny and good and right.  And I realized that THAT is the kind of parent I want to be (plus one who gets to say "fuck").

So if Harper loves profane milkshakes, well, that's just who she is.  She might run into some Clarences who don't understand her, but that's why I'm around.  I won't let people kick my kid just because they don't take her path.  I will, however, refrain from buying more Oreos.

Oh, hi! You're still here?

Yeah, sorry.  December is a bitch of a month -- Sean's birthday, Harper's birthday, Christmas.  Not exactly total chaos, but pretty busy.  So the blog just gets ignored in December.  Then I was going to write a couple posts after the new year, but the computer fried -- our software got et by a virus despite having security software.  (Hey, if you live in the D.C. area, don't use a computer company named OnCall 25/8.  The idiot name alone should of clued me in, but I'm a slow learner.) 

But now I'm back, and I'll be writing more posts.  Coming up, Sharon learns in mid-January that preschool sign-up time is mid-January!  Apparently I was just supposed to know this intuitively because I gave birth.  Oh, the fun and hijinks.

First in a loooong line of hairdos

Harper got her first haircut the other day.  I've been going back and forth on whether to get her one.  A certain control-freak grandmother was lobbying for it, and I didn't think it seemed necessary.  But now she's sleeping with blankets, and tussling with them all night leaves her looking quite scary.  Also, because the back of her hair started growing before the front, we were approaching mullet territory.  Time to intervene.

So I took her to Cheryl, my stylist.  I've heard horror stories about Cartoon Cuts.  If I wanted Harper to have a bowl cut, I'd hand her over to Sean.  (He says he'd actually just give her a buzz cut.)  Cheryl's good people.  She's from Massachusetts, so I knew she could put Harper at ease by talking about Manny.  But Harper didn't need to be put at ease.  She did fine.  She mostly wanted to see what Cheryl was doing, so every time Cheryl was about to snip, Harper turned around.  And she liked staring at herself in the big mirror, the little narcissist.

Cheryl gave Harper a bob.  Sean's all full of himself because last week he suggested a bob would look best, and then Cheryl came up with that without any prompting from us.  (I have not mentioned to Mr. GQ Style that this does nothing to quell the gay rumors.)  But he's right; she does look pretty cute in her curly bob.  And I'm sad about it.  I had no problem with her getting a haircut -- I hear some moms weep through them -- but now I see how grown up she looks and I'm a little blue.  Where has my little baby gone?  Maybe I should have asked myself that when she called Sean a "pantload" two weeks ago, but I'm asking myself that now.

Tell me something good

Harper is talking up a storm.  I guess this shouldn't be a surprise -- she's been talking for quite awhile now -- but just in the past month a verbal hemorrhage has begun pouring forth.  In the past, words weren't surprises.  Each word was work and we worked awhile for her to get them down.  When something came along and it was a word she knew, she used it and everyone cheered and then we went back to communicating with crying and yelling.  But now she can talk all the time about everything, and she does.  She's constantly surprising me with words I didn't know she knew.  Last week she was wandering around muttering "cheeseburger" a lot, then occasionally coming right up to me and going, "CHEESEBURGER!"  So we got her a damn cheeseburger on Monday.  But where the hell did she learn cheeseburger?  It's not like we talk about cheeseburgers constantly around here.  Well, on second thought, maybe Sean does.

But mostly, I love getting to communicate with Harper more.  She likes to tell me stories.  After a major event in her life, which usually means interacting with some animal, she rehashes the details with me for a couple days.  A couple weeks ago, after molesting two cats who were hanging out at the neighborhood playground, she spent days telling me, "Kiss kitty, hug kitty, two kitties.  Pat!  Pat kitties.  I LIKE kitties!"  Last week, we saw a bobblehead Geico gecko, and she went nuts.  She climbed up on the desk it was on and went to town on that thing.  And she spent the next day telling me all about it:  "Hug gecko!  Pat gecko.  I LIKE gecko!"  She seems to know we're going to the in-laws again soon, and she's been babbling away about getting to give Heidi dog treats ("I LIKE treats!").  And, oh god, the freakin' World Series.  Don't marry a guy from the Northeast if you want your kid to be normal.  Harper fell in love with Manny Ramirez during the series and now likes to babble on about how she's going to give "Manny" a hug.

Yeah, there's a downside -- she asks about things I'd rather avoid, like "more cand[y]?", and can we read the book about Lollipop the dog for the 80th time today.  But when that kid comes to me and says, "I LIKE Mommy," it's pretty damn great.         

It's business time

This is just a post to let you know that Sean (that guy I'm married to) has written a post.  "Whoop-de-fuckin'-do," you might be saying, but since it's his first post in a year and a half, I thought I'd talk it up a little.  He's taking care of some business.  Actually, I just used that as my subject line so I could run this:

"I take off my clothes / But I trip over my jeans ‘cause I’m still wearing my shoes / But it’s okay because I turn it all into a sexy dance / The next thing you know I’m wearing absolutely nothing / Except for my socks / And you know when I’m down to my socks what time it is / It’s business time / It’s business / It’s business time / When I’m down to my socks it’s time for business / That’s why they’re called business socks / Oooh" -- "It's Business Time" by Flight of the Conchords.  Oh, my new favorite show.  Thank god for OnDemand so we can watch those boys over and over again whenever we want.  Too funny.  My favorite song is "If You're Into It."  Download a free MP3 of it now.  I demand it.

Talkin' bout the old style too

I love art.  I think you have to blame Great-aunt Louise for that.  She and Great-uncle Bob were art collectors.  Very active art collectors.  And they wanted to show everything, not just a few pieces at a time.  It makes sense to me -- why buy art only to keep it in storage most of the year?  So they hung art literally floor to ceiling.  On every wall, along the staircase, everywhere.  Couple that with the back of their house being glass and facing the Puget Sound, and you're talking about a house that left an impression.  I wanted a house like that. 

Well, there's no house like that (yet), but we're getting close to having all the art.  We have more art than we have wallspace, unfortunately.  (What was it I said about it being dumb to store art?)  I have wide and varied taste, but over the years I've really come to enjoy folk art -- or outsider art, or visionary art, whatever vogue term it has this week.  I love the playful nature of it, the crazy topics, the great color in so many pieces.  So while we have all kinds of art, we own a bunch of folk art.  Most pieces are the new-style look, old-style process of the carving/typesetting folk artists at Yee-Haw Industrial Press, like this one and this one (although ours is a fine-art print) and this one ...

The trouble with folk art is that it looks so fun, so accessible, so ... doable.  You think, aw hell, I have a sense of humor and a bit of artistic talent, why ain't I makin' my own damn art?  So occasionally I produce a painting or a piece of scratchboard or such and think I'm a closet folk-art genius.  Then, through a series of accidents on my sister's part, I found out that Kevin Bradley and Julie Belcher, the geniuses behind Yee-Haw, were going to be teaching a letterpress class at Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring.  I about peed myself, like a tween (or Stacy) finding out Justin Timberlake is coming to town.  I could be taught by the masters!  My idols!  Oh my god, I'd have to show them my artwork.

That's the trouble with producing art -- people expect to see it.  I'd rather not show it, for fear of finding out I'm not really a closet folk-art genius.  But we're all friends here, right?  (Answer: Right.)  So I'm going to show you what I made.  One piece is all carved (linoleum block) and one piece is all typeset.  But first let me say:  I got to spend three days with my art idols and it was fantastic.  They taught me a bunch of techniques I didn't know, they entertained me, and they unfortunately turned me on to expensive tools I now covet.  (Oh, and we have to buy a house with a concrete-foundation garage so I can get a letterpress.)  I'm sorry the class wasn't a week, and I'm sorry I didn't make a piece that combined carving and set type.  But the Pyramid Atlantic equipment is often available and I'm going to take advantage of that when I can.  Because maybe, just maybe, I'm a closet folk-art genius.  I hope so, because I have some art to sell -- we're out of wallspace.

Here's the first piece I did, called "The Bottle Let Him Down."  Sean came up with the wording, hence the double-signature.  I debated copying a font for this, but Kevin Bradley recommended freestyling the letters.  "That's what George Jones would do," he said.  He had an excellent point.  I carved two plates for this -- one for all the black text and bottle shape, and one for the green border and bottle color.  In hindsight, I wish I had not put so much space between the lines of text.  Also, I accidentally cut off the end of one of the g's, so there's some unfortunate stubbery going on there.  (Kevin was like, "Oh well, deal," and stubbed the g for me after I was paralyzed by the horror of my mistake.)  And you can see where I got a little tipsy with the green in the bottle -- it slants away too much in the top half.  I also think I cleaned the block out a bit too much; I'd like a little more of the black "woodblock" marks, especially between the lines of text.  Well, enough insulting my own work:  Overall, I'm fairly happy with how it turned out.

Here's the second piece I did, which has not been titled yet.  It might be called "Uncle Bastard," which is Sean's nickname.  This is only blurry and crooked because I am a closet folk-art genius, not a photographer.  This piece is completely typeset.  It looks easy, but I figure it took about 5.5 hours to completely set.  It would have been easier if there were longer lines for the outline, but there were only teeny dashes.  In this piece, I learned my lesson with leading (between-the-lines spacing), but I was having serious issues with kerning (between-words spacing).  Part of that is because I have a few different widths going on within the pieces, but part of it is inexperience.  You'd think I'd be good.  Let's figure I created about 1,200 pages a year (4 pages a day -- and, dude, I so did more than that) for all the years I was actively creating newspaper pages.  But all of those pages had automatic kerning.  If pages were still typeset, they'd put me in ad sales.  I had two other issues -- I mistook a b for a d and didn't notice it for a couple prints, and I had some rising spacers that ruined a couple prints (including one with the nicest inking).  Speaking of inking, I wanted to put more ink on the drum, but a more experienced student told me there was enough.  I should have gone with my gut instinct; the pieces in general are too light.  But mostly I love this print, and it was a big hit with my fellow students who got to see it (it was the last run on the last day, and most folks had left).  The best surprise:  I had a rocket in my original sketch, and couldn't believe I found a slug of one.  It was much longer than the one in my sketch, but with a find like that I had to make it work. 

So, overall:  I had a blast.  Best three days in quite awhile.  I did not get a job at Yee-Haw, but Kevin Bradley said he liked my George Jones print, and my closet folk-art genius ego is doing just fine with that.           

"And we don't care about the young folks / Talkin' bout the young style / And we don't care about the old folks / Talkin' bout the old style too" -- "Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn and John (featuring Victoria Bergsman).  This is my latest obsession song, although I guess I'm also obsessing on "Johnny Appleseed" by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros.  "Johnny" is the theme song for "John from Cincinnati," which is how it came to my attention.  Never mind that it's on an album we've owned for awhile ("Global A Go-Go"), which is the source of another obsession song ("Mondo Bongo") which came to my attention via another source of screen entertainment ("Mr. and Mrs. Smith").  This is how things work in my world.  ANYWAY.  "Young Folks."  Great song.  Love that whistle.  Love that beat.  Love that video.  Talkin' only me and you.