We Must Have the Manual Somewhere

Back the summer before last, when I was tres prego and we had no interest in going anywhere for Labor Day weekend, we got together for dinner one night with our friends the Mullins at a local old-timey burger and ice cream place. They live in Sacto, but were in town doing something or other since they already had birthed their two kids years earlier and were mobile and social as young families are.

We don’t see these fine folks anywhere near as often as we’d like, but work and life and their kids’ schools and Deanna’s busy career as a doc and the fact that there’s more than an hour’s drive between us, tend to throw a kink in making casual plans. Their last-minute call to get together was a welcomed surprise.

This dinner was the perfect setting for Mark and I to get us some parenting advice from pros. Dave and Deanna had been waiting patiently for years for Mark and I to even just get hitched, never mind have kids, and finally we were in the home stretch to parenthood. But that evening Mark and I learned the most from them about what our future roles would entail from just observing.

At one point in our meal their youngest, the beautiful Avery (who I’ll take bets right now will be a bigger pop icon than Britney Spears some day), took a bite of her burger which she insisted on smothering with ketchup and mustard, chewed it for a few seconds, then spit it out.

You could actually see Deanna’s blood pressure shoot up.

“We don’t do that, Avery,” she said levelly. “Please do not do that again.”

Well, you can probably see where this is going. Avery of course, took another bite and did it again. And Deanna was as unpleased as a Mama can get.

“That’s it! No dinner for you! We’re going to the car!”

And before we could say, “Hey, so how is work going, Deanna?”–since through all this Mark and I were naively trying to carry on our Grown Up Talk–Deanna whisked a bawling Avery out of the restaurant and into their parked car where they sat for the remainder of our meal. (From our vantage point we could see them in the parking lot, and I remembering being impressed that Deanna seemed utterly calm and relaxed once she addressed the situation properly. In fact, she quickly appeared to get engrossed in a novel we learned from Dave that she kept on-hand for these very reasons. Little did I know at the time, as a mother, a rare opportunity to read is something that must always be taken advantage of, despite the circumstances.)

Inside the restaurant, now a party of four with Dave and his older daughter, Kendra, Dave explained to us that the spitting out of food is “Deanna’s thing.” It’s her hot button. The thing she just can’t deal with. His was, well, I can’t remember what it was that puts him over the edge, but there was something.

Later that evening, like anthropologists furtively recording data in our field notes, Mark and I marveled over our new discovery. These parental hot buttons were both powerful and fascinating. What would ours be, we wondered? Would the same thing set us both off, or would the things that each of our parents stressed we couldn’t do as kids define our personal boundaries of acceptable behavior? Apparently we wouldn’t know until we experienced it.

Well, nearly 17 months into Kate’s life, we can now safely report that we know what at least one of these is for us. Kate does this thing… To even think of it gets my blood boiling, and I actually take it much better than Mark does—though at times an outside observer might witness my reaction to it and beg to differ. In the microcosm that is our blissed-out nuclear family life, a small war is waging, and Mark and I are utterly at wits’ end trying to determine how to put a clean end to it.

It seems silly to even say what it is, because in writing it seems far more benign than the searing frustration it elicits from us. But I guess that’s the nature of these things. You don’t know what will cause your undoing until you’re in the midst of a blind rage.

The thing is, she throws her food off her high chair tray.

See? It sounds so banal.

Whatever. So you have to pick it up. But, no. It’s much worse than that.

It started with her casually chucking things off the edge. A Cheerio or an unwanted steamed broccoli floret. Then she must have seen it get a rise out of us, and she started doing it more slyly. So, while engaging us in direct eye contact, she’d sidle her fist, which was clutching say, some scrambled egg or a chunk of avocado, over to the edge of the tray and release it slowly as if we wouldn’t notice.

Sometimes she’d do it more forthrightly, while saying, “No, no”–baldly tossing our admonishment back at us. The first time it was kind of funny to see her do it while saying no, though God knows we used all our powers of holding-back-laughter-in-church to not positively reinforce it. And the second time it turns out it wasn’t even remotely amusing.

More recently Kate’s Projectile Party involves chucking the entire bowl or dish contents and all over the edge, then taking a sidelong swipe of her arm and sending the sippy cup flying as well. It’s messy and loud.

And the one that really adds insult to injury is when you’re on your hands and knees picking up whatever has been tossed, and you get a fistful of baked beans tossed onto your head. In those instances, if we weren’t already at home, I’d have her in the car seat with no more dinner in no time, and not just because I’m really into the book I’m reading right now.

All this brings to light the stunning parallels between raising dogs and children: consistency and consequences. We have started taking her food tray away when she does this, but we haven’t really made the consequences sufficiently dire. I’m not saying we’d resort to anything worthy of calling Child Protective Services on us, mind you. But just something negative enough so she learns that doing that leads to something she doesn’t want. No more salt lick. No more pellets.

What prevents us from following through with sufficient consequences is that often when The Tossing takes place, she hasn’t eaten what we feel is a sufficient dinner. We can’t bear the thought of sending her to bed hungry. (For the love of God, she might then wake up in the middle of the night!) So the punishment just amounts to a brief interruption in her repast. Eventually the tray comes out again with a different food item on it. We try again, hoping to lure her into actually consuming something, and civilly.

At those times, during Round 2, when she starts sending things flying again, I can only say that both Mark and I nearly combust with aggravation. It’s one part “she did it again,” with one part “she’s still not eaten enough,” and one large part “we clearly have no idea how to handle this situation.”

We’re rational people. We know there must be some course of action out there to manage this issue better. We have a strong suspicion it involves ending the meal then and there even though as an Italian American the thought of that pains me almost as much as The Tossing itself.

And for the life of us we’re unable to find our toddler Owner’s Manual to read up on the prescribed course of action. In the midst of the squash-tossing mayhem we both vow to get some book, or look online, or ask some friend, but once you’re in the trenches and you’re enemy is firing, it’s hard to effectively strategize from a defensive position.

And when it’s not happening, we tend to be off thinking about other things. Like how damn wonderful and perfect and adorable and smart she is. In those moments, the food fights seem to evaporate from our psyches. We live in the moment, in contented denial that nothing could ever be wrong. (Fast forward 15 years to the call from the mall store, “Our Kate? Shoplifting? Never!”)

Ah well. Perhaps we need to take it on with baby steps. For starters, I’m going to start wearing a shower cap at Kate’s mealtimes. It may not get to the root of the problem, but it seems like a workable solution for keeping my hair free of clumps of mac and cheese.

Pop Tart Psychology

A few years ago when we were in Connecticut visiting Mark’s sister and hubby they had Pop Tarts in the house, and in the course of the visit we had them for brekkie. So when we got home Mark got some at the grocery store–two packs since they were a BOGO item, i.e. “Buy One Get One” free. (This is what you learn from having a grocery store client for as long as I have.) I lamented that we shouldn’t eat those. They were a special “when we were at someone else’s house or up in Tahoe” treat. (For some reason when you go to Tahoe you’re allowed to eat like a 12-year-old latch child.) Then I polished off both boxes before I think Mark even got one.

We went for a spell without getting them. I put my (much fatter) foot down and managed to convince Mark that cinnamon toast was just as sugary.

Well I looked in the cupboard a couple days ago and what do I see but two gargantuan boxes of Pop Tarts. Brown sugar–not even my flavor. I prefer blueberry. Though that didn’t stop me from snarfing them up in the past, nor did it this time.

And so I’m sitting here with a cup of Earl Grey decaf and now my second Pop Tart and thinking this gastronomic decline just makes perfect sense right now. Everything else in my world seems to be coming a bit more unglued than I’d like–though I did check in with Mark recently to see if I was just being dramatic and/or hormonal. He kinda didn’t answer….

Yesterday morning we finally had our pitch. A response to an RFP to keep an existing client. Their bean counters (I assume) have all vendors bid or re-bid as it were for the work every several years to make sure they’re getting the most bang for their buck. And while I don’t blame them, bidding to keep work you already have is the worst. Losing hurts more than losing to a client you never had. And winning really just gets you back to where you were before you devoted weeks of stress, extra work, and new gray hairs to it all.

That said, pitching at a publishing company does beat pitching at an agency. I mean, this wasn’t a 25-person roller coaster ride from hell that involved experts pulled in from offices in other time zones and executives who two days before the pitch determine all the work that’s been done is in the totally wrong direction, and ‘y’all should probably execute against this strategy now.’

Weirdly, I was the exec in this pitch. Not that I haven’t been a Big Girl on these things in the past, but at least then I was one in a team. And now it’s just kinda me and other people who don’t seem to have tons of experience pitching who intermittently seem to get it, then suddenly do something leaving me fretting that they don’t get it at all.

Self-imposed stress can be the worst of it all. As long as someone else more senior than you tells you what you’re doing sucks, you’re confident in that assessment. But when it’s you telling you, you can’t help but wonder if maybe what you’ve been slaving over is really okay, or even kinda good, and you’re just being hard on yourself. Then, moments later, you are utterly convinced of its suckingness.

At any rate, there were no endlessly long late nights. Nor excessive weekends of work. But my brain was totally co-opted by thoughts of this so even Kate Time occasionally felt slightly tainted by work thoughts. Which is not The Plan. The Plan is to have the job that I do when I do it and not obsess over it and have it affect my sleep, and make me snap at the people working with me since I wish they had more experience pitching, and decide to go into the office on my work-from-home day, so not be able to drive Kate and the nanny to Gymboree and then feel guilty that my work is seeping into places that are not in The Plan.

For all this I had to be in LA overnight. Kate did a great job of making me feel even worse about it all by getting a cold and being especially sad and Mommy-clingy. And it was all about me just getting home after the pitch and then I’d have the rest of the week and weekend with her, but my bag got lost and I ended up sitting in the airport fuming and waiting for the next plane to land. An hour spent waiting for your bag to turn up sucks in any scenario, but one in which you are desperate to get back to the baby you’ve been fearing you’re been short-shrifting, makes it intolerable.

At one point, with only 20 more minutes to wait, I considered getting in my car and driving home to see Kate, and just getting the bag another day.

Of course, while waiting I had umpteen work calls and several of them indicated I might need to do some work the next day (my day off). This sent me into the stress stratosphere.

Thankfully by Friday morning it became apparent that the meeting I thought I might need to have wasn’t going to happen. I might get my day off after all. And the clouds–like those white fluffy ones in the opening sequence of The Simpsons–seemed to part and some rays of sun made their way down to me and my self pity. I resolved that next week I’d take my work-from-home day from home, and to take my day off off.

And if that wasn’t good enough, when I did check work email later that day (despite my best intentions—clearly I am part of the problem), I discovered that something I’d been working on for weeks that had been caught up in corporate red tape had suddenly slipped past the goalie and my mission was accomplished. It was one of those things that I was resolved to get up my dukes over and suddenly and anti-climactically the problem vanished. Poof!

It’s so weird when you are in a mental groove and then you’re spit out the other end of it. It was like my psyche was still crunched up in a grumpy stress ball and was having trouble shaking it off and going to the light.

I can have work-life balance. I can spend time with Kate and Mark and still have a satisfying career. I’d still be getting this new crop of gray hair even if I was home being fed peeled grapes. If I keep chanting it, it will all be true, right?

Perhaps I’m approaching the recent appearance of Pop Tarts with the totally wrong attitude. Maybe I should behold them as a celebratory indulgence that’s suddenly there for the takin’, not the specter of poor nutrition that’s symptomatic of temporary poor life management.

Either way, they sure do toast up nice.

The Joys of the Season: Packing It All Up

It may make me sound like a holiday curmudgeon. And I’m not. I swear! But this year, one of the highlights of the holidays was packing up all the ornaments, decorations, and Christmas crap.

And not for any reason like we had a bad Christmas, or I that I have any negative associations with the baby Jesus. In fact, we had a lovely time. Christmas Eve we had a fun dinner party with Sacha, Joel and Baby Owen and Joel’s parents who were in from Chicago. I made Aunt Mary’s eggnog, we dressed the babies up in special waiting-for-Santa PJs, and when they were in bed we made our way through some good food and wine while chatting about everything from being deprived of junk food as a kid, to what causes Joel’s mother wants to fight for when she retires. When it was time to go I got Kate from the Pack and Play in their bedroom and her hair was sticking straight up like Phyllis Diller and even though we’d woken her up and dragged her out into a brightly lit room of fairly lit adults she was wincing and all smiley and it was so darn cute you just had to laugh at her and hug her to pieces.

And Christmas day was relaxed and lazy and fun. Peggy was here being Supreme Grandma to Kate. After a 10-minute period of Kate not totally gushing over Peggy when she first arrived, she shook that free and the two of them dove into in a wonderful love fest that was fun to see. You just can’t help but love it when another person is as gaga for your baby as you are.

On Christmas after opening presents and eating cranberry bread that I made (just like my Mom used to) and lounging around, we headed out for a before-it-rains hike with Kristen B and fam. Afterwards we ended up going to their house for an impromptu lunch of leftovers and to check out Milana’s Santa loot. Neither Mark nor I even thought about taking a shower until after 7PM. It was a dirty-haired Christmas, and it suited us just fine.

In the post-holiday shopping blitz (in which we probably spent more money than we did on all our pressies for others), I bought some ornament storage boxes at The Container Store. Then at OSH I got a Rubbermaid wreath storage bag. And at Target I picked up a wrapping paper and ribbon holder that looks like a golf bag, but lacks wheels (which would be a nice feature for their next gen product).

It was all I could do not to rip the ornaments off the tree the moment I entered the house with my storage boxes. But in a maternal act of selflessness I saw how much Kate enjoyed looking at the tree, so I left it intact until yesterday.

Suffice it to say, I’ve never had so much fun taking down a Christmas tree. I let my OCD out of the closet and wore it like a badge of honor. If I could have I would have alphabetized those damn ornaments, but I managed to derive enough pleasure from simply stowing each one carfefully in its own compartment where it will be safely stored and easily retracted next year. Oh simple pleasures!

My grapevine wreath, along with the pinecone ones Mom made and the shell one Aunt Mary made me are all wrapped and sealed in the wreath bag–and labeled neatly with green masking tape. (Do other people own six wreaths? Am I normal?) I covered all the other random decorations in bubble wrap and put the manger pieces in the same old newspapers that my mother stored them in for years. (I didn’t look at the year on the papers but I should have. I bet it’s old!) And Grandma Kohl’s divine Christmas tree skirt and 12 Days of Christmas wall hanging got furled up and packed away in the special cotton bags she made for them.

What, I ask you, could be more fun? In fact, I blew off the neighbor’s New Year’s Day party I was having such a dandy time doing all this.

Mark tossed the tree out front and vacuumed up stray needles and I slapped my hands together gloating with satisfaction while surveying the house. Without the tree and all the fixings it seemed like we suddenly have so much more room.

And just like that we’re back to non-holiday mode. It’s over and packed away perfectly until next year when we do it all over again.

Will I Ever Be Hungry Again?

Oy, am I full.

I think it’s the culmination of a week’s worth of eating. And with each meal I’m surpassing my body’s natural step-away-now-you’ve-had-enough signal, and even the back-up i’m-serious-stop-all-intake-immediately warning sign and continuing gorging myself convinced that there’s some under-utilized gastro-intestinal space somewhere where I can pack away a couple more Christams cookies, pieces of gingerbread, Toblerone chocolate, or in the case of this past lunch, a simple cup of hot chocolate. How is it that of all things it’s one small liquid beverage that managed to send me over the edge to bloated sloshing Santa-belly mode. Forget the Betty Ford Clinic. My first stop post-holidays is Over Eaters Anonymous.

In one famous moment in my shared-memory life with Mark, we ate dinner at some German restaurant in Hayes Valley called Supenkutchen (go with my spelling here). We were out with our incredibly fabulous friends Scot and Sheryl, and some friend of theirs who was in from Europe or somewhere who was probably a world-famous cyclist, though I wouldn’t have known. So this dinner. Well, first off, it’s a German restaurant, so it’s hardly the 70’s diet dinner of cottage cheese and canned fruit, right? But add to that the fact that they serve post-War portions at this place: two gigantic slabs of meat, with a pound or so of schnitzel on the side, on a platter that’d fit your Grandma’s turkey, along with the requisite pints of beer. I have to burp just thinking about it.

After that meal I was so full, so miserably overstuffed physically and so filled with self-loathing for having gotten myself into that place, I was over-the-top Crabby. Famously Crabby. I mean, I was lashing out at myself and others with the helpless frustration of a boa constrictor who’s trying to digest a small goat.

Now, if ever I am crabby (rare an occasion as it is), Mark and I measure my crabbiness on a scale relative to that night.

Scot and Sheryl and their maybe-famous guest ended up staying at our grand Noe Valley flat that night, and as I changed the sheets on the guest bed I remember biting Sheryl’s head off when she asked something meek, kind, and innocent like, “Can I help you?” You’d have thought I’d already bitten off enough that night.

At any rate, all the food, plus the intermittent gloom of the weather, and either too much sleep, or not enough, have left me feeling somewhat logie this week. I’ve gotten to sleep late thanks to Grandma Peggy being here and spending lots of QT with Kate, and we’ve all taken Family Naps (TM) when Kate has taken hers in the afternoons, but still I’m finding myself somehow sleepy.

Maybe slowing down and relaxing–which I generally tend to find stressful and have trouble comprehending its popularity–has exhausted me.

Yesterday I dragged myself to yoga, and despite how smelly I realized my feet were once class was underway (somehow my personal hygiene has also dropped off this week), I think it was a good effort to shake off my lazy sleepy holiday schlump. Today my stomach muscles feel slightly sore which is gratifying.

I think it’s from yoga, and not my excessive food intake, but it’s anyone’s guess.

Another theory: Kate has somehow tapped into the wellspring of my energy and is wielding it wildly for her own personal gain. The gal is on a general all-out blitz. She officially started walking this week. And not just the we’ll-crouch—and-hold-out-our-arms-while-she-walks-towards-us thing. She’s now often walking on her own volition to get around. Sure, at times she stumbles and sways and falls on her ass. And part of the time she still opts to crawl. But she probably gets that from me.

And that little mouth of hers is working as hard as her legs. We were in the car the other day and Mark turned to me and said, “My God will she ever stop?,” and in that way that there’s some annoying background noise that you hadn’t noticed until someone points it out, I realized she’d been talking non-stop for the past half-hour.

“Baby, baby, baby, doggie, Santa, Grandma, Dadda, baby, baby, baby, doe, doe, doe. Uh-oooh! Uh-oooh! More. More. More. Rabbit! Rabbit!”

For the love of God, it’s exhausting just listening.

But she’s our own little Energizer Bunny Love Bug. And with all her drunken sailor walking, and the accompanying bar-fight facial bruises, scrapes and contusions she’s collected on her mobile adventures and interactions with Christmas present toys, the gal is ridiculously adorable. So much so that one must grab her and squeeeeze her and give her no less than a hundred kisses, like it or not.

And mostly, she’s got better things to do. Now she wriggles out of your clutches and says “Doe! Doe! Doe!,” which if you choose to accept it is her way of telling you she’d like you to put her down. She’s got places to be, man.

And if there’s anyone to blame for her being wired for action, it’s me. I’m just hopeful that at some point soon we’re able to re-distribute the energy levels between us a bit more equally. It’s weird not being the one whose stumbling around wildly and talking non-stop.

Nearly Christmas

I’ve been a cookie baking fool. Over the course of the past few weekends I’ve been producing cookies at a furious pace and maniacally labeling freezer bags and Tupperware with cookie types and dates and storing them up for Christmas. Then to top it off I made cranberry bread this morning. I’m like a conscientious squirrel readying myself for the long cold months, and I can only imagine if I were one of the other squirrels I’d hate me.

But the fact is, aside from the by-product that it will be nice to have an assortment of cookies for those who stop by for some McClusky family holiday cheer, I think the cookie baking somehow turned into this nostalgic refuge for connecting with my mom.

There is something about getting your house ready for Christmas when you’re the one playing Santa. I want it to be nice. I want the tree to be pretty–not over-the-top fancy, but sweet and nice and covered in ornaments that have meaning to me or Mark and someday when she’s old enough to grock it all, to Kate.

My mother kicked ass at Christmas. Not that she’d ever take any credit for it, and not that she was showy about it. But she made pinecone wreaths, she baked and cooked special food, she hacked down her own tree with an axe and made a profusion of Chex Mix.

Going through all the motions this year I’ve given myself time to do it without stress and panic and the fear that I wasn’t going to have time to do everything I wanted to do. Even though it’s taken time and energy and planning, it’s this weirdly rewarding act—getting ready for Christmas—which was totally devoid of external pressure. How comforting it is putting a perfect double batch of Mark’s family chocolate cookies in the freezer.

And part of the comfort of it all is the knowledge that I’m doing the things that my mother did year after year—and since this is the first time we are having our own Christmas and not going home to RI, doing this all myself has made me realize all that goes into it. She’s been on my mind so much as I set out the manger figurines, or wrangle with fresh garland that I’m determined to frame the front door with, or put the cards in the little red wooden sleigh every day after Mark and Kate and I open them together. By repeating this well-worn ritual that she performed for so many years it’s like I’ve somehow been hanging out with her.

Part of the connection comes from the fact that so many of the decorations, the manger, the sleigh, the ceramic angels that lean towards each other and kiss–and are surprisingly not tacky, though in describing them it’s hard to imagine how they couldn’t be. So many of the things were hers. And I think she knew that of all of us I would cherish them the most. I think before she was even sick she said that I’d get the manger “one day.”

Peggy arrived today, and after going to a Christmas party we came home and got Kate to bed and watched a movie called The Family Stone. I guess I’d put it on our Netflix queue at some point thinking it was a light-as-a-feather comedy about a guy taking his girlfriend home at Christmas and she’s all New York and uptight and they’re all mellow and quirky but tight-knit and they give her a hard time.

It turns out the movie, while also being about the anal girlfriend thing, was more about this amazing family who lived in this huge old house that was totally enviable, but also a real family house with the requisite set of mismatched coffee mugs. Diane Keaton plays the eccentric but crazy-with-love mother of five distinctly different but successful in their own way adult children.

Somewhere towards the end, I realized that somehow my perspective on movies like this has totally shifted. I’m not identifying with the horror of being the child whose parents make a scene in front of the new significant other. I’m not picturing myself as the derelict daughter who wants to make the girlfriend’s life hell because she’s protecting her brother. I’m totally putting myself into the mother role—even though the mother is probably in her sixties in the movie. I’m thinking about how great it would be to have a brood of five children, who are all unique and fabulous and who unconditionally adore me despite my idiosyncrasies. I’m relieved to see that as this mother I’ve managed to hold onto my smart and funny husband who I still connect with and who isn’t afraid to hug and kiss our adult sons and tell them how much he loves them. From the snow-covered house to the cute gay son to the high-thread count sheets and patterned wallpaper, it was a nice daydreamy kind of fantasy.

I kicked Mark who was lying on the couch next to me. “Five kids,” I say. “How great is that?”

And of course, before they spell out what was going to happen in the otherwise light and breezy movie, it dawns on me that, of course (duh), the mother is sick. Just when you might be nearing the point of finding the family all to perfect in their garrulous noogie-giving love for each other, you realize that they are about to lose their most central character.

So here I am. Having spent the past few weeks channeling my own mother and hoping that somehow from wherever she is seeing me and admiring the fine job I’m doing of feathering the McClusky family Christmas nest. Then after renting an unsuspecting holiday hoax movie I’m suddenly crying over the fictitious dying mother who I wanted to be, and over the searingly sad pang of goneness of my own mother. No gut-wrenching sobs, mind you. Just the kind of weepiness that anyone would get watching a movie like that, but at a deeper, more personal level.

Maybe my mother is communicating with me through my Netflix queue. I swear I don’t remember ever having picked that movie, but it seemed to have made its way to me at a perfect time. Maybe I needed some sort of culmination to it all. Some big emotional moment to work out all these stray thoughts I’ve been having about Mom, so I can settle into Mark and Kate and the here and now and focus on the great new Christmas we are about to have–thanks in no small part to all my hard work.

We Were Called Up

Last week or so, one night as Mark was falling off to sleep, he groggily mentioned to me that he got an invitation to the French Laundry holiday open house.

It was bizarre. Sharing this information so off-handedly, and so many hours after having actually gotten the invitation. Within seconds I was straddling him in bed pumping him for information as if I were giving him CPR.

Since Mark had interviewed Chef Keller for a Wired story, and then attended another event where he was at Boulevard, Mark has managed to get in with His people.

Once I managed to drag every detail he remembered about the invitation–which was sitting on his desk at work, right out in the open!–my heart was racing wildly. To us, this is like an invitation to The White House. Or better.

We had a couple plans already for the party day. Maia’s ballet class was performing The Nutcracker. Whatever. She’s eight. There will be other performances in her childhood that we can attend. And our friends Megan and Jason, who have moved here after an episode in San Diego, have invited us over a shameful number of times and somehow fate has intervened every one. This time, I just had to shamelessly admit to why we wouldn’t be there. Thankfully, Jason understood the magnitude of the social occasion that we were privy to, and even went so far as to say they’d take our place if we suddenly fell in. (Leaving the guests they’d invited to their holiday party to fend for themselves?)

Well, like all days one looks forward to, this one came and went. Today we packed Kate up and took her to Shell and Don’s where we had a sitter watch her, since they were off at their own thing. I’d fretted over what to wear. Of course, the perfect outfits were all trapped at the dry cleaner and I decided it wasn’t worth it breaking in to emancipate them. (The dry cleaner already hates me for bringing them so many Kate-vomit-strewn clothes recently.) So I took a skirt that was too formal for a daytime party and paired it with a sweater that was too informal for the skirt, and put on some cute shoes and looked and felt all mismatched.

Of course we ran late. Of course I’d envisioned arriving at the stroke if 12:30 and staying the full four hours. But when we did pull up, we were almost surprised to see people pouring out of the place. The garden packed with folks, the balconies seemingly spilling over with people packing food into their mouths and clutching champagne flutes. We got to see this group several times as we circled around looking for parking, and Mark commented that we weren’t the only guests. Of course I’d known that, but someone seeing all those people was dismaying. There were so many of them! Eating my food! Drinking my French champagne! And where was Chef Keller, waiting to personally greet us with a holiday wish and maybe even a little gift of chutney, with a green ribbon on it?

My disdain for the other guests didn’t relent once we were amidst them. They were everywhere. And instead of the subdued and exclusive party I was envisioning, I felt instead like I was elbowing my way through a Filene’s Basement sale. There were food tables stationed with servers, but lines to get to them. At times, at the dessert tables, platters would remain empty. When we were inside my coat was too hot and I needed to fumble with it and my glass and plate with no assistance from the first-rate staff. At one point I noticed a tablecloth had a large dark streak of some sauce across it. Sure the food, when we got some, was good. But the whole event did something to tarnish my impression of Keller’s perfection.

At one point in the tent, I was chatting with a co-worker of Mark’s who had randomly been invited to the party from a local Napa friend. I turned to see Mark, who was standing next to me, chatting with Him. He’s so thin and looks kinda old. He was wearing a dark suit and bright red clogs.

Mark touched my elbow and graciously introduced me. “My wife Kristen.” And I looked at him and stammered something about everything being so lovely and happy holidays and then embarrassingly I said what “an honor” it was to be there. I was a bumbling star-struck foodie, standing humbly before a world-class gourmet great.

I didn’t mention to him about the spilled sauce upstairs on the fois gras table. I mean, everyone has their moments of holiday recklessness, right? They slosh a little run over the edge of the punch bowl and who’s to worry? It’s a party! They overcook the Swedish meatballs and still set them out on the buffet table.

Today wasn’t perfection. It wasn’t what I’d envisioned. And damn those people who showed up in jeans. Jeans! But despite it all I think I’m willing to give ole Thomas a second chance.

Pygmy Tree and More Puking

On Saturday I gathered the family in a stern holiday-spirit march and forced them out the door to Half Moon Bay, where a Google Search (TM) had informed me that there was “one of the largest choose-and-cut live Christmas tree farms in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

Despite the fact that Kate barfed all over me in the Safeway parking lot the day prior, it seemed perfectly reasonable for me to pack her into the car for a 45-minute drive for Christmas-tree-cuttin’ fun.

About a half-hour into the drive she started kinda whimpering. I offered her water and cereal and she definitively shook them off. Then nearly 10 minutes to our destination I looked into the back seat and got some sort of telltale “I’m gonna spew” sign from Kate. Mark pulled over. Thankfully, giving her some fresh air seemed to intercept the sickies, but did nothing for our feeling of being bad parents for having taken her out.

At that point though, we were almost there, so we didn’t know what else to do other than persevere. At the entrance to the farm we stopped at a small hut that had a friendly “Pick up your saw here!” sign on it. After years of post-9/11 air travel, this seemed utterly disconcerting. Here is a venue that requires you to pick up a saw before entering. It was so perverse, I had Mark stop so I could take a picture.

The hot blonde local teen working the saw-hand-out hut gave us some spiel about where the different kinds of trees were and how it was we were to find and cut and pay for our tree. As we pulled away I confessed to Mark I didn’t really listen to/follow anything she’d said. And in an uncharacteristic moment he said he hadn’t either. (If he turns his brain off when we’re together too, what’s to become of us?)

Well before we had too much time to fret over not knowing where to go or what to do we stumbled upon the “warming hut” which was producing fake snow and trying really hard (and tragically) to give off some alpine woodsy cachet. We pulled over since I’d read there was some Santa-photo op, and with Kate’s poor performance with Santa the day before I thought we could traumatize her anew and/or hopefully get a good (and free!) picture for a holiday card.

But really what happened was we bought some over-priced slice and bake Christmas tree sugar cookies and Kate freaked out when we asked a stranger take our picture with a guy dressed in a Rudolph costume. Turns out she likes Rudolph as much (or little) as she likes Santa.

When we ventured out again for the project at hand—the contrived “we will cut down our tree as part of our tradition, damn it!”—we were totally confused by what the kinds of trees that Mark and I like are called. We were even uncertain that we liked the same kind. Mark seemed set on a short-pine tree, but I had no idea what the needle-length was of my ideal tree.

“I think I like Noble Firs,” I said, trying to sound cool. “Or wait, is it Scotch Pines?” So we drove around a labyrinth of dirt roads following little hand-painted signs and trying to figure out what it was we liked and wanted and where that might be found. In the few times we ventured out of the car, I cared less about getting a tree, and more about photo ops with Kate. Prop her up, take a picture, she falls forward planting her hands in the dirt and yelps, I brush it off and re-prop her for more photo fun. Yes, I was that Mom.

Finally, we found the type we both like—Noble, I think—and realized that all the Noble Firs were teeny. Or maybe at least in this little foresty nook where we were. Was this all the Nobles that they had? We did another lap and found another section, at this point getting well into overdueness for Kate’s afternoon nap. So, determined, we traipsed around and looked for The One.

And thankfully, even with Mark I do maintain some sort of awareness of what is reasonable for me to ask. What I really wanted to do was say, “I know this was my idea, and I dragged you all the way here, and Kate almost barfed on the way, but I really don’t like these trees and let’s just go back to the place 3 blocks from our house and get a tree there.” I kinda knew that saying that wasn’t so much an option.

But all the Noble Firs were so damned puny. I was hoping for majestic, and instead we got what we referred to as our Little Teapot Tree (i.e. short and stout). It ain’t tall, I tell you, but it makes up for its height with its girth! So, $75 later we left the tree farm. We cut our tree and had our experience and made our tradition, and now have a Charlie Browner of a tree to prove it.

Today Mark asked me if it was just him or was our cut-our-own-tree adventure not exactly the scene from LL Bean that I was hoping for. And I had to confess that it wasn’t. But it made me feel like Mark and I had come a long way.

It reminded me of the time when we were first dating when we decided to make our own pasta. We called Shelley and Don to borrow their pasta maker—a wedding present that was gathering dust even for them, hardcore cooks that they are. Mark and I decided to make a lasagna. and slaved over producing perfect pasta and our own sauce. The project took all day. I mean ALL DAY. And when we finally exhaustedly sat down to eat it, I had the horrible secret realization deep down inside that I couldn’t really tell that the pasta was homemade. And that maybe I’d actually even had lasagnas with store-bought pasta and jarred sauce that I even—gasp!—liked better. For shame. Of course, it was too early in our relationship to admit this to each other. So we both cooed over how delectable it was, hiding our secret disappointment.

It was kinda that way with our cut-our-own tree. Here’s all the trouble we went to, and we have an overpriced pygmy tree to show for it.

The next day we ran an errand at Ocean Supply Hardware, and as much as I was chanting internally, “Don’t look.” Don’t look,” I looked at the trees they had for sale in their parking lot and they had some really tall and beautiful Noble Pines for just $45. Oy.

Sunday evening we were invited to the neighbor’s for a Hanukkah party. And Mark had been moaning a bit about not feeling well, but truly I suspected 90% of it was a lack of desire to venture out to a party that wouldn’t be populated with all people he knows and loves. But he surprised me and rallied, coming to the party even when I said I was happy to pop over there solo with Kate. After a half-hour of chit-chattery with various folks, he looked me in the eye and said he was going home. By the time Kate and I got back 20 minutes later, I heard the retching from behind the closed bathroom door.

Kate’s Both Ends Flu has not only made its mark on Shelly, the nanny. Now Mark has fallen prey to it too, and spent today home from work moaning and, as he put it, “throwing himself a pity party.” And this morning when Shelly arrived, she looked green. She started feeling sick on Thursday and is still not in the clear—so I sent her home and called in a sick day for myself to care for Mark and watch Kate.

So now, with the two other people aside from me who are regularly in contact with Patient Zero Kate, I can’t help but feel that there’s a target painted on my forehead. It’s only a matter of time until this plague strikes me too. The pediatrician’s office today told me over the phone that, yes, this stomach virus is going around, and it takes 4-7 days to get over. (Mark was not too pleased to hear that.)

Shelly called tonight and still feels crummy, so it’s unlikely she’ll be here tomorrow too. So if you’re overcome with a desire to stop by Chez McClusky, know that I’ve nailed a large Quarantine sign on the front door. I’m just cowering inside by the overpriced pygmy Christmas tree, waiting for the sickness to strike me too.

Please please please don’t nothing bad happen

There is a mundane rhythm to my life these days, peppered with ecstatic happiness.

Mark’s job is good. He’s become a regular media darling. This morning, for instance, he was on Morning Edition on NPR, and he was amazing. That great resonant sexy voice of his that I fell in love with over endless epic phone calls early in what I was too gun-shy to even call our “relationship.” And he was articulate, like he is. Explaining something that someone else using other words would not convey in nearly as compelling a way. That’s my boy. I got into work and one of the women in production said, “I heard your husband on the radio this morning,” and I broke out of my I’m-the-boss-and-mostly-professional mode to gush for a few minutes about how great he sounded and how smart he is and how proud I am, and then I sort of shook myself out of it and said, “Okay. Have a good morning,” and wandered off to my office.

And my job is good. I mean, there’s a reason when in every one of my interviews people prattled on about the employees there being “salt of the earth.” The thing is, they ARE. I mean, I’ve been searching like a truffle sniffing pig for some office politics and have yet to unearth any. It’s almost creepy. And Thursday I’m co-hosting a holiday party with the editorial director that it appears people are genuinely looking forward to. I mean, in our team meeting this morning I felt like that intangible element of team-ness was really taking shape. Two months in and I’m no longer looking out at everyone there as them, and feeling more like a natural part of things. (Sure, I still think they’re the Bad News Bears in some client meetings, but with firm gentle guidance I’m hopeful we can even make progress there!)

And Kate. [Insert proud mama rant jam-packed with love here.] What can I say other than she continues to dazzle and delight us. Our trip to North Carolina was another wonderful touchstone with the Miller clan. Kate discovered the joys of getting to know a dog up close with Chuck and Ann’s beagle Zoe. Day One she peered down at her from my arms. On Day Two she woke up in the hotel where we stayed chanting “doggie.” Day Three she sat in the middle of the living room and let Zoe lick her face. And in the course of all spending the days together, I walked upon scenes with Kate and her grandma and/or great grandma that were too sweet for any Kodak film to ever capture. And as the report goes (since I was in DC with Amelia and company), on the traditional post-Thanksgiving shopping day, Kate greeted every mall shopper she encountered with a “hi.” Mark claims she said that no less than 200 times.

Wal-Mart: If you’re hiring greeters on the other end of the age spectrum, we have your gal.

And sure, the nanny has put an occasional bur in my saddle. (You know, that ‘ole saddle of mine.) But overall, even when it’s just the coming home and getting Kate in bed then sitting on the couch with Mark to, yes, eat dinner in front of the TV (sorry, Mom)–I just get silly happy and have to do little dances and lunge at Mark with cheek kisses. Hooray! We have a sweet-ass little baby sleeping in that room! I have this plate of ravioli, here for the eatin’! I have my husband to sit with and not even maybe talk so much but just lounge head to toe on the couch under an afghan. What on God’s green earth could be better? I ask you.

I really really really don’t want anything bad to come up. I just feel like stuff was bad for a while. Or everything good was paired with something bad. I got engaged. My mother got cancer. My mother died. I got married. I got pregnant. My weird eye problem came back. But then the eye got better. And Kate arrived on the scene.

And here we are being happy even though, with the exception of Kate’s glorious existence, nothing really big is happening in our lives. (As much as we’re enjoying watching Lost on DVD, I don’t think it’s something we’ll look back on years from now and be nostalgic about.) But sometimes I can’t help feeling like this is too good for me to deserve. Or maybe just that my the-good-with-the-bad spate was the way my life was always going to be from here on out. But I’m hoping that I’ve broken that pattern.

Please don’t let the other shoe fall. Please let me roll with this too-good-to-last feeling for a while longer. I really am relishing it and appreciating it, if that counts for anything. And if it does have to be interrupted by something, hopefully it’ll just be that there is office politics at Sunset after all.

Talking Up a Storm Now

We seem to be in a learning, growing, changing spurt in this house. And not just Kate. It seems like there is something churning through all of us.

Mark is busy at work tackling a big feature story which at times has had him feeling frustrated, but ultimately has been a great project for him to take on. And finally it seems to be in the wrap-up final edit stages (knock wood) and so it’s nearing time to settle down and feel proud and relieved and ultimately thankful for taking on the challenge in the first place (since writing isn’t really a job requirement for him).

And I’m still on the upswing of my new-job learning curve. I’ve started to get to know the team and am feeling lucky to be part of a friendly, un-political and talented office. Sure, I’ve battled with intermittent frustrations–mainly about the client services lack-of-savvy that seems to pepper the ranks–but ultimately what I’m learning about people I’m appreciating and feeling grateful for. I’m also getting to know the clients and seem to have made some modest but real inroads in relationship-building there. I’ve tackled some challenges, crossed some things off my To Do list, and managed to have a feeling of job satisfaction minus the up-all-night stressing component that seemed to be part of the last job at least.

And our glorious little Kate. She is just shining and sweet and aglow. She is crawling and trying to stand–until she realizes she’s not holding onto something and she topples over. And she is saying words like a fiend: apple, doggie, turkey, book, ball. Most words you can make sense of. The one that’s totally off base is pumpkin. She says something that sounds like “BA-bi” for pumpkin. She’s also learning things like where her feet, teeth, hair is. She’s clearly a small sponge, and we just need to remember to keep adding information.

All this learning is leaving us all pretty tuckered out by night’s end. So Kate’s been sleeping through the night (knock wood) and Mark and I are intermittently keeping each other up by sleeping restlessly and thinking of everything we have to do, or going out like lights.

Oh, and on a totally different topic, today when the nanny left she said, “I love you, Kate,” which was very sweet.

Nannies and Boyfriends

Sometimes I wonder if my brain works very differently than other peoples’. It seems that I can’t have an experience without somehow tying it to something else in my life. I mean, I guess that’s how we all operate on some level, to process change. But for me sometimes it feels more like a game of Concentration. I turn over one Jack and know I’ve seen another Jack somewhere…but where was it? It’s fun to me to make the connection.

So Shelly. Our nanny. As I’ve not been shy about sharing, we got off to a rocky start. I was returning to work after a year off. Mark was traveling for business. Shelly was new to all of us. And in addition to the new job, new team, new industry, I had a new commute which I’d yet to understand the traffic/distance and timing ins-and-outs of.

Most of my family and friends offered their shoulders for me to unburden myself upon that first week. I was going to be 5 minutes late getting home on my second day of work, and Shelly’s reaction was less than easy-going. It was a stressful interaction with her that dominoed to Kate also being stressed, and especially without Mark here to help me wrangle with it, the whole experience lead me to question where she was truly The One to care for Kate.

Well since then the job has become less new. I have an understanding of the intricacies of the commute. Mark has been traveling less for work. And I ironed out some issues with Shelly’s hours that allow me more wiggle room in my drive home. She and I have also gotten to know each other better. And she and Kate have clearly forged a bond.

And yet, the outpouring of support from those family members and friends who had my back when I was sure the nanny should go, haven’t all caught up with our current state of contentedness. When they inquire whether we’ve found someone new, I feel the need to justify and explain why we haven’t and how we’ve had a change of heart. And still I worry that the kind inquirer won’t really believe me, or think I’ve made the best decision.

It leaves me feeling like you do when you and your boyfriend have a fight, or break up, or he just does something jerky. You do what any typical gal does–reach out to your posse for support. And often that support comes in the form of “you’re too good for him,” “you should ditch the dope” and sometimes even the candid I’m-telling-you-this-because-I’m-your-friend-and-care-about-you “I never really liked him in the first place.”

Which all gets a bit sticky once the incident that set off all the need for all the extra love and support is past, and you find yourself back together with said BF and feeling all butterfly-stomachy in love again. Those conversations in which you and you friends fantasized about him getting afflicted with a lifetime worth of he’ll-never-date-again acne suddenly need to be swept under the carpet by all parties. When both groups are together again, say, you sitting on your parent’s couch snuggling with the guy who they know did you wrong, you’re aware that your parents are secretly still cursing him, but you want them to see that he’s changed! He’s different now! Everything is okay–really.

Alas, I fear that’s where I’ve landed with poor Shelly. Will she ever meet a friend without them wondering what it was she was so hopped-up to get to that she couldn’t stay 5 extra minutes with Kate that evening? Are they judging me and Mark as parents who really should find another nanny but are maybe just too lazy? Or worse, don’t care enough about who watches Kate?

And maybe in my most self-doubting moments, do I fear that they are right?

In my Mental Game of Concentration, I have to compare it to yet another thing. It’s like looking for apartments. When you’re looking, you want it all–hardwood floors, fireplace, parking, walk to BART. And when you finally get a place you’re thrilled that you didn’t have to take that place that was so dark, or expensive, or whatever. But you still can torture yourself with the fantasy that the perfect reasonably-priced rental with a hot tub in back and a Viking range was out there and you missed it.

Ah, well. Yesterday I went for a walk with Kate when I got back from my work trip in LA. I was looking up at the Berkeley hills and remembering when we just moved here how I felt so misplaced in this neighborhood. (After a dozen years in Noe Valley, it’s no wonder.) But now, I look up at those hills and revel in their beauty. I look at our little local library and the coffee shops and people with their yoga mats tucked under their arms waiting to cross the street, and I think of how lucky we are to be here. Without a doubt, this is home now.

Our rocky start aside, I’ve been getting some of that feel-good vibe from Shelly recently too. Seeing the great healthy meals she cooks for Kate, the way she teaches her little games and how to blow kisses. The care and concern she’s expressed in the past couple days about Kate’s runny nose.

Hopefully some day all the friends who have ever heard me kvetch about Shelly will know that Mark, Kate and I feel content and lucky to have found her, and confident that we have the right nanny–even if there may be one out there who’s just as good who charges a little less.