November 25, 2006

I kick ass. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out! The past 36 hours have been a whirlwind. I designated yesterday as our Thanksgiving because I couldn’t stand the thought of Karis’s first thanksgiving being celebrated with the mafia, sans turkey. Not only did I make an entire thanksgiving dinner in a kitchen that measures smaller than the average bathroom with less than 20 square inches of counter space, but it turned out DELICIOUS! We had turkey, stuffing, candied yams, mashed potatoes and gravy, dinner rolls, salad and pumpkin cake. But my ass kicking doesn’t stop there! Oh no, I managed to play quasi-host to Brendan and Dawn, wrangle the baby, AND clean everything up without losing my sanity.
Karis was fussy and wouldn’t go to sleep until 1:30am. At 2:00am The Boy woke up and started vomiting violently. I know what you’re thinking and NO! It was NOT food poisoning. He had had 5 beers with Brendan and his body was vehemently objecting to it. He was up every hour on the hour dry heaving loudly into the toilet bowl. I stood behind him feeling completely useless. When he returned to bed he’d hack and snarl the phlegm from his throat and spit it into a bag that was placed beside his bed. Even if I lacked all compassion, the noise alone would have kept me up – as it was I lay there cringing for him and praying he wouldn’t wake up the baby!
5:00am found me online looking for home remedies for nausea. There aren’t any. The Boy refused to let me call a doctor. He continued to dry heave every hour. The baby woke up at 6:00am, ate and went back to sleep. By 8:00am she was up and refusing to entertain herself. I lay her between The Boy and me and dozed off for 20 minutes or so. I woke up to a urine soaked bed compliments of a grinning baby and a faulty diaper.
I cleaned the baby and when The Boy ran to the bathroom (at the top of the hour – like clockwork) I stripped the bed – but we didn’t have any clean sheets to put on it. I improvised an old flat sheet and put our comforter over it so The Boy wouldn’t have to agonize on a bare mattress. I then got the laundry together – How on earth do we accumulate so much freaking laundry in so little time?
The rest of the morning was spent studying The Boy for signs of severe dehydration and electrolyte imbalance, and keeping Karis happy. Hun’s finally came home around 1:30. I asked her to watch the baby while I schlepped our very heavy laundry bag down the street to the laundry mat. The next two hours were spent racing back and forth to advance the laundry, and running between the apartments trying to keep both The Boy and the baby happy. The Boy would text me little messages like, “Touch is very important.” in an effort to get me to leave the baby and come rub his head.
At last I sit here, a moment for myself. The laundry is home, sitting by the door waiting to be put away and both The Boy and the baby are fast asleep in their respective beds. I pray as I type that The Boy doesn’t REALLY have a fever and that this vomit party is a result of alcohol and not the flu. I am trying to ignore the sour feeling in my gut. I cannot CANNOT get the flu right now! I hope to God that Karis’s vaccine will protect her even though she doesn’t get the second shot until December 14.

So, like I said, eat your heart out Martha! Let’s see YOU host a successful Thanksgiving feast with a vomit/urine after party in a small studio apartment and keep not only your sanity, but a positive outlook too!

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November 23, 2006
A family Thanksgiving

I personally consider it sacrilegious to eat in a restaurant on thanksgiving, but that’s where we found ourselves. This wasn’t just any restaurant either – it was an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. Donna used to live in the neighborhood, and her daughter Julia now resided there. The restaurant was run by a very well connected family if you know what I mean.
We were seated in the back room. The menu boasted delicious Italian dishes, and a thanksgiving special of turkey and stuffing. (For the record it was NOTHING like you would expect turkey and stuffing to be served) We all ate and chatted merrily. An old woman came in and started singing Italian opera much to Karis’s delight. She got the whole back room singing along with her and I was laughing so hard tears came to my eyes. It was a really beautiful moment.
Throughout the meal I kept noticing two men seated at the table next to us. One was a Tony Bennet look alike dressed in a red velvet coat with his shirt collar turned up circa 1976. The other was a little younger and had a large band aide over his jugular. Half way through our meal the staff came out with two whole turkeys, one for each of them, and gleefully proclaimed, “Welcome back Jo-ey” It wasn’t hard to figure out where Joey had been.
Our meal dragged on, Julia continued to consume wine, and Donna kept stage whispering to us that the blonde woman and her two sons sitting next to Tony Bennet were the REAL Gotti family. The Boy pointed out that they looked nothing like the Gotti’s from the TV. show GROWING UP GOTTI. Donna brushed that away stating the OBVIOUS fact that the real Gotti’s couldn’t possibly do that show and that they pay actors to portray them. This keeps them safe of course.
Accepting this as the gospel, Julia became very star-struck and excited. With very little nudging from Donna, Julia got up the nerve to approach one of the “Gotti” boys. “Didn’t I see you at the Copa last night?” she gushed. The “Gotti” boy, who introduced himself as Anthony (what a unique name – I know) took her by the hand and dramatically led her out of the room. Anthony’s mother and Donna then had a moment of their own. “My boy is very enamored of your daughter. He’s been staring at her across the room for an hour. He’s a very good boy. He’s very honorable. (Re. Donna’s dred locks) I like your hair. You’ve got courage to wear your hair like that.” At this point Tony Bennet breaks in and proclaims loudly that Donna has “black person hair” and why would she want to ruin her looks like that? Donna tells Tony Bennet to go fuck himself. He backpedals and says he meant no disrespect. About this time my attention is drawn to Joey who has decided to light up his stinky cigarette AT THE TABLE a mere 2 feet from my baby’s delicate lungs, instead of stepping OUTSIDE where the rest of the patrons had to smoke.
Before I blew a gasket Julia returned, still very much in heat. The “Gotti” family left, followed by Tony Bennet and Joey.
We sat a while longer. David committed to his best Godfather impersonation, complete with the smacking of all of our cheeks, while Julia sat shaking and goggle-eyed, simpering to her mom about how excited she was that a Gotti liked her!
We ended the night at Julia’s apartment. For all that I don’t understand the girl, I’ve got to say that Julia will one day make some man a very good wife. She will cook and clean and dote with the best of them. Before we left, Julia informed us that it was her dream in life to marry in to a mafia family. I asked how she felt about her son or husband getting shot. She said if they knew how to handle themselves they wouldn’t get shot. I couldn’t argue with her. Not because she had a solid point, but because she had pictures of Anthony “Gotti” dancing in her eyes and two bottles of wine dancing in her blood stream.
And so ended our FAMILY thanksgiving. Choo godda problem wid dat?

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November 10, 2006
Canto xxxv

Karis had her six-month vaccinations today. As I sat in the pediatrician’s waiting room finishing up Dante’s Inferno I came to the realization that Dante was mistaken. There are in fact ten circles of hell, and not the nine that were previously assumed. The tenth circle being my pediatrician’s waiting room.
It more than qualified! It had putrid matter, (diapers in dire need of changing) wild demons, (unsupervised, obnoxious children, coughing and sneezing their germs about the room) and hopeless souls condemned to sit there for all eternity. (sleep deprived new mothers such as myself)
If you’ve never experienced an over-booked pediatricians waiting room you may feel inclined to argue my comparison. Had Dante ever experienced this himself, I contend that he would gladly have amended his text.

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November 9, 2006
I heart New York

I never wanted to raise a baby in the city. From the minute I found out I was pregnant my mind started inventing different scenarios that had me moving back to the west coast immediately. I always imagined raising my babies on Californian soil, close to my family. I would love a little land somewhere green – or even a house in the suburbs. This whole not having a yard thing is so old.
I live in a fourth floor walk-up on Manhattan’s upper west side; a studio walk-up. We have managed to carve out a home for ourselves in a 400 sq ft space – big by New York standards. The first time I dragged the bulky baby stroller violently down the curving narrow flights, sweating profusely and cursing like a sailor, “Never again! Never fucking again!” I could hear my mother chuckling by the front door as she waited with the baby.  “Never again!” Oh, how wrong I was. Here I am six months later, and I can’t count the times I’ve trekked that damn stroller up and down those cursed stairs. It’s a daily occurrence – and the baby isn’t getting any lighter!
It’s funny how life works itself out. I still don’t enjoy dealing with the stroller, be it on my own stairs or the many stairs of the subways, but I’ve come to accept it as part of my city life. I’ve also grown to accept hauling my giant, very heavy bag of laundry down the street every week, rain or shine, to the over priced laundry mat.
Ok, so why is this entry titled “I heart New York” then?  Because though New York is filled with stairs, and over priced laundry mats, and crowded, poorly laid out grocery stores, it’s also filled with people. It’s filled with the good kind of people. I know I can usually be heard grumping about how much I hate crowds, and being crunched together with people who don’t practice good hygiene, but every now and then I’ll look beyond the surface inconveniences and see the beauty in it all.
Today was one of those days when I was pleasantly surprised by the love this city has to offer. I was taking Karis to an audition all the way over on the east side. This required us to take a cross-town bus, then transfer to the 6-line subway. As we descended into the tunnel I could hear a quartet singing doo-wap on the platform. Street musicians are to be expected in the subway. What I didn’t expect was the large crowd of people waiting for the train to be dancing and singing along. I stood just inside the turnstile and watched in joyful awe as elderly Fifth Avenue mavens smiled and swayed with gangsta youth. Karis too was delighted. She kicked her chubby little legs and gurgled happily. Every time I met someone’s eyes we shared big goofy smiles. It was really great. I kept asking myself, “Where else could this ever happen but a subway in NYC?”

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