Nobody Knows Anything

Sophia’s teacher told me the funniest story.

Evidently some prospective parents were touring the preschool today, and the teacher wanted to demonstrate how they talk about parents. (Or something. This part I’m not clear on.) So she asked, “Who here misses their mommy?”

Sophia answered loudly and proudly: “I don’t!”

Not quite the answer anyone was expecting. So then the teacher asked the kids, “Who here loves their mommy?”

Sophia thought about this for a few seconds and then shouted, “I do!”

(I’m supposing that all the children said “I do!” as well.)

The teacher explained to the parents that Sophia is a very independent soul.

The teacher said to me that Sophia is definitely one of the most independent and self-confident children she’s ever met, and she’s going to miss her a whole bunch when we leave.

One of Sophia’s favorite books currently is There’s A Nightmare in My Closet by Mercer Mayer. In it, a little boy turns the tables on the Nightmare who’s been terrorizing him. Of course, she only asks me to read it during daytime, in the living room. She hasn’t braved it as a bedtime book.

I’ve been having nightmares of my own in regards to closets, albeit of a different variety. I’ve begun going through closets, pitching what I’m absolutely sure I will never wear again and have no desire to see again. The t-shirt from the Fall ‘90 Product Intro? Gone. The corduroy shorts? Yuck.

But it just keeps coming.

I filled four black garbage bags full of clothes this afternoon. I have another two in the upstairs guest room. Plus there are probably twenty garments on hangers.

Who knew I had this many clothes? Certainly no one who knows me, since I’m definitely not a clotheshorse.

Of late I had begun making a list of exercise clothes to get before returning to walking/jogging. I discovered this afternoon that I’ve clearly made this list before, because I found the exact clothes I want.

What was scary was how many clothes still had the damn tags attached. And on clothes I would never wear. Did I buy this? Did someone buy it for me? Where did this come from?

And evidently when I was a size 6, I went nuts at the Gap, because I must have had six pairs of jeans in that size. I found sweaters my mother gave me a million years ago. (The pangs of guilt I felt as I put them in the black bags told me why I hadn’t gotten rid of them before. But still. They’re not surviving another move, dammit.)

I went through Sophia’s closets the other day. No wonder I haven’t been able to find any clothes for her either, given how choked her closet was with stuff she grew out of months and months ago. I have ten plastic boxes filled with clothes both tots have grown out of. I didn’t want to do it, but as Darin said, “If we have another one, we’ll get new stuff, okay? Let’s get rid of this.”

I still have to go through the linen closet. I’ve told Darin that my secret desire is to toss all of our towels and buy new ones for the new house, because we have so many towels that have frayed edges. We have towels I originally had when I lived at my parents’s house. These are towels that predate my relationship with Darin by several years. These are ante-diluvian towels, and I understand towel technology has improved somewhat. And if I got new ones, I could color-code them: certain ones go in Mommy and Daddy’s bathroom, certain ones go in the kiddies’s bathroom, others go in the guest bath.

The really big fluffy bath sheets will go in Mommy and Daddy’s bathroom.

What’s annoying the hell out of me about this spring cleaning/packing spree is that I don’t even know what to do with all this stuff I’m throwing out. Yes, yes: take it to Goodwill. But we’re talking several trips with a minivan. Bags and bags and bags of stuff.

I guess moving is good, because it clears out the clutter. But then the clutter just moves somewhere else.

…I’m going to explode, or something. But, you know, in a good way, because change is good.

(Who said that? I want to bop them on the nose.)

I haven’t been posting because I’ve either been too busy or too hyped up or too, well, overwhelmed to proceed.

Last week—the week of getting rear-ended and of having a rock crack the windshield and of discovering we owed taxes and had no money in the bank with which to do so and Sophia was on spring break so I had to scramble to fill up the days—was also the week Darin was away. (You’ll pardon me if I don’t mention little things like his being away when it’s actually happening.) He was up in Northern California, at Apple, doing some business stuff. I don’t know what. That part: not interesting to me.

He also spent some time looking at houses. He didn’t want to; the trip we’d taken in March had been excruciating both in terms of time spent and quality of houses viewed. Before he went up for this business trip I finally gave in and said that we should look in an area that Darin had wanted to look in from the beginning but I hadn’t wanted to because it was too far away from Apple and would be too much of a commute. But the areas we’d looked in during that househunting trip were…how shall I put this…no fucking way. It was time to think outside the box a little.

The first day he was up there—Sunday the 13th—I called him on his cell phone to ask him about something or other. Then I asked about how the house hunting was going.

“Oh wow, really good,” he said, and I could tell from the sound of his voice that the house he’d just seen was It. He looked at a few more houses that week, but he was pretty certain that the house he’d just finished looking at the day I’d called was the one. He went to see it again and was absolutely sure.

So this past week has been spent faxing contracts all over California—

“But Diane,” I hear you say, “when did you get a chance to go up and look at the house?”

If you ever need an example of one spouse’s complete and total trust in the other spouse’s aesthetic taste, just tell them about my complete acceptance of a house 400 miles away. I know what I need in a house; I know that Darin is much pickier both about houses and locations. We had talked (and talked, and talked) quite a bit about must-haves and wants, and from the sound of it this house fulfills most of these needs and wants just fine. So undoubtedly the first time I will see the inside of the house is the day we get the keys, when escrow closes. And that’s okay by me. I guess the universe put out the net or something just in time.

—and picking end of escrow days and setting up inspections hither and yon.

I called my friend E., who’s buying our Los Angeles house, during her vacation to ask her about changing the end of escrow for our end of the deal…and accidentally woke her up. At a quarter to eleven in the morning. Well, she was on vacation, after all. And she doesn’t have kids (or, as we like to call them, the 6 A.M. Gang).

We only have a couple more weeks in LA. I can’t believe it. I keep making lists of things we have to do and things we might want to do and see before we go. And the lists just keep getting longer, as the time gets shorter.

“What’re we doing today?”

“I dunno.”

“Everyone we know is out of town…Well, to be more exact, all of Sophia’s friends are out of town.”

For a couple of seconds we contemplated going to Disneyland, but today was a blocked out day for the Annual Pass holders (like us), so we decided to do other touristy things instead.

§

We started off in Pasadena, where we had breakfast at Mi Piace, which has a very, very good brunch. I was biased against Mi Piace for the first several years we were here, because we went to the one in Burbank a couple of times with Darin’s friends and every time we went something horrible went wrong. The Pasadena location, however, has always been very, very good to us.

We hit the Barnes and Noble for an hour of so of story reading time (and Darin went nuts buying books, something he hasn’t done for a long stretch—yes, we’re about to move, but hey, someone else will be carrying the boxes), and then we hit the road.

“How about we go to Malibu?” Darin said.

I said that was fine with me. Probably not too many Malibu driving trips on the agenda in the near future.

There was terrible traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway, but who cared: it wasn’t like we were trying to get anywhere, and the kids were asleep anyhow. I looked out at the beach as we drove.

“We never took them to the beach!” I wailed.

“Hon, we’re still going to be in California. It’ll be the same ocean even.”

Okay, so I’ve been freaking out about the little things.

We parked in Santa Monica and decided to get some lunch at Il Fornaio. I wasn’t terribly hungry, so I just had soup. Darin had a small plate of ravioli. Sophia ate nothing. Simon ate almost an entire plate of pasta with cheese. Every stereotype I’ve ever heard about the differences in eating between boys and girls…well, let’s just say the kids aren’t dispelling them right now.

Then we got very touristy and did something Darin and I have never done, with or without kids.

The Santa Monica Pier is a boardwalk filled with junky food (cotton candy and churros), junky clothing (does anyone except anorexic fifteen-year-olds wear those clothes?), games where you win gigantic stuffed animals, and carnival rides, including a pretty big roller coaster. But everything was for the taller end of the human spectrum.

We thought we were going to get out of there scott-free, until we discovered the kids’ part of the boardwalk: rides just for the 48-inch and under set. You tell me if Sophia wanted to go on rides and whether she enjoyed any second of it:

Crying. Hysteria. “I don’t want to leave.”

Daddy took Sophia down to the beach, where she could kick off her sandals and run free:

(Poor Simon. Trapped in the stroller. Although if the past few days give any indication, he’ll be running on that beach with Fia in less than a week.)

When it was time to leave the beach…Crying. Hysteria. “I don’t want to leave.”

We were dragging her off the pier when we discovered the Carousel. Oh, can’t resist a carousel. Mommy and Daughter rode the Carousel twice. Before the second ride I explained that this was the last time. At the end of the second ride, Sophia began to negotiate for “just one more ride.” We said no. Crying. Hysteria. Etc.

By now Sophia was finally hungry and wanted chicken. More specifically, she wanted chicken with peapods, which is her favorite dish at PF Chang’s. So we found a Chinese restaurant.

“Does she eat Chinese food?” the waitress asked.

“In fact, she’s why we’re here,” Darin said.

Sophia ate—and, to no one’s surprise, so did Simon—and then we headed home. Amazingly, none of us (including parents) fell asleep in the car. The kids fussed a little about going to bed, but it was strictly pro forma fussing.

Yo, universe. Yes, you. Stop it.

§

Reportedly moving is right up there with death on the stress-o-meter.

I don’t know. Never experienced death. Don’t want to. It won’t be pretty.

I’m having a time of it right now. I have to stop thinking of the ways it could be worse, because I’m scared I’m going to give the universe ideas. Now, you say, the universe is pretty much just a concept, not an entity who can understand and act upon those understandings. And I’d agree with you. But I still don’t want to give it any ideas.

§

The other day, the same day we got rearended, I took the kids to get their portrait taken. Of course they both fell asleep in the car and I didn’t have the heart to wake them up. Then it turned out that we were an hour late to the sitting anyhow. It was raining; let’s just go home.

On the way home there was a large Crack! on the windshield, and the babysitter and I both jumped in our seats. A rock or something, we thought.

Today I discovered that there was a good chunk taken out of the windshield. And there’s a crack starting to run through it. The windshield’s got to be replaced.

Oh joy. We get to pay the first $500.

Right before our auto insurance is about to expire.

And you know, we’re moving. So we’re going to renew our auto insurance and then move and have to re-renew it.

§

Turns out Bank of America has completely fucked up our credit rating. Says one of our mortgage payments was 90 days late. Uh, BofA? We paid our mortgage by direct deposit, fuckers.

(Stress makes me swear like a sailor.)

I have to dig out the BofA statements, get on the phone, and keep dogging them until they fix it and fix it right now, so we can qualify for a new goddamn mortgage.

§

I think I’ve been on the phone non-stop for the past three days. Setting up inspections. (Jesus, there are a lot of inspections when you want to sell a house. It’s getting to be expensive just to sell a damn house.) Calling various insurance companies. Finding out from the mortgage broker what else we have to do to qualify for a ridiculous mortgage.

Then I relax with my computer and unearth scary articles about how there are no preschool spots available in Silicon Valley.

I’d start taking Xanax or something, but I’m still nursing.

§

We’ve picked our move date. Sure, I said. Let’s do it, I said. Everything will work out. Let’s leap into the unknown, I said. Thinking, of course, of the saying: “Leap and a net will appear.” I repeat that to myself a lot recently, in the hopes that the damned net-holders will show up and put the net out.

Any time, guys. Any time you want to put that net out, go ahead.

§

Update: The babysitter came home from the zoo with the kids. Fia’s completely wiped out. But Simon woke up after a short nap and we cuddled for a while, which made me feel a little better. Then we shared some dinner. Are babies supposed to enjoy New England clam chowder that much?

I love my little honeys. And as long as I keep them in mind, I’m doing okay.

I was awakened this morning by the dulcet tones of my daughter yelling, “Mooooooooommmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeee.” Over and over again. Since she was using the same non-emergency yell she does every morning, I took a shower before heading upstairs.When I got out of the shower she was not yelling. In fact, I heard very little noise, which to all parents is the sign that the kids are Up To No Good.

Actually, what they were up to was pretty cute. When I got to the kids’ room I discovered that somehow Sophia had gotten into Simon’s crib (her superhero identity is, after all, Danger Girl) and the two of them were playing there. Which, you know, would be a much better way to start the day than yelling, “MOOOOMMMMEEEEEE.” At least for me.

§

So we came out to the kitchen to make breakfast. I’ve started to make oatmeal again every morning, because it’s easier than deciding what to eat each and every a.m. I bought a box of McCann’s Quick Cooking Irish Oatmeal, which takes a few minutes to make, instead of cooking up a pot of steel cut oats at the beginning of the week and eating a little bit every day.

Can someone explain this to me? The cooking instructions, for both traditional (on the stove) and microwave is to take a 1/3 cup of oatmeal, mix with water or milk, and cook. Makes a darn fine size bowl of oatmeal. The nutritional information, however, is for a serving size of 1/2 cup of dry oatmeal. Why on earth would they do that? It’s not hard to figure the math for the calories in a 1/3 cup, but still.

Tried to be a nice mom. Bought a copy of The Little Mermaid (Sophia is currently obsessed by Ariel) off of Amazon zShops. What arrived was a cheap knockoff, clearly a phony.

Have to figure out how to rectify this situation. Dammit.

§

Trying to figure out the mortgage thing for a house up north. Big numbers. Huge fucking numbers. Numbers that make me want to cry. If there’s anywhere in the country that screams “dual income,” the Bay Area is it.

§

Yesterday morning I decided to take the kids to Barnes and Noble, where we settle down in the Kids section and read books for a couple of hours.

On the way there, we got rearended. I don’t think the other driver was going particularly fast, because our bumper is only a little messed up. But I had a sore neck and a headache all day. Despite the level of stress in my life at the moment, I don’t usually get headaches, so this was remarkable. At no time did I black out or feel the need to take a nap, so I didn’t have a concussion, I was just a little shaken up.

The worst part was that the insurance people kept asking me, “What happened?” and I couldn’t remember. It was just totally blank. Had I stopped to take a right? Had I stopped to let the guy in front of me do something? I simply cannot remember.

And now I have to go buy two new car seats, because whenever you’re in an accident you’re supposed to get rid of your car seat. Insurance should pay for it. Still a pain in the ass though.

§

I’ve turned my White Board into a To Do List for this move. Jesus, selling a house takes a lot of inspections. I’m going to be here talking to inspectors until the cows come home, and when the cows come home in Los Angeles, well, neighbors start to talk.

§

Usually we get money back on Tax Day. Today I wrote out some gigantic checks.

That sound you hear is me banging my head against the desk. And crying.

§

Exercise? Are you kidding?

It’s taking quite a bit of energy to remind myself that eating is not an acceptable response to stressful situations. Screaming is. Meditation is. But eating is not.

Not, mind you, that that reminder is always working.

“Okay, I want to do a movie where I run for President, and I do some political-type ranting, and me and Bernie Mac play brothers but all we kinda do is beat one another up. It’s funny shit, when we slap one another around.”

“You’ll do the crazy ranting thing?”

“Shit yeah.”

“And you can do this all cheap?”

“Real cheap. I’ll write it. I’ll produce it. I’ll even direct.”

“Sign here, Mr. Rock.”

§

I liked the joke about the Superwhores. But overall…ennh. Poorly written, poorly edited, scotch-taped together. Wait for another HBO special.

No, not me. Her. She cheats! She decided her first card was a free pass to the Lollipop. Then after she ended up behind me (an appearance of the Candy Cane shortly before she reached the Castle!), she decided that she could go straight to the Candy Castle without, you know, going through the torture of picking the cards.

Where does this behavior come from?

We went to see Bend It Like Beckham last Friday night (in case you’ve been waiting with bated breath since my Friday posting to hear what we went to see). We disagreed on the title—Darin didn’t like it, I think it’s pretty good, because it’s offbeat and intriguing for Americans—but we agreed on everything else. BILB is a good movie: enjoyable, nice characters, likeable main character overcoming strong odds to achieve her goals. The entire thing’s predictable, of course, but you don’t care.

Jess, the main character, is an Indian-British girl who loves playing soccer. Jess’s parents, orthodox Sikhs, want her to be a proper Indian girl, learn to make the proper Indian dinners for her future husband, and stop all this soccer nonsense. Jess meets Juliette, who gets her to play on her club team, which is managed by Joe. (It only strikes me right now that all these characters have names that begin with “J,” which is usually a no-no. Anyhow.) Jess plays soccer on the sly, without her parents’ permission. WHAT WILL HAPPEN? Oh yes, and Jess and Joe are attracted to one another, but Jess knows Juliette has a crush on Joe. WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

Don’t worry too much, ‘kay? It’s fun stuff, from scenes from Jess’s home life to the interactions with Juliette and Joe. One too many “Oops! Accidentally caught at something!” plot twists, but whatever: just enjoy it.

One aspect I really enjoyed was the final shot, which tells you so much about how things have turned out. So many movies hit you over the head explaining things: I was happy that the filmmakers trusted us with a visual.

One annoying aspect: the plethora of unfunny gay/lesbian jokes. I mean, you know, enough’s enough already. Shouldn’t the Brits be ahead of us on that score?

Okay, another annoying aspect: at no point is Jess ever shown “bending it like Beckham,” so if you’re not up on European soccer (or Spice Girls), you don’t really have a clue what the hell it means. The filmmakers could have thrown us a bone on that one.

Anyhow: two thumbs up.