Javier Heard of Me?

Javier Bardem. I was just going to write his name but I feel compelled to say more. He's so lovely. Deep voice, scruffy beard, long-haired Oscar winner. The truth is I haven't seen No Country for Old Men yet because I caught a glimpse of that hairdo and it's not a good look. I will go see it of course. Love the Coen Brothers too but Javier is the main attraction.

I've decided George Clooney is off my list. I feel like Rosey O'Donnell must've felt when she saw Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch. Slightly sickened and kind of clammy. George's offense? He took a 28 year-old former cocktail waitress to the Oscars. He's 46 by the way. How does that work I wonder. When you're a waitress and then you take a sabbatical to be with George, does he give you an allowance? Since George is notoriously commitment phobic, maybe he keeps refilling gift cards. You can shut those off at any time.

Yes I know Javier is dating Penelope Cruz but that doesn't mean a girl can't dream. I'd probably just want a long-distance relationship with him anyway. I don't know if you've ever dated a person from another country but something always gets lost in translation. When I lived in France, I dated some french guys and found their complete lack of athleticism a deal breaker. The French are really not very sporty. I took some classes at a gym and the changing room was co-ed. Then I tried swimming. I couldn't do laps because all these couples were making out at the edge of the pool. I'd have to turn around mid-stream. Ridiculous really. There are plenty of better places to make out in Paris.

With Javier, I'm sure things would be great in the beginning but I'd probably get tired of something like how much he loves his mother or teeny bathing suits. The euro fling is fine over there but it doesn't work as well here, say in front of your brother who would likely give you endless amounts of shit if you brought a guy to the beach wearing a speedo.

I don't know though. Maybe Javier isn't a speedo kind of guy. Maybe.

Rubberband Man

Last week I was watching Oprah and her show featured three motivational type speakers discussing the book The Secret and their own books and businesses built around thinking positively. My husband always says, "Change your thoughts, change your life." He usually says this when I get mad at him for not doing laundry.

I will say that I'm genetically predisposed to monkey brain as we call it in my family. It starts early in the morning, when I'm doing some kind of chore like unloading the dishwasher. The monologue begins, "Rack'em, frack'em." It starts as a low grumble. "Unloading the freakin' dishwasher again. I bet I'll have to do the laundry next," I whisper to myself. Then it becomes a tumblin' tumbleweed, a rolling stone gathering moss.

I asked my husband about changing my thoughts. I was also feeling a little smarmy for watching Oprah during the day. "How do you change your thoughts?" He told me there are devices you can use. A simple one is wearing a rubberband. Just give it a thwack when you start going down a negative path.

I made fun of his suggestion in that hilarious, dismissive way I have. Until a couple of days later when I was unloading groceries and I noticed the purple rubberband around my asparagus. "Why not?" I said. I put the rubberband on my wrist and began snapping it whenever my thoughts started going south.

Last night I was driving into the City and I heard an interview on All Things Considered. A writer named Eric G. Wilson wrote a book called Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy. Link to story here. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18885211 Eric was reading an excerpt from the book, a list of things he'd tried to boost his spirits. He concluded, "I have quit all of this and then started again and then once more quit. Now I plan to stay quit. The road to hell is paved with happy plans."

I'm going to write to Eric and tell him about my rubberband. My guess is he'll think I'm crazy. Is crazy worse than being sad? Oprah and all the others want us to believe that being negative is a direct line to failure, to being overweight, dateless, slovenly, homebound, eating a Hungry Man in front of a rabbit-eared TV.

I don't know the answer. I'm a mix of Finnish and Scottish, people who can be very funny but almost always have a dark side. I agree with Eric Wilson that some people are predisposed to melancholy. I know it in myself. And I completely agree with this idea of people hiding their sadness behind fear. We are a fearful culture. We're getting worse all the time. He writes:

"With no more melancholics, we would live in a world in which everyone simply accepted the status quo, in which everyone would simply be content with the given. This would constitute a dystopia of ubiquitous placid grins, a nightmare worthy of Philip K. Dick, a police state of Pollyannas, a flatland that offers nothing new under the sun. Why are we pushing toward such a hellish condition?

The answer is simple: fear. Most hide behind the smile because they are afraid of facing the world's complexity, its vagueness, its terrible beauties. If they stay safely ensconced behind their painted grins, then they won't have to encounter the insecurities attendant upon dwelling in possibility, those anxious moments when one doesn't know this from that, when one could suddenly become almost anything at all. Even though this anxiety, usually over death, is in the end exhilarating, a call to be creative, it is in the beginning rather horrifying, a feeling of hovering in an unpredictable abyss. Most immediately flee from this situation. They try to lose themselves in the laughing masses, hoping the anxiety will never again visit them. They don inauthenticity as a mask, a disguise protecting them from the abyss."

I think that's what pisses me off so much about the women I meet out here in the burbs. There are exceptions of course and I do believe all of them struggle with all kinds of issues both large and small. What drives me nuts is that suburban mom who has become a caricature, hiding behind soccer matches and bunco and white zinfandel. Why can't we all just say it? Our husbands make us crazy. Parenting is difficult if not impossible. I want to run away sometimes and disappear because this can't be it.

Snap. The sound of my purple rubberband. I'm wondering if I should go with yellow now. Purple is just a little too close to blue.

Car Trouble

Last night I locked myself out of my car. It's not the first time but it was unique in that the car was still running. I have an excuse. Really.

My car was in the shop all day and I couldn't spring her until 4:00. If you live in the burbs you know how important your car is to daily living. So I was trapped in the house from 7:30 until 4:00. I couldn't return Season 1 of 30Rock. I couldn't get to the gym. I tried starting my scooter but it's just too cold for scootering.

So I finally get my car and start driving. Guzzling gas. My little V8 with a sunroof. I take my son to karate and notice a warning light is on in my car. Liftgate open. This is one of the items I just paid to have fixed, so I'm peeved.

My husband broke my liftgate. The liftgate is that little window that opens on the trunk. He broke it hauling wood from West End Lumber in Bridgeport. Normally I wouldn't really care if my liftgate window won't close all the way but it bothers me because that error message - liftgate open - blocks all other messages like direction and temperature. So I have to turn on AM radio if I want to get the temp for the day.

What's really annoying me other than the fact that a) I paid to have something fixed that is still broken and b) I have to tune in to AM radio is c) my husband's strict policy of "don't touch my stuff". See he doesn't want anyone touching his car, his computer, his guitars, his glasses, his moleskin notebook, his.... you get my drift. The fact that he broke something on my car and seems to think that is okay when clearly it is not, is annoying.

Getting back to how I locked myself out. I had a few minutes to kill waiting for karate to end and I thought I'd try fixing my car. My mechanic showed me how to close the liftgate (supposedly) by using the clicker to lock and unlock. So I was trying that and I guess I left it in lock mode and then turned on the car. When my son came out of karate I pulled on the door handle and it was locked.

The good news is this time my son was outside the car with me. The last time I locked myself out of the car, my son was inside and I was out. He was little at the time, we were still counting his age in months I think. We were living in North Carolina and it was around this same time of year, February, except that in North Carolina that can mean heat.

I panicked and then I came up with a plan. I called my dad who lived down the street and got my stepmother instead. I asked her if she could come down to my office and watch the car while I flew back to my house to get my spare keys. Somewhere along the way she decided to call 911. Now that is probably what I should've done, but I thought I could get to and from my house faster than emergency services could make it to my car.

In the meantime someone from another office in our building is outside talking to me, wants to know if we could join hands and pray or some crap like that. When my stepmother arrives, I take off like a shot, leaving her to pray with the nutter. I made it to my house in about 3 minutes, grabbed the keys and ran.

When I got back to my car the Raleigh fire department was standing around my Volvo, one guy holding an axe-like tool. They were about to break the window when I showed up with the spare keys. I opened the car and retrieved my son. A tearful reunion of mother and child although I don't recall my son being upset. I don't think he really picked up on the emergency unfolding around him.

As the firemen were leaving, one of them pulled me aside and said, "Normally I'd need to write you up for this but I'm going to let it go since you got him out so quickly." I was thinking write me up for what? For being a working mom, tired, overwrought and a bit spacey? Granted not a banner moment as a mom but it's not like I went to work and left my kids in the car for the day. There was a guy in Raleigh who was picked up for leaving his kid in the car while he went into a strip club.

I was just trying to get to and from work, my kid in tow, and I made a mistake. The same thing happened last night. Working, running back and forth to karate and guitar lessons and the grocery and afterschool mutli-sport camp can get a little tiring. Add that something is still broken in my car that I just had fixed and the aggravation I feel knowing Mr. Don't Touch My Stuff caused this problem and some balls are going to get dropped.

Luckily my neighbor, also a working mom, was home and she retrieved my spare keys and brought them to us. As an aside, I received an email that says you can use your cell phone to open your car door by having a person point your spare key clicker into their phone and then you point your cell phone at your car. This is an urban legend. We tried it and it didn't work.

In the meantime my son was practicing his high kicks in the parking lot and found a $20 bill on the ground. Once again unscathed by the emergency, he actually winds up ahead in the deal. I think he might have the "step in shit" gene my brother and father have but I'll have to go into that in another post. Clearly I don't have the step in shit gene and may in fact have the "working man takes it up the pipe" gene.

All's well that ends well. We got in the car and drove home. I can tell you one thing, I'm not putting my car back in the shop. I guess I'll have to assign a button to an AM weather station. I don't really use the direction feature except to feng shui some stuff in my office. One thing I am planning is to touch some of my husband's stuff. As a little joke I like to put fingerprints on his monitor. I might smudge up his iPhone. That will really get him.

NB While I was writing this post, I burned an entire pot of wild rice. This is what I'm talking about people. Being a working mom means having a million jobs, none of which you do very well. The mental state that condition creates is what makes women crazy. Like Britney crazy except with big grandma underwear.