the other side...

this day is about to turn into a late afternoon and early evening of intense madness. my stress levels were freaking out a little until until until i came across a few drawings by esmé.

are you sick of hearing esmé escapades? i understand if you are. but, man. i will never tire of writing them down.




ever since we saw da vinci's ginevra de' benci - the only da vinci in the western hemisphere and it's hanging in our museum! and i just edited out a what now, complete with shout-out pose. and then i thought better of that edit. - she's been drawing on both sides of her papers.

a front view and a back view.

i find this fascinating. marvelous. interesting. brilliant. badass.

and it's amazing to me how excruciatingly different the same scene looks. it's like the difference between hello and goodbye, one of which i avoid like the plague. it breaks my heart too hard. does that even make sense?




if there's a point to this, it's that i'm going to look at my late afternoon and early evening of intense madness from my girlies' view. which turns it all straight-away into a few hours of wonderful.

hope you have a sweetheart of a weekend, you little sweethearts. from any view. xoxo. here and here.

man on fire...

we watched man on fire all together camped out, with esmé playing more furiously when scenes turned too red for her liking.

it's one of my favorite movies. when the girlies ask me why, i tell them that it's love. in its most basic, beautiful form, it's love.




would i kill for you? die for you? trade my life to save yours? yes to all. in a half-heartbeat.

before mémé fell asleep, she told me she thinks she can feel herself growing up, listing all the things she knows now. how to make friends anywhere, how to read a few words that she couldn't read before, how to make art that makes her dad's eyes water, how to change the kitchen garbage bag, and the meaning of love.

what's the meaning of love? i asked her.




when you cross the bridge for someone, even when there's something awful waiting for you.

yes. that's a start.

here and here.

fears...

it's strange, the list of things-that-probably-will-never-happen-but-that-still-scare-the-britches-off-me. you probably have a similar list, don't you? here are my top five. this morning.

one. wooden stairs and socks.

two. a lion attack out of nowhere.

three. replying to all.




four. piñatas. which is really more about the sticks.

five. when you're leaning over the sink, brushing your teeth, and then you look up at yourself in the mirror and there's a killer in a balaclava standing there. this has only happened once. and it was gracie. but, whoa.

golden bandit bunny. too bad it's sold, bunny! have a sweetheart weekend, you little sweethearts! and if you find yourself forced to run up a dark staircase, just be sure to throw out several donkey-kicks in case there's a murderer chasing behind you. it works. tah-rust me. xoxo.

so this is it...

it was a sunday morning or maybe saturday, but i remember three things. uncle sugar was looking quite chocolate-lovely on a leather chair with a bon appetit in his hands. i was standing in the kitchen hoping someone would make me something. and then he looked up.

those browns of his, when concerned, gut me every time. and at this moment, he looked very concerned.

kar? we're about to go through a very. bad. period.

every bit of liquid that sloshes through my body rushed to my toes and i thought i'd faint a little. so. this is it. this is how it happens. on a sunday morning or maybe saturday.




he continued, shaking his head in grave apology.

those beans i bought...they're terrible.

liquid back to sloshing as usual.

coffee beans. coffee. beans.

i almost just wrote we need bigger problems, but then i got scared about throwing that out to the universe. so forget that, mister. i will gladly take sub-par and somewhat bitter beans over trouble any day. did i say that loud enough? sigh.

gimme. gimme.

murder...

so i was picking up my friend's full-length mink the other day...

i could stop there, couldn't i? but i won't.




the place was nice but kind of a hike, and there was a doorbell. i stood there for a moment while the guy inside stared hard at me and i stared hard back at him and that's when i made the decision not to ring the doorbell. they let me in anyway. i think because of my furry mitts from pour porter peeking out.

fur shops are strange to me. i'm not anti-fur or anti-anything, for that matter, but i felt like i was choking in there. it smelled old. and everyone was unattractive, but trying super hard to make you think they were not unattractive. did i just write that? oh, my. i should've stopped at the choking bit.




so they give me my friend's mink, which is the longest most beautiful richest color piece of perfection that kind of made me make the same sound i make when i am cuddling with one of my people. the end.

wait. there's more.

so i walk out of the shop, merrily making my way to my car when i hear FUR! IS! MURDER! and i thought about it in my head as i was walking and agreed. good point. for sure. it is murder. unless the animals in question have already perished. then it's simply serendipitous, yes?

again with the FUR! IS! MURDER!

and i looked at this group of grungy fellows on my right, one with a camera and all looking at me, and i smiled and nodded politely and said something along the lines of it sure is, mister.

and then i looked down. you'd think that my first thought would've been dummy. you're. carrying. a. giant. bag. out. of. a. fur. shop. with. the. name. of. the. fur. shop. emblazoned. across. it. sadly, it was not. my first thought was a hissper to myself they see my mitts!




anyway. i hid my hands under the gigantic mink and smiled my most reassuring, brightest, non-threatening to all animals of the world smile and assured those lovely boys in a bit of a panicked voice that IT'S NOT MINE! IT'S MY FRIEND'S!

i didn't tell them she has others. and i won't tell her what they said, either.

p.s. my friends said i could wear the mink as much as i want before they come to pick it up, with only one rule. i must wear it to lacrosse games while puffing on a filtered ciggie in one hand, a dirty martini in the other. i will be sure to instagram that as soon as it happens. also, for the record, my mitts are not even fur. they're just so darn...furry.

gimme.

wise words from my friend...

trying to get back here. i am i am. until then, a stashism.

we're not going to talk about this...

do you even know some of the poor decisions i've made? like, trying to cook a pizza on a wooden pizza peel.

as soon as it started flaming, i stomped my foot and asked the girlies three why the heck would they name it a pizza peel if you couldn't use it to make a pizza?!

their answer included something or other about the basics of fire and flammability. doesn't take much, does it? wood and flame. yep.




i've microwaved metal, even after insane conversations with my brain trying to convince whoever's in charge that it's not so much silver...maybe the microwave won't even notice it.

i never wash my grapes, i seem to always ask when the baby's due when the mom is standing there holding a three-month old, and i continually forget to ask the guy to trim my nails until after he's polished them. can you just...a little bit shorter...it's fine...

it's remarkable. when you say to someone that it's fine and wave away all the it's not fines from the air around you, it usually is fine.

i thought i shouldn't go to alt summit this year because we're moving this summer. this should come as no surprise, but i am not good with time or numbers or deadlines - or at least not as good as i am with creating fires, contained explosions, and uncomfortable situations - because, to me, there's no in-between time. there's now and then there's late. and now, i find that i actually could've spared a few days next week. too late.

{insert a traffic jam of regret right here.}




so, if you're speaking, feel free to facetime me during your chat. i will nod my head and smile at you like you're the smartest little thing in the room. you probably are. and if you're attending, you can do the same; i'll whisper all the right times to clap and encourage you to ask questions. lots of them. and if your name is joslyn and you have a blog called simple lovely, you can call me at midnight and i will call down to the front desk and order you coffee for the morning. at which time, you are to call me once again so we can share a cup of caffeine.

sigh.

the whole point of this post is that i would've worn these tights to the white party.

name calling...

ages ago in oman, i had a friend who was so awesome. like, swedish supermodel who adored her gorgeous and witty italian husband and her three gorgeous and witty babes and spoke four languages. i still miss hanging out with her. they don't make a lot of women like that in my current neighborhood.

the point of this is that, if she didn't like another woman, she would call her a cow. i thought that was funny and rather mild, and i was always a little shocked when our other international friends would take instant offense. i kind of thought something was lost in translation, do you know?




fast-forward to last night, when grae wouldn't let lillie in front of the bathroom mirror. as an aside, can i tell you that this home is insanely mirror-heavy and there still aren't enough for those girlies three.

and lillie called grae a pig.

{insert brawl here.}

part of me is happy that they're not using the language i hear coming from, say, their busmates' mouths. but the other part of me is taking away their electronics and telly privileges for the weekend. i told them that sisters don't call each other animal names. sisters don't fight. if they don't have each other, they have nothing.

grae shrugged and replied we'll always have esmé.

{insert brawl here.}

have you ever been called a name that set your temper on fire? tell me...

instagram...

yes, instragram. i don't know how to use it and it seems silly to me but i am such a screamingly visual person that it seems sillier that i not try it out. so i am.

here is my new bauble tree. it's massive and it catches the light so captivatingly in the mornings that i gasp. and i don't even mind that captivatingly is not a word. it should be.

i wish i was a photographer. i do. so does uncle sugar. one christmas in london, he bought me a fancy camera. when he gave it to me, he said something like "now you can be one of those cute ladies who walks around with a camera and takes pictures all the time."

i remember telling him a few minutes later - just after i whipped off the camera strap from around my neck because i thought it was choking the life out of me. i'm claustrophic like that, you know. - that i take better pictures with my words. and that i'd prefer to just look at things hard and write them in my memory. that if he ever wanted to revisit a particular holiday or one of the girlies' sporting events, just ask. i'll tell him the story. heck, i'll even re-enact it as best i can.

{crickets.}

yep. that was a good christmas memory. if you'd like, i can re-enact the look of disgust and disappointment on that guy's face. let me know. because there's no photo.

p.s. and here is my little disco ball.

stealing my breath...

just a few images that stopped me.

this is what the new year is looking like so far. stunning.




i need to remember this one. needy and homeless, redefined.

and whoa. this is love, yes?

may you have someone or many ones in 2012 and beyond who will always always come after you.

gimme. gimme. gimme.

don't forget...

you're the biggest gift you can give to someone else.

i know i'm grateful as heck for you. merry days, you little sweethearts. xoxo.

circumstances...

there are people out there who you might not know that well and you might not see them so often and you probably don't even know their circumstances yet - which is kind of my new word because i feel like we all need circumstances to carry along with us so we can explain ourselves away a little better straight-away, like those people who wear the goofy tees like i'm with stupid or like the girl in lillie's pe class who wears thongs with questions on them, which leads me to worry incessantly about her circumstances, but that's not a story for today. - but it all melts down in your heart to one thought: i like that person.

here's the thing about melissa. i like that person. and when she asked if i'd write a little something for her, i said yes. and then i did a crap job with the writing part.

but here's the thing about melissa. she told me it was perfect. that it made her heart flutter. and i believed her.

i like that person very much.

my gimme bar is so much fun. you can look at all of my gimmes if you click on that hot pink positive on my sidebar.

truth...

did you have to read that twice? i did, too. but all of a sudden, it makes all the sense in the world.

although i think i'd replace success with happiness.

xoxo from me to you.

last night...

mondays are tough, yes? i've never been able to fall in love with a monday.

until last night. when i treated her like friday.

we hit pause on homework and writing and studying bahasa indonesian. meandered through shops and didn't listen to the radio in the car and laughed lazily, as if we had all the time in the world together.

we all need unexpected nights like that. they're, like, rare birds that make you gasp when they fly by. finding twenty dollars at the bottom of your bag. the same feeling as a snow day, but better...because you chose it.

we strolled by santa and there was absolutely no line. esmé looked at me and asked if she could go talk to him.




do you think he's the real one? she whispered.

if you feel it, you'll know. i reminded her.

i've always told them to trust their instincts. that believing is so much more wonderful than the alternative. and that santa can't be everywhere at once, so he pops in to malls every so often, serendipitously and luckily for us. and so if we see him and our heart starts to race a little, swell a lot, maybe our eyes water a little? that's him.

anyway. she met santa last night.

later, i was holding her before she fell asleep. someday, i'll be able to do this myself, she told me, kind of in apology.

no rush. no rush at all.

three...

my mom called late last week. we talked about when she'd get here for the holidays and i tried to convince her to come even earlier and leave way later. like, the day after never. and then she mentioned her mammogram...and...well...how she has to go back.

i just filled up two paragraphs with panic. but there's no need stating the obvious, is there? delete that. instead, i'll tell you something else.



when the girlies three came home from school, i asked them to be extra nice to each other. kindness brings good luck, i think. and then i told them about their grammy and how she needs a little bit of it.

grae - and before i tell you her diagnosis, please remember that she has watched every gross emergency room-ish show on telly, so she clearly is coming at this with a massive yet surprisingly worthless degree of knowledge - is convinced that this little blip has been caused by stress, and promptly vowed to slit the throats of anyone responsible for said stress thrown at her grammy.

i knew she'd make a great physician, but this violent streak makes me wonder if she wouldn't be better off in the mafia.

esmé followed me around for at least ten minutes after she heard the news. oh, great, she said. now you're not going to have a mom. you already don't have a dad or a lin...and with your mom gone, too...you won't have anyone.

i tried listing all the people i do have left and - let's not get ahead of ourselves, esmé! - reminding her that they just want my mom to come back and re-check something that didn't look quite right. that certainly doesn't mean the end, esmé!

but she just looked at me like what are we gonna do, mom? this is life. we're all dying.




note to self: never ever do not ever allow that kid to be a hostage negotiator.

but lillie. that one breaks my heart. as soon as she heard, it was like all her lights went out. just like that.

will she be okay? she asked two days later, with a serious absence of chandelier.

yes, grae answered, definitively.

and she should know. this is nothing compared to the guy with the golf club stuck through his head. even though it feels like everything.

no...

a good reminder for fighty, peeved little old me.

this shall include but is not limited to moods, eff words, and combative parenting skills. of which i have an abundance.

teasing. i just liked the image. and you. xoxo. also, this is the question, isn't it?

i'll probably regret this one...

so. last night, lillie's science teacher sends out a class mail. something about people talking too much and not listening to her and could the parents please reinforce zipping it in her class and she'd greatly appreciate it.

i asked lillie about it, and she looked a little confused. the only person i talk to is my teacher...and...maybe the kids around me. but we were taking a test today and i used up all the time in class and i didn't really get a chance to talk to anyone.

i see. so i wrote a little note in return, saying that i was sure lillie was one of the chatters. and, for that, my apologies. that lillie will do her best to zip it. but that what really was important to me is how lill's been studying like a fiend and how self-motivated she's grown and how interested she is. heavy emphasis on interested. and that i hope she's enjoying lillie as much as we do.

lillie read the note over my shoulder. i swear, her chandelier smile would've lit a path from my house to yours. swear.

really? she asked. thank you, mom.

i told her not to let anyone else write her about section. ever. i don't think she understood that at all, but you will, yes?

so the teacher wrote back this morning. said that lillie was, indeed, a too-much talker. that, while lill is a joy to have in class and while she is proud of lill's efforts and interest, she's not a fan of lillie's love for the side conversation.




agreed, i wrote back. a million times over. that we'll work on the chatting, but that i'm quite sure her love of interacting with everyone is a brilliant skill that will come in handy someday. it seems i only need to be concerned with getting her past seventh grade science.

i'm not having it. i couldn't help but push back a little.

all these kids...they're all the same. they're either little hoochie-mamas with low-cut shirts and even lower values, or else they're - as lillie and grae call them - chihuahuas. the kinds of girls who start shaking when anyone even looks at them. the kinds of girls who would never dare talk in class, not to mention stand up for themselves or anyone else. it's painful to me, these girls growing up too, too fast and these chihuahuas.

sometimes i cringe that i have great danes. grae, sometimes, is more pitbull. but that is another story.

which took place the other night at swimming. the team was stretching out by the side of the pool, and one of the girls asked my two why their fins were shorter than everyone else's. before they could answer that they're training fins and much more difficult to use than the longer ones, another little girl piped up and answered for them.

because their parents can't afford the real fins.

as soon as grae told me...well...to make a long story short, i fuh-reaked. so mad i can't even explain it. and then i made it quite clear to her gross and useless father that his child was completely inappropriate and crude. he replied with those fated words - that doesn't sound like my daughter - but that he'd talk to her.

i may have replied be sure you do before i give gracie permission to respond.

and then i flamed uncle sugar. there were a lot of effs involved in that text. and that charmer of mine replied why would you ever care about people like that? that's so unlike you. and if grae can't handle this, she needs to turn in her man card.




i love that guy.

i've come to the realization that i'm a pretty chill person. until it comes to my girlies three. i am beyond disinterested in making people who blend in. who follow. who listen to how others define them and change their definition accordingly. who don't enjoy life, but are scared to death of it. who can't enjoy like heck the person sitting next to them, no matter where in the world they may be sitting. and it seems that i will fight like a dog to make sure that all doesn't happen.

this is probably a problem, but asking me to change is like...asking lill to keep quiet in science. which, i hate to tell you, is probably not going to happen.

images i loved on b for bonnie. and there. i feel better now. thanks for listening.

language...

i'm so quiet these days, but writing so much more than usual, which is a lot, and none of it's on mackin ink. that feels both funny and as it should be. i seriously need to reinvent this space...i'm thinking that will happen once i move, yes? say yes.

from seriously legal docs to influencing missives to did i really just write that responses to a little mail sent two floors down to my patrick...everything i'm writing these days seems pretty important. like, making little dents in my world important.




i like being a writer. i like being able to write. because on days like this after a few days like that, i see it so clearly: life is all about language, isn't it?

and here i was just telling someone this weekend that i'd love to be a nurse.

grae-rose, however, will someday be a trauma surgeon. that kid is cold as ice. it cracks us up when she offers her medical opinion at the oddest moments. pat fake-earnestly comments "yes. because gracie is a doctor. she's seen every episode of trauma in the ER, you know. plus, 800 pounds and having a baby." as lillie would say, "good lord, gracie" complete with her eye roll. in other news, lillie is charming the pants off me and pat. her english project was one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen...a three-d map of the world with stories about all the places she's seen and lived. it was heart-stopping for me and reinforced why we move around. i always go back to what uncle sugar said when he proposed: "...and we'll have babies and live all over the world so that they understand america's place in it and love her all the more for it." yes to that. and esmé. oh esmé. the other day, i was particularly nice and she looked at me particularly nicely and said "you remind me of your dad." i gasped and said "you never knew my dad." and she smiled with this wisdom and like i knew nothing at all and answered "oh yes i did." these girlies of mine...good lord, right? i want this.

thankful...

i was writing last night while the girlies were watching x-factor, and i kept reminding them not to fall asleep until josh krajcik performed.

tell me when he's on, i must've yelled ten times.

i could feel esmé rolling her eyes. you're just gonna cry, she warned.

i did. he sang wild horses, which is one of my favorite favorites ever. and explaining it to esmé what it meant in words she could understand...well. if you want meaningful things to mean even more, explain them in simple terms.

couldn't drag me away...damn if i don't feel that way every time i look at this little family of mine.

spending the week with friends and lovely traditions and there might even be a day or two when i lounge at the kitchen island and watch uncle sugar make magic. kidding about the might part. also about the day or two part. it's a four-day weekend, after all, and our fridge is stocked with some pretty brilliant ingredients! xoxo.

bedtime...

esmé would wholeheartedly agree with this. i would, too, but not remotely in the same way.

potato, potato.

gimme.

a test...

at some point last night, lillie stopped studying with me for her science exam. which is exactly when grae took over.

it must've been when i ran downstairs to chat with uncle sugar, who was writing a practice essay in bahasa indonesian about...hold me, friends...housemaids. specifically, the hiring of them.

ok. daydream done.

we heard them laughing their heads off for over an hour, and kind of smiled at each other. our lillie and grae and their little sidekick, too, who honestly knows next-to-nothing about diffusion and meiosis and cytokinesis. trust me.

there's a bit of a problem in that all of grae's study prompts begin with a fat kid trying to stuff himself through the door. or cell membrane, as it were. also, the fat kid has an indistinguishable accent; a startlingly gross mix of uneducated, dull, and cockney, if you can imagine. so when lillie gets ready to write out a definition or process, she clears her throat first. kind of like a bad muppet.

lillie may not get an A today, but i guess pat and i are fine with that.

actually, we're more than fine with that.

time...

do you know how long it takes to tell someone you love them?

whisper that you're sure they hung the moon and stuck on all the stars in perfect pattern? that the sight of them, the sound of them, the sweet smell of them...causes your heart to stop whatever it's doing - no matter how important that doing may be - dropping beats like mad and completely forgetting about everything else except one thing.

zero time. so little time that you can't even find it on a clock. you've got to find it in your heart.

last night, esmé and i were reading. her, this. me, this.

by the way. i write down genius lines from genius books to see what it feels like to write genius lines in genius books. do you ever do that? in this case, i wrote: he forgets that he was someone's dream once, himself.

we shouldn't forget that, should we. it would probably make us a lot nicer to the people who've chosen to be around us. and who keep on choosing us, yes?

so out of the blue, i hear esmé say i love you.

and i smiled so hard. she fills silence with love. check.

i love you, too, mémé, i answered back.

and here's where i know she's going to skate through life with a smile. ooh, she grinned. i was actually talking to wemberly.

and then we both laughed while i stumbled to pick up all my fallen beats. because we both knew she wasn't.

it's been said...

and i've been agreeing more and more. it's a nice way to live, i think. my girlies three agree.

i was going to post this bit of insight instead, but i wanted something more thoughtful and good for the world to sit here all weekend. not that...oh, never mind.

also, I MISS YOU! all caps means it's for real.

catch you next week, you little sweethearts. xoxo.

backyard bill...

still killing it. family style.

for some reason, i've been using the words kickass and badass a lot lately. i think that's a sign that things are coming along quite nicely.

in other news, my sister wrote me a mail this morning that made my day. it read, in part, "if you ever killed someone, i'd go on dateline and say you didn't do it."

i hope you have someone who'd lie like that for you. i seriously do. xoxo and have a badass weekend, you little kickass sweethearts.

truth...

don't you? say yes...