Serenading My Quoniam.
Mood:  flirty
If you must fuck up your life so that you spend your leisure time working your ass off, for God's sake do it alongside your best friend. Last night I was out in the yard bagging up terrarium substrate, and Ben, who was working around the kitchen, slid the window open so he could keep me company.

"Shall I sing Porgy and Bess to you?" he asked.

"Why?" I asked, a bit taken aback.

"Why not?"

Why not indeed. The guy slays me. There is nothing under the sun that can surprise me -- actually, that is not accurate; a lot of the goings-on in the world shock the shit out of me -- but no one has ever offered to sing Porgy and Bess to me before. He even offered to put on blackface. (I'm SORRY! Please, not with the hate mail! That opera was written in 1934. People used to DO that!) I demurred on the blackface, being pressed for time, and then surer than shit, my beloved husband proceeded to sing me an overture from Porgy and Bess.

I came inside as he sang the closing bars and we started talking about the Wife of Bath. Of course, The Canterbury Tales is well known for the dirty parts, but that's not why I'm rereading it; Ben and I quote the dirty parts to each other often enough that I don't need another reading. But the Wife of Bath is a piece of work -- conniving broad, and she usually got away with it, but some of those guys really had her number, and they told her just what a treacherous bitch she was. I like her because she's forthright and unafraid to admit she loves to fuck, even though she is also an aging, scheming, golddigging twat.

Can I say that word? I don't like most words for the female apparatus; I don't like the C word. The Wife of Bath (let's call her Alison, for that is her name) referred to hers as her quoniam or her belle chose. The latter means beautiful thing, which I find charming. I can't find the etymology of quoniam right off and don't have time to research it well, but Ben and I assume it was later shortened to quim, which is also a charming word. It's cute and friendly, as all good quoniams (quonia?) should be.

We're definitely going to use those. Doesn't effing quoniam sound better than fucking c___? Better, and incomprehensible. Ben and I have a sort of secret language, a verbal shorthand we use for talking about strangers in their presence, and the next time some female is behaving toward us in a particularly insufferable manner, I will just turn to him and say conversationally, "Quoniam." Unless Middle English as a second language suddenly catches on, we're golden.

Footnote: Speaking of talking about people within their earshot, we hit upon a stroke of pure brilliance over the weekend in the form of Matt's Magna Doodle, which is sort of a cross between a "magic slate" and an Etch-A-Sketch. In short, you write things and make them instantly disappear. We spent a giggly lunchtime at an Italian restaurant passing Magna Doodle notes to each other about the diners at adjoining tables. If you don't feel like learning Middle English, we highly recommend it.

Good As They Need To Be.
Topic: Rants
This morning on the Howard Stern Show, they played a "best of" segment featuring a 1997 phone call from a woman who believed Robert Redford and Robert Urich were plotting to kill her. The girl wasn't kidding; she had clearly gone on a shopping spree at Delusions "R" Us. Howard and Robin drew her out on the topic, and the woman explained the conspiracy at length for a good 45 minutes.

(Note: If you're planning to e-mail and lecture me about the plight of the mentally ill and my staggering lack of tact, let's take it as read, okay? You're right. I am an appallingly tactless, callous person. News flash: Life is funny, even the tragic bits. Maybe especially the tragic bits. Political correctness may be many things, but funny is not one of them. Thank you.)

Anyway, Howard got her husband on the phone and asked him (surprise!) if the sex was any good. To no one's surprise, the guy replied that yes, it was. It's well known that for a guy, the thing about being involved with a crazy broad is that it's the best sex he'll ever have in his life. Los Angeles talk radio personality Tom Leykis has mentioned this fact many times on the air. My husband, who has had more than his share of wack jobs (two stalkers that I know of, one of whom used to call him repeatedly, back when we were first dating, while I was lying in his bed in the mornings, and also a genuine diagnosed schizophrenic), says it's completely true. Although he is a true gentleman and thus does not mention names or details.

I wonder why this is. Perhaps it's the product of a wild imagination and a lack of inhibitions or any grasp on reality. Maybe it's schizophrenia's way, since the disorder is heredity, of assuring its own perpetuation. Possibly it's just that crazy girls need love too. I can't tell you if the same holds true for nutty men; I've known an odd duck or two in my time, but no one certifiable. So I don't know. If you're female and have slept with a truly wacky man, drop me a line and let me know how it was.

Spider Mom.
Topic: Miscellany
The simple truth is that Ben and I really fucked up somewhere along the line. I've just sat down for the first time in nearly two hours. Since sitting down to write, I've jumped up once to throw the laundry in the dryer, again to comfort crabby Sam and persuade him to try the nap thing, and a third time to find Matt's misplaced toy. And that's just in the space of two sentences. Somehow, I told Ben, we've managed to arrange our lives so that we work a hell of a lot harder during our leisure time than we do in our careers. We really fucked up at some point. And he had to agree.




To give you an example of my insanity and gluttony for punishment, I'm the self-appointed keeper of two tarantulas and a leopard gecko. Like I didn't have enough to do? I'll save the gecko for later, because I am too tired to set up the photograph I have in mind, but the tarantulas are a Costa Rican Zebra named Beast Boy and a classic Mexican Red-Knee called Arachne. That's Beastie on the left and Arachne on the right. I got them both as spiderlings last October; each of them, including legs, was about the size of a dime at the time. As you see, that has changed. It seems I have a sort of green thumb for tarantulas.

You would think that spiders would just hang around like bugs, but I've spent time observing them, and they do have distinct habits and temperaments, just as Sam and Matt do. Beastie is rather solitary and wary, but sweet in a standoffish way. Arachne is more forthcoming, full of piss and vinegar. I haven't yet learned how to sex tarantulas (Don't say it. Just don't say it), but I figure her for a girl because she has pretty legs and is charming but a bitch.

Despite having been on my feet all day (much of the time carrying a napping two-year-old), due to their prodigious growth I spent the late afternoon moving the spiders into bigger terraria. They seem quite happy in their new homes. I would be happy too if I could get a bigger house for $20, especially if someone else was buying. Meanwhile, I am shaking my head at my own insanity; I am not only deranged enough to keep tarantulas in the first place, I am also bughouse (ha!) enough to take on the extra responsibility of additional living things to whom I did not give birth and for whom I absolutely do not have time. Who the hell appointed me keeper of the life force? Apparently it's a compulsion. As with the kids, I enjoy looking at them and thinking Isn't that a fine specimen of a living thing? I helped that life along, there. A born masochist, I mean mother.

As a footnote, I would like to point out that spider shit is very similar to bird shit; I'd be hard pressed to tell the two apart in controlled conditions, although presumably if you were dealing with spiderlings and eagles, as opposed to bird-eating spiders and sparrows, the size of the dump might be a useful clue. What all this means I have no idea. Perhaps a zoologist could enlighten me. But I don't think even they spend as much time thinking about shit, and dealing with shit, as I do.

My Husband, The Prick: Coda.
Mood:  irritated
Topic: The Tao of Ben
My husband read all about the fact that he is a prick, and the statement that his IQ was measured at 154. "Actually, that's not right," he told me.

"Oh? What is it then?"

"What they told us was that my IQ was at least 155," he said.

Prick. If they awarded IQ points for assholery, it'd be 387, you prick.

Grapefruit Juice As Public Relations Device.
Mood:  mischievious
Many mornings, I get up before my family and squeeze fresh juice for my husband by hand. I know; I am so not that type. But really it only takes a few minutes, Ben enjoys it, and it sounds so good on paper. It was mentioned in passing yesterday, and I could tell my mother-in-law was thinking Well, she may be this tremendous bitch who dares to have opinions I didn't give her permission to have, but at least she squeezes fresh juice for my son.

The juice recipe is very simple: For approximately eight ounces, squeeze first one Coachella Valley grapefruit, then one tangelo, then another grapefruit. The tangelo cuts the acidity of the grapefruit and adds a sweet note, plus my husband has an inexplicable affection for tangelos. Just be sure to cover the juice before you refrigerate it, lest it end up with a garlic hummus top note.

Meanwhile, Matt, who rose early with me, is hypnotized by one of Erika's old Mary Kate & Ashley videos from the early '90s. So funny to watch. Batten down the hatches, girls: There are a whole lot of nightclubs in your future, a whole lot of not eating, and a whole lot of photo shoots with pouts on your faces and your arms around each other.

Reading List.
Tonight, after dropping my mother-in-law off at the train station, we went book shopping at Borders. Which was a welcome relief, because my mother-in-law routinely tests my patience to the limit, especially when she brings with her, and insists upon discussing with us, a stack of articles she has carefully cut out of periodicals because our very lives, and those of our children, depend upon us reading these articles and taking to heart every bit of information and advice they contain.

At times like this I long for a mother-in-law like Joan Plowright in I Love You To Death or Brenda Fricker in So I Married An Axe Murderer, raptly perusing the National Enquirer and Weekly World News for enlightening information ("Look at this. Space alien marries two-headed Elvis clone.") -- but no, Ben's mother isn't that entertaining.

"Here is this article that talks about how you should always wash your hands," she tells us. "Everyone up where I live [faraway, exotic Ventura County] is talking about it. It's VERY important," she tells us. And meanwhile Ben and I are thinking Shit, and here all these years we've been sticking our fingers up our asses and then making sandwiches for the boys. Who knew? I mean, I ask you. Sometimes, after a day of this, I'm sorry I don't drink anymore and haven't smoked pot in years.

Following an afternoon of being educated by Mom, the idea of something pleasurable to read is enticing indeed. I had a very specific book in mind, namely a copy of The Canterbury Tales which included both the original Middle English and a modern translation, but without the migraine-inducing alternating line format. (Got that?) While poor Ben grappled with the boys, I checked out both the Literature section and the Poetry section, but came up empty-handed. What the fuck? I thought. (Our local Borders is about the same square footage as our house.)

I approached the Customer Service desk and came face-to-face with a tall, pale, pimply girl who looked like she hated George Bush and loved to recycle. She asked if she could help me. "Chaucer?" I said.

She stared at me as though I were speaking Middle English.

"Geoffrey Chaucer?" I tried. Again the blank stare, this time with a rising element of panic.

"The author?" Fortunately for our young friend, who looked ready to dive under the desk and start gibbering, a salesperson about my age came to our rescue and led me to Chaucer, who was inexplicably stashed in the History section. To my delight, there were six or seven different editions of The Canterbury Tales, and I was able to find exactly what I wanted for the bargain price of $5.99, which wasn't much more than I paid for my caramel latte. Happy day. (I do feel bad about frightening that poor girl so terribly, though. Poor kid just didn't know what to do about someone who didn't ask for John Grisham or Dr. Phil.)

I also came home with a copy of The Water-Method Man (1972) by John Irving, to replace my old copy which had summarily fallen apart, and a remaindered 1999 edition of National Geographic's Field Guide to the Birds of North America. I've just bought a second bird feeder for the back yard, and it'll be fun identifying the little fuckers in between scrubbing their shit off the patio furniture.

If we're able to stay up later than the kids tonight, we'll . . . well, I mean if we're still awake after that, we've got some tasty stuff to read. But before we do, we'll pull our fingers out of our asses and wash our hands. Because it's VERY important, is why.

Listen To This.
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: Music
It must be the day for listening to early '80s music; I went from Joe Jackson to Squeeze's Eastside Story (1981), which is another fucking brilliant album. (Trivia: If you listen carefully to the backup vocal on the second verse of Tempted, that's Elvis Costello affecting a basso, that sneaky little shit. He produced the album.)

I've also brought Elvis Costello's This Year's Model, which came out in 1979, and Crowded House's Woodface, which didn't come out until 1991 -- but it's all of a bunch, witty underrated British pop.

Perusing the Eastside Story album cover, I was struck again by lead singer Glenn Tilbrook, who had the market on the innocent child-man thing cornered back there in 1981. (That's him second from the right on the album cover, and in the middle in the publicity still. Want a piece of candy, little boy?) In fact, he was a little boy -- he was twenty-three. These days, he just looks like a nice middle-aged man. I suppose it's happened to most of us.

If you're not familiar with this tasty stuff, and if you get the chance, do check it out. I didn't discover it till the early '90s, so you needn't feel like you've been asleep at the switch. Production isn't everything, but you need to have some. Lyrics aren't important, unless they are truly witty -- Difford and Tilbrook are very deft, and Elvis Costello is the master of multilayered wordplay. Edge is overrated, but the cheek should contain a tongue. The tune's gotta bounce, but not too hard. Restraint is a virtue. This has got all that. Compare it to the jump-rope chants that pass for lyrics these days, and the banging on trash cans and recycled disco that passes for music, it's fucking Mozart.

Harry Potter, Tobey Maguire And My Insane Hormones.
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: Rants
Because I am both a mommy and a nerd, I have a Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban day-by-day photo calendar on my desk. I don't want to admit it, but I have to: Those boys, who are now around fifteen, are getting intriguing looking. Daniel Radcliffe himself, that redhead who plays Ron Weasley, even the evil blond kid. I should probably go to jail for even thinking this. Call me the Wife of Bath.

For that matter, there is always something intriguing about that little-kid look. Tobey Maguire has always been fascinating to me; he's of age, but has that wide-eyed Oh my goodness, I've never seen a boobie before look. You just want to persuade him to do dirty things with you.

Shit, could someone please dump a bucket of water on me or something? Damn these pregnancy hormones. Four children and they have never clobbered me quite this hard before. And now I am off to ponder the intricacies of the United States Code, which is this girl's substitute for thinking about baseball.

Thoughts On Joe Jackson.
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: Rants
He's done some brilliant stuff. For three days I've had Is She Really Going Out With Him? stuck in my head, so I brought his 1996 Greatest Hits collection to the office today. It also includes tracks from his 1982 release Night and Day, which is an amazing album.

But: good Christ, that guy is a gigantic fairy. I mean he is just the gayest thing I have ever seen in my life. Or, should I say, I have ever heard. Corporeally, I have always thought he looked like a sperm, or maybe a fetus. The Reproductive Fairy.

My Husband, The Prick.
Mood:  crushed out
Topic: The Tao of Ben
There are those who have expressed shock at my reference, in this blog, to my husband as a prick. That is your chosen mate and the father of your children, they say, or words to that effect. How can you say such terrible things about him?

It's true that Ben is an absolute masterpiece of a man and that I love him very dearly. However: He is a prick. (Hi honey! Kisses!) I am not just saying this, either. I have solid proof, to wit:

He is smarter than I am. Intelligent men aren't ordinarily a problem for me; with the exception of that commodities trader I dumped to start dating Ben, I've tended to gravitate toward brilliant men. However, he is brighter than I am and has the statistics to prove it: According to standardized tests way back when, his IQ is 154 and mine is only 145. That's nine whole points, you prick. Of course, we have to account for some of the pruning of brain cells we did in the '70s and '80s, which might have equalized things a bit, but according solely to the numbers, I'm his mental inferior.

Of course, you may be thinking. He's a lawyer, isn't he? You should expect him to be very intelligent. Well, no; that's not accurate. The California Bar is populated with a startling percentage of abject idiots, and as for the rest of them, for the most part they aren't so much intelligent as they are cagey.

However, I first met Ben when he was my boss for two months on a temp assignment, and it's true that he was pretty much the first attorney I'd ever worked for where I didn't secretly think I was smarter than he was. For once I wasn't thinking You should be sitting in here drafting my points and authorities, and could you please, please try to grasp the proper use of the comma? So I guess I should have seen it coming. What I didn't see coming was what an insufferable know-it-all -- insufferable prick -- he can be. Worse, I'm probably not much better.

He is more well-read than I am. This is particularly goading because my bachelor's is in English literature, whereas he majored in something reprehensible related to business or economics, and his postgraduate degrees are an MBA and a JD. Not a liberal arts degree in sight. Yet that prick is far better versed in history and literature than I am. It's true that he's a little weak on modern American literature and to some extent on Shakespeare, but he's well versed in Chaucer and has plowed through more DH Lawrence and Tolstoy than I ever managed to do.

However, being well-read doesn't make him a total prick. On our first date, Ben completely charmed me by announcing that James Joyce's Ulysses was "gibberish". I squealed with delight. "That's exactly what I've always thought!" I crowed. Do you know how much time I spent, as an undergrad in English, listening to people have on about how brilliant and profound Joyce's works are, and Ulysses in particular? The entire time, I was thinking what a bunch of incomprehensible bullshit it was; but Ben was the first person I ever met who dared to say it. Besides, a guy who discusses Joyce on the first date instantly makes a girl like me weak in the knees. I vowed immediately to have sex with him whenever possible and to spend a ton of time with him, even though he is absolutely not meant to know more about literature than I do, and therefore he is a prick.

He is instinctively condescending. This must be a corollary of being smarter than everyone else; during conversations with me, even after all these years, he will automatically launch into explanations of the most axiomatic concepts of science or sociology. Well, maybe not axiomatic to the coke-addled trust fund babies he hung out with at Beverly Hills High, but axiomatic to anyone with the mental wherewithal to think beyond series TV and French Vogue. It makes me nuts: Don't you condescend to me, you prick, I tell him. I don't have big enough tits to be a bimbo. And then I blow him a Bronx cheer, flip him the bird, and kiss him, and we continue our conversation.

He invariably beats me at backgammon. In my undergrad days, I was pretty damned good. Scott and I used to play everyone in his dorm, and although I would lose a few games from time to time, I could beat all the guys fairly routinely. That is, until that prick Ben came along. It's not that I lose to him once in a while -- he beats me every single goddamned fucking time, without exception. Clearly there is some sort of bad magic at work, there; you could play a series of games with a chimp, and statistically speaking, at some point the chimp would have to win. It drives me absolutely insane, and I have been known to pout and say I'm not playing anymore and stomp off like any three-year-old. Because I am just not meant to lose like that, is why.

His sense of humor is even more offensive than mine is. And that is really saying something, because I have an appalling sense of humor; I have had female acquaintances who have completely stopped speaking to me because of some obscene and/or misogynistic joke I've told. Which is stupid, really; as Steve Martin's character pointed out in the movie My Blue Heaven, most people think they have good senses of humor, but they don't, really. Anyone who would be offended by a joke about how a pregnant woman is different from a light bulb (you can unscrew a light bulb) just isn't made for this world and should go hide in a shoebox.

Ben, though, has some material so shocking that he can make even me howl in protest: Honey, that is just plain wrong, and no one should ever say that. I mean, you are talking about actual sex with animals, for crying out loud. Does this stop him? It does not, because he is a prick, and part of his amusement in telling these jokes is in watching people run screaming for the exits. (In fact, he confessed to me that he used to deliberately say appalling things on first dates, in order to screen out girls who would find his sense of humor intolerable. Which turned out, he says, to be almost all of them.)

A large portion of his material is original, and almost all of it is pretty startling. These are a couple of the cleanest, most printable examples I can think of:

One day he burst into song, his own take on that little Peter Paul Mounds/Almond Joy advertising jingle. You remember. Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't. Except Ben's version was:

Sometimes a dick's in your butt
Sometimes it's not.

Do you see what I mean? People just don't go about saying things like that. They certainly don't expect to hear other people say them. And Ben, that prick, enjoys playing these things for shock value.

Another story I found appalling was a famous prank he and his friend Bob (whose sense of humor is so disgusting that he makes Ben look like a Sunday school teacher) played on another guy. They gave him the Elephant Walk. I don't know; maybe all guys do this; but it involves turning both your front pockets inside out, opening your fly, pulling out your unit, and walking menacingly toward someone. You see? Pockets = elephant ears. Penis = trunk. Horrifying.

Worse, as you see, Ben's shtick tends to be terribly gay, which also raises disturbing questions. My husband is as heterosexual as they come (except for a suspicious affection for Rock Hudson/ Doris Day movies), but he knows the shock value of appearing gay, and he isn't afraid to do it, and he loves how it makes people uncomfortable. See? Total prick.

Finally, I can't stay mad at him for more than a minute. This really cheeses me off. Several times I've had good and righteous reasons to be extremely pissed off at him, like the time he stood me up for a dinner date and went and sat in a bar for two hours before he remembered to call me, or the time the first year we were married when he went away to Lake Nacimiento for the weekend and didn't tell me until I saw his water ski in the back of the car, whereupon he announced that he was leaving in ten minutes and that I was staying home to feed and walk the dog and let in the repairmen.

You see? Real prick maneuvers. Yet on each occasion, just as I was asserting my righteous indignation, he said something to totally crack me up and charm me. "Fuck you," I used to tell him. "I'm so fucking pissed off at you right now, I'm going to go off and start making voodoo dolls. Now could you please stop being so fucking endearing for a minute so I can get on with that?" Prick. And then he would grin at me, and say something funny, and kiss me, and thus get himself completely out of trouble.

I think you can agree he's a prick. But, you know, it's like I said. All the really good ones can be pricks at times. It's all a matter of whether they make it worth your while.

Bangui Aplomb Detroit Beltsville Assimilable Attentive Blurry Beret Contrariwise Affirmation.
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Rants
This was the actual subject line of a home loan solicitation e-mail that landed in my Spam box this morning. Clearly the ravings of a lunatic. I thought I was starting to hallucinate from sleep deprivation.

The more I look at it, though, the more it makes sense. I have definitely been in the Attentive Blurry state -- am now, in fact -- and have made a Contrariwise Affirmation or two in my time.

Vacation Photos.
Mood:  happy
Topic: Miscellany
There is no better fun to be had at 3 a.m. than downloading photos. Of course, at this hour, the captions might very well be written in Parseltongue for all I know. I can't be certain.

Spring Vacation 2005

Yes, It's That Painful.
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Rants
Have you ever drafted an application for professional compensation pursuant to 11 U.S.C. Section 330? I didn't think so. I have to draft three of them by tomorrow afternoon. Can someone just order me to prenatal bedrest right now?

I have just returned from vacation. I've got a lot of stuff in my mind. I don't want to think, read or write about anything that isn't Hunter Thompson, famous wife killers and whether they do or don't get convicted or sentenced to death, California plant life, schematics for the Kettler Junior tricycle, my husband and sons, decent corned beef and cabbage to go in Newport Beach, my unborn daughter, my former lover, the clutter I need to clear before the maids come in to clean, my front tires (which look kind of low), and my mother's lung cancer which was diagnosed two days ago. Instead I am squinting at fee statements and manufacturing sunshine to pump up His Honor's robes about why he ought to award our fees in full, forever and ever, world without end, amen.

I would rather be examined with a sandpaper speculum. I'm not kidding. Thank you for your time.

Skeleton Crew.
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: Sam
Preamble: I would like to point out that it is five freaking thirty in the morning and I have been up for over an hour despite not having to leave the house until 6:45. Damned pregnancy insomnia. It's good for the blog though; I've even got three draft entries in the pipeline on topics ranging from "Sticking it in" and popular music to mating tortoises to a comparison study of the Beatles, Monkees, Rutles and Wiggles.

* * *

Every morning in the car, I listen to the Howard Stern Show. There are many who will tell me I absolutely should not do this, what with the kids in the car and all, but I am a much worse influence on them than Howard Stern. I have never heard them repeat anything untoward from the Stern Show, but I have more than once heard Matt mutter "bloody hell". On the plus side, if he's going to learn to cuss from me, at least he is learning to do it in a somewhat refined, British style. We are, after all, a nice well-spoken family.

In any event, yesterday morning Artie and Howard were discussing Michael Powell, the departing FCC head. "Michael Powell!" Matt yelled. Sam, who firmly believes that Michael Jackson is both a skeleton and a girl, cried, "He's a skeleton!"

"No, honey," I told him. "Michael Jackson is the one who's a skeleton. This is Michael Powell. He's an entirely different guy."

Sam looked at me. "They're all skeletons," he said darkly.

I tried to convince him otherwise, but he is quite certain that anyone named Michael is a skeleton. This could prove interesting in his future social life.

Meanwhile, in this week's Onion, Neverland Ranch Investigators Discover Corpse of Real Michael Jackson

Well, that explains a lot. Sam is right. He really is a skeleton.

Footnote: My Tits.
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Pregnancy
Those who have known me forever would be surprised if they knew that this A-cup queen, despite still wearing a size 4 and having no stretch marks, now wears a 36D. It's sort of fun having tits for a change, although I wish the fucking things still defied gravity as deftly as they did when I was nineteen.

My husband, who married me when I was in my late 30s, during my I damn well work out every day, have no crease at the base of my butt, and have no tits either phase, is amused and bemused. I married a girl with tits, he says. Who knew? They probably don't do him much good, what with all the pregnancy and nursing for the past four and a half years. Sorry, Ben. I hope that, as in the case of Mount Rushmore or the Taj Mahal, there is still some pleasure to be found in the viewing alone.

Remembering Hunter And Mark.
Mood:  crushed out
Topic: Miscellany
The death of Hunter S. Thompson has left me a tiny bit melancholy and a whole lot nostalgic. He was so much the magic gonzo daddy of my undergrad days, and his passing has brought back a flood of memories from those times, and in particular, of good friends.

Why all this talk of HST? Well, that's a no-brainer. Those who have known me forever can easily understand why I would feel drawn to a crazy, perhaps brilliant, sometimes self-destructive writer. As for those of you who know me more recently: I wasn't always a smart-ass late-blooming brood mare with a happy marriage and a desk job, you know. Once upon a time, I was a smart-ass crazy writer, quite fond of substance abuse and occasionally promiscuous. Okay, maybe more than occasionally. Maybe seasonally. But not all the time.

When I think of my undergrad years, and I think of sex, I immediately think of Mark. To this day, the memory of him brings on a smile and a little rueful shake of the head. The guy was, quite simply, the lust of my life. There have been a handful of men, my beloved husband included, whom I wanted so badly, but Mark was the Holy Grail. If lust like that could be bottled and sold, I would be a billionairess several times over.

So hard to describe him to those who didn't know him. Was he good-looking? Shit, yes. Nice body? Like you wouldn't believe. But that wasn't it. I've known a lot of good-looking guys with nice bodies, and most of them you just want to flick aside like an annoying insect. You don't even want to sleep with them first, because that might involve having to listen to their stupid fucking attempts at conversation, and furthermore, you suspect it would be like sleeping with a semi-animate Ken doll. (Do men think this way about women with beautiful faces and bodies? I don't think so. I think they sleep with them anyway.) But I digress.

Mark was different. He had that thing, that dark angelic animal beauty. Jim Morrison comes to mind, the beatific sensuality, although Mark was never belligerent to his friends, never falling-down intoxicated. Modernly, the best I can think of is Johnny Depp, but without the scruffiness or the vaguely creepy Edward Scissorhands/ Sleepy Hollow/ Jack Sparrow effeminacy. Looking at him, it used to hit me bam! right between the ovaries.

As if that wasn't enough, he was witty and well-read and a great deal of fun to be with. In all fairness, he could also be a substantial pain in the ass, but that's true of all exceptional men, Hunter Thompson and my husband also included. They know they're good, those pricks.

I lusted after Mark unabashedly for something like two years. It wasn't any secret. Well, actually, since I met him through a friend of his whom I was dating for a while, it was mostly a secret for my entire second undergrad year. Not a secret to me, probably not a secret to Mark, but hopefully a secret to my then-boyfriend, the poor guy.

My best friend Scott was my gleeful confidante. We were all friends, all hung out together, and one night when Scott wasn't around, Mark finally cashed in his free ticket and spent the night with me. The next day, I called Scott with an audible grin, wrote Il prend la bate (a play, in French, on Mark's last name) on my bedroom floor with lipstick, and we spent some time celebrating. I felt like I had won the Stanley Cup.

Did I love Mark? Well, that depends on what you mean. I didn't want to marry him or have his babies, but I was willing to have with him whatever adventures might lie in store, and to stand beside him for the time we had. He was like an older brother in many ways, teasing me and giving me holy hell. There were no sappy words or romantic claptrap. After a while we stopped "dating" (whatever that means), but he was and is a friend. And if in ensuing years we occasionally slept together when we both found ourselves willing and/or unattached, well, that was just part of the ride. He knew he still had the free ticket. Sometimes he pulled it out and we put it to good use.

I lost touch with him in the early eighties and never knew what became of him. In early 1996, Scott gave me Mark for a Valentine's Day present -- meaning that he gave me information leading to Mark's whereabouts. I wanted to know if he was okay. It transpired that he was an attorney in Florida; whether that's okay or not, Mark can be the judge. He sounds happy enough on the phone and in e-mails.

The lust was a long time ago. When I speak to Mark now, there's generally an undercurrent of Remember all that? That was some fun, there, but he is someone's husband, I am someone's wife, and so the friendship remains. I'm happy to report he can still be a fucking prick -- Suffice it to say I am still gorgeous, that prick once mentioned in an e-mail. He was one of the most extraordinary people I've ever had the pleasure to know. Here's to you, Mark, you gorgeous smart-assed prick, my dear friend, the one-time lust of my life. We had some good times.

P.S. to Still Bill: I really apologize for the times when you were his roommate and trying to sleep. We tried to be quiet, really. And I promise we never, ever did it on your sheets.

Back To Reality.
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: Miscellany
We're back from our palms to pines vacation and glad to be home, although the weather in Newport Beach is distressingly damp, grey and chilly in contrast to the sun and heat of Palm Desert and the crisp alpine air of Idyllwild.

Science nerds that we are at heart, our favorite parts of the vacation were exploring the local plant and animal life, Southern California being a place of amazing climactic contrasts. The desert climate of the Coachella Valley (where daytime temperatures were in the 90s) is less than an hour's drive from the high elevations and pine forests of the San Jacinto Mountains (where Sam and Matt played in snow for the first time ever). In between are, I believe, seven or so microclimates, each with its own mix of plant and animal life. From chollas to firs, from roadrunners to robins. Blew our minds.

I'll spare you a detailed account of the journey, because let's face it: Everyone's vacation is far more interesting to themselves than it is to anyone else. Ben tells of a friend who, upon returning from a trip through Asia, actually held a narrated slideshow for family and friends. He did that? I asked Ben. To his friends? There aren't enough cocktails or hors d'ouevres on earth to make that kind of boredom worthwhile. Me, I much prefer handing my friends a pile of snapshots, to be glanced at or ignored as they please. Here are some verbal snapshots from this trip:

The Indian Canyons of Palm Springs are unbelievably cool, packed with wildflowers and groves of California fan palms, which is California's only native species of palm. That was our favorite side trip.

Matt gave us all a scare. Our cabin in Idyllwild, which appeared to have been built in the '40s, harbored an insane heating system featuring a radiator under a grate in the living room floor. On Saturday morning, Matt tripped and fell, burning his hands and cheek on the grate. Fortunately he was not badly injured, but he cried for a full hour, in obvious confusion and pain. I sobbed right along with him. Especially when he buried his face in my shoulder and sobbed, "I'll be nice" -- thinking he was being punished. And then my heart broke into a thousand pieces, until he mended it completely by smiling through the afternoon, telling me his hands felt better, and remarking over dinner, "I had fun today."

We drove to the Salton Sea, which is a fascinating piece of California natural (I should say unnatural; check out the link if you are curious) history. Like a 40-year-old stripper, it can be very beautiful from a distance but is most disillusioning on close inspection. Pollution is to blame for a lot of that. Furthermore, it smells awful.

Sam had a blast paddling around the pool in Palm Desert and repeatedly scaling a miniature rock climbing wall in a park in the mountains. Our little athlete. We suddenly realized that his legs are about four inches longer than they were when I bought his fall clothes. Furthermore, he has developed a fraternal, protective attitude toward his younger brother that just slays me. "Come here, Matt," I heard him say. "I will share my cookie with you."

Pregnancy Update: The fetus has been identified as a girl, to wit Julia Rose Kathleen Crumpacker. She has no Down's markers or visible deformities on ultrasound. I have gained no weight in the past two weeks despite a close vacation kinship with Ben and Jerry. I have, however, started to waddle. Furthermore, we have seen the advent of the Famous Second Trimester Return (With a Vengeance) of the Sex Drive. Of this, I will say only (a) I wish the boys would sleep more often and (b) good thing I can't get pregnant.

Erika and Joel, who were ostensibly watching the house in our absence, did a lousy job and furthermore left my kitchen and laundry area an utter mess. Next time, we will lock the joint up and take the gecko and tarantulas with us. Despite all this, we are glad to be home.

Les Vacances.
Mood:  lazy
Topic: Miscellany
This blog is going on vacation. Well, actually, this blog is staying right where it is; I, and my husband, and my two sons, and my enormous belly -- we are going on vacation. It's our first real vacation in two and a half years, and although it promises to be a very wholesome, family-oriented, low-key vacation, I am still insanely excited about it.

Tomorrow morning I'll have my ultrasound and amnio, at which time we will learn what gender the pierogi. If all goes well, the amnio will show that this kid is genetically as sound as a pound, and thereupon Mommy hopes to breathe a sigh of relief and settle in for a blissful spring and summer.

The vacation itself? Desert Breezes. Palms to Pines Highway. Idyllwild. Of course, the Coachella Valley is loaded with fairies, but at this time of year it is also loaded with wildflowers. Furthermore, Ben and the boys will be with me, so it hardly matters where we go. I could take a vacation in a wet paper bag with those guys.

Stay out of trouble while I'm gone. Eat fish on Fridays. And just say no to drugs. See you around the Ides of March.

Bill, Still.
Mood:  happy
Topic: Miscellany
Last night I was swapping e-mails with my friend Bill Toreki, or as he's been known for 25 years and more, Still Bill. I can't remember exactly how he got that name -- I wonder if he does -- but it always fit. Because, you know, no matter what, he was and is still Bill.

Bill was a core member of the group of intellectual bad boys and girls I ran with in my undergrad days at the University of Delaware. Most of us were in the University Honors Program, whereby the rising intellectual stars of tomorrow were sent to college early and placed in honors courses. We weren't the Poindexters you might envision -- in fact, we were completely out of our fucking minds. We tackled tough courses and played very, very hard. Bill was an amazing guy, the Hunter S. Thompson of science. An unschooled observer might have thought he spent all his time completely drunk and/or stoned and/or -- you hardly wanted to think what. And maybe he did, but he was also clobbering a tough science curriculum and oh, I don't know, maybe inventing polymers off in a corner in his spare time.

He is now a genius scientist in Florida, to no one's surprise. You can find his website here. Drop on in, and tell him Gretch the Wretch sent you.

I Filled Up My Shoe, And Brought It To You.
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: Music
Today, on an impulse, I pulled out and listened to Bob Dylan's 1966 release Blonde On Blonde for the first time in years. Knocked me out all over again -- what a fucking brilliant piece of work. It's number nine in Rolling Stone's top 500 albums and has served as the soundtrack for bits of my life on many occasions.

Nice one, Saint Bob. Makes me remember why, way back when I was 17, I wanted to have your baby.