July 1st - "Henrietta Lacks" Book Discussion Here!

Be there or be square. July 1st. Our book is "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot. It's a compelling one. So much so that Oprah and "True Blood" creator Alan Ball are doing an HBO film project based on it. Hooray!

Our First Counseling Session

The long-awaited marriage counseling appointment finally came & went. And wow. We really put it off for far too long.

Our therapist, Dr. R, surprised and impressed me on many levels - I guess I wasn't expecting much from a professional working here in Podunkville. His tone was a great fit for us. When I read on his CV that he also does "Pastoral Counseling," I asked him if he would have any problem working with an atheist like me, and he said no problem at all. He mentioned that he is a mentee of Dr. John Gottman's, whose work I really believe in- and that sealed the deal for me.

What can I say about the hour-long session? DH and I both cried multiple times. My DH has an issue with me that he finally figured out is not really about me, but is about deep-seated family-of-origin pain. Basically, his anger that I am not a better housekeeper has nothing to do with the dirty dishes in the sink, which is what I knew deep down all along. That was validating for me (and for the record, our house is quite clean thank you very fucking much). I didn't say much this time. I had trouble finding the right words for what I was feeling. And I wanted DH to keep talking. I knew I needed to think about these things a lot more. Afterwards, we went for a walk in the park and I suddenly got really angry with DH as I started really thinking about all of the stuff I have been putting under the rug. I need to learn to express my anger in a healthier way. My issue (I think) is that I am good at making things seem like everything is ok when actually DH's moods are killing me inside - just like my dad handles my effed up, emotionally-abusive mom!

I just love dysfunctional family legacies, don't you?

We will definitely be coming back to see Dr. R, and hopefully in time we can come up with some strategies so we don't scar our poor babies for life, end up in divorce court, or worse yet, end up remarrying the exact same effed up pattern-having spouse. Hooray!

When Bad Things Happen to Ok-ish People

I try not to be a hater. I think a lot of shitty people just lack awareness about how their behavior affects others.

I've probably talked before about the one woman I really can't stand here in Podunkville. DH and I affectionately (privately) call her Skeletor, because she looks, well, skeletal. More on that later. Skeletor is the wife of one of DH's business partners, who I call Bill Clinton, because he is one of those guys who just oozes sleaze - I don't know how else to describe it. He has never done anything inappropriate in front of me, but trust me, the name works.

Anyway, Skeletor and Bill Clinton moved here 5 years before us, and actually helped convince us to move here. Skeletor warned me that she had been unhappy here initially, because she had a hard time finding a best friend, and she missed the shopping opportunities of a bigger city. She is only 2 years older than me, and her youngest child is only 22 months older than DS, and actually when we first met I thought she was ok. So, given her history here, I assumed she would get that a new person like myself might appreciate the occasional phone call or invitation to play at the park, or even just some friendly advice about things to do here with kids, when we first moved here almost 2 years ago. Nope. I was always the one who had to call and eventually I stopped trying. She never lifted a finger to help me fit in. Familiarity turned to contempt. Luckily, DH's older partners' wives took me under their wings, and did all the things a well-adjusted person would do to welcome folks to their new lives in the middle of nowhere.

Small town life really shows you a person's true character - that is, if you believe the gossip. And there was and is plenty to go around about Skeletor. Things like "OMG, Becky, Skeletor hangs around with this one woman who is like her only friend, who dresses like a total slut, she has breast implants," etc, plus the ones I've personally witnessed where she says things that make other people feel bad like "the high school play was horrible" to the kid with the lead role's mother. Oddly, Bill Clinton is a very well-liked guy, but a few people have seen how he really is. DH is one who has seen Bill Clinton's true colors, and has had to explain to me the concept of "guy code" as the reason why Skeletor needs to continue not knowing certain things about her husband's extracurricular activities. But the whole town knows. Yeah, life here is like high school.

Then Skeletor went and joined my shitty book club a few months back - the one that I am in the middle of quitting, to beat that poor dead horse yet again. It was awkward because once she realized I had been invited to be a member by some of her own friends she had never introduced me to (and who had been trying to keep her out sadly enough) somehow that raised my esteem in her eyes. And she started calling and asking me to do things, way out of left field. By that point DH had decided that any friendship between me and Skeletor would just inherently be a bad thing given all of the carnal knowledge I had of Bill Clinton's deceit, so he said to me "Hush, I never tell you what to do, right? Well I'm telling you now so you'd better hear me: don't be friends with Skeletor!!!" So I didn't - and it was easy because clearly I never got along with her anyway.

Now I feel bad. Because it has finally come out that Skeletor's family including Bill Clinton just did a full-blown intervention on her and sent her to an in-patient program to help her through her exercise anorexia, which she has apparently been grappling with for ages. So I guess mom was right: be nice to everyone, you don't know what they're going through. And when you live in a small town, never take the gossip bait.

I really don't know where I was going with this post. It has just been on my mind as I think about why we are where we are and what that all means. What do you think?

Unfriendable in this Land

Yesterday, after watching "Lost," DH and I were lamenting the fact that we have very few "couple friends" here in Podunkville. (Marriage counseling begins on the 17th - maybe we'll meet a nice couple in the waiting room...). While it seems like there is no shortage of kids for DS to play with at the park, and the moms of those kids for me to chat with, somehow that next, more elusive level of friendship - the "hey, let's get our spouses together, get sitters for the kids, and go out for a double dinner date next Saturday" - that has been a lot harder to find.

We're wondering why. We have a couple of theories. We are not outdoorsy enough to attract the liberals who live here, and we're not religious enough to mesh with everyone else. So we need to find the in-between-ers like us who maybe do outdoorsy things like hiking but not all the time and not to crazy extremes like base jumping, and who maybe respect religion but are closet atheists who don't hate certain groups, thinking everyone who doesn't agree with us is going to have a hot time in the afterlife.

So we have plenty of superficial "friends" here (as in people who don't know the real us), but few close friends. We decided we'd like that to change. So we started taking stock of our friendships to try to figure out what we need to be doing to meet that goal. (Gah, reading that again, I know how cheesy and oddly obvious this sounds...)

There are 3 other couples with kids with whom we are part of an official "Dinner Group," where we rotate houses, and every 6 weeks or so, we all help cook a big dinner, while we leave the kids with sitters. One of the couples is even newer to the area than we are, so they've been open to our invitations and even though their kids are 4 and 7 years older than ours, they do really seem like a good fit with us. The other 2 couples are great, but they are a lot more outdoorsy than we are and their hobbies don't really mesh with ours very well - the only commonality really is a love of good food and left-liberal leaning conversation. Which hasn't been enough to inspire get-togethers with them beyond the Dinner Group meetings.

It seems like the only people open to new friends like us are the people who, like us, have recently moved here. Everyone else seems pretty settled into their lives and friendships. Is it like that everywhere?

I've also been spending my time poorly as far as making close friends goes - as you know from my previous post, I've been wasting away in a shitty book club that has 23 members. I haven't really clicked with anyone there. The truth is I haven't spent time with any of the book club women 1-on-1 in the year and a half I've been a member. They haven't asked me and vice versa. That's shorthand for "I have no real friends there." It was a good way to meet people early on, but now I'm looking for a new place to fish. Not sure how my slowly-fade-away-over-time-style exit is going to play out.

DH recently joined a male book club which meets like every 3 months, and is full of triathlon-mountain-biking-teleskiing dudes who don't really watch sports on TV, nor do fantasy teams like DH does, and thus have little on the surface stuff in common with DH - but we'll see if he forms any connections there. He just might.

Some friendships we thought for sure would happen just never did - like remember that mom & son I blogged about over a month ago who I met at the food court and thought we'd definitely start seeing? She totally has not responded to any of my (2) emails, or to the one phone call I placed. I'm pretty shocked, because when we first met it seemed like she was more into it than me. Maybe she got hit by a bus, to borrow that misguided dating analogy.

I've mentioned my friend Stitch before, and her husband, Cowboy. Stitch is like the only woman here who knows the real me, and she lives even further off into the country than we do, so we have to really plan to see each other. DH is really not into Cowboy, but he thinks he is a nice guy, and so that has made it hard to do couple stuff with them, and I know Stitch wants to, which is awkward and sucky.

I've rambled enough. If any of you are really good at making friends, or really bad at making friends, and think you know why, I'd love to hear about it.

UPDATE: Poor DH's male book club meeting the other night totally made him feel like shit. First of all, the book SUCKED out loud. (It's old & out of print for a reason.) These Ironman-crazy-outdoors dudes decided they would all do a 2 mile run straight up a fucking mountain... and DH was left in the dust. He said he felt like he was the fat kid in high school gym class all over again (and DH is in great shape I might add). And they didn't even read the shitty book, but DH did! And they had no idea who Betty White was, and why she was going to be hosting Saturday Night Live. So he is going to quit. These really aren't bad guys, it's just that he had nothing in common with this group who does Ironman races, and were raised that way, and know zero about pop culture or sports. I feel so bad for him because I know he had high hopes, and feels like a loser.

Marriage Counseling

DH just texted me that he has the name of a local psychologist who can provide us with marriage counseling. I have to admit I am a little scared - that our confidentiality will be breached in our little town, that when people find out they will think we're on the brink of divorce (we're really not - this is a very proactive step, as things fortunately have not gotten ugly thus far), that the psychologist will hate me for being an atheist, and if it ever comes up that it will quickly get around town, that it won't be worth the money, that the therapist will be podunk and dr.phil-like... perhaps many of the usual things we fret about when meeting a new therapist.

Why now? I know we're in Survival Mode (with a 6.5 mo old girl and a 2.5 year old boy).. but the thing is, we need more of a structure to our conversations, and a scheduled time to truly work on things. Instead of me going through what I feel the issues are, I'm just going to copy and paste some emails between me & DH from this morning (one upside to anonny-blogging?). Oh boy....

****
Email from DH to me this morning:

You asked me in the last email why I was upset and not seeming like I gave shit. Rather than hold things in and be passive aggressive, I'm going to try and be more direct.

I feel last night was an example of why, at times, I feel like I'm alone in our marraige.

Between 5:00 and 10:00 pm last night, when DS was awake until he fell asleep, here is what I did:

- Cooked dinner
- Cleaned the majority of the dishes (you did put the detergent in the dishwasher)
- Showered with the kids
- Cleaned and dressed DS
- Played with DS
- Booked flights
- Made dinner reservations
- Starting booking rental property
- Took DS in bed and took an hour to get him asleep

During this same time you did:

- Dress DD
- Hold both children, mainly DD, while watching about 5 hours of TV (including TV watched while I cooked).

This is not meant to be a "scoreboard" to see who's a better spouse/parent etc. But it illustrates my frustration at times when I get home and I don't feel our marraige is a partnership. I loved it yesterday when you came out and helped me pull weeds. We had time together, we talked, it actually meant a lot to me. (I'm actually crying right now as I write this email to you thinking about us to illustrate my sincerity).

When I have to ask you several times to turn off the TV to eat dinner with me, that really hurts my feelings. When the opportunity presents itself, both kids asleep and/or playing, and you choose to watch TV or read on the internet, it makes me feel like I'm not very important to you.

I empathize that there are times when we both need "me time" but I just want to feel like I matter to you. You'll find that my mood improves greatly the more I feel like you want to be a partner with me. Whether we like it or not, as parents, there are daily responsibilities that we need to take care of EVERYday: walking dogs, feeding dogs, cooking/buying dinner, cleaning the dishes, making bottles, getting the kids asleep.

***
Email from me to DH this morning:

I'm flabbergasted.

What do you do when your spouse insists that you in fact did only 2 things in a 5 hour period, and totally ignores and minimizes at least 15 other daily chores you did after he went to bed that he routinely takes for granted? And then uses that as a bizarre rationalization for his unexplained bad behavior for the last 2 weeks, including his 5-day vacation with his buddies?

Do you respond by cataloguing the things you did? Or do you just stop doing them until he finally gets it?

What is your issue with saying you "help" in your own home? Do you get how patronizing and inaccurate that is? And why are you so obsessed with who does what around here anyway? Why do you feel the need to control and micromanage these things that don't even matter in the grand scheme of things? It is as though there is a part of you deep down that gets off on discrediting what I do.

I just don't know what to do with you anymore. You are really not getting it.
***

God, I hate how cold I sounded! DH really is a wonderful husband - sometimes a r'tard and sometimes unbelievably selfish, but mostly really, really good. I think this is worth working on.

Any words of wisdom for us?

Talking Bout Guernsey

Our topic is the book "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.

I freaking ADORED this book. However a good friend of mine did not - and I totally respect her opinion about that and think she has better taste in literature than I do. So let's discuss.

My initial thoughts:

Great example about a guy who looks perfect on paper but doesn't make you shiver, and therefore is not marriage material. Though I have to say the one she ended up with didn't seem to really make her shiver either - or perhaps he actually did, but the fact that it was written in letters & telegrams obscured that.

Oh, sending the children away for years! Having to make that fateful decision based on such little information? And to have to live with yourself as a parent?!

I wished Juliet could have found a diary in Elizabeth's house in which she chronicled her love affair with Christian. But isn't that how life is - we rarely get the full story.

Does the fact that the name Christian, which means follower of Christ, allude to the fact that Elizabeth was perhaps a Christ figure, who made Christ-like sacrifices for others? Did anyone else think Elizabeth was foolish, and that an argument could be made that for her daughter's sake she could have tried harder at self-preservation?

Discuss!

I Don't Sleep, I Read

For some reason (two small children, cough cough...), I don't get enough sleep. And even when I am able to sleep, because everyone else in my house is sleeping at that moment, I sometimes experience insomnia. So I bust out a book in bed (because I sleep alone in the room next to DD while DH is in our bed with DS). I've managed to read a few more books than usual lately. (I'm omitting the authors' names because I can't be bothered to get up and look at the pile of books). Here's my list of good, finished reads:

The Help
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Prospect Park West
Superfreakonomics
The Big Short

And I am about 10 pages into "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" (and loving it). Anyone want to discuss it here with me at the end of May? Or any of these other titles now? Or anything you would recommend?

What Would You Do?

Some friends of ours in Podunkville are divorcing, and their three daughters are really suffering and having many behavioral problems at school. Thankfully their dad has taken the middle daughter's Kindergarten teacher's advice to get the girls into therapy. I'll cut to the chase: I think their dad is a far better parent to the girls, and is the only one of the pair who truly wants his children in his home as much as possible. Their mother, on the other hand, does not really want full custody of her girls, but also does not want to have to pay child support. I will spare you the gory details, but I think she is an alcoholic. She is also about to get married to her supervisor, with whom she was carrying on an extramarital affair... and mom's new fiance has been divorced twice because he was unfaithful to his last two wives.

The dad has asked me to fill out a form for the girls's Guardian Ad Litem, which asks for honest feedback about what I have seen, heard, and believe to be in their best interests. So if I'm honest, I'll be throwing mom under the bus. And I'm a little worried she might make a smear campaign against me for speaking out. And yet the truth needs to be told. But few of us in town are willing and able to tell the truth because of where we work, and our fear of whatever psycho shit mom might do.

If you were in my shoes, what would you do?

Getting It Together

I had an appointment on Friday with my attorney - the good kind of attorney - a trusts & estates lawyer. He's helping DH and I get our proverbial shit together so in case we die or become incapacitated, our little ones will be provided for and will have a home with someone on our guardian list of 10 couples.

One of our main goals of this exercise is to make sure that under no circumstances are DH's parents ever to be granted custody of our children. Long story short, DH and I have no relationship with either of his parents, who are divorced and remarried to some poor schmucks and live miserably ever after on the other side of the country. They have never met our kids, and we doubt that will ever change. To put it mildly, they are scumbags who engage in illegal and unethical stuff. To this day we still get collection calls for them - they are apparently on the lam from creditors, but I digress.

Anyway, it feels good to be putting these plans on paper finally. Now that we have planned for it, it will never happen I'm sure (knock on wood.)

Do you have an exit strategy or any kind of estate plan in case of zombie takeover?

Thank You Notes

Another odd thing about Podunkville: very few people write thank you notes. Or even thank you emails for that matter.

I am a bit old school about certain points of etiquette. "Obsessive" is how you could describe my affinity for writing thank you notes on pretty paper. But in my little podunk hamlet, of the last five gifts I've given, I haven't received a single thank you note, email, text, call, hand wave, high five or what have you. Which strikes me as odd. Three of the 5 non-thank you note writers were not raised in Podunkville, so it is not a "podunk thing" necessarily. As a matter of fact, some expat English friends of ours who just moved to Northern NJ, way on the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, report the same thing: nobody there sends written thank you's anymore. And I'm not talking about people who are superbusy because they just had a baby or a serious illness. No, I'm talking people with school aged children who threw over the top birthday fetes for their little ones. Or even worse, for themselves.

Am I hopelessly old fashioned and out of touch to think a written thank you note for a gift unopened in front of the giver (and also for pretty much all gifts & all nice things done for you) is still the social norm? Help me out here. No shame if you generally don't write them - I really want to know how it is. Is it because I'm not on FB? Is that the new forum for gratitude? I think not. Do tell.

Love Scenes

DH and I noticed a funny thing when we were watching the first episode of "Mad Men" Season 3, with DS (29 mos) sitting next to us on the couch (as usual, refusing to go to bed). Suddenly, a love scene came on, and DS averted his eyes with a sly smile, and made an "ugghh" sound as if it grossed him out! Which DH said was the exact reaction he used to have as a child, whenever sensual images appeared on TV.

As far as I know, we haven't done anything to reinforce any sort of 'yuck factor' about these kinds of images. I wonder if this is some sort of innate human reaction he had, or if perhaps we are somehow reinforcing it subconsciously?

Any experiences with this? How do you handle it?

Spirited Boy

I finally checked out the "Spirited Child" book from the library, the same one that folks have been recommending on "Ask Moxie" for ages. I admit I have been in denial about how challenging my 29-month-old DS can be. Like I was somehow afraid of labeling him unfairly, though "spirited" is just about the perfect euphemistic term for a kid like DS. I'm having trouble putting into words why I feel this particular shoe fits him.

He is a wonderful boy, don't get me wrong. And super cute - the kind of beautiful kid that middle-aged women in public always comment on literally every single day - "Where did he get those amazing long lashes, big brown eyes, sweet smile, sandy brown hair???" Probably from the same gene pool that gave him his low sleep needs, a predilection for climbing and jumping, and a very stubborn, determined personality. I'm glad he is happy most of the time.... because he is so very hard to keep up with! At least he is fun to be around and has a sweet personality while he is raising hell! Yesterday we had our second broken eggs incident. I was doing the dishes and heard the fridge door open and shut - he does that all the time - he is strong enough to break open the fridge lock we used to have. Minutes later, I walked towards the entryway where I heard him laughing, and on the floor and in the hall closet were 10 broken, raw eggs. It took so much restraint not to break down and cry right there. It took hours to clean up.

Other people's kids don't do stuff like this all the time, like DS does. (I'm sure they do, somewhere. Just not anyone around me.) And I really do mean "all the time." I am so exhausted from cleaning up after him, collecting piles of his broken things in the garage, wiping stuff off of every surface of our house, trying to hide things he's found all over again (he is like a heat-seeking missile for search and destroy of pens, chapstick, chocolate), etc...

I feel like he is either going to be a huge success or a complete failure - isn't that an odd thing to think?

My Podunk neighbor thinks I should start spanking him. Um, no.

This is not a discipline issue, it is a personality issue. That's what I really feel. Anybody else get what I'm saying?

EDIT: I'm halfway through the book. BTW, the book is "Raising Your Spirited Child, A Guide for Parents Whose Child is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent and Energetic" by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. Excellent read. Extremely validating for me. Avoids mislabeling. It concerns developmentally normal child behavior. Deals with the real emotions I feel, primarily the loss of a dream/phantom "easy" child I thought he once was and would forever be - naive, I know. It also gets wonderfully specific. Turns out that DS is "spirited" alright. Of the various categories explored, DS is only "more" in the "Persistent" and "Energetic" areas. Which explains why he is happy-go-lucky while destroying everything in sight and going non-stop. His hapless parents are "spunky," so there is a temperamental mismatch we need to work through. Great, great book!

Little Lessons

A few little lessons I've learned recently--

People like to be asked & they like to be thanked.

Despite its name, the garbage disposal is not the place to dispose of garbage.

I have been using way too much laundry & dishwasher detergent for my appliances.

Wearing a proper-fitting bra causes people to ask me if I've lost weight. I haven't.

There is this dessert called "Crack Pie" because it is supposedly as addictive as crack cocaine. It is.

Children still play Bloody Mary, and Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board at slumber parties!

On a related note, I have an old Ouija board in my upstairs closet that I suddenly feel an urge to part with...

We recently got upgraded to business class on a flight, and soon I realized what that old yarn means: "The luxury, once sampled, becomes necessity."

It is hard to find cute, non-clunky, affordable shoes for boys. That's why DS has several of the same pairs in multiple sizes & colors. And also why I love thrift stores.

It saves so much time to mix baby formula in a pitcher, then pour it into bottles. I'm a failed breast feeder, and I'm making peace with that.

DS just attended his first Easter egg hunt today. I didn't know that these days, most kids hunt for plastic eggs with goodies inside them. I brought real ones, hard-boiled & dyed with simple vinegar and food coloring. I swear I wasn't trying to be Martha fucking Stewart. Kids fought over them. Who knew? Must be their novelty.

Your comments, your tips, and/or your own life lessons are welcome!

Mommy Pick-Up

I've been waiting for it to happen, and today my time finally came. When I was least expecting it, in the middle of a large, bulk-buying retailer.... I got picked up by another mom with a same-aged kid! And she was coolballs! And liberal! And lives right here in Podunk-motherfucking-ville, but is originally from a large city, just like us! Hooray!

I really have my charming, defiant son to thank. My DS ran away from me in the food court and sat at the table next to this cute pregnant lady and her son. Her boy was sitting in one of those portable kid chairs that clips on to the edge of a table. We have the same chair at home! In the same color! And it is not available here in Podunkville, so I knew she must shop a lot online, and that there just had to be many common threads between us. And I really liked her son's shoes. Random - I'm not really into appearances, but for some odd reason I care about boys' footwear. But I didn't say anything.

Then her son threw a cup of ice everywhere, started screaming, and I was thinking - I should say something helpful? But then DS flipped a piece of pizza on my leg, so I got distracted...

Then suddenly she turned to us once the screams stopped, and she opened with "how old is he?" And we ended up sitting there for over half an hour and our boys played - really nicely. Turns out we know some of the same people and think the exact same things about them - isn't that a key basis for friendship? Not only that, but she's about to have her second baby in a month or so and I have a 5.5 month old. We're both Catholic but not religious. And I shared my tip on how to clean the clip-on chair: put that mofo in the dishwasher! We exchanged numbers & emails, and free days. Pretty sure the rest is going to be history.

So I can only imagine that this is what it would feel like to meet some of you in person. ;) Got any good friend/mommy friend pick-up tales?

Median Voter Theory

Democrats, Health Care Reform, And The Center | The New Republic

The above link is to a really interesting piece critiquing "median voter theory" vis-a-vis health care reform. One of the best comments was by @blackton: "I hope the Democrats label [the next bill attempting to get a public option] the "No abortion on demand Public option," since the Hyde amendment would prohibit it anyway it will be the truth, and let the Republicans stand up and be forced to vote no for it."

That would be genius.

Then they should repeal the Hyde Amendment. The fact that it is good law today is so effed up I can't even fully express it.

Historic Vote

The House votes on health care reform today. I can hardly believe the day has finally come. Maybe that's why I am awake before 6 am on a Sunday. It is a rare thing that I wake up before my kids.

On these issues, I am 100% for everything the liberals want to do. In fact, I'm even for many of the things the liberals never said they wanted to do, but Fox News warned us they wanted to do. I don't think the current bill goes far enough to reign in the powerful insurance industry. Call me a Socialist.

I have an ethical problem with the existence of for-profit health insurance companies. They incentivize ripping people off and sending sick people to an early grave, all because it benefits the bottom line.

For those of you who get HBO, (and I don't mean 'human body odor' heh heh... I kill me) and feel like I do, I recommended watching this past Friday night's episode of "Real Time With Bill Maher." It has nice Gavin Newsom eye candy to boot. Note: the non-sleep habits of my kids make it so I have to tivo all of the tv I watch, and don't always get to it before the tivo runs out of room and starts deleting shit. But the gods were on my side on Friday night, when the kids actually fell asleep around 8pm, so DH and I got to watch Bill Maher together. First and last time that will ever happen!

In other political news, have any of you read "Game Change"? I hear it rips Elizabeth Edwards a new one for being abusive to campaign staff. She can't catch a break at all, can she?

Oh, by the way, I totally won't be offended if you disagree with me. Some people don't think Gavin Newsom is very attractive. Everyone here is entitled to their incorrect opinions, I promise!

My Shitty Book Club

I think I need to break up with my Shitty Book Club. When I joined a year and a half ago, I was the 12th member. We met once a month, worked around everyone's schedule, and chose decent books. Back then, only about 6 or 7 people showed up each time, so I felt I got to know everyone pretty quickly. Which was just the perfect thing when I was the new kid in town. But then suddenly, things started to change last summer. New people started showing up each time. Including the one woman in town I am supposed to be especially friendly with (because we're close in age & our hubbies are colleagues), but who I totally cannot stand! By last September, we had 21 freaking members. We started reading these atrocious books that the new members picked. I won't mention them here, but they sucked. What I'm trying to say is I have clearly outgrown this Shitty Book Club, and want to start seeing other people.

However, here in Podunkville, I don't think it can be done without some emotional fallout.

Because, well, people gossip about stupid shit here. As in I went to a brunch today at the home of a woman who is not in Shitty Book Club. One of the other women there, Ms. A, who is also not in Shitty Book Club, mentioned that a mutual friend of ours, who is in Shitty Book Club with me, had told her that she felt Shitty Book Club is now too large (I agree), and that she (Ms. A) had originally hoped to join but now that we've closed it at 21 people she can't. Hmm..... And the hostess, Ms. T, then mentioned that she wanted to join a book club. So I said to Ms. T, "Then perhaps we should start one of our own" - at which point Ms. A quickly made it clear that she did not want to be a part of such a club with Ms. T and me. Weirdness! Ms. A is an odd one, always trying to sell you random things, so no loss really. And I'm not sure Ms. T is what I'm looking for either, though she is totally nice, she wouldn't enjoy reading "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" with me.

I asked DH what he thought I should do. DH said, being a guy, he'd just stop going if he didn't like it. I tried to tell him it's not quite that simple when it comes to female friendships.

What would you do? Ever been in this kind of situation?

EDIT: I found an old NYT article that is a neat summation of typical book club dysfunction: "Fought Over Any Good Books Lately?" by Joanne Kaufman, Dec 5, 2008. Word.

2nd EDIT: I am toying with the idea of emailing the 3 original members and saying "Hi, um, folks are saying this group is too big. I'm partially to blame for that, and it has to be hard on you to organize everyone (as @Jac said). Here are some ideas for splitting the group that would hopefully avoid hurt feelings: 1) By seniority, 2) Alphabetical By Last name, 3) Geographically, or 4) By Random Drawing from a hat. Peace!: And I will give it until the end of May. If nothing changes, I will just Be Perpetually Busy.

3rd EDIT: So I sent an email as described in the 2nd edit. Within minutes I got an impassioned phone call from one of the original members saying "I was so surprised to get your email! We hope you don't want to quit!" and also making odd assertions about not being political or cliquey or even being an organized group. I don't think I made myself very clear. Or perhaps I did and it was too harsh a reality to confront. We meet again on Monday - it may be my last. If it doesn't go well, should I communicate my quitting or just let it be (Be Perpetually Busy)?

Pondunk Moments

We went to a rodeo this weekend with the kids, in the company of our sweet neighbors who have same-aged kids. The ages of the kids are about the only thing we have in common, but yet we have fun together. Even at rodeos. Where we do not belong. The rodeo was a total trip though. I could not believe how people were dressed. Actual cowboys running around with ginormous golden belt buckles, devoid of any irony. Mall hair everywhere. Princesses in sashes, tiaras, and fancy denim, with their hair spiral curled and sprayed to death. Ever see the movie "Borat" where he gets on the mic at the rodeo? It was like that! Only there was no Borat. Just a scary looking clown in a barrel, like in the movies. And a fat emcee who made jokes at the expense of President Obama, gays, and people who enjoy beastiality. We forgot to laugh.

In the local paper, the big story is about the county increasing the cost of marriage licenses to help defray the cost of divorces, where an increasing number of people represent themselves and keep misfiling the paperwork because they cannot read and follow the instructions. Which means the courts have to schedule multiple hearings for each case, and apparently it is all very expensive. Locals are enraged that the courts would "attack marriage." I have no idea where these people come from. That's the big story today. The big story yesterday was that a 17-year-old woman was abducted and murdered last month and police have no leads, and a 17-year-old boy was charged with attempted murder for plotting the next Columbine because he was bullied. Of course he wasn't targeting the actual bullies' houses; his target was a school none of them attended. I live in a crazy ass place, what can I say? I think it is fairly typical, sadly enough.

Do you like where you live?

Too Much

This week I reached several personal limits:

Too much dog urine in the living room carpet
Too many tantrums from 28-mo-old DS
Too many hours of DH away from home, plus too many hours of babysitter on vacation = way too much time alone with my kids
Too much yelling and general hateration from me towards DS
Too long before I was able to finally take a fucking shower

I think I'm done having kids. Not feeling certain enough to give away all outgrown baby clothes and have DH get a vasectomy... but I'm done with feeling overwhelmed. Definitely see the benefit to the concept of LESS IS MORE.

...But talk to me again in a year, and I might have changed my mind. Again.

How did you know you were DONE? With whatever?

p.s. This may have sounded overly harsh. I didn't mean it to. I like my kids. I just had them too close together and in perhaps the wrong gender order. I know things will improve with time. But right now, I just really need more time to myself that does not include my work or running errands, that's my lesson from this oh so shitty week. In other news, the Oscars are tonight. And DH is making Chicago style pizza. Cause we cashed in a bunch of credit card bonus points and finally got a stand mixer. In tangerine. That's what I'm happy about at this moment. (Lame-o.)

The Crazies

I love me some scary B-movies. Especially zombie movies. So I was pretty excited when DH told me he wanted to see "The Crazies" instead of "Shutter Island" for our Thursday date night. Oh, man it delivered. "The Crazies" was brilliantly scary. It gave me the same uneasy reaction I had for a few days after seeing the remake of "Dawn of the Dead" in '04. I had a damn hard time sleeping - and not just because my 2 year old was kicking me in the head all night.

"The Crazies" has actually gotten pretty decent reviews, including a "SEE IT" from my 2 favorite critics. I'm an avid watcher of "At The Movies" on the Reelz channel. Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott are two of the best movie reviewers out there. I usually put their recommendations on my Netflix queue because I usually can't make it to the theatre very often. They both disliked "Shutter Island" so we gave it a pass, though we are huge Scorsese fans, they said it was his weakest film since "Bringing Out The Dead," and said some of the film's Holocaust imagery was borderline offensive. Enough said. Glad we went with "The Crazies."

I'll let you IMBD the plot. I thought Timothy Olyphant was great as the tiny Iowa town's sheriff. The film had some interesting critiques of America today, as zombie movies often do. Of course it was gory to an extreme, and there were lots of really good jump out of your seat moments that worked, because they were somehow believable despite the genre.

If any of you out there actually go and see these kinds of movies, or have other recommendations for me, I'd love to hear them!