Skip to main content

My Weekend

 I'm ready for retirement. I know this because I spent this weekend's date night at a concert of elderly white men.


The men formed the Maplewood Glee Club, and they performed the hits of the Beatles and the Beach Boys. In one risqué interlude, they tried out a Dylan ballad.

"You're on a date?" said my friend, who was sitting nearby. "When my husband and I found sitters, in the early days, we would just run out the clock at Target. If dinner finished early, you'd wander around Target, because you wouldn't want to return to the babies before you had to."

This is the greatest idea I've heard in a long while. A Target trip sounds like a week in Turks and Caicos.

"Well," I said, shifting subjects, "did you see the new Helen Mirren film? She was with Jim Broadbent. They're so wonderful...."

Later, my husband and I found updates on our newest back-road scandal: Certain parties feel that residents are allowing poison-ivy bushes to grow, and grow, unmonitored. Is there a way to recruit a band of goats? Marc and I thought the goat question was a joke, but then it seemed not to be a joke.

In childhood, I laughed when Howard Ashman made fun of suburbanites. "Between our frozen dinner....and our bedtime....9:15.....we snuggle watching Lucy, on our big, enormous, twelve-inch screen...."

Now, 9:15 seems ambitious to me.

This was my weekend.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Host a Baby

-You have assumed responsibility for a mewling, puking ball of life, a yellow-lab pup. He will spit his half-digested kibble all over your shoes, all over your hard-cover edition of Jennifer Haigh's novel  Faith . He will eat your tables, your chairs, your "I {Heart] Montessori" magnet, placed too low on the fridge. When you try to watch Bette Davis in  Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte , on your TV, your dog will bark through the murder-prologue, for no apparent reason. He will whimper through Lena Dunham's  Girls , such that you have to rewind several times to catch every nuance of Andrew Rannells's ad-libbing--and, still, you'll have a nagging suspicion you've missed something. Your dog will poop on the kitchen floor, in the hallway, between the tiny bars of his crate. He'll announce his wakefulness at 5 AM, 2 AM, or while you and another human are mid-coitus. All this, and you get outside, and it's: "Don't let him pee on my tulips!" When...
3 comments
Read more

Joshie

  When I was growing up, a class birthday involved Hostess cupcakes. Often, the cupcakes would come in a shoebox, so you could taste a leathery residue (during the party). Times change. You can't bring a treat into a public school, in 2024, because heaven knows what kind of allergies might lurk, in unseen corners, in the classroom. But Joshua's teacher will allow: a dance party, a pajama day, or a guest reader. I chose to bring a story for Joshua's birthday (observed), but I didn't think through the role that anxiety might play in this interaction. We talk, in this house, quite a bit about anxiety; one game-changer, for J, has been a daily list of activities, so that he knows exactly what to expect. He gets a look of profound satisfaction when he sees the agenda; it doesn't really matter what the specific events happen to be. It's just about knowing, "I can anticipate X, Y, and Z." Joshua struggled with his celebration. He wore his nervousness on his f...
2 comments
Read more

Josh at Five

 Joshie's project is "flexibility"; the goal is to see that a plan is just an idea, not a gospel, not a guarantee. This is difficult. Yesterday, we went to a restaurant--billed as "open," with unlocked doors--and the owner informed us of an "error in advertising." But Joshie couldn't accept the word "closed." He threw himself on the floor, then climbed on the furniture. I felt for the owner, until he nervously made a reference to "the glass windows." He imagined that my child might toss himself through a sealed window, like Mary Katherine Gallagher, or like Bruce Willis, in "Die Hard." Then--thank the Lord!--I was able to laugh. The thing that really has therapeutic value for Joshie is: a firetruck. If we are out in public, and he spots a parked truck, he wants to climb on each surface. He breathlessly alludes to the wheels, the door, the windows. If an actual fire station ("fire ocean," in Joshie's parla...
Post a Comment
Read more