If You Are Homeless

It's been serious, sincere, and heavy over at Crabmommy of late. And it's about to get worse. Because as we all know a crisis is afoot. And while I usually traffic in claptrap and whatnot and randomommy trivia, I feel compelled to talk about the current crisis. I cannot ignore the grim realities of day-to-day life in America. And I know you all want to know what I think about what's going down in our country today. And many of you have written to ask me how I'm managing and how my 401K is doing and the answer is very well! I have taken ZERO losses there. Because there was NEVER ANYTHING IN IT TO BEGIN WITH.

Anyway, it's true that we're in trouble right now. And facing tough times. I myself worry every day. About the big stuff. Like how to re-register my car with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

As some of you may recall, I moved recently, away from the rodeos and Polish poolboys of my former resort town in Wyoming...and ever westward to another state where the rain falls freely and the Teva sandals are as abundant as the congenial lesbian dogwalkers and micro-brew-drinking men sporting Devendra Banhart-y folksy facial hair and Maasai earrings.

But this is a state also very interested in one driving a law-abiding smog-checked car. And apparently I have very little time to get my car tested for smog output before I will be sent to a special jail reserved for the most criminal of offenders: those who don't recycle properly and whose SUV's are belching unconscionably into the fine misty air.

So I have been going to our state's website. And reading about emissions checks and re-registering of licence plates and such. And I came upon this incredibly fine and sweet and oddly touching thing that I must share with you. Check out this section at my state DMV website, on proving residence:

All documents submitted must be acceptable to DMV. DMV has the discretion to reject or to require additional evidence to verify your residence address.

Homelessness

Individuals that are homeless may use a descriptive address such as "under the west end of the Burnside Bridge."

Nice to know that if the economy is going to screw Crabhubby, Crabkid, and me out of our rental home (and it actually, jokes aside, might), we are welcome to domicile ourselves under one of Crabcity's bridges, so long as our car burns clean.

When Parents Attack, Part 2

A while ago I alluded darkly to a scuffle with Perfect Urban Motherhood on my return to city life from Crabtown. I waited a while to write the story, hoping time would give it a comic gleam and thus something unpleasant would be entertaining for my readers. Alas, it just isn't funny, but write it up I did, finally, here:

Beware the barking hippiemom at the gate!

My anecdote is a parable really, revealing (to me anyway) the seamy negative underside of Positively Perfecto Parenting, the vanilla fascism that is our current mommy culture, where all mothers must speak to their small children in the same perky and patient way. Nothing like one incident to make me generalize and stereotype hugely, but there it is. Okay, so this was just one wacko chick but...yeesh. Second time I've been reprimanded in public for my momming style by some supposedly well-meaning woman. What's next? A Crabmommy stoning on Nancy Grace?

Crabmommy no longer goes to a certain Teva-sandal-heavy part of Crabcity, where the streets are paved with hippiemamas, craft stores sell placenta print kits, and wind-chimes tinkle from every porch. Okay, so actually I do go to that part of town, but I bring my mace, just in case.

(Hippiereaders, relax in your Prana slacks: I have my crunchy side too and usually I fully dig your Mayan sling!...I'm just...still....smarting, k?)

As promised, soon to come, part 3 of my pop star bad photo series: Rod Stewart next!

The Neighbors

I have a problem: I don't know whether to tell Crabtot that Captain Hook lives next door to us or to wait for her to figure it out for herself. I'm scared she will get a fright if I don't warn her. Of the man down the street's hand. Which is actually a hook. And this is relevant right now. Since we have just bought Peter Pan on DVD. And I don't know why I am writing in fragments. Somehow the problem. Necessitates choppy sentences.

Those of you who came to this blog in its infancy will recall my fascination with my then-neighbors, Crabtown's finest, slummiest, and in fact most charming cowboy campers, who did seasonal work at the Crabtown rodeo and spent an awful lot of time asleep in temporary homes comprised of rusted husks of metal propped up on bricks.

I miss them.

And I miss spying on them.

But I have some interesting new folk around me. Like Captain Hook: he has a wild head of woolly hair, two somewhat fractious Bassett hounds and, to repeat, a hook for a hand. I noticed the hook last week when walking Crabtot to preschool. She's at the age where she asks me out loud in front of some poor blighted human why that person is fat or has pimples or uses a wheelchair, so I expected her instantly to spot the hook as neighbor wrangled his Bassett hounds. But she did not. And then I expected again that she might remark upon the hook when we saw this man again raking leaves with his hook. (He didn't rake leaves with the actual hook. He had a rake. He just, you know, has this hook.) She did not remark on the hook. But it is only a matter of time.

Not being accustomed to thinking about hooks for hands, I am a little puzzled by the hook. I don't know; I thought maybe by now the modern era could produce something better than a hook. I imagine a hook must be useful otherwise someone wouldn't sport it in lieu of a hand. That said, a prosthetic robot hand would surely be better? But maybe you need like super-schmantzy health insurance to get your, um, hand on one of those...?

Anyhoo, the dilemma here has nought to do with the actual hook, but with how to approach the hook with Crabtot. This past week, she has become obsessed with Peter Pan and is a tad freaked by Captain Hook and all. I have been pushing the PP DVD because Strawberry Shortcake gets on my last nerve, but now am wondering whether to push the Friendship Cake scene back into the mix so we don't develop the nascent interest in Captain Hook.

To clarify, my real fear here is not that Crabtot will become scared by the real-life Captain Hook down the road. No, I fear that she will embarrass me by asking me in front of him why the dude has a hook for a hand. Should I discuss in advance, I wonder?

Our neighborhood! Chock full of fascination! There is another chap down the block who drives a giant stretch limo and has a giant built-up shoe. He tools around, chain-smoking, outside his house, which is incredibly dilapidated (there is an old cardboard box that ever since I moved here has been propped beneath an attic window to hold it up and, I suppose, let air in [or smells out?]). Said limo driver is very sweet and very proud of his limo company. He gave Crabtot his business card the other day on our way to preschool, and told her that he gives "discounts for good grades"! Then he turned to me and said, "It's never too early to start getting them motivated!"

Did you hear that Crabtot? Study hard and in 13 years you might get 10% off our neighbor's limo service as he drives you to your prom!

Okay, so maybe Crabtot isn't yet properly motivated by the limo discount to study hard for her entire school career, but she is rightly impressed by the limo. "When I'm a grownup I'm going to drive that big car," she told me yesterday. "I'm going to make a bed in it for my babies....My ten babies," she clarified when I asked her how many she would be having. (It's always between five and sixteen).

The limo guy is truly very sweet and we stop and chat often. He's always trying to make Crabtot pick dandelion flowers and weeds from the strip of "garden" in front of his house; he's quite crafty that way. On July 4 he drove the limo round and round the 'hood, gingerly approaching our street where we had fireworks going...but he glided by after a round of rockets, and waved like the queen and we all waved back and I half expected a rain of limo business cards to fall upon us all like confetti.

We also have a sexually ambiguous couple (Crabhub thinks one is transgendered). One of the (wo)men repairs unbelievably ancient bicycles and has about seven hundred of them in her yard. Their house is quite magnificent (if you ignore the very gay giant faux-Tuscan planters in front of it) and they are quite unfriendly but they have two beautiful little daughters who are quite polite.

Love my 'hood. Seriously, people, unless you're on the wrong side of the tracks you're doomed to a dull life (says she who, like, checks real estate listing in tony zones about, oh, every day)!

What should I do? Discuss hook in advance and coach Crabtot on how not to react when she actually sees it thereby sparing Captain Hook's feelings and, more important, saving me from embarrassment? Or let the metal prong announce itself organically (okay, that word doesn't quite work) in its own time...and let the subsequent reaction be whatever it will be?

A tough question for a tough times.

Grumpy, Frumpy, Lumpy

I just read my last post and realized how incredibly profound I can be on this blog. Since I have no pearls of domestic wisdom to toss your way today, I suggest you look elsewhere for entertainment. Like, perhaps, this episode from Offsprung TV's Motherhoodlum.

How as your week? Mine was lumpy! Lots of globbiness and roundness and general flubbiness after the sharpness of late.

For those of you seeking my usual Friday swagiciliousness, there shan't be any this weekend. I feel it's all getting to be a bit much, ya know? Let's bring this blog back to its roots! Let's get some venting on! Forget the free iron-on labels and whatnot. I mean, seriously, what kind of crabby blogger foists treats on readers every week? It's false advertising.

So this week, no. Next week, maybe. I still have swag to offer; I'm a momocrite. You know that. I *may* even make good on the last post's promise and offer a free set of shower caps for covering leftovers. So don't give up if you're here for the stuff. Hope springs eternal. Keep the faith, come back, and maybe next time you'll get luckier. Then again, maybe not.

What I can promise with more enthusiasm is a proper and much-belated set of notes on Crabcity, our new home, which I have been judging in ways both favorable and unfavorable for the last three months of serious and unremitting SAHMery. Soon enough I shall have tales of fascist liberalism, reports on abundant sightings of men en route to drumming circles, verbatim and compelling accounts of people debating micro-brews and bike paths, and a seriously sinister tale of passive aggression in motherhood. Fellow parent-peeps, every day of my life as a mother the following is reinforced: The uber-positive parenting cult is alive and flourishing in America (and, I'm quite sure everywhere else where middle class affluence resides). What is thing I call uber-positive parenting? It is a predominating culture in which all parents must behave in a proscribed manner towards their children and each other; in this cult there is no room for differentiation, irritation, negative thinking, imperfection, or any sort of defection from syrupy permissive-parenting camp. In this culture parents sublimate themselves entirely for their children and embrace what my new favorite author Hara Marano (Nation of Wimps) calls "pasteurized parenting," where everything is safe and nothing is ever difficult, ugly, or unpleasant for the child.

Okay so a globby flubby post without contours or definition. Whatevs, mon. Dunno about you, but I'm spent.

But before I expire completely from the sheer weight of being me, may I direct you to a charming tale of lumpiness and say give it up for the state of Georgia! Georgia is hosting a pregnant endangered male sea dragon, whatever that is, according to Yahoo news. I am actually too lazy to read the piece in its entirety even though I have a soft spot for silly things from the ocean depths. I will, however, say that were I to choose between reading that article and the one below it "Fecal Matter Found on Restaurant Lemon Slices," you can bet I will be reading about the knocked up seahorse. Seriously, why is that people call it news when there's a report on something unhygienic that happened in a restaurant? So you got a bit of fecal matter on your lemon. Bad luck? Yes. Breaking news? No. Useful information? Not at all. I mean what are we all meant to do, give up on restaurants or lemon slices? I say clean it up, shut up, sort the place out and above all, don't say a word.

Food for thought.

Socialist Euro-Style Free Daycare in America: Just go to IKEA!

There are days when you go shopping in a strip mall near an airport, buy absolutely nothing, and call it time well spent.

Even though I spent the entirety of Saturday by myself (I did Mom's Day a day early), Sunday proved that I needed more time out from Crabtot. We'd gone out en famille in search of a washer-dryer. Crabtot had half-spun and half-sobbed in her car-seat for the duration of the car trip out to the delightful strip mall that houses Best Buy. I'd thought that, unlike her parents, she'd quite enjoy an examination of front and top-loading washer-dryers for her Sunday outing; after all, these are the things that kids get sort of tickled over, right? But she grew quickly bored and threw herself up and down the aisles, complaining and demanding strawberries and such.

After a spell, Crabhubby and I looked at each other over the Maytags and Whirlpools. "IKEA," I said. "It's a good day for IKEA."

And he said, "Let's go."

Some of you may be confused. Why add a cavernous self-serve homewares depot to an already overburdened family shopping trip? But you are merely the uninitiated or foreigners in an inhumane country that does not offer the splendor of a Scando-warehouse called IKEA. Which is oh so very much more than merely half-cooked cheap furnishings made by people with names like Gunnar Bjirkelund (no doubt the pseudonym of one Jeffrey Weiner of Brooklyn? ...Does IKEA give you Swedish avatars when they hire you, I wonder?) Back to the point, Until moving to Crabcity I had lived a half-life, without IKEA. But Crabcity is more civilized. And the chief sign of that is the presence of IKEA. With its free childcare. That's right, Crabtown friends: free.

When we first spotted IKEA's free childcare room, "Småland," we thought we might be seeing things. Crabtot smashed her nose to the glass in wonder, as children frolicked inside a giant clog. Yes, a giant clog. Which sounds a tad absurd now, but when you are at IKEA it just makes sense, like lingonberries with Swedish meatballs.

For those sadly in the dark, Småland is a "magical forest" where children play like bunny rabbits while their parents argue over whether to get the Malm series of bureau or the Snordgegrone (okay, I made up the last). Småland is where forest fairies bewitch each other inside IKEA children's room products while Mom tries to convince Dad that there's nothing wrong with a $1 towel, and Dad tries to convince Mom that there's nothing wrong with a bedroom that consists entirely of birch-veneered furniture. When did Småland come to be? I don't recall ever seeing it in other IKEAs that I have visited. Mind you, I haven't been to an IKEA in years and back when I last trotted through a Nordic habitat in search of a futon cover or lava lamp or whatever-all I bought in those carefree days, I wasn't even thinking about having children, much less thinking about how to palm them off on others.

"Yay, Small Land!" Crabtot said when we dropped her off, signing a perfunctory info sheet, and attaching an ID sticker to her back. Then we thrust her through a trapdoor that led to that Magic Forest and we bailed...past the Marketplace (where you get big furnishings), through the habitats (where tranquil modern living is simulated in an otherwise tense environment of beleaguered families making what appear to be major life decisions), and made straight for the restaurant. Which basically just rocks. Except that the strudel is frozen. "What time is it?" I asked Crabhub. "Check your phone." You see, at Småland you get only one hour of childcare. Then they buzz you with a pager.

The first time Crabhubby and I did the IKEA date, we felt very pleased with ourselves. Drinking $1 coffee out of china cups, stashed in a pleasing booth beside paper screens stretched with Marimekko-ripoff fabric, we looked out the windows and sipped on freedom. The view was gorgeous. Okay, so the view is basically just the back of the strip mall with the airport parking lot nearby but when you've got one hour of child-free time on the weekend, all childless views are good views.

Our most recent IKEA date was a touch more fraught. We'd just prior to the outing drunk fifty barrels of coffee and so decided to nix sitting and sipping for some random shopping. Except there was nothing we could think of buying. "Napkins," I said firmly to Crabhubby when he expressed reservations over the whole thing and posited that we nix IKEA altogether and go home to clean the house. "I need napkins. And a small white frame."

"Pity they don't let you leave for an hour," Crabhub said. We peered across the strip mall wondering if we'd get caught if we made a break for it and hit the grass island strips adjacent to the cars, to loll upon the lawn and take a nap. Yes, unfortunately there is one major rule of Småland and it's for parents: no leaving the premises. I wondered if my pager would work if we spent the hour upon the grassy knoll near the edge of the IKEA parking lot. But in the end, I'm not a rebel. I can't break laws. The closest I've ever been to law-breaking was an attempt at bathroom graffiti in grad school. With a Pilot Varsity fountain pen that wrote in turquoise ink. (I was getting my Master's in Writing people. Leave me alone.) So it was napkins over naps on strip-mall lawns. We really did need napkins.

But napkin-shopping just isn't the whale of a time it should be when your bloody Småland pager keeps vibrating in your pocket.

Now, first, a word about the IKEA childminders. If you want me to tell you they look perfectly wonderful and beautifully trained and wildly knowledgeable about children, I will. Because to me any warm body looks to be that way of a Sunday afternoon when one's preschooler is preschooling all over you. That said, the grownups in the Magic Forest have more of a desultory look, more of a teenage look, more of a low-slung pants, dyed hair, ipod's-on-shuffle sort of look. They say only two things to you when you drop your child off. "Is she potty trained?" and "Is she over 34" tall?" And you say yes and yes and then stuff her through a trapdoor and Bob's your uncle. Which is why you might actually get a tad nervous when the pager goes off prematurely. Maybe the tot got hurt?! Maybe some bloody bruiser of a boy mashed her delicate leg in the clog?

So Crabmommy sprinted for that Magic Forest. Not so easy to find at IKEA. You're going against the stream, working backwards through habitats: bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, office, patio...When I get to the Forest my eyes roam frantically for a small creature with a puff of uncombed hair and unmatching socks, quite possibly crying or injured near a giant clog. But Crabtot's happy, up a magical woodland climbing wall, oblivious. "Sorry," one of the teens says. 'The pager's just malfunctioning." She gives me a new one.

I race back to Crabhubby. Patio, office, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. Mostly we've been wandering without purpose or enjoyment. And now I can't find him. And now I have only forty minutes left.

"What about this for the living room?" he asks when I capture him beneath a pallet of wool rugs designed by Sigrid Olafsen and made by children in Guam. We discuss the rug. For about thirty minutes. Oh, how we can discuss a rug! And just when we've reached an agreement on the tone and weave and quality of rug, the pager jiggles again. Off I go. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, office, patio. Småland. And I see Crabtot, or rather just her hair. She is DROWNING IN A SEA OF PLASTIC BALLS. "Excuse me!" I say to the teen up front as I point wildly at the ball pit from behind glass (parents can't go into Småland). "I don't think my child can breathe!!" But the teen just smiles as Crabtot stands up and I see the ocean of plastic balls is only about twelve inches deep. To be sure, my child was quite fine, but my pager was not.

"Again?" The teen rolls her eyes. "Sor-ree!" she says to me and hands me another, snapping her gum.

"I can't get much shopping done this way," I say, all huffy, as though I'd come to IKEA to actually shop.

"I'll give you another half-hour then," she says. Score!

Patio, office, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. Rugs. Crabhusband and I discuss and rationalize the rug for the remainder of the Småland time. This activity is perhaps not quite as peachy-fun as some things (especially since we ended up not buying the rug, or napkins for that matter). Then again, there are other Sunday experiences that make arguing over a rug at a mall on an off-ramp near the airport as bloody fantastic as sharing a pot of Beluga caviar with Javier Bardem.
And so after coming all the way out to a strip mall near the airport of a Sunday, we left Best Buy with no washer/dryer and then we left IKEA empty-handed too. But at IKEA at least, we'd got what we came for. To be empty-handed: that's what we'd really wanted.

Anyone else been to Småland? I think we might go back this weekend. It really is a total all around family win-win-win activity. Or win-times-18 if you're those fundamentalist idiots who are about to have an eighteenth baby.

More giveaways of smashing toddler loveliness right here this Thursday. And Cookie sees new posts twice this week as ever, something about donuts and then Astromommy returns (plug, plug, what-eva, mon)...

Blossoms and Stalactites

Last month, this is what I saw out of my window in Crabtown, and it was good:I truly loved this insane shelf of snow and ice. I wish I could convey to you how amazing and deep and wide it was. But while my photos aren't fab, I'd bet even a pro photographer couldn't have captured the absurd scale of this thing. It was like a sand dune. Only upside down. And made of, uh, snow. Okay, so that doesn't make sense. Maybe another picture will give more immediacy to the frosty 'tites teetering at the edge of my vision. Okay, so still inadequate to the sight itself. Anyhoo, this snow-ice-bedangled thing hung outside the window next to the table where I worked, begging me to stare at it and think on it. And so I did and I have, and here is my poem:

Oh! Giant white lip, how do you hang?
A mini-mount beneath the mountain
Such a prong! A veritable
Mega-beak of snow.
Your clinging bulk
Coldly keeps me company
Thawing the ice chest
of my heart's typical tundra.

Okay, does anyone know the Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend? If so, then you will recognize within my own humble efforts the ghost of a genius poem written by fictional British teen and aspiring poet Adrian, entitled "Norway." It has the best first line ever:

Norway, land of difficult spelling

And now that we have moved to Crabcity, the scene is a touch different. And it, too, is good. Very.Your spring, how does it hang? Shoot me your best weather description.

p.s. for those who entered the Dollar Store Preg-o test Giveaway the winner is Alexis. CONGRATULATIONS, Alexis. (Send me an email at crabmommy at gmail dot com and include your address. Very soon a pregnancy test will be winging its way towards you. Yay! Schuh-weet!)