March Madness

The Department of Motor Vehicles, Los Angeles. CA 2017

My understanding of what's going on in this country is shrinking, and I find myself opening up articles, reading a few sentences and then sighing in exasperation or grimacing in disgust or taking in breaths to allay anxiety or rolling my eyes heaven-ward in bewilderment.

Are we supposed to understand what's going on?

I hate to say it, but I rely almost exclusively now on acronyms to express myself in this area. WTF?

I remember this quote by the great 18th century satirist, Jonathan Swift:

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

and

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed. 

We're all Gullivers here, methinks.

Sophie went back to school today for the first time in weeks, other than the day I brought her in for her birthday. I don't feel like going over what's been going on because, frankly, I'm so tired of the whole shebang, and I imagine you are, too. Suffice it to say that she's trending better even as we slowly wean her from the hideous benzodiazepine and supplement more aggressively with THC. I'm trending better right along with her because you know where she stops, I begin or where I stop, she begins and it's a fine, fine line. I also got acupuncture from our beloved Dr. Jin.

Yes. THC, baby. The psychoactive stuff that I myself have not partaken of since the halcyon days of college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. If I'd had any idea that I'd be administering a pale green gold oily version of it to my seizing and drug-addled daughter thirty-plus years later, I would have smoked more and studied less. Hell, I would have joined in with something more than tolerance when my boyfriend and his housemates watched the Tar Heels play basketball with the sound turned down and the bootleg Grateful Dead tapes turned up.

Anywho.

If you hear Old Racist Alabama Elf-Man Sessions or Old Up Big Pharma's Ass Georgia Cracker Price make any cracks about medical marijuana being a joke, tell them I'm going to beat the crap out of them in my mind. My tiny little mother mind™ knows few boundaries, is exasperated, disgusted, anxious and bewildered and would love a good red neck upon which to project its conflicts. Just a little March Madness.

Speaking of conflicts and the Tar Heels, did ya'll watch that game yesterday? It was a nail-biter that I watched with my sons and Sophie. March Madness for sure. This is a picture of when we had fallen behind Arizona after an early 17-point lead. I have quite effectively brainwashed my sons to be ardent Carolina basketball fans, and they were nervous wrecks.

Here's a video of the action when things got really tense at the end, right before I began to fold the boys' clean socks into balls, a task that I turned over to them when they were about five and seven years old. So many boring white socks I thought I'd go mad, wrote Virginia Woolf. I thought I was going to have a stroke or a heart attack watching the last few minutes of the game and even folded The Brother's laundry and smoked a few cigarettes in between bong hits.*

Between the not smoking too much THC in college, giving Sophie enough THC to help her brain today and parenting my boys to cheer ardently for a team that I love despite not knowing a damn thing about the sport -- well -- I'm going to humble brag here about my parenting skills. I am bewildered, to say the least.















* Just kidding. Virginia Woolf did not write that.

Basketball Agita and a Punch to the Gut

So ya'll know that I am the world's least able athlete, have an antipathy toward football that rivals one toward Drumpf and am otherwise bored out of my mind by sports with two exceptions: when my sons play anything, I'm into it and I am a Tar Heel basketball lover of the nth degree.

So, yeah. Last night. I have a friend who can't watch the Heels play anymore because he's afraid he'll have a heart attack. I felt some serious agita last night, lying on my bed with Henry sprawled next to me and the laptop open to the final NCAA championship game. Oliver is on the east coast with my parents, but when Marcus Paige shot that 3-pointer to tie the game, I called him and before I could scream in exultation, The Big O screamed back at me that VILLANOVA WON, MOM! VILLANOVA WON! And Henry and I looked back down on the little screen which evidently was a second or two behind the regular broadcast and watched Villanova make that final shot and wow. Just wow. Or should I say holy shit. And then I just expired, as did Henry.

Anywho.

On another note, I was up most of the night with Sophie. We're going through another weird period, and I'm just barely keeping it together. So many of you help me to keep it together, and I am continually reminded of the grace that lives in this world. I'm frustrated and pained at what's going on -- not just in my literal world but in the world at large. Being able to channel that frustration and anguish into writing keeps me quite literally alive, and my post over at marijuana.com today was like a reverse sucker punch.  Please visit it, give it some love and share it if you feel like it. Here's the link:

The Literal Beating Heart

Parenting and Summer Reading

So, I've got two kids in high school and one to go. Oliver will be entering the seventh grade after Labor Day, and he's the one who despises school, mainly because he has some learning disabilities and up until very recently, we didn't really have a handle on those. Conversations this summer around summer reading requirements have generally been the type where if you suggested that someone should perhaps start reading their required book and if you happened to be lighting a candle at the same time to mask the smell of another child's diaper, the whole house would have gone up in flames.

Anywho.

Last night I made a gentle suggestion that perhaps it was time for someone to start reading their required book (and to be fair, the first was actually finally finished three weeks ago!). The suggestion hung there in the dry and combustible air. Mom, I really hate basketball, and it's a book about basketball, he said fairly rationally from his perch on a stool in the kitchen. I confidently spooned beans into a bowl  for Sophie's dinner. I love basketball, actually, (because I went to the world's greatest basketball university which is another topic altogether) which is saying a lot given that I am utterly not into sports, completely nonathletic and verge on the irrational in my hatred of football. Well, it's not really about the sport, I said, it's about a boy who plays basketball, but it's really more about him. Someone frowned and squirmed on his chair. I scattered chicken on top of the beans and sprinkled cheese on top of that. Hey, I've got an idea, I said, as I put the bean concoction in the microwave. If you finish this book without grumping around and resisting it, I'll buy us two tickets to a Lakers or Clippers game. Someone stopped squirming and looked interested. How about the Dodgers instead? he asked.

Reader, if you're a young parent, don't let anyone tell you that bribes shouldn't be used in parenting. Consider yourself skilled if you get your obstreperous, extremely volatile offspring to agree to read about basketball (your favorite sport) in return for you having to sit through baseball (a sport that bores you to tears). Consider yourself a good enough mother.

Plus, your house doesn't go up in flames.

Kicking off from center field and tulips

 At 7:30 am, I was doing this:

I was watching him:

At 10:00 am, I bought these as a sort of reward and incentive to get through the rest of the day:

At noon, I was doing this:

(disclosure: the photo is taken from another game earlier in the season, but you get the gist)

Some of you might remember when I described my Italian grandmother, in her very old age, walking around the house in her black dress muttering Pray that I die, Pray that I die. Well, I'm going to confess that the prospect of another basketball game contingent upon that one, provoked a similar response in me. Pray that they lose. Pray that they lose. If anyone is reading this who happens to be on our team, please forgive me. My prayer was answered, and they lost. Basketball season is officially over.

At 2:20 pm, I was watching him:

Henry broke a long batting slump, so bad that he had been plunged into the depths of despondency and failure just two days ago. He hit a DOUBLE and a TRIPLE. I screamed myself hoarse.

At 4:00 pm I'm watching this:



I just remarked on Facebook that the trouble with Facebook is that superlatives have become cliche, and there's just no way to properly describe Van Morrison in this video without using one.

Jock Talk, Part 3,459,213

Henry's lacrosse season is over, and Oliver's basketball nearly so, but baseball season has begun, and yesterday I went shopping for gear with Oliver. Both boys are catchers and require the requisite baseball gear and then about a million dollars worth of catcher protection crap. Henry and I had gone last week, but I'd forgotten to purchase a few things for him, so when we got home, Oliver quickly separated his stuff from Henry's. He held up two identical boxes that housed jock straps, one an adult small and the other an adult medium. They were both priced $5.99.

If one is bigger than the other, why do they both cost the same? Oliver asked.

Well, it's probably only a bit more material, I said.

That's stupid, Oliver said.

Well, maybe they're ripping you off for the small one, I suggested, and was interrupted.

Yeah, and maybe you're getting a good deal if you've got a big _______.

Reader, I'll let you fill in that blank but know that I burst out laughing with Oliver when he said it.

Blustery Day

It's blustery today, here in Los Angeles. The kids went to bed last night hoping that perhaps there would be snow when they woke up. I'm not kidding you -- there were rumors that San Francisco would get some and perhaps even a few flakes would fall on the Hollywood Sign.

No snow. A lot of bluster. (and they've spelled Winnie the Pooh wrong here, but for some reason I've been singing this all day) -- god knows why as I'm so not a cutesy video poster type.




Oliver played basketball today as passionately as he plays every sport -- that means a lot of aggression, some tears, some gritting of the teeth, a couple of baskets -- a lot of bluster.

And the world's least crafty mother cooked up the idea that we could spraypaint the boys' bedroom door with chalkboard paint and that it would look really good.

That was a lot of bluster on my part, too.