THE WORLD'S TINIEST JEDI

Happy Halloweiners, everybody!

I spent the holiday afternoon handing out candy at a cable station's haunted house, an experience that beautifully showcased the axiom: The smaller the person, the automatically cuter the costume.

*infant monkey
*infant pumpkin
*infant tomato

There were also Star Wars-garbed toddlers walking around - no Princess Leias in chains, but all kinds of Ewoks, a Darth Vader who got up in my face and told me very seriously I'M DARRRRTH VAAAAADER!!!! (I peed a little), and, as mentioned above, the world's itty-bittiest Jedi. *melt*

The best part though was a kindergartener Deceptacon wailing his head off because he was scared of the black light graveyard that ended with a dude jumping out and yelling at people. NOT SO TOUGH NOW, EH, MEGATRON? He may have been too big to be adorable by the above principle, but he did scientifically prove that ridiculous costume + small child sobbing = instant hilarity AND total preciousness.

I am at home now and Vin is already wearing his own Darth Vader ensemble. Guess I am going to have to go dress up the cats.

Ground control to Major Ari

The Short Goodbye

So our household received this O HAI I'M SKIPPING OUT ON UR LIVES BUT LIKE I TOTALLY CARE ABOUT U phone call a week ago, while Lucy and I were hosting her brother and frantically preparing to leave for Chicago and fly Vin to his grandma's elsewhere in the wee hours of the following morning. Actually, only Lucy received the call. Her ex, who is (or was) a pretty integral part of our family setup, called to announce that he had been fired from his job a week earlier and was moving to the Bay Area to live with his family...the next day. Oh yeah, though, he could still pick up Vin at the airport on Monday. If we needed him to. Maybe. If we really needed him to. Well, he thought he could, but he needed a minute to think about it. Why was Lucy being so mean and not-understanding about him and his needs? He had to go! Like, now! But he knew that, like, she needed him, and so...IF she really needed him...etc.

So I did what any normal auntie would do. I called him and gave him a piece of my fucking mind. Was he just not going to tell me he was moving 400 miles away?? I told him that I understood that he had to do what he (thought he) had to do, but that I was really upset that he had referred to us as "family" for a solid year and then sat on this kind of information for as long as he had without telling us - his "family," right? - what was going on. And that Vin is fucking SIX YEARS OLD AND HAS ALREADY HAD A FATHER LEAVE WITHOUT WARNING, AND THAT HIS ACTIONS ARE JACKED-UP, SHITTY, HURTFUL, AND JUST WRONG. And he was all, "I have no choice...I have to move..." and I could hear in his voice that he was just fucking yes-ma'aming me so I would get off the phone. Having said what I had to say, I did.

And then I thought about it a while longer. And I remembered all the times I skipped out of town, literally and metaphorically. Granted, I was in my early/mid-20s and effectively raised by wolves, which doesn't excuse my behavior, but I realized that I couldn't judge him without judging myself, and I couldn't forgive myself without forgiving him. And in a wave of compassion tempered still with the anger, I wrote him an email saying as much, expressing that I hope he gets what he really needs, and that I hope he learns how to make transitions with as much grace and integrity as possible so he doesn't keep fucking people over.

I still feel that way - although since I rarely experience anger as something that segues neatly into another feeling and stays that way, I am angry all over again writing this. Immediately after Lucy as gently as possible imparted the news, Vin started hitting things, being ugly, and otherwise acting out. He's got a lot of hurt and anger to deal with from this and from the original pain of his father leaving. She and I are doing our best to encourage him to express his feelings - including his hurt and anger - respectfully. It's challenging. Nobody ever taught US how to do this as kids. Nobody really sat us down and taught us how to do it, period - we each came to the conclusion as adults that we were unhappy, that things weren't working, that we had to ask people to help us figure out some other way to live. The last thing this world needs is one more person walking around as an adult zombie with the emotional capacity of that six-year-old child whose father, and then the closest thing he's had since then, have both left.

And now I'm not angry, I'm sad. That abandonment leads people to and through the most hollow, death-seeking self-rejection. The ex's own father left him, and he does not appear to be doing very well for himself at the moment.

I am choosing to end this entry with a picture of a pug in a bee suit. If you've read this far you probably need it as much as I do.

...Love...

"I love you more than a thousand cats in a thousand pairs of fabulous dancing pants," I told Vin when I tucked him in tonight. We had just read the Shel Silverstein fabulous dancing pants poem after doing imitations of all four of our cats. I kissed his forehead and his cheeks and pulled up the blanket.

"That's a lot of poop right there," he responded, and paused, and continued: "I love YOU more than a thousand cat poops and pukes."

It's always good to know where you stand, right?

We were reading out of the copy of Where The Sidewalk Ends friends of my parents gave me when I was five, a little younger than he is now. The cover is slightly gnawed, and some of the pages are stained because I never learned not to eat while reading. He asked for some of my favorites, including "Sick," which always reminds me of a friend I had growing up who died when we were in middle school. Hope Platshorn. One of the sixth grade classes had had to memorize that poem. Our yearbook reprinted the poem under this photo of her that...was just so entirely her. Eyes open, laughing, loving, arms stretched wide, wearing one of those polyester vests that was the cutting edge of fashion in 1985 and that is actually back in style again now (at least according to certain offshoots of certain hipster clothing companies run by gropy lechers here in Los Angeles hipsterville). I can't hear or read that poem without thinking of her. For Hopey and for Vin, I gave it my all.

Merge

So it looks like Lucy and I are turning into each other. Originally we were all worried that our styles would clash and none of our furniture would go together, but not only have we found some happy medium with a weird but fabulous living room palette of teal (her), olive (me), mustard (both of us), and leopard print (both of us), but our clothing tastes are morphing as well. Lucy is now prancing around in flats and cap-sleeve dresses with demure little A-line skirts while I am scribbling my face with heavy black eyeliner, ripping up tank tops for maximum boobage exposure, and buying as many pairs of 5" heels as I can afford.

The stripper pole has been mounted. That is a PROFESHUNUL term. Sadly, one of the cats fled through a broken window and is now living a life of tease and denial in the parrot people's yard. I can't blame him; they have a hot tub and totally amazing landscaping. And, also, a lot of delicious looking tropical birds. There is a dishearteningly long list of things that need to be repaired around here; thankfully, the landlords are responsive. We are all still trying to figure out various standards and protocols for sharing living space as a family. While there is a lot of chaos, it is made sweet by Lucy's and my commitment to really working together. I won't lie, it's hard, there have been issues and tissues, and there will undoubtedly be more. But it's working. It definitely helps that we are both clear communicators and that we wear the same clothing and shoe size.

Parallel Living

I am sooooooo caffeinated right now so apologies in advance for upcoming run-on sentence time, but hey, THE MOVE IS OVER, we are installed in Glitter Palace with our four cats and 50,000 pairs of shoes and are currently in the process of discovering some not-so-awesome surprises, like the low hot water pressure and the yelly parrot next door, but the landlords care and are reponsive, and we can teach the parrot some Mozart or, like, the soothing sound of a mellow ocean breeze, right?

So we spent the afternoon of our first full day at the new house in a certain place...the name of which should strike fear into your heart - it does ours, ever since Vin had the epic meltdown of all time there last summer. Four little letters, Scandinavian design. It's unclear what we were thinking beyond "Gotta get some Malm and lingonberry, pronto," but we went and there were a bunch of day players dressed as Vikings (?) outside with some rather effective-looking swords. Guess that's what they do with the disruptive customers...lucky the Vikings weren't there the last time we were there because we would have all been chopped up and flattened into particle board.

So we were dissatisfiedly browsing the mug selection (why are they all so small?) when I heard a male voice pipe over the display: "Hey, Chai, you need anything else?" WHO THE FUCK ELSE HERE HAS MY NAME??? I had to know, and peeked around the corner to see an Orthodox couple pushing a cart - they were a collection of toddler, tzitzit, and some awfully cute modest lady clothing. They were good decade younger than I am, and suddenly I was conscious of my belly bared beneath my cropped cleavagey shirt, my rack popping out of my push-up bra, the Hebrew tattooed on my arm, the choices I have made, the ease with which I could have fallen into an obsessive observance of the 613 as opposed to looking within and finding that religion doesn't really work for me (and I'm not saying these people are obsessive, I'm saying I have problems with my own tendencies toward compulsion and would have ended up, like, toiveling everything that touches my body including bus seats and movie tickets), and most of all my joy in my own weird patchwork Jewish expression that will set our table tomorrow night with roast chicken, gluten-free challah, and arroz con gandules made con tocino. The same expression that next weekend will have us reclining and yapping about identity, social ills, and tikkun olam with an orange on the seder plate for women and a lemon or whatever we can find for queers. A cow femur that I keep on my shelf year-round for the paschal offering. And probably some more salt-porky arroz con b'tayavon. Perhaps not traditional, but tradition.

!!!!!

We found a place! It is awesome! It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, an office, and three other kids Vin's age on the property! Lucy's ex suckered himself into adopting the fifth cat! We are moving very soon!

HEY! This is a FAMILY blog!

Lucy and I like The Office. A lot. We constantly quote the dip-it-in-water-to-make-it-slide-down-your-gullet-easier line, and because we are teenage boys at heart, we riff on this one particular callback until we are both completely sick of it but can't help ourselves. So it should not have been any surprise when planning some event or another, we asked another friend if she were coming -- and from the other room Vin yelled, "THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!" There was a long pause while Lucy and I looked at each other, brows raised. And then we totally lost it, silently, as he concluded, "...or he said."

There's been a lot of that going on around here. Lucy has commented how weird it is to hear her words coming from the mouth of a six-year-old: "It really puts things in a whole different light!" It is odd, but admittedly hilarious, to watch him get frustrated with one of his Transformers and sputter, "OH, for GOD'S SAKE!" The best, though, is when he flips his hair around, rolls his eyes, stamps his foot, and yells at Lucy, "YOU'RE BEING DRAMATIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Because, you know, that's what she said. Or something.