Parent-speak

After three-months of living with small children, I understand kids perfectly well (dinosaurs have nine teeth no matter what I say; the letter P can be called any other letter of the alphabet depending on our mood; it is always a good time to sit down on the floor and roll a ball back and forth). It's parents who can be difficult to follow sometimes. Here's a conversation I had this weekend when our friends Meg and John, parents of Lily (2-years) and Stella (2-months), came to town:

Me (to Lily who had spent the previous five minutes looking for cracks in the wooden floor at her father's suggestion): Ooooh, Lily, let's go look out the window and see what we can see!

Lily: Okay! Let's find a school bus!

Me: Hmmm, there aren't many school buses at night. How about something else that's yellow... taxis!

John: Oh, really great idea, Rebo.

Me (brightly): I know...(then picking up on excessive amount of sarcasm) wait... what?

John: Taking a two-year-old to the window??

Me: But it's closed. And it's locked. And I'm holding her.

John: Still.

Me (narrowing my eyes, considering whether to point out that he and his wife decided to drive their small children to New York post-Hurricane Sandy and pre-walloping nor'easter in the middle of a gas shortage.... considering, considering, considering. Being the bigger person. Temporarily.): Fine. Lily, let's go back to looking at the floor.

First-World Refugees

After Hurricane Sandy, Tiffany and I were displaced from the basement of our friends, where we were already displaced, to the spare bedroom of other family friends who took me in during another time I was displaced (aka, graduate school). Weary of living out of boxes and bags-which we've been doing since we moved from San Francisco in August and will continue to do until we move into our Manhattan apartment in 27 days-I stubbornly refused to pack anything but work clothes. Of course, then I was unable to go to work, so I have been wearing the same "casual" outfit for days.

On the day of the storm, we filled up our car with gas, bought a bunch of bottled water, and then plopped down in front of the TV to "use the electricity while we've got it!" by having a Glee marathon. Along with my mom, whose weekend visit was extended by the storm, we took turns charging our cell phones in the car even though they were rendered virtually useless by the power outages all around us.

Every time the lights flickered, we gasped, collectively, and when they came back on we looked around and congratulated ourselves for being lucky.

When the power did finally go out, for a 12-hour period the day after the storm, we huddled around the fireplace, reading until we couldn't see anymore. After our electricity was restored, we shut off all the lights and stayed right where we were by the fire, Glee be damned.

My Bestie

I only have a handful of friends in New York.

Ok, fine... I only have a handful of friends. Period.

Anyway, one of my New York friends, Jen, sticks out like a sore thumb from my handful.

The only thing Jen and I have in common is a common friend, Teresa. And it is only because of our love and respect for Teresa that Jen and I initially stayed in the same room together long enough to develop a mutual affection.

Jen is fashionable. I'm... not. She's loud. I'm less loud bordering on quiet. She likes to talk politics. I do not. Oh yeah, and speaking of politics. We don't have those in common either.

I try to avoid political conversations with Jen, but the other night, she wouldn't let me, so we took Teresa's living room hostage and went at it despite the fact that everyone else in the living room was either a sleeping newborn or trying to watch Modern Family.

"I'm fiscally conservative!" I hissed at one point, trying to rebut her argument that I was disagreeing with everything she agreed with just to be stubborn. I instantly thought of all the ways I am not fiscally conservative and hoped she wouldn't.
"Freezing your leftover pizza does not make you fiscally conservative," Jen spat. "It makes you weird."
"I'm personally fiscally conservative!"

She scoffed.

"Whatever!" I shouted. "Binders of women?"

I mean, seriously. What kind of person doesn't believe in leftovers?





Sent from my iPhone

On Coloring

I'll tell you what: Having kids is tough.

Well, technically, Tiffany and I don't have kids (I know I've been away from the blog a long time, but still, three weeks would be a pretty aggressive gestation period for a human being). But we are living with two of them now--and their parents--until we find a place of our own in New York.

When I say tough, I mean that having children around is so much fun I don't have time to do any of the things I should be doing when I'm not at work--like writing this blog, going for a run, or finding an apartment where we wouldn't have kids to play with anymore.

I came upstairs in my running clothes the other day, and Peter, our friends' 2-year-old, was lying on the floor on his stomach in the kitchen, coloring.

"Come on, Rebo," he said, using the nickname his mom and a few other soccer teammates gave me in college. "Color."

He had just learned to call someone to him by waving his hand toward himself, and he scooped his entire arm through the air to indicate that I should come closer.

"Maybe later," I said. "I'm going for a run real quick."

Peter stared at me.

I stared at Peter.

And then, in that amazing ability children have, he forgave me for the words I had just uttered, and scooped his arm through the air again as if I hadn't spoken at all.

"No," he said, matter-of-factly. "Color."

He patted the floor next to him and held up a purple crayon.

I took it.

E-Z as Can Be

Anyway, we made it to New York. Lots of people were wondering because it's been a while since my last post. Some of Tiffany's friends even texted, emailed and called to ask if we made it out of Impy's driveway, which is nice because it means they were reading the blog (but obviously not too closely or they'd have realized we never pulled into the driveway in the first place).

So we made it. And as soon as we got the chance, we got back in the car and drove to see Tiffany's family in New England. After years of living plane-rides away from our families, we were giddy at the idea that we were connected to certain members by the same highway (I even texted my brother in Florida that I could see him in just under 1,300 miles). But it wasn't enough that we could leave work on a Friday night and be having a beer and Dr Pepper with Tiffany's dad before bedtime. We wanted to be there faster, which we realized as soon as we got onto the West Side Highway in Manhattan and almost immediately had to come to a stop in the Cash Only lane while E-ZPass drivers cruised by us on the way to their own families.

"Sh*t," we said, looking at each other.

But it turns out you can buy E-Z passes in the cash lane in New York, so, guess what, we bought one.

"How does this work?" I asked the woman.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, when can we use it?"

"Right now," she said.

"Oh good!" I cried, stuffing my dollar bills back into my wallet.

The woman stared at me.

"Not right this minute," she said. "You're in a Cash Only lane."

Road Trip: Blogged (Sunday)

Tiffany and I have been lucky on our road trip because we've gotten to see a lot of our friends and family who are scattered across the country. Besides having Tiffany's dad Gary along for the first half of the ride, we saw Tiffany's sister Melody in Denver and my mom and grandmother and lots of friends in Kansas City. Last night, we drove right by my grandmother's best friend in Dayton, Ohio.

When I say we drove right by her, that's exactly what I mean. Oh, sure, eventually we made a U-turn, pulled in front of her house and stayed the night, but when we first saw Impy, she was standing in her door waving us into her driveway while we kept right on going, waving frantically back at her.

"Should I pull into her driveway?" I asked Tiffany.

"Absolutely not! Do not pull this trailer into her driveway!"

"Call her and tell her we're turning around!" I shrieked, as Impy looked after us in confusion.

After I made a wide turn at the next four-way stop, we lurched to a halt just off Impy's curb.

"Girls, I cleared the driveway so you could pull right in," she said, coming to give us a hug.

"Thank you so much, Impy," I said, giving her a squeeze, "but we don't know how to reverse."

Road Trip: Blogged (Yesterday)

Yesterday was the first day of the road trip that Tiffany and I didn't have her dad with us, which probably explains why we almost ran out of gas in the middle of Missouri.

With Gary, we filled up every time our gas gauge hit the quarter-tank mark, but Tiffany and I thought we'd go right to E before we stopped that morning. We waved off a visible-from-the-highway station confidently, only to be leaning forward in our seats a few miles later as we passed... absolutely nothing.

"It's fine," I said. "We have 30 miles once the light comes on."

Tiffany was quiet.

"Right?" I asked, the pitch of my voice creeping up. "Or is that some myth I've acquired in my many years of hardly-ever-driving?"

We shouted when we saw a Sunoco off in the distance only to discover that the last gas pumped there may have been shortly after Lewis and Clark passed by.

After several exits that said "No Gas," there was, finally, a very ambiguous blue "Gas" sign that listed no gas stations.

"What does that mean?" I shrieked. "There must be no gas here!"

"Or maybe they just haven't gotten around to putting up the sign," Tiffany countered.

"I don't know..." I hesitated. "I mean... if there was a station, don't you think they'd..."

I'm always indecisive at precisely the moment a decision is crucial.

"I'm going," Tiffany said swerving toward the exit ramp.

Anyway, there was a gas station. Tiffany and I sighed in relief and were halfway to the bathroom before we realized Gary wasn't around to man the pump.