this woman’s work

Go here and check out the guy in the middle. That’s my brother-in-law (Brett’s little brother).

I don’t know him at all. Technically I met him before I met Brett because I briefly dated one of his friends. He used to play pool at the bar (where I later met Brett) and he had long hair that drove the girls crazy. My roommate thought he was dreamy because of that long curly hair (this was the grunge era, you know). Me, I never liked long hair on men, which is why I zeroed in on his pal.

He was good looking then (you can see he’s still good looking) and being the sort of angry feminist that I was, I rolled my eyes at his legions of girlfriends and never thought much of him. I believe we grunted at each other when Ed (boyfriend) and I were leaving the house they shared.

So then it was odd to meet Brett and realize that he was Todd’s older brother.

“You mean pool playing Todd?” I said in amazement. Hmph. Small world.

Pretty much from the time I started dating Brett Todd has been elsewhere. He was in NYC for a really long time and just recently moved out to LA. Like I said, I don’t know him. He’s very very very close-mouthed (at least around family) and he’s constantly surprising us. Like the site says, he was in Eastern Europe for awhile because he realized, post-Glasnost, that the poor people of Eastern Europe were stuck driving cars covered in primer. (He’s always been car-crazy.) So he flew over to Czechoslovakia and started a business painting cars. His mom only found out he was over there when she happened to turn on NPR and heard an interview with him.

He seems like a nice guy and the kids like him. He’s the kind of weird uncle who jets in last minute for holidays and then gives them ridiculous gifts. I think that’s a good sort of uncle to have.

And he’s still dating beautiful women only now I don’t hold it against him.

–>

I’m having a blog day where the only topics I can think to write about are not very nice ones where I would mostly be complaining about people. I don’t really want to do that though so I’m sitting here stymied about what to write.

Maybe I can be vague and that way I can vent without making anyone feel picked on. I don’t know though; I appreciate that vague can be boring. Hmmm. No, I don’t think I can do it.

Well, maybe having no good blog thoughts is the Powers that Be trying to get me to work on my essay. I guess I’ll go do that then. Or laundry. There’s always laundry.

Oh here’s something though. I was giving Brett a hard time about doing a lousy job of cleaning the kitchen after dinner. He’ll run the dishwasher but leave it full of clean dishes and the sink overflowing with dirty ones, which so doesn’t count as cleaning the kitchen. So last night I was really hassling him and he promised to get up early and do a decent job this time. I woke up to a sparkling kitchen and a note, which read:

A full service essential cleaning was provided by Friedman Cleaning and Supplies. “For a Brighter and Cleaner Tomorrow.”

It made me laugh and I appreciated being able to see my way clear to cook breakfast.

I couldn’t let my bitchy entries hang.

It’s not unusual for my mom to save the day. Long-time readers will remember entries like this and this and this.

My mom and I argue about stuff (homeschool archives — nuff said) and I know she’d like it if maybe I got the hair out of my eyes and smiled more (”You’d be such a pretty girl if…”) and other kind of mundane mom-things. We piss each other off periodically and then my sister runs interference (I do the same for her when it’s called for) but when the chips are down, I still call my mommy.

Brett and I were talking the other day about how we barely ever take the kids to the doctors (we have very healthy children — knock wood) and he said that if I weren’t around that he’d take ‘em a lot more.

“But you never panic when they’re sick,” he said. “Why is that?”
“Because I always call my mom,” I said. My mom is the one who reminds me that hot water bottles help tummy aches and that if the fever doesn’t come back, it’s probably not an infection.

When that agent contacted me? I hit forward and sent it right to my mother. When I feel let down by a friend? I call her because she is always — right or wrong — on my side. (It shores me up to be brave about my culpability.) And this year she saved Christmas not to mention my sanity.

Back when we used to be broke, she would paypal me money for absolutely no reason and refuse to make a big deal out of it. She would drop by with big boxes of diapers. She would sometimes call me and announce she was taking us out to eat.

“And order appetizers!” she would say expansively. “Whatever we don’t eat you guys can just take home.”

It’s not the things — the money, the diapers, the typewriter she bought when I was 17 — it’s her unwavering support. It’s that even when we’re arguing, I know that she loves me and that sometimes — ironically — that’s what drives our disagreements.

So this is a much nicer entry to leave up here. Good old mom.

p.s. Noah’s named after her — his middle name is her maiden name.

You can hear Madison simply by clicking this link here: click me!

Usually she is chattier but she was kinda into my laptop, which I was allowing her to touch for the first time EVER.

I took the kids out on Monday (it was in the low 70s) to take pics for holiday cards. Nothing turned out quite right — at least of them together.

I’m going over to my sister’s today. We’re both on the wrong side of PMS so maybe we’ll cheer each other up. At least she’s got coffee. I started crying while I was on the phone with her (my dad, nothing he’s done just the way he is sometimes) and now Noah is being exceptionally nice to me. Nothing will make a mom feel guiltier than that, I think.

You can see, with stories like this (from my archives two years ago) why maybe I wouldn’t have had the wherewithall to forge a close relationship to my little sisters. So if you’re starting a new family and want your old family to find a way to be a part of it, consider that a cautionary tale.

Jessy asked if Whitney (the myspace sister in the post below) is a half-sister and yes, she is. I have an older half-sister from my dad’s first marriage, an older sister and younger brother from my dad’s second marriage, and two half-sisters from his last marriage.

I barely know my oldest half-sister. My dad and her mom divorced when she was very young and he wasn’t very involved (understatement) in raising her. We also lived out of state for all but three or four years of her life.

My youngest half-sisters were born when I was 14 and 16, which was also (coincidentally? I think not!) when my relationship with my dad started to fall apart. Also there was a period in my late teens when I wasn’t speaking to him at all so I was not close to them. My older (full) sister is because she made a concentrated effort to be there — she remembered what it felt like to have a half-sister who couldn’t be around.

I think of my older sister and my younger brother as my family. My younger half-sisters feel something like cousins and my older half-sister, unfortunately, doesn’t come into my thoughts much at all. Sometimes it can still be difficult to be around my little sisters, too, because my father was present in their lives in a way he decidedly was NOT for us. He would never ever ever admit this even to himself but his last two children are more his than any of us who came before. It’s not that he doesn’t love us; he just wasn’t around. He didn’t change diapers. He didn’t come to school plays. He wasn’t there. (He traveled a lot for work.) He bonded to Lindsay and Whitney and they are much, much closer to him. Sometimes in my very smallest self, I’m still jealous of them for that.

I think it can be different, of course. I think the situation surrounding our divorce and my dad’s parenting brought challenges that aren’t universal. I don’t think anyone could extrapolate from my experience to say anything definitive about what it’s like to have half-siblings. (And remember, too, these are my dad’s kids and we didn’t live with him. I think it would be very different if your custodial parent had children and different in a good way.)

www.myspace.com/indiephotos

My how my father worries. She’s the youngest of two in her family, the youngest of six if you count all of us (and generally none of us do).

She got separated from her mom but they are both safe and sound!!!!!

I just saw that J’s mom registered herself as safe on the Red Cross site!!! As my mom says, hallelujah and pass the salt!

I left a message at J’s just in case she didn’t see it (it wasn’t there last night) and hopefully there will be good news about her sister, too.

Updates when I have ‘em!!!