Waiting for number three

Allison, stylishly pregnant in High Line Park, NYC

I shouldn't be writing. What I should be doing is grading papers, posting assignments, building my department's newsletter which was due yesterday, or filling out student loan consolidation papers. Even though I haven't blogged in six months, I shouldn't be doing it NOW.

But I can't help it. I am waiting for Allison, my younger beautiful daughter to deliver my third grandchild. Hard to believe, isn't it? If you don't know me personally, you may be surprised to hear that I have more than one.

When Megan had Charlotte, I was still a columnist at a newspaper. In fact, she may be part of the reason I'm not still writing for them. They started asking me about my subject ahead of time, something they'd never done before. They warned me I was writing too much about my granddaughter (I counted; it really wasn't all that often).

The truth is that the powers that be weren't amused by the blonde tot's antics. But I knew my audience was; I had the emails to prove it. People loved Charlotte.

But I had more time then, and since, I have taken on three jobs, become a commuter, and have a ten-month-old grandson you've never met, Desmond Flynn. So I thought I should catch you up, before Allison delivers grandson number two.

This is Desmond Flynn, whose middle name was inspired by
 his sister, who loves Tangled.

Desmond has his moments of inconsolability, but generally has a cheery disposition, and a smile with the megawatts of a Hollywood klieg light.

He smiles all the time he isn't pissed off by his inability to talk, walk, and make you understand exactly what it is he wants. At his tender age, he seems to be angst-free, which is more than we can say for Charlotte.

If they were fictional characters, Charlotte would be Hamlet, and Des, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. (Or at least Anne of Green Gables.)

Desmond is like Charlie Chaplin, all physical comedy. He'll try to walk, fall on his butt, and turn to smile at you, like: "Did you see what I did there? I got a million of 'em."

I wasn't really prepared for a boy, but Desmond won me over, and the first time he turned that high-beam smile on me, I was putty in his hands. He is sweetness incarnate, except when he's trying to avoid sleeping.

This is kind of aunt that Allison is:
the run-through-the-sprinklers-with all-her-clothes-on aunt.
When she showed up, C asked her "Do you like water?
Do you like bugs? Mommy! She likes water and bugs!"

Allison has some trepidation about becoming a mom, even though she's been both a babysitter and a nanny for years. But I have no fear. She is heavily invested in being a family, and I'm sure she will built a rock-solid family of her own.

When we all lived together, she was the one saying, "Let's turn off the television." Let's play some games. Let's have family time."

She plays wonderful games with Charlotte, who adores her unquestioningly. C remarks when people or things remind her of "Aunt Ally."

Patrick and Ally dance at their wedding in 2011.

Another point in Ally's favor is Patrick, the husband who adores her. Although I'm sure his mother would say it is past time he was a father, I think this baby is coming at exactly the right moment. He is coming into his own as a head winemaker, and now this.

I'm sure there's a tortured metaphor to be made about winemaking being like childrearing, since you don't know the real outcome of your labor for years, but I won't go there.

Now Allison is in the hospital waiting for them to induce labor, and Megan will be flying back to New York to meet her first nephew next week. I will be watching Charlotte overnight, and I'm sure we will have a great time. Last time we have a sleep-over, she was so kind as to point out that "Pluto is no longer a planet. They decided it was too small."

Yeah, I knew that, kid. I just refuse to let go of things I have believed for 40-plus years.

Desmond, wreathed in his customary smile.

I leave at the end of the month for the East Coast, and will spend my spring break getting to know yet another boy. I'm sure I will love him every bit as much as Desmond. I hope we get another clown.

It all started with the condoms.

I mean, once I get an idea, I just can’t let go, and the idea of sex at the Olympics started when I found out that the Olympics have an official condom. It’s not exactly something that they advertise in the US, like: “Durex, the official condoms of the Olympics.”

Nevertheless, there IS an official condom, it IS Durex, and there was a flap because an Australian Olympian saw a bucket of “rogue” condoms with a kangaroo on it, thought it was funny, and tweeted a photo.

The bucket had a computer-generated sign that read: "Kangaroo condoms, For the gland downunder."

It was cute, but the Olympic organization didn't find it amusing, and in an attempt to protect their brand and sponsors, tracked down the offending latex and dispensed with it.

But the ensuing publicity (most people never knew there was an official condom) started folks thinking about what really does go on in the Olympic village. ESPN got a few athletes to talk on the record, and it turns out to be fairly bacchanal.

According to medal winner Ryan Lochte, 70% to 75% of athletes are having sex in the Olympic Village. The explanation is that fit, young athletes who have been concentrating on nothing but getting to the games finally are in a position to meet attractive people with the same interests and level of fitness. And the result is international diplomacy of a very personal kind.

The close quarters and skimpy uniforms also add to the heightened sexual atmosphere. Breaux Greer, an American javelin thrower said,  "You see what everybody is working with from the jump."

Unfortunately, he also made the cavalier remark that "even if their face is a 7, their body is a 20."

Way to keep it classy, Breaux.

Of course, being a mature woman, my musing about this wasn't imagining beautiful bodies having orgies in hot tubs (honestly...), as they are reported to have done, but rather about the kids at the Olympics. I tried to find out how minors were dealt with. Do they have chaperones? The age of consent in the United Kingdom is 16, so legally they could do what they wanted.

The athletes lived in double-occupancy rooms in the Olympic Village, so did a parent room with these kids? I can remember being 16, and the idea that my parents would have to room with me would have been horrifying. You want so much to be an adult and do what the big kids do.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 47.4% of high school students have had sex, so many of those 16-year-olds might not be virgins anyway.  But the idea that 70 to 75% of the athletes are whoring around like its spring break makes the parent in me want to keep younger participants far, far away.

Once there, athletes can't assume that they will ever get to the Olympics again, so I can imagine that they would want the complete experience: living in the village, meeting peers from around the globe, trading training tips, or whatever sports people talk about. (Clearly, I wouldn't know; have you seen me?)

Having to have a chaperone would really put a damper on things, I imagine, and all because the older competitors can't keep it in their pants. That's sad.

An amusing  Durex Olympic billboard.

It's rather amusing that previous to the electronic age, Olympic athletes had pretty squeaky clean images. They were the people on Wheaties boxes, being giving ticker-tape parades and keys to cities. Palmdale's own silver medalist, Lashina Demus, was feted at Poncitlan Square's 50-year city anniversary this week. She was there with her adorable twin sons, so it's unlikely she was involved in all this debauchery.

Considering the 24-hour news cycle and the fact that anyone with a smart phone can share photos, videos and text from inside the Olympic Village, it's difficult to keep a lid on things. (Ask Prince Harry.)

Maybe if this technology had been available when Bruce Jenner was on the Wheaties box, we would have realized much sooner what a douchebag he was, dumping his wife who supported him through all his training right after he became successful.

Previous medal winner for soccer, Julie Foudy, recalled looking at all the "eye candy" at her Olympics and wondering why she got married, and gold medalist Ryan Lochte said he felt he missed out last year because he had a girlfriend, so he made sure he was single this time around.

Hope Solo, the US women's soccer goalkeeper, said that athletes really are different from the rest of us: "When they're training, it's laser focus. When they go out for a drink, it's 20 drinks. With a once-in-a-lifetime experience, you want to build memories, whether it's sexual, partying or on the field. I've seen people having sex right out in the open. On the grass, between buildings, people are getting down and dirty."

When all is said and done, I'm glad that our Olympians are having safe sex, at least. The ESPN story reported that in 2000 in Sydney, 70,000 condoms weren't enough, and they ordered 20,000 more. Today the standing order is 100,000 official condoms. At those numbers, no wonder Durex wants to keep other companies out of the village.

And at roughly 10,000 athletes, that's 10 condoms per. That's a lotta action.

Did you miss me?

So, I’m sitting here with approximately 100 surgical steel stitches in a line from above my navel well down into what Victorian pornography euphemistically calls the “Mound of Venus.”

I can’t have sex, drive my sports car (or any car for that matter), swim, or luxuriate in a hot bath, all things that I consider essential to life. No matter how long I stand in the shower, I can’t approximate the feeling of well being that I get while submerged in water.

There are other things I can’t do which I don’t miss. Grocery shopping at the “you-bag it” store and lifting heavy sacks, for instance. And as a water aerobics classmate cheerfully crowed, “You won’t be able to vacuum for months.”

I had a “complete hysterectomy.” Did you know that there is a difference between a “total” and a “complete.”? Yeah, me neither, but just like booking a “direct flight,” when you really mean “non-stop,” there is a difference. If you’ve ever sat in an airport for four hours waiting for your “direct “ flight to resume, you’ll know what I mean.

You might be sitting there wondering why the hell I haven’t written for months. I don’t really have any good excuse other than I didn’t feel like it. I always said that I never wrote for free — there was always money or a grade attached. Until one day there wasn’t.

When I parted company with the local newspaper, I had been writing my column for almost ten years. People liked it, and my editors continued to pay me for writing it. The pittance they paid was just enough to complicate collecting unemployment and my tax filing, but it was something.

I got lots of positive feedback from people in the community. But in August of 2010, caught in the bind that all newspapers find themselves in, they decided my $200 a month could be better spent elsewhere, and discontinued my column.

I felt a certain obligation to my readers, and quickly took the column online. I tried to make it appear the same time that the column ran —Sunday morning— but I didn’t always make it. Often, I spent all morning Sunday writing about what my husband and I did on Saturday night.

It was terrific not having to answer to anyone — at the end, my editors were wanting to know in advance what I was writing about, to avoid trouble with management. About the time they told me I was writing about my granddaughter Charlotte too often, I was more than ready to cut the cord.

I could include photos, link to Wikipedia entries for those who didn't get some of my obscure references (I once had to defend using the expression “being between Syclla and Charybdis” at the paper because “people won’t understand it”), and embed videos. It was fun.

Until one day, it wasn’t fun any more. It felt like work. Unpaid work. My husband, who writes for the sheer love of it, doesn’t really understand. He asked for whom I wrote, expecting to hear me say, “me,” but that wasn’t my answer. Like the class clown, if I'm not getting money, I need affirmation, an audience, and I wasn’t getting it.

And then I realized I could quit. One Sunday, I just didn’t write. No explanations, I just didn’t. And if it takes 21 days to form a habit, I can tell you it takes fewer days to quit a habit you’re weary of.

Some people make a living out of their websites, some make enough to cover their expenses, but trying to make the site pay looked like another job to me, and I already had a very taxing one: teaching composition to college freshman. Which was another reason I had trouble writing: when push came to shove, my papers needed to be graded before I could write about our latest Los Angeles adventure.

But now I feel like writing again, perhaps because I realize that I want to write — even if it is just for me. After spending the last month waiting for this surgery to determine whether the softball-size mass on my left ovary was cancer or a fibroid tumor, I have had plenty of time for reflection. Thankfully, it was the latter, which really gives me no excuse for not fulfilling my potential.

If you are a writer, you write. It’s really simple. And I am a writer, have been since roughly fourth grade. My forced reflection period has convinced me that I need to get some of the book plans I have out of my head and onto paper, but for now, just writing this blog is a baby step.

So I’ll make a deal with you, what’s left of my readership. I’ll continue to write, and I’ll strive for posting weekly. But if I can’t, don’t be surprised. It probably means I’m torturing freshman somewhere by trying to coax a decent thesis statement out of them.

For your part, throw me a bone in the form of a comment or an email once in a while, just to let me know you’re still out there. At the right of the page is a “Subscribe by email” link. Just put your email address in there, and when I post, it will come to your mailbox . Or you can follow me with a Google or Yahoo reader by clicking the “subscribe” button.

Give the class clown some love.

Ps. While I've been on hiatus (no, that's not where the Kennedys go in the summer, as Neil Young once asked an interviewer) Charlotte has gained a little brother, Desmond. Tune in next week for the adventures of Super Chub!

Pulling strings to help Bob Baker

One of the characters in Bob Baker Marionettes
Christmas show welcomes guests.

Editor's note: This column originally ran in the Antelope Valley Press on Sunday, June 7, 2009. Three years later, Bob Baker is still hanging on, although his grip is now precarious. Humorist Charles Phoenix is doing a one-off fundraiser to try to save the theater. My husband and I took Phoenix's Downtown Disneyland Tour in December of 2011, and saw a part of the Christmas show, which was wonderful. Many of the puppeteers are Latino kids from the theater's downtown neighborhood. If you can't go to the fundraiser, try to catch the show, before the whole thing slips away.

Pulling strings at city hall took on a new meaning Wednesday, as the Bob Baker Marionettes lobbied the Los Angeles City Council to grant historical cultural landmark status to their home on First St.

The council granted the wish of Pinocchio, Fluffy the dog, and Calvin Collidisworth the song-and-dance man, and now the former movie scenery shop is on the city's landmark list. I'm not sure what that means in terms of protection for the theater, but I hope it helps.

Fans of the 85-year-old Bob Baker, marionette operator extraordinaire, were concerned back in December when they heard that the operation needed $30,000 to bring its mortgage current, or it would be forced to sell the building.

Baker has said that although he was behind in payments, he is refinancing his mortgage to a better rate, and that if people want to help, they should come down and see the show.

The poor marionettes are caught in the same bind as everyone: with less disposable income, people are having kid's birthdays at home to save money, school districts are cutting field trips, and the mortgage/credit crunch is driving up the cost of business.

Bob Baker with his Marionettes. Charles Phoenix's fundraiser  is on July 29 at 4pm.
Tickets are $75, and the details are here.

I had heard of Bob Baker for years, but I'd never seen his show until my friend Lynn and I went on Charles Phoenix's "Disneyland" Tour of Downtown Los Angeles. Phoenix, a huge fan and supporter of Baker, believes that every land at the Happiest Place on Earth can be found downtown.

For Fantasyland, he took us on a yellow school bus to the Marionette Theater and we got the birthday experience: 

a puppet show, a cake, and ice cream in those cool little Dixie cups I hadn't seen since I was a kid.

Baker isn't always there; often he is on the road doing shows, like he was on Wednesday when his puppets invaded the council chambers. But he performed the day we visited, and came into the birthday room to chat.

Watching Baker agilely working the strings, it's difficult to believe he's 85, and I could have listened to his old Hollywood stories for hours. He manufactures collectible marionettes for the Disney Corporation, and said he had a "handshake deal" with Walt himself.

Charles Phoenix (in mouse ears) gives a tour of the
Bob Baker Marionette Theater as part of a tour. Phoenix is doing a
 fundraiser for the Los Angeles institution.

His long career, begun by working with director Mervyn LeRoy, has spanned decades. He operated the aliens in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," made shoes, stockings and nightgowns dance in "Bedknobs and Brooksticks," worked the marionette that sang with Judy Garland in "A Star is Born" and one of his puppets was serenaded by Elvis Presley in "G.I. Blues."

You might think that children raised on video games and movies with sophisticated special effects would scoff at the time-honored marionette show, but the kids at our show were enthralled.

The folks working the puppets wear black and are in plain sight, but after a few minutes you forget that they are even there. The puppeteers breathe such life into the creatures that the children sitting on the floor are transfixed.

Baker has vowed never to give up the fight to keep the theater open, and I hope he succeeds. My granddaughter Charlotte is only two months old, and I want to give her a birthday party there when she's old enough.

A very Gorey evening....

Our official portrait from the Edwardian Ball at the Belasco Theater in Los Angeles.
I  regret that you can't see Jim's cool gunfighter's coat in this picture. But you can see my ray gun.

I'm not sure why I love to dress up so much. Psychiatrists might have a theory about self-loathing, and they might be right. I haven't been comfortable in my skin since sixth grade. When you're not happy with the way you look, pretending to be someone else makes a lot of sense.

My favorite gown from Age of Innocence.
Now this is better than Renaissance clothes. 

A close-up of my ray gun.

Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I can remember dragging my mother's best white peignoir set out of her drawer, wrapping a ribbon crossways over my chest and declaring myself Helen of Troy. At which point she forbade me to drag her good nightgown all over the neighborhood, especially in late October.

When I had kids, I spent so much time making them costumes, I never quite got around to making one for me. A notable exception was in the late 1990s, when I made a red satin Edwardian ball gown, which would have been suitable for the Titanic. In fact, I did wear it for formal night on a week-long cruise to Mexico. It hangs in my closet, a mute reminder that I'm not as thin as I once was.

Here is the gunfighter coat with all the
 accouterments that April provided.
You can see a Gorey character behind him,

The Society for Creative Anachronism and the Renaissance Faire gave me lots of opportunity to dress up and pretend to be someone else, but 16th and 17th century costumes were not as detailed and delicate as liked. I gave a Russian party once, and April Ray of Daisy's Costumes on Lancaster Boulevard turned me into Anna Karenina and my family into that of Czar Nicholas.

So when my husband and I decided to go to the Edwardian Ball, I knew just where to go. I went into Daisy's with a sheaf of photographs and drawings culled from the Internet. You can't go into Daisy's and browse, because only she knows where everything is. You have to go in and say, "I want to be steampunk," and show her examples.

April got excited over one drawing that had leather straps and buckles holding up an overskirt and a corset top, and when your costumer is having fun, you get a great outfit. She took one look at my husband and exclaimed, "Oh, I've got a wonderful gunfighter's coat that will just fit you!"

We still haven't mastered the art of taking our own
 photo yet. How do those kids do this?

We ended up making about seven trips to Daisy's Costumes. I bought a striped steampunk corset and a ray gun, as well as goggles for Jim off the internet, and April made me a holster for my gun. I already had tea-length crocheted gloves and Victorian boots.

When we got inside the Belasco Theater, it was like stepping into a film. The venue actually is from the Edwardian era, generally described as beginning with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and ending with the start of the first World War.

This is the main theater at the Belasco. We paid a fortune
for one of these tables, but it was great to have a place to roost.

There was a guy playing a guitar made out of a shovel, called appropriately enough, Shovelman.

The place was awash in crinolines, corsets, high-topped ladies' boots, spats and top hats on men in a variety of time periods. Lots of the women had those tiny top-hats perched at a jaunty angle.

The Edwardian era was well-represented, as was steampunk and Victorian. I only saw a few truly authentic Edwardian costumes, but this wasn't about authenticity, it was a giant party. Everyone made at least some sort of effort.

One of our friendly neighbors, a steampunk naturalist.
She had butterflies all over her clothes, an Edwardian
walking skirt, a leather corset and goggles.
Jim thinks she was a little lit. I think he's right.

Waiting in line for a martini, I looked around and saw men in full safari gear and pith helmets, gentlemen in evening clothes who looked like they just came from seeing Jenny Lind perform, ladies in low-cut dresses with dazzling necklaces, and even a few men in Oriental robes and turbans, looking like Ram Dass from A Little Princess.

I was sad that I forgot my camera, but we both had our iPhones, so we got a few photos. People were coming up to us and exclaiming how great we looked, and asking to take our picture. We were doing the same, and everyone we met was remarkably friendly. Couple would just come up and introduce themselves, and chat.

One of our balcony neighbors insisted that the only way we could take her picture was if I was in it with her. She was a steampunk naturalist, and truly looked like an Edward Gorey drawing.

I believe that is actor Christopher Shyer (J. Edgar)
with the accordion, but I'm not 100% sure. His female
companion was a big hit with photographers all night.

Oh, did I mention Gorey? The Edwardian Ball, which began in San Francisco, is dedicated to the author and illustrator, whose black and white drawings of the bizarre lives (and deaths) of Edwardian families have been a favorite of mine since high school. The Vau de Vire Society reenacts Gorey stories with the blessing of the author's trust. This year's offering was The Iron Tonic, a tale about what happens when denizens of a home for the aged discover a magic elixir.

Couples were waltzing on the main floor to prerecorded music before the entertainment began. From our perch in the balcony, we had a great view. The master of ceremonies was fantastic, and changed costumes three or four times. You can see a video I shot of the opening number here.  Footage of the San Francisco ball is playing on the screen behind him.

The evening's entertainment also included Rosen Coven, the "World's Premier Pagan Lounge Ensemble," a string based musical group who are among the originators of the Edwardian Ball, and various vaudeville-type acts.

Feeling like the Edward Gorey character
from the PBS Mystery! titles.

The latter included aerialists, a whip act (get your mind out of the gutter), and a vastly entertaining Western shooting act which turned the gender tables. The shooter was a tall buff woman in a barely there buckskin top and pants shooting balloons off an "Indian maiden," who was the most flamboyant  queen I've ever seen. He was wearing nothing but a loincloth, moccasins, and a feather, but he might as well have been in rhinestones. Politically correct? No, but hysterical.

The only real anachronism was Creature Feature, who describe themselves as a "shitty rock band who writes songs about shitty horror movies." Here is a video of them which I shot mainly to show you the background video. It reminds me of Terry Gilliam's animation for Monty Python. Imagine what Gilliam could have done with computers!

Here's a link to a Huffington Post article with photos. You will see a photo of the tarot card reader to whom I paid $20. She read a three-card spread, then we chatted and she rubbed scented oil in my palm. It felt very decadent.

We want to go to San Francisco next year. That ball is an entire weekend, in a much larger venue. They actually had a bicycle-powered merry-go-round at that one, and many more vendors. But I think we'd like to come bank to this one again next year ask, and bring friends.

But a year is a long time to wait to dress up again. Maybe I should look into the Pickwick or Jane Austen societies. You know they've got to have parties, right?

Coming soon....the Edwardian Ball

Our official photo from The Edwardian Ball.

Sorry, it's been a couple of weeks since I have posted. We have had a busy social calendar, and it's hiring season for colleges, so I've been applying for jobs. This weekend I will post our adventures at The Edwardian Ball, so stay tuned.

Be my Valentine!

Today is Valentine's Day.

Any woman who says she doesn't care about that is a liar. Or Amy Farrah Fowler. But judging how Amy melted over that tiara, even she might be susceptible.

Oh, we say we don't care. We rationalize that our husband/boyfriend/shack job is plenty romantic throughout the year, and romance shouldn't be confined to just one day. If we are survivors of the 1960s, we might say that romance shouldn't be institutionalized, but spontaneous and free, like running through a meadow. (Yeah, just like we used to do under the influence.)

If we are very cynical, we consider the multi-billion dollar business this day set aside for showing love has become, and we say it is just another "Hallmark holiday" like Grandparent's Day, and dismiss it. (Speaking of that, I didn't get a Grandparent's Day card last year, what gives?)

But the truth is we'd sell our mothers for a dozen roses (I prefer peach, but the traditional red would suffice) delivered to the office. Because it's not really about whether we get roses, but rather that we are seen getting roses by the rest of our office mates,  "esse est percipi" (to be is to be perceived) as philosopher George Berkeley famously put it.

Like so much that happens today, if we can't put the picture on Facebook, it didn't really happen. We need to be the object of envy in the office.

When I was first divorced, I was invited to a girls-only Valentine's Day party, where unattached women drink and scoff at Cupid and his obviously bad aim, since they are still single. I was uncomfortable, because I hadn't given up hope. Sure, my husband dumped me after 18 years of marriage for someone younger he met on the Internet, but that didn't mean I was unloveable. My Prince Charming was right around the corner, I believed.

Thirteen years later, I was still waiting, still single with no significant relationship to speak of in all those years, and none on the horizon. I left the office that Valentine's day bitter and discouraged, after seeing bouquet after bouquet arrive for happily pair-bonded (as Amy would say) co-workers. Now, I was finally at that cynical place where I hated the whole holiday. I finally got it.

I left work heading straight to BevMo to buy a bottle of Bombay Sapphire to drown my sorrows, but not before I spied an errant rose in the foyer floor of the office. One tightly closed little rosebud that hadn't found its way to the beloved. I ground it to pieces under my heel, and just kept walking.

It was agit-prop theater, to be sure, but oddly, it made me feel a tiny bit better. Little did I know that my "I hate Valentine's Day"message was received by the co-worker holding the door for me, and he was almost  moved to invite me out for a drink. As he puts it now, if he had, it would have speeded up our courtship by a good six-months.

The next Valentine's Day, I still didn't get roses in the office, because I didn't work there anymore. I had to quit to avoid getting fired or getting him fired for intraoffice dating. It was a small price to pay. I haven't had a full-time job since, but I did get a full-time romance.

And I married the King of Romance. We don't exchange gifts on Valentines, but we go to a special dinner and dancing every year. Today, he is taking me to the Queen of Hearts Ball at the Edison in Los Angeles. It is a 1920s setting with a very strict dress code. Since it is a ball, he's wearing a tux tonight.

So now I have become one of the envied. And yes, I am back to loving Valentine's Day, just the way I did when my girls gave little neighborhood parties with heart-themed paper plates and heart-shaped sugar cookies we baked.

So, for all my single friends — don't give up hope. It took me 13 years to get swept off my feet, but when I did, it was marvelous. I'm sending good thoughts out into the universe for you.