So I'm in Georgia. Visiting my mom and everyone else in the frickin' world. Meaning that my grandmother is here. My sister and her husband and daughter and stepson are here. My dad and stepmom were here. My brother is here. My sister is coming with her boyfriend.
So how's the baby handling it? you ask. As if you didn't know.
Fucking. Hell.
Actually I'm being melodramatic because tonight she saved most of her fussing up for the right before bed and then there was a MELTDOWN. Like a serious China Syndrome MELTDOWN that occurred. There was acute radiation poisoning. People died. It was pretty awful.
It's the tears that kill me really. I know in my mind you know that nothing is happening to her. Nothing ACTUALLY bad you know. She's not in pain or sick or in danger. She's just mad. Like really really really reallyreallyreally mad. But just mad. And then I see those big giant tears rolling down her cheeks (yeah, lucky me I got one that actually produces tears)and I want to just rush out into the middle of the street and offer the next person who drives by my daughter. "Please take her. Take her. Because I'm pretty sure anyone would be a better parent than I am. I mean LOOK AT HER! TEARS!"
It's a feeling. You know. It passes. Whhheeeewwww.
My mom and I were alone in the kitchen and she said this:
"I wanted to let you know what a good mother you are. It's been really neat to see you transform like this. It's really amazing."
"Thanks. Well I love her. I love being her mom."
"I know you can tell."
Aaaawwww.
Paul Gude: I just got back from a meeting!
jtothep716: hooray
jtothep716: bep* is happy and trying to roll over while watching Judge Judy
jtothep716: The people on right now are pretty spectacularly white trash which I think makes them look interesting to her
Paul Gude: She is observng the situation and judging it accordingly.
jtothep716: and she is wearing a pink and fuzzy dress
jtothep716: which is crucial to being able to make good decisions.
Amen.
*Note - Bep is our nickname for Betty. Etymology is as follows: Baby, Bay-py, Beppy, Bep. I am starting now to call her Bubby and Bub.
So I leave Betty on the floor on a quilt when I go into the kitchen or pop upstairs to go pee or you know whatever and when I come back she has rotated 90-180 Degrees from where she was when I left the room.
I finally figured out how she does it, but I would like to hear your theories.
I wish you could see my garden. And I use the term "garden" very loosely. It's more a refutation of any theory of nature that makes it seem stingy or spare. There are plants back there that are taller than I am. And the yard was cleared last winter! Just in the past two months these plants or weeds or or or whatever the hell they are are just shooting up to the sky. I swear you can practically see them growing, hear their seed pods and buds and flowers creaking and finally bursting open. The soil is BLACK and filled with bugs and worms. I feel like if I could plant myself in it somehow all my aches and pains, all my creases and lines, all my dry patches and calusses would vanish an I would somehow be restored.
I also am suspicious that my backyard is some sort of haven or petri dish for the plant that will take over the world. The terrestrial triffid. Although, I guess in the end it turned out the triffids were terrestrial. I've never seen the movie, but the book rules.
Hope I didn't ruin it for you.
Like you were totally going to read it anyway.
Unfortunately I have no idea what's in my yard. I've never ever lived anywhere with a garden. Military housing. They pave EVERYTHING. I know about the morning glories but that's it. Everything else looks like obscenely fecund tropical plants with leaves bigger than your head. The dude who lived in the house before us was a Japanese man who totally cultivated a garden and then let it go to seed when he lost his job. So god only knows what's out there. Someone said she thought one plant was some sort of squash variant. There is one primrose, one tulip, one STALK OF CORN, a purple lilac bush, a pink lilac bush (I never see pink ones anymore and now I have one!), another bush I've seen around that grows green flowers in spherical clumps (absolutely stunning I might add), a cherry tree, and a huge swath of resplendant, humid, generous, overwhelming, luscious, sexual, burgeoning, tremendous, succulent, feverish nature nature nature nature.
I don't want to touch it, but I know my neighbors will kill us if we don't so something to you know get things under control.
Sexually repressed Philistines.
I might as well tell you who they are:
Stephanie Timm
Sheila Callaghan
Sarah Ruhl
Allison Gregory
Huh. All chicks. Neat.
I think Brendan Healey maybe? He's a dude.
I am sitting in a nexus of fantastic playwrights. Honestly. I mean it. Playwrights who actually make me want to do something crazy like reach into myself and fuckin' write. They are all gonna just do it. And they're all gonna like be it and show us all how its done, yo. Writing new language and bashing their minds into themselves they resolve in this indescribable writing that is utterly theatrical and human and crazy and funny. I feel like I'm witnessing something that I can't possibly be witnessing. Like I'm witnessing the Harlem Renaissance or the Beat Movement or something.
I want to hit myself in the head and bleed into a cup and print on the cup in Sharpie the date and cover it in Saran and shove it in the freezer and show people the scar on my head and say "I saw it and read it and witnessed it and so... I have the cup in my fridge. Wanna see it?"
By the way, the baby is great, and beautiful, and impossible. I left her at a film shoot with Paul, cause I had a rehearsal and she went to pieces. Unfortunately, the going to pieces thing lasted a whole extra day. She was happy as a clam until I set her down and went into the kitchen. As soon as I was out of sight... calamity. She cried and huffed and sobbed and sucked air and waaaa'ed and bawled for three hours.