Oh, shut up.

I’m sorry.  I have no grievance against you, May.  You’re a lovely month, what with the blossoms and the balmy weather and the little puppies and . . .

Oh, my God, I just realized–it’s almost JUNE.

No, no, no.  Slow down.  Make it stop.  To quote George Jetson, “Get me off this crazy thing!” 

I just have too much to do right now–so much that even though a lot of it is perfectly pleasant, I’m still looking at the weeks ahead and wishing the days away.  For one thing, I have three kids “graduating” from various schools (I’m putting graduation in quotation marks because only one is high school; the other two are elementary and middle schools and whenever I refer to those as graduations, I think of Mr. Incredible’s wonderful rant–”It is not a graduation! He will be moving from the 4th grade to the 5th grade. . .  .They keep inventing new ways to celebrate mediocrity”).  There are more events connected to these three milestones than you could imagine were possible.

But before we even reach those, we have the end-of-the-year musical performances.  This week, I’ll be sitting in a school auditorium five separate times, for somewhere between an hour and two hours, alternating between cold-sweat terror when my kids are onstage and total boredom when they’re not.

Um . . .  not that other people’s kids aren’t wonderful and talented and adorable and all that.  They totally are and when I say “boredom,” I really mean, “enthusiastic enjoyment.”

Phew.  Saved that one.

I know, I sound all Scroogey, except it’s not Christmas. We need a word for a late-spring Scrooge, for someone who frowns at soft breezes, shakes his fist at the sun, and doesn’t see what’s so great about tossing away those bulky coats and sweaters.  I’m willing to sacrifice myself to the cause: I could be a good springtime Scrooge.  My first name is too normal and my last name is too difficult to pronounce, so maybe we could combine them:  ”Click?” “Cabnik?” “Clabnik”?  Oh, I like Clabnik.  That’s sort of Dickensian.

Okay, so if you’re like me, just feeling overwhelmed by everything you need to do before you get to summer vacation, feel free to tell the next person who says, “Don’t you just love this time of year?” “Not really.  But don’t mind me.  I’m a total Clabnik.”

Maybe it will catch on.

Oh, and there’s LESS THAN ONE WEEK LEFT to get the e-book of EPIC FAIL for only $2.99.  Do it now, or regret those unsaved dollars forever.

Reports of my entombing are exaggerated.

I do leave the house once in a while.  Quite frequently, in fact.

But like most exaggerations, there is a kernel of truth to that crazy shut-in image of me.  Sometimes I feel like I have this bungee cord between me and my home: it can stretch but sooner or later it starts tugging me back.  Hard.

I know not everyone feels the same way.  Some people like to keep moving, spend their days out in the world, seeking new experiences and making new friends.

Those people are wrong.

Here are the reasons why I’ve discovered it’s best for me to leave my house as seldom as possible.

1. WEATHER.  There’s weather outside, people.  Even here in beautiful sunny Los Angeles, there’s weather.  Inside a house, you can control your climate.  You go out in the world and you lose all control over that stuff.  Do you know what it’s like to be in a t-shirt when the temperature dips to an unreasonable 63 degrees?  It’s cold, man.  It’s cold.  Well, mildly cool, at any rate.

2. OTHER PEOPLE.  Even more unpredictable than the weather.  Sure there are those salt of the earth types who are a pleasure to meet.  But then there are all the others.  The Kardashians are out there in the world beyond my house.  So is Snooki.  And that guy who gave me the finger yesterday because he thought I had honked at him even though I hadn’t.  None of these horrible people is in my house.  I think.  I should probably go check out that noise upstairs just to make sure.

3. LINES.  Everywhere you go, you have to stand in line.  Have you seen my local Starbucks?  The queue stretches out the door.  Do you know how long it takes me to make a cup of coffee in my own home?  Okay, it sort of depends on whether or not I cleaned out the coffee maker beforehand–probably not–and how many times I spill the grounds and the water–and whether I bother to clean that all up right away or not–but the point is, I go right to the front of the line here.

4.  405 CONSTRUCTION TRAFFIC.  For those of you who don’t live on the west side of LA, let me explain to you this little construction project they’ve been doing on our only major north/south freeway.  Basically what happened was this: Satan called his minions to him and said, “I want to drive men crazy with fury and frustration, divide brother against brother, wreak havoc, and make grown women tear their hair out in anguish,” and someone said, “Three years of construction along the 405 in west LA should do it.”  Far better to be a prisoner in my own home than venture east after 2 pm on a week day.  Far better.  Far better.

5. GETTING DRESSED.  I’m home right now, working on my computer, and I’m wearing a soft sweatshirt I bought at a thrift store that my kids say looks like “a towel,” a pair of knee-length sweat shorts that were handed down to me years ago by a then-14-year-old, glasses (haven’t put my lenses in yet) and fuzzy blue socks.  If I left the house like this, people would cluck their tongues and the nice ones would hand me money, which wouldn’t be all bad, but still . . .  No, leaving the house requires real clothing, and I hate real clothes.  They have buttons and zippers and you’re supposed to wash them after you wear them.

6.  THE PETS.  You’d think the neediness of my two dogs and my cat would mean I’d be desperate to leave the house, but the truth is that it’s better to keep up with their eating, entertainment and toileting needs as they come up, and NOT leave them alone for a while, because the homecoming is too much to deal with when I’m already exhausted from having ventured out into the world.  One step into the house and I’ve got two dogs hurling themselves at me and a cat meowing his lungs out.  ”PAY ATTENTION TO ME!” they all scream, when all I really want to do is urinate and check my email.  (Not at the same time.  I swear.)  If I don’t leave, they don’t get so nuts.  Well, they do, but it’s spread out more.

7.  FAMILY.  If members of my family are here in the house, I don’t want to leave it.  I like my family.  They get my jokes.  They love me.  They’re not scary, mean, or unpredictable.  Sure, they can occasionally be annoying, but that’s why bathroom door locks were invented. Speaking of which:

8.  BATHROOMS.  Home bathrooms are better than bathrooms out in the world.  You know it and I know it.

9.  MY KITCHEN.  I love my kitchen.  It has my favorite foods in it.  It has roughly a dozen different kinds of coffee making products in it (see above).  It has a big oven that I use on an almost daily basis for baking cookies, brownies, and cakes.  It’s always open and it’s only in my home.

10. HAPPINESS.  Happiness is snuggling up on your bed with members of your family and several warm pets and watching something terrible like SMASH or something wonderful like GAME OF THRONES and knowing that whatever horrors are going on in the world outside your door, for the moment you’re safe and sated and comfortable and entertained and cozy and surrounded by people you love.  Why wouldn’t I prefer that to pretty much everything else?

Ridiculous.

I don’t even want to grace this ridiculous cover with any more attention, but I’m sure you’ve already seen it anyway–the preschool-aged kid on the stepladder sucking at his (gorgeous, thin, blond) mother’s nipple.  Yeah, that’s going to start a useful dialogue.

Some mothers breastfeed.  Some don’t.  I did with each kid for about a year.  I have friends who nursed their kids for longer, friends who did it for only a few weeks, friends who pumped and gave their kids breast milk in a bottle, friends who used formula, and friends who I have no idea what they did because it’s their OWN FUCKING BUSINESS.

Sorry.  Forgive my language.  I’m just pissed off at TIME Magazine.

Even with all this variety, I didn’t know a single person who nursed her kid on a stepladder, which might make a cynical person think that the editors of TIME staged the picture to make the image  as unappealing as possible.

Why?

The only possible reason is to be inflammatory.  To create a noxious image of a nursing mother so women who didn’t nurse have a reason to feel superior to women who did, thereby putting nursing mothers in a defensive place where they have to start lashing out and pointing to all the medical evidence that breastfed babies are healthier than bottle-fed babies, thus making the mothers who didn’t nurse even more defensive and eager to return the attack.

Are we having fun yet?

I say we tell those editors to go screw themselves.  I say we smile at mothers who are offering their breast to their babies and smile at the mothers who are offering a bottle.  And like all good mothers, let’s simply ignore TIME’s bad behavior until they realize they’re not getting attention for it and they stop pulling this crap.

I was at the Literary Guild of Orange County’s Festival of Women Authors this weekend, surrounded by the nicest, most well-read and intelligent and just WONDERFUL women I’ve ever met and I felt brave and supported enough to tell a very painful story about a previous speaking engagement.  A woman had pulled me aside after I was done and reamed me out for “being offensive.”  I had used the term “full-time mother” to describe myself, and she said that was an insult to all working mothers, who, despite being at work all day, are just as much mothers as the rest of us.  I was so exhausted after hours of making speeches that I didn’t do the smart thing (i.e. simply say that I meant “stay-at-home mother” and of course didn’t mean to offend anyone) and kept rambling on, trying to defend my use of the term and digging myself in deeper with her.  She made it clear I was a hateful human being. I cried all the way home.

I told this story to the lovely women at my table this weekend, and one of them said, “I know what happened: someone had once made her feel bad about being a working mother and she was carrying that around inside of her and that made her explode against you.  Don’t give it another thought.  We just all have to be kind to each other and let every mother make the choices that are right for her.”

This same woman also traded me a piece of chocolate cake for the fruit-flavored desert I’d been given, so I would have loved her anyway, but this pretty much sealed the deal.

I wish she were an editor at TIME Magazine.  She’s way ahead of all of them.

So my wish this Mother’s Day?  That all of us mothers could be kind to one another, accept that we don’t all need or want to make the same choices when it comes to bringing up our kids, but that as long as the choices are made out of love and commitment and kindness, you can’t really go wrong.

And tell TIME Magazine to go sit in a corner until it can learn to play nicely.

Today’s no different.  This is not a political statement.  It’s maybe a philosophical one.  But it’s not political.

I am in favor of love.  I’d like to see our country choose love over hate whenever possible.

That’s it.

Maybe it’s an oversimplification, but sometimes you need to step back and see things as simply as possible.

People know the difference.  They can come up with excuses and arguments and try to recast debates to make their choices look less ugly, but deep down they know when they’re choosing love and they know when they’re choosing hate.

Love is about acceptance and tolerance and inclusion and empathy.  Hatred is about building walls and calling names and finding ways to divide us all.

Choose love, not hate.

If you find yourself reading this and disagreeing with me because you think there’s a secret agenda here, then I’d ask you to look deep inside yourself and think about the choices you’re making.  Because hearing someone simply say, “Choose love over hate” shouldn’t make you uncomfortable.  And it shouldn’t feel political.  It should feel right.

It’s not politics.  It’s humanity.

Choose love over hate.

For those who haven’t seen it yet, this version stars Alice in Wonderland, whose real name is Mia Washawashawoohoo, Magneto, and Billy Elliot, who seems to have hung up his dance shoes (Don’t do it, Billy!  You were born to be in the balley!).

Now before I go any further, I should warn you that I wrote my college senior thesis on Jane Eyre.  And here you thought I was a nerd.  Nope, totally COOL.  Actually, it wasn’t just on Jane Eyre.  It was also on Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, which for some reason no one ever makes movies of, and people SHOULD, because what’s sexier than a boss who puts on a nightgown and a wig just to get in bed with his maid and steal her virtue?  Seriously–DON’T YOU WANT TO SEE THAT IN A MOVIE?  I know I do.

Back to Jane Eyre.

********Stop right here if you’ve never read Jane Eyre, not because I’m worried about spoiling it for you but because you shouldn’t be wasting your time reading stupid blog posts when you could be reading one of the most romantic books in the entire universe.  GO READ IT.**********

So the movie did a nice job of moving through Jane’s early years, which is the part of the book that I find absolutely unbearable because almost everyone is cruel to poor passionate little Jane and I hate when little kids are lonely and mistreated–not that other people necessarily like it but it seems to get under my skin more in fiction than it does anyone else I know.  Anyway, the director got us safely through that part and then she meets Rochester and I happen to find Magneto very appealing and sexy even when he can’t bend metal, so that was good and Alice in Wonderland is just the right mixture of plain and pretty, and  Judi Dench was kind of wasted but it’s always nice to see her, like when your great-aunt shows up at your wedding and you can’t spend that much time with her but it’s nice to see her dear old familiar face out there in the sea of people.

There’s never enough dialogue between Jane and Rochester to suit me in adaptations–it’s always (understandably) truncated and (less understandably) dumbed down, I guess so modern audiences will understand it, but the whole POINT of their talks together is that they’re able to communicate with each other in a way no one else can keep up with, so it’s supposed to go over your head a little. Anyway, they successfully connect, nd then we all know what happens (or if we don’t, how many times do I have to tell you to stop reading this and go read THAT?) and then Jane runs away, meets Billy Elliot, inherits a fortune and goes back to find Rochester.  And then.  Nothing.  She holds his hand and they kiss.

The End.

Didn’t anyone involved with this move READ THE BOOK?  The whole point of the ending of Jane Eyre is that their positions are reversed: now she’s the one who’s rich and strong, and his life has been ruined and he’s lost various body parts, and now she gets to TORTURE him the way he tortured her.  And that’s why it’s so incredibly satisfying.

See, when Rochester’s rich and powerful, he torments Jane by pretending he’s going to marry another woman.  He’s well aware Jane loves him.  He loves her.  But he strings out this whole “I’m going to marry someone else” thing until her passion explodes and he can say, “Ha, just joking, I really love you as much as you love me.”  Fine.  Great.  But at the end of the book, when she’s doing better than he is, she turns the tables completely, and tells him all about cute Billy Elliot who wanted to marry her, and who’s a much better dancer than Rochester is.  Rochester sits there, blind and suffering, assuming she’s going to leave him for this better-looking guy, until SHE says, “Ha, just joking, I still love you.”

It’s total wish fulfillment for every woman who’s ever had to wait on a man’s pleasure (and back in 19th century England, I’m guessing there were quite a few of those).  And they completely cut it out of the movie, ending it with a whimper, not a bang.  Come on, guys–we already know Jane’s capable of love: it’s the fact that she can match his cruelty with her own that makes her so awesome!

2.  Adding extra words to titles, like calling New Girl, ”The New Girl,“ or Where the Sidewalk Ends, ”The Crack at the End of the Sidewalk.”  (Okay, they were kind of right to laugh at me about that last one.)

3.  Sighing after I’ve been told that one of them has a) gotten a very low grade on a test; b) forgotten to tell me that he needs to bring snack for some school meeting the next day; or c) berated me mercilessly for some failing of mine.  Apparently my sighs are very hurtful to their tender feelings.

4. Singing.  The second I try to croon along to something, I’m ridiculed for not knowing either the lyrics or the tune. Even if I’m all alone in a room and start singing softly to myself, some child is sure to shout from somewhere far away: “That’s not how it goes!  Can’t you even hear yourself?”

5.  Drinking.  I take one sip of wine, and I’m accused of being a witless, amoral drunkard.  Who raised them to be so Puritanical?

6.  Dressing shabbily.  They find it especially disconcerting when I’m wearing my favorite thrift store soft hoodie (“It looks like a towel”) or anything from the Eileen Fisher line of clothing (“That’s just frumpy”).

There was a time when they wore onesies drenched with drool.  And I never ridiculed them for that.

7. Dancing.  They blame me for the fact that they laugh so hard whenever I start moving to a beat that they fall down and hurt themselves.

8.  Neglecting to pick up the mess they make in my car.  It’s apparently very embarrassing to have a friend get in your car and see the dirty socks and old Jamba Juice cup you left there a couple of days ago when it’s CLEARLY your mother’s responsibility to crawl into the back seat every day and pick up your trash.

9.  Entering a room without realizing that they’re video-chatting with a friend, and blithely saying something horribly inappropriate like “Hey, it’s bedtime–you should get off the computer.”

10. Chewing.  Apparently I “crunch too much, especially on things that shouldn’t be crunchy.”

12.  Highlighting something, then clicking on Edit, then on Copy, then on the new page, then on Edit and then on Paste.  Apparently there’s a faster way of doing this and I’m a pathetic loser for doing it the long way.

13.  Writing about them on Facebook or on this blog.

14. Breathing

And I'M the embarrassing one?

2.  My daughter came home “sick” today and is listening to loud music and singing along.  Every once in a while she stops singing long enough to tell me she “still feels really sick.”  Uh-huh.

3.  The cat keeps coming downstairs and meowing, and because we have a dysfunctional relationship, I know that once the dog wakes up, I’m going to have to carry the cat to the litter box and wait up there with him until he goes.  The ultimate killer of any momentum.

4.  I’d rather drink coffee and eat homemade Twix bars than try to figure out how to get this new idea off the ground.  The first few chapters are hard.  Oh, who am I kidding?  I’d rather drink coffee and eat homemade Twix bars than do pretty much anything else. I’ve already gone back to the kitchen about five times for refills of both.  And as soon as this friggin’ dog wakes up, I’m going back for sixths.

5.  My friends are being funny on Facebook, and it’s so much easier and more entertaining just to hang out with them there than stare at Microsoft Word wishing I knew how to make this thing work.

6.  It’s dark and rainy and cool and it would be so nice to curl up in bed with a junky book.  Then the dog could sleep on top of me without my butt hurting.

7.  I should really finish cleaning up the kitchen.  That’s Job Number One.  But I don’t want to clean the kitchen.  But how can I convince myself to write (Job Number Two) when I haven’t completed Job Number One?  Better to ignore all demanding tasks and waste time than think about everything I SHOULD be doing.

8.  I don’t wannnnnnnnaaaaa work.

9.  Did I mention the thing about my butt hurting?  Because it’s hurting even more now.

10. I’ve lost my focus.  I think I left it somewhere in the nineties. Oh, look, there’s something shiny over there!  What should we have for dinner tonight?  Something smells funny in the house.  I think my throat is starting to hurt.  I wonder how I’d feel if I saw a hologram of someone I loved who’d died.  Why do adults like kale so much more than kids?  If you squeeze your butt muscles when you’re sitting, you can raise yourself up like an inch.  These mosquito bites are really itchy.  I am definitely getting a cold.  Socks are nice.

Well, that’s enough work for now!  Time for more Twix bars.  Except there’s this dog on my lap.

<sigh>

If I hadn't left my home, could I have done THIS?

My grandmother called me a stick-in-the-mud when I was 13.  She got me.

So what was I doing at Coachella last weekend?  And why was I having such a good time there?  I was far away from home, pushing my way through the biggest crowds I’ve ever seen, on totally unfamiliar terrain–and I’ve never been happier.

It’s possible I need to leave my comfort zone more often.

I know that when the moment comes–when I’m supposed to leave my house to go somewhere (especially without my entire family–I’m happy to go anywhere with the whole family, because then I’m a turtle, carrying my home on my back), I’m going to balk.  I always do.  Whether it’s a cocktail party, a school meeting, a literary festival, when the time comes to go, I don’t wanna.  But that’s why it’s all the more important for me to say YES when I’m invited to go somewhere, do something, step outside that nice little box I call my home.  Once I’m committed, I have to go.  And if I go, maybe I’ll actually discover that I like where I am.

That’s what happened with Coachella–I would have canceled if I hadn’t promised my son and friend a year in advance to accompany them, and now it ranks as one of my favorite weekends of all time.

Not every experience is like Coachella–sometimes I break out of my comfort zone only to find that I am, truly, uncomfortable.  And I’ll never like having to drive long distances.  And when I’m separated from too much of my family, I feel this constant strain, like something in me just needs to get BACK.  But it’s worth a little discomfort to discover unexpected joys, so I’ll keep forcing myself to say yes to new experiences.

See you at Burning Man!

(Oh, also, I’ve been meaning to share two links with you all.  The first is to a fun post someone sent me called “20 Incredibly Rare Author Interviews, Unearthed.”  Check it out–it’s fun reading.

The other is to a piece I was interviewed for, on a blog called Healthism, about helping your child with autism prepare for college.)

And yet the entire previous week, I had been trying to figure out how I could get my son, his friend, his friend’s mother (who’s my friend) to agree to leave the Coachella Music Festival as early as possible on Sunday.  I mean, how much time could someone like me really spend at a music festival?  I have a kid in college.  I wear reading glasses.  I have a band of middle-aged pudge around my waist.  I drive a minivan, for goodness sake!  I’d seen photos of people at Coachella and they’re all young and goodlooking.  Trendsetters.  The girls all dress in adorable little jeans shorts with bikini tops so their flat stomachs can be shown off.  Beautiful young hipsters should go to music festivals.  Not . . . you know . . .  me.

So I figured I’d be uncomfortable and out of place there and counting the hours until I could leave.

And I did count the hours, only it was with disappointment at how quickly they were dwindling.

I had the time of my (middle-aged, suburban) life.  One of the greatest weekends ever.  Over much too soon.

Some stand-out moments:

1. Being basically right in the front of the stage that first afternoon for Jimmy Cliff (whom I adored as a teenager and who’s still great)  and then Arctic Monkeys.  Me.  Right in front.  Screaming and cheering and singing along with the rest.  Happy as a friggin’ clam.

2. Realizing that Jimmy Cliff and Arctic Monkeys were only the beginning of days of fantastic music.  Suddenly totally getting why people love this festival.  Four stages?  Constant choices?  Music everywhere?  Unbelievable riches.

3. Making a mad dash to get Coachella hoodies for me and my son that first night when it started raining and the temperature kept dropping and dropping.  So much for the concept that the desert is always hot.  The cute little girls in their bikini tops were all stealing their boyfriends’ drug rugs and draping them over themselves to keep warm.  No matter–it was great to have an excuse to buy hoodies that listed all the performing bands on the back.  Now we’ll never forget.

4. Walking and standing all day and then collapsing into a nice warm comfy bed at night and sleeping like a baby.

5.  Feist, the Shins, Florence, Fitz and the Tantrums, Gotye, the Black Keys, etc etc etc.

6.  Fish tacos.  Really really good fish tacos.  So good that it didn’t matter that my teeth were chattering from the cold when I was eating them.

7.  Finding a few stolen moments to sneak off for a glass of wine (well, a plastic cup of wine) with my friend, the two of us sitting–actually sitting–music thumping some distance away from us, having a heart-to-heart about our families and lives, then happily getting back on our feet and heading toward the stages again to meet up with our sons and hear more great music.

8.  The young man next to me at Awolnation, who, when people started crowd surfing, turned to me and said, “Don’t worry.  I’ll watch out for you and take care of anyone who comes along.”  And then he really did.

9.  The young man with the top knot and tons of colorful make-up who was standing with a group of his very tall friends in front of me at Gotye, and who spotted me arching my neck and said kindly, “You’re smaller than me.  Come stand in front.”  (Note: I was smaller than almost everyone there.  But he was the only one who took pity on me.)

10. My 18-year-old son telling me he was glad we went together.  Even if I’d hated it, I would have loved it just for that.

So glad I went.  So very very glad.

Strolling behind the boys at Coachella.