Maxi dresses are all the rage. Which is a pity, because most women look dreadful in them. In order to look good in a maxi dress, you need to be tall and slim. I love maxi dresses and I’m tall and pretty slim, but even I sometimes think they cling a little much to my fatty deposits to look really good. Short women, dumpy women, big zaftig women, when they wear maxi dresses they all look like trolls or Cleo Lane on a bad day. Of course, this does not deter all these many women, and the streets are full of short women hoiking up overlong hems and large women cruising down the street in acres of fabric looking like they’ve been attacked by an overzealous decorator (the word ‘swagging’ springs to mind). Really, what are these women thinking? Don’t they have mirrors? Or even just eyes? (I don’t have a mirror anymore, but there are enough shop windows for me to be able to see that I am but a shadow of my formerly sartorially acute self).
I miss my clothes. Most of the clothes I brought to GB are the ones that I would not mind too, too much if they got baby-related effluvia on them. Today, for example, I am wearing a pair of grey linen trousers that I had made from a piece of fabric Fur and I used as a table cloth Christmas 2005. The linen cost $2 at the Russian Market in Phnom Penh. I think Son-Ca in Hoi An charged another $4 to make them into tailor-made trousers. I did just notice today that the fabric around the zip seems to be giving out. I noticed quite a while ago that the ass is saggy. Luckily my $15 H&M men’s floral shirt covers most of both of these deficits.
But I live in a provincial English town. What do I care what I wear, what I look like? . I guess in some ways Cheltenham and New York are, for me, actually quite similar in that respect. You can wear anything in NYC, too. You’re never going to be the most stylish person or the least stylish person, so just wear whatever you want. Quite liberating, really. Cheltenham, home of the world famous racecourse and a Regency spa town full of glorious Georgian buildings clad in golden Cotswold sandstone, is quite a posh town. There’s a lot of money here, and I think people fancy themselves as quite smart. But it’s smart in a matching cashmere twin-set, boucle suit, patent shoes or sometimes Laura Ashey kind of way, and let’s face it, neither of those is really my style. So I wear very random assortments of what clothes I do have here: Levi Red culottes bought from a consignment street rail with a green cardigan and grey slip-on All-star lowtops. Enormously baggy pale grey Helmut Lang cotton pants with a ‘Got Hope?’ Obama campaign singlet and afore-mentioned Converse. Cream cotton hiphuggers with red climbing roses all over them, a grey jersey smock and cream gladiator sandals. These are all great garments, but it’s a limited selection, and there is a lot of wearing of jeans (admittedly, very cool jeans, but still…) and shapeless shirts with the sleeves rolled up.
I USED TO WEAR COOL CLOTHES! COOL CLOTHES THAT FIT! I’m the person who managed to find things at the Barneys Warehouse Sale (cf. grey Helmut Lang pants) years after it stopped being a place at which you could really find much worth buying. I’m the person who almost spent the first money from her student loan on a pair of Manolos…in 1993!!! (The only reason I didn’t buy them was because they were so damned uncomfortable). I’m the person who bought herself a 30th birthday present of a cashmere Jil Sander suit…at 90% off. I’m the person whose lovely, lovely clothes are IN STORAGE IN BROOKLYN!
Tomorrow I will wear the maxi dress I bought for $20 at a storefront sale on Canal and Ludlow. It has a plunging neckline and a bold green and cream ikat print (it is 3 years old, people). It is much nicer than the HIDEOUS prints on some of the maxi dresses I see here. Someone has to show these people how it’s done, and as long as I’m here….
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Forget Freud. Please
I had a dream about George Clooney the other night, except I kept calling him Gordon Brown. Go wild, my people, go wild.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Free employment
Kids love cigarettes. And beer. And bits of broken glass. My idea for David Cameron's Big Society programme--in which voluntarism replaces the duties of the state--is to fire all the park workers and set little kids loose on the parks instead. Kids are, after all, much closer to the ground, especially if they are still crawling. If other kids are like Lilla, they are guaranteed to find and attempt to ingest every single butt, bottle cap and bit of filthy, casually discarded detritus in any greensward.
Genius. My career in public policy is finally secure.
Genius. My career in public policy is finally secure.
The Wheels on the Bus
Some of you may know how much I loathe this song and, in fact, now use it as a playgroup numerus clausus: if at any point during the morning we have to sing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’, I decide never to return to that playgroup. This has meant that there is an ever-shrinking number of groups we can attend, because that freakin’ song is as ubiquitous as it is insipid. I know there will be a lot of insipid crap in my future, especially as I am the mother of a daughter, and young girls seem to have targets on their backs at which companies take direct aim with their most insultingly insipid wares. But “The Mummies on the bus go chatter, chatter, chatter…” Really? In 2010? Give me a motherfucking break.
'The Wheels on the Bus' makes me want to throw myself under a bus. Or, better, to hijack said bus and make the driver drive me and Lilla at ‘Speed’-like speed to the nearest major airport with transatlantic departures. I want to bring Lilla up in a place where we can see breakdancers and mariachi players in the subway. In fact, I want to bring her up in a place in which we can see breakdancers and mariachi players in the same car in the subway. Hmmm, I wonder what place I have in mind…. I’ll tell you this for free, the damn wheels on the bus don’t even go round there—especially on crosstown buses--because of the traffic. Take that, insipid song-singers!
'The Wheels on the Bus' makes me want to throw myself under a bus. Or, better, to hijack said bus and make the driver drive me and Lilla at ‘Speed’-like speed to the nearest major airport with transatlantic departures. I want to bring Lilla up in a place where we can see breakdancers and mariachi players in the subway. In fact, I want to bring her up in a place in which we can see breakdancers and mariachi players in the same car in the subway. Hmmm, I wonder what place I have in mind…. I’ll tell you this for free, the damn wheels on the bus don’t even go round there—especially on crosstown buses--because of the traffic. Take that, insipid song-singers!
Monday, July 12, 2010
Baby crack
OK, whose idea was it to give babies Cheerios? I might as well have given Lilla crack. I don’t care what it did for her fine motor skills—all that picking up of teeny tiny breakfast cereal hoops—the stuff is highly addictive and full of sugar. Like me, she will favor sugar over all other possible foodstuffs, and like me, she will probably have terrible teeth (especially if we stay in GB). And I don’t want to hear shit about me being a bad role model eating doughnuts beside her while trying to feed her mashed butternut squash or carrot soup; she doesn’t know what a doughnut is. Yet.
She does, however, know what Cheerios are. Her face literally lights up into this big cheesy smile when I take the box off the shelf. Her first word—and her first tattoo?--will probably be “Cheerios”. I should try to get her on a Cheerios ad. Maybe the revenue will pay for the dentistry.
Actually, that’s not entirely fair. Though all of the above is true (Lilla loves Cheerios, British dentistry leaves a lot to be desired, I am a bad, doughnut-eating parent), Lilla does actually like a lot of foods at the moment and/or when she feels like it. I picked her up from her day at nursery the other day, and the daycare workers were agog at her ability to basically eat anything within range, from an entire kiwifruit to a variety of vegetables, some ground beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, a round of wholewheat toast, plain yogurt (at a sitting)…She can double-fist broccoli. If I don’t peel grapes fast enough, she shouts at me--literally shouts. Boy, that was a mug’s game, the grape-peeling; I never should have started that. I was glad when we ran out. It’s much easier to deal with feeding her chunks of mango. She also has expensive taste in fish. So far, she has loved Dover sole and wild line-caught salmon (blech!). She tears at chicken with her little bottom peg teeth. As my friend, Mick, pointed out when he saw her eat, she does give whatever she’s eating a second shot at life —food goes in, comes back out, goes back in. For the record, she loved his paella. Also for the record, I did NOT give her any of his duck in port and ginger sauce on New Year’s day; I kept it all for me.
Then, of course, there are the days when she won’t eat anything at all (except, given the chance, Cheerios). She raises her hand and turns her head away in gesture reminiscent of Diane Wiest in “Bullets over Broadway” (“Don’t speak!”): “Darling, I couldn’t possibly eat THAT. What are you thinking, offering me THAT?”. Often THAT is exactly the same food she hoovered up the day before, carefully stored by me in itty-bitty Tupperware pots in the fridge. She purses her lips. She takes food in and then lets it roll back out. Sometimes she even balks at broccoli, though here she admits of something of a compromise: she puts a floret in her mouth, sucks hard, takes the floret out and chucks it over the side of her chair like discarded gum that has lost its flavor.
I know I’m not supposed to stress out about what she eats; I don’t want to give her food ‘issues’ and I am assured that no baby has ever deliberately starved itself to death. My primary care doctor/general practitioner assures me that “children are like dogs” in that they eat what they need. Ooooooo.K. But, really, left to her own devices, Lilla would eat nothing but fruit, crackers and, of course, Cheerios. Meanwhile, who am I to say anything about healthy eating habits? I who miss the ready availability of doughnuts whose ‘best before’ date is in another calendar year than the one in which they are bought? Who loves a candy whose taste is so artificial it’s indescribable (Tootsie Rolls, if you feel like sending/bringing any)? Who was first words were, according to my father, “Cheeseburger, french fries and a small Coke, please”? Seriously, who am I to worry about the presence of protein, complex carbohydrates and fresh vegetables? Wellll, if it’s not my intake, not my food pyramid…..
As you can see, I am still bewitched by Lilla, and though I am still, on some days, one rock short of a pocketful with which to walk into the Severn River, I am constantly aware of how fortunate I am in my misfortune that I get to spend so much time with her. Had I taken maternity leave from a job in the U.S., I would have had to have been back at work months ago and would only have seen Lilla in the morning rush to get out the door and the wind-down routine of feed, bath, bed (and weekends). As it is, I often miss her when I take these little breaks to the café across the street (which does NOT have internet access). The solution is clearly to be independently wealthy…or shacked up with an employee of Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan. In fact, my latest plan is to become an employee of such an organization…on their corporate social responsibility/philanthropy staffs, sort of like how I was at Cleary. So if any of you know anyone at a big international firm (that would ultimately get me back to the US) or anyone in corporate philanthropy (like a corporate foundation), please, please let me know.
UPDATE: Lilla continues to be a typical toddler in her fickle attitudes towards food, and sometimes barely eats anything at all, though her weight and general health are fine. I attach a picture of her eating peas (the night this picture was taken, I had to keep making more and more servings; the next day, she had clearly had enough and spent the entire meal squashing the proffered peas with the end of her finger and then throwing the remains over the side of her chair >sigh<).
Oh, and her first word, after, “Det!” ("that", with finger pointing) was “Duck” and then “Qua” which is either (a) what ducks say or (b) evidence of her precocity in classical languages. I await “mama”, “mom” etc…
She does, however, know what Cheerios are. Her face literally lights up into this big cheesy smile when I take the box off the shelf. Her first word—and her first tattoo?--will probably be “Cheerios”. I should try to get her on a Cheerios ad. Maybe the revenue will pay for the dentistry.
Actually, that’s not entirely fair. Though all of the above is true (Lilla loves Cheerios, British dentistry leaves a lot to be desired, I am a bad, doughnut-eating parent), Lilla does actually like a lot of foods at the moment and/or when she feels like it. I picked her up from her day at nursery the other day, and the daycare workers were agog at her ability to basically eat anything within range, from an entire kiwifruit to a variety of vegetables, some ground beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, a round of wholewheat toast, plain yogurt (at a sitting)…She can double-fist broccoli. If I don’t peel grapes fast enough, she shouts at me--literally shouts. Boy, that was a mug’s game, the grape-peeling; I never should have started that. I was glad when we ran out. It’s much easier to deal with feeding her chunks of mango. She also has expensive taste in fish. So far, she has loved Dover sole and wild line-caught salmon (blech!). She tears at chicken with her little bottom peg teeth. As my friend, Mick, pointed out when he saw her eat, she does give whatever she’s eating a second shot at life —food goes in, comes back out, goes back in. For the record, she loved his paella. Also for the record, I did NOT give her any of his duck in port and ginger sauce on New Year’s day; I kept it all for me.
Then, of course, there are the days when she won’t eat anything at all (except, given the chance, Cheerios). She raises her hand and turns her head away in gesture reminiscent of Diane Wiest in “Bullets over Broadway” (“Don’t speak!”): “Darling, I couldn’t possibly eat THAT. What are you thinking, offering me THAT?”. Often THAT is exactly the same food she hoovered up the day before, carefully stored by me in itty-bitty Tupperware pots in the fridge. She purses her lips. She takes food in and then lets it roll back out. Sometimes she even balks at broccoli, though here she admits of something of a compromise: she puts a floret in her mouth, sucks hard, takes the floret out and chucks it over the side of her chair like discarded gum that has lost its flavor.
I know I’m not supposed to stress out about what she eats; I don’t want to give her food ‘issues’ and I am assured that no baby has ever deliberately starved itself to death. My primary care doctor/general practitioner assures me that “children are like dogs” in that they eat what they need. Ooooooo.K. But, really, left to her own devices, Lilla would eat nothing but fruit, crackers and, of course, Cheerios. Meanwhile, who am I to say anything about healthy eating habits? I who miss the ready availability of doughnuts whose ‘best before’ date is in another calendar year than the one in which they are bought? Who loves a candy whose taste is so artificial it’s indescribable (Tootsie Rolls, if you feel like sending/bringing any)? Who was first words were, according to my father, “Cheeseburger, french fries and a small Coke, please”? Seriously, who am I to worry about the presence of protein, complex carbohydrates and fresh vegetables? Wellll, if it’s not my intake, not my food pyramid…..
As you can see, I am still bewitched by Lilla, and though I am still, on some days, one rock short of a pocketful with which to walk into the Severn River, I am constantly aware of how fortunate I am in my misfortune that I get to spend so much time with her. Had I taken maternity leave from a job in the U.S., I would have had to have been back at work months ago and would only have seen Lilla in the morning rush to get out the door and the wind-down routine of feed, bath, bed (and weekends). As it is, I often miss her when I take these little breaks to the café across the street (which does NOT have internet access). The solution is clearly to be independently wealthy…or shacked up with an employee of Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan. In fact, my latest plan is to become an employee of such an organization…on their corporate social responsibility/philanthropy staffs, sort of like how I was at Cleary. So if any of you know anyone at a big international firm (that would ultimately get me back to the US) or anyone in corporate philanthropy (like a corporate foundation), please, please let me know.
UPDATE: Lilla continues to be a typical toddler in her fickle attitudes towards food, and sometimes barely eats anything at all, though her weight and general health are fine. I attach a picture of her eating peas (the night this picture was taken, I had to keep making more and more servings; the next day, she had clearly had enough and spent the entire meal squashing the proffered peas with the end of her finger and then throwing the remains over the side of her chair >sigh<).
Oh, and her first word, after, “Det!” ("that", with finger pointing) was “Duck” and then “Qua” which is either (a) what ducks say or (b) evidence of her precocity in classical languages. I await “mama”, “mom” etc…
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