Yoga for Beginners (and Old Bags of Bones)

I exercise a ton, if you count racing around the streets of Brooklyn more than Forest freaking Gump. I, doe one, count it. One of these days I'm going to get a pedometer and then I'm going to feel incredibly good about myself.

I do not, however, exercise in the formal sense and I'm starting to feel like I could use some, particularly the variety which provides mental health benefits. Yoga, in other words.  I want to do yoga. I want to be calm and oozing with equanimity. I also want to be hot with a rock-hard ass.

So, I turn to a yoga class, in the hopes that it was the magical variety of yoga which makes all your problems, and body fat, go away.

It was a gentle, beginner class, full of mothers who've been out of the exercise loop. And I did, in fact, witness magic. I witnessed the magic of aging. I witnessed the magical toll that having three kids will take on the human body. Here is my epiphany:

I am an old bag of bones. Brittle bones connected by cracking joints to which useless flesh that once was muscle continues to adhere.

Thanks, yoga. I feel freaking fantastic about myself now.

Every time I moved, my body made sounds. Bad sounds, like when you try to force the plastic backing off the remote and you pull too hard so it make s pop! sound and you think," Shit, I shouldn't have done that." Except the remote is my body and even the gentlest exertion appeared to make things go wrong.

I can no longer touch my toes without howling in discomfort. I can't cross my legs without hearing my knees crack like a tree limb being broken in half.  Three kids later, my muscles are functioning at approximately 3% capacity, except for my vocal cords, which have become super-sized and all-powerful.

Downward dog used to be enjoyable. Now, my head throbs and my shoulders creak and there are shooting pains in my hands. My hands!  It's probably arthritis, seeing as my body has aged 10 years since having my third baby a year ago. I was in child's pose for about 75 percent of the class, so I didn't have a heart attack, which David would find very inconvenient. I am not even exaggerating when I say that my grandmother who is 83, could have done a more peppy sun salute.

I'm going back. Obviously. I'm going to rehabilitate this sack-of-shit body, one measly hour a week. I may no longer be young but I insist on continuing to be foolishly optimistic.

That's not to say I'm giving up on yoga. I may be an old bag of bones with zero muscle tone but I retain my stubbornness.

Gandolfini does Sendak

In a collaboration between two artists I really respect and have terrific affection for, here is  In The Night Kitchen, read by James Gandolfini.

Gandolfini's voice has always been one of my favorite things about him, and it brings to life Sendak's wild, whimsical, helter-skelter words in an accessible, easy way that's wonderfully paternal. I really enjoy . . .  especially his New York twang saying, "Til it looked OK."

Why Parents Are So Tired

As the end of school draws near and summer "vacation" rolls around, I thought you's enjoy this post on The Real Reason Parents Are So Tired. I can, clearly, relate. I've always thought the sequence of events that occur during infancy to be a major lapse in Mother Nature's judgment: first, a woman should withstand the increasing strain and exhaustion of pregnancy for nine months, then undergo the Herculean trial of childbirth and then is immediately required to care for a creature that will not sleep more than an hour at a time for several weeks. How are either parties - child or mother -- supposed to make it past the first month alive and sane? What would have made a lot more sense if, after the exertion of pregnancy anc childbirth, the baby slept for 48 hours, uninterrupted, and thereafter from 6pm to 11am without waking, for -- oh, I don't know -- 2 full months. THEN, we'd have a fighting chance.

Of course, it would be good if all you had to do for a tight ass was click your heels three times, and that shit doesn't happen either, now does it?

Father's Day

On Mother's Day, David gave me a card which read, "Happy Mother's Day! I hope the day is everything you want (just keep your expectations reasonable)." This was meant sincerely. I have a long history of feeling inordinately disappointed on Mother's Day when the kids act no more grateful than usual, no more cooperative, no more helpful. I spend all day shouting, "THIS IS MY DAY TO BE HONORED!" and "NO ONE APPRECIATES ME!" which makes it very difficult, it turns out, for your audience to honor and appreciate you.

On Father's Day, David does not have the same problem, mercifully. He does not expect a parade thrown in his honor. He does not expect his children to suddenly transform into Stepford kids. He does not expect all the stops to be pulled out and a massive jubilee to ensue. He just wants to get a burger and a beer. And we can manage that. So everyone is happy.

This year, not only did we get him a burger and a beer, the kids and I made him breakfast.

"A feast!" Seconda promised. The feast consisted of french toast, scrambled eggs and sliced peaches and carrots. Not Challah French Toast with Rhubarb Compote and Mascarpone Whipped Cream and Organic, Free-Range Egg Scramble with Heirloom Tomatoes and Essence of Sassafras. Just eggs and french toast made from the generic Key-Food brand whole wheat sliced bread we bought three weeks ago and forgot about in the back of the fridge. A feast.

"Come, Daddy," Primo urged, pulling him from the kitchen where he was already preparing breakfast for the kids, as he does every morning, and leading him into the bedroom: "You just relax and read your book. Have some time to yourself."

Five minutes later, I set off the fire alarm. Turns out you shouldn't leave butter burning for five minutes on the stove top over a high flame while you clean up the milk the baby poured all over the carpet. The alarm blared in that deafening way it does, like it's trying to save someone's life or something. The baby started screaming. The kids ran in circles in a panic. I don't know how we'd ever get our act together in a real crisis.

"DAVID!" I yelled, "GET OVER HERE!"

Still, he did get a whole five minutes of Me-Time.

Later, he and I sneaked out for brunch, just the two of us, after I craftily unloaded the big kids at a drop off birthday party and left the baby, napping, with my grandmother.

As if that wasn't enough celebration, he took Primo on a Boy's Afternoon to see Man of Steel, the which they both loved with the special enthusiasm only those with a Y chromosome can muster.

It was a perfect Father's Day, he concluded, after the kids went to bed.

A wise man, that husband of mine. Maybe I'll follow his example next year and finally find satisfaction. Or maybe he'll throw me the surprise party I'm always secretly expecting, and I'll find satisfaction that way. Only time will tell.

The Berenstain Bears: a cautionary tale about teen pregnancy?

"The dad on the Berenstain Bears is SUCH a yokel," Primo observed on the walk to school yesterday. Apropos of nothing. I think the kid just likes finding reasons to use the word "yokel:" its one of his favorites.

"Yes, he is," I replied.

"I think the whole point of that series is to show kids they shouldn't have babies when they're teenagers." He was smiling, setting up a joke.

"What on earth are you talking about?" I asked.

"Well, the mom and dad were teenage parents and that's why they didn't get their college diplomas and so they don't have enough money to live in a regular house, which is why they have to live in the trees," he explained, cracking himself the hell up.

"All they do is lounge around all day making cherry pie and going fishing," he added disdainfully.

"Where did you even learn about the pitfalls of teenager parenthood?"

"On TV of course," he said, "Where i get ALL my information!"

I was about to tell him that HIS parents got college diplomas and a fat lot of good its done us but I decided that probably wasn't the right message to be sending.

So I just said,"We may need to cut back on your screen time. Like in the Berenstain Bears and Too Much TV."

Where did my 8 year-old learn the term "eco-goth"?

Got some new boots the other day and made the colossal mistake of asking Primo what he thought of them.

"Mom, you're SO eco-Goth!" he observed.

"I don't know what that means."

"It means you're EMO and you look like you belong on a beet farm."

"Is that good or bad?"

"You look like a demented soldier ballerina!"

"Now you're just making stuff up."

"Oh, Mom," he smiled, slinging his arm around me, "I'm just kidding, you look great!"

Why I didn't learn my lesson after our shopping trip for skinny jeans, I don't know.

Making Kids Cry

This is a picture of a baby crying, which they will do when photographers give them candy and thentake it away without explanation:

Making Children Cry

They don't call the photographer, Jill Greenberg, "The Manipulator" for nothing.

 That these pictures are both sort of funny and also sort of fucked-up is exceedingly apparent to me. Apart from any ethical questions -- is it OK to "torment" unconsenting youngsters for art -- what I'm interested in is how she lights these kids to make them look like they're glowing. Only kids and supermodels look cute that shiny, and drooling.

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Fighting over dead hermit crabs

Is it just my kids or will siblings fight over anything?

Yesterday, one of our hermit crabs died. In point of fact, it was three or four days ago that the crab died - or, I should say, that we discovered him dead. He might have died up to a week before that. Who knows? Those animals are nocturnal so during the day they do nothing and look dead anyway. Its no wonder the kids haven't played with them, or even looked at them, in weeks. In fact, I've forgotten all about the crabs. Every so often, I'll pass by the Hermitage, as I like to call it, and I'll see their unmoving shells and I'll wonder if anyone in our house is making the slightest effort to keep them living. David is, I think. He's the zookeeper of the house, as it relates to the actual animals, and not just the children that act like animals. I'm pretty sure he wets the crabs' sponge which is the only thing one must do to keep those primitive life forms in good health.

Anyway, one night a few days ago, David said: "One hermit crab is eating the other."

"WHAT?" I cried. As you may know, I'm not the biggest animal-lover out there, and if I was, hermit crabs certainly wouldn't be the animals that won my affection but even I draw the line somewhere, "Is it alive or dead?"

"Which one?"

"The one being EATEN!"

"Dead. Definitely dead," replied David, "Though I can't tell if it was dead first or dead once the eating began."

"David," I said, "That is really fucked up."

And then, "Do something!"

He did. He threw the dead one out in the garbage.

I figured that he'd handle breaking the news to the kids. Honestly, they haven't so much as glanced in the direction of the Hermitage in weeks so I didn't think they'd be all that broken up about it.

Which was naive, on my part. I found this out when I accidentally broke the news to them while telling it to their part time babysitter.

"Yeah, we're down to one crab now. A one-crab household," I told her.

"What?" exclaimed Seconda, "What happened to the other one?"

"Well, honey, it died," I informed her gently.

"WHICH ONE?" she shrieked, "Whose crab?"

"I don't know," I answered honestly, "They both look exactly the same to me. I can't tell them apart."

"It was Primo's!" she affirmed.

"WHAT?" Primo piped up, "My hermit crab died? How do you know it was mine?"

"I just KNOW!"

"That is SO unfair! Why didn't SECONDA'S die?"

He did not appear to be upset that the crab had passed on, just upset that Seconda's hadn't.

This, among other reasons, is why you should not acquire hermit crabs. They may be easy to keep alive - requiring little to no effort -- but they will cause problems, even after death.

"Now what?" Primo asked, "Its just not fair that Seconda has a pet and I don't."

I was considering telling them to share the existing crab -- a joint custody situation -- or pointing out that we don't actually know whose crab died, seeing as they were pretty much interchangeable -- but then I decided to go with: "Life isn't fair."

Which is true enough.

"But to console you after this terrible heartbreak, I will allow you to play video games for ten minutes. WIll that soften the blow?"

"YES!" Primo exclaimed.

RIP Hermes. I may not be an animal-lover, may not even be able to identify the crab in a line-up but I do remember his name.