things i learned at kindergarten transition night

I attended "kindergarten transition night" tonight at L's future elementary school. It's sort of a pre-orientation thing, where they tell you what you need to start doing with your kid so they don't freak out the first day of kindergarten. (Why yes, they did ask me to write their press releases, how nice of you to ask!)

I learned many things. 

Did you know that if your kid misses 10 days of kindergarten, by the 3rd grade they're an entire month behind??

There's a kid at her school named Link. (He'll be in the first grade.) Which is some kind of awesome. If I had named L Zelda, they would have been a match made in kids-who-grew-up-in-the-80s-and-90s-heaven. Also, nerds. 

Did I say I learned many things? I may have exaggerated. 

There was this woman who pronounced "feelings" like "fillings" and it took me a minute to figure out why once every few weeks the kindergartners got a visit from the guidance counselor to talk about their "fillings". So that occupied a few minutes of brain work for me. 

And I mentioned there was a kid named Link.

This blog post degenerated really quickly. Sorry friends, it looks like someone is not handling the transition well to kindergarten. 

white lies

This morning, I'm walking around smiling to myself while L plays on my bed.

"Why are you smiling, mom?" L asks me.

"Because I am thinking about something happy," I tell her.

"What?" She asks, impertinently. (I'm just kidding, it's not really impertinent, but still like, what do you mean 'what?')

"You," I respond, still smiling.

I love that Lena totally buys this. Like, of course, if I am walking around smiling a knowing smile to myself, I must be thinking about how wonderful she is, because what else is better in the world than knowing the love of motherhood. (Except you know...you know.)



The reality was, I was thinking about this College Humor video that I had watched yesterday at work that was a movie trailer for a live action Dora the Explorer movie. And it was really freakin' funny. I was thinking about that. And smiling. That's my story at least, and I'm sticking to it.

found in country

I was talking to Julian about searching for things on the internet when you don't know what they're called, and sometimes the internet totally follows through. For instance, "red bugs on cement wall", which I think the urban legend is that they are chiggers but they are really harmless clover bugs! I told L this and she was like, "But why are they on walls." And...I had no answer for that. Google says they eat clover, isn't that enough??

Children dude. Keeping us curious. Also this is totally one of those moments that my dad will cite as "Rachael does not have a curious scientific mind, and Lena is way better." Because I did not ask why the clover bugs were on the cement walls in the first place. And so.

ANYWAY,

so I read this poem a million (read: at least 8) years ago. And I remembered really liking it. And about once a year, I try to find it on the internet. All I remember is that it's about Vietnam, it has the phrase "In country" (which is a really ubiquitous phrase about the Vietnam war, I have subsequently found) and I think it's by a guy named Bill. Oh and there's this crazy image of an old lady, and what I imagine to be yellow teeth.

So I google it, all variations of "In country" "bill" "poem" "vietnam" "yellow teeth", and I have never found it.

Until today. Talking about this with Julian, I google it one last time just for funsies.

and.

I find it.

This is crazy!! This is the internet!! And it's not quite how I remembered it. There are no yellow teeth, but there is an image of an old lady, and a harrowing last line.




IN COUNTRY



Fireblass blink
on Bien Hoa airstrip.
My bladder aches and I’m afraid,
but the Swedish girls says, “Stay put;
the seat belt sign is on,”
and pokes out the overhead light.
I can smell her mix
of tension and perfume,
feel the splash of woman hair
against my face
one last time.

We circle, descend, circle,
then it’s morning,
then it’s real
MP’s rout us
off the Northwest Orient
into a furnace
of burning shit and JP4.
“Run, run,” they shout,
“Run, run. You’ll miss the bus.
You’ll miss the bus to Long Bien.”

Mama-sans,
heads wrapped in old cloth,
lean against wooden posts and yawn.
One drags a broom
In front of the banner,
WELCOME TO IV CORPS,
and turns to look
but I look away.
I didn't know death
had such lively eyes.



Bill Bauer

april in pictures

\

dependency

I was talking with this guy (a guy!!) at a party, and we were watching my and some other kids running around, and out comes the perfunctory small talk re: kids--Oh if only we had that much energy!--as if an invisible hand is somehow forcing us to stand in place, not allowing us to put down our beers, forbidding our feet to move. Ahh, adulthood.

So he says something like, how do kids have so much energy? and I respond, you know, I wonder when we lose this. And he replies, college, maybe? Which says a lot about a person, probably. My chronic ennui set in around high school, so this guy clearly does not have as many issues as I do. Naturally, I pretend, that for me too, I lost my endless energy in college. So what is it about college, then, I ask, and he answers, I don't know, you start drinking alcohol, needing coffee in the morning. He trails off. That's it! I say, It's chemical dependence, and he laughs, because we have just solved the universe.

I'm thinking about this, because I'm at the dentist, waiting for L in the waiting room, and I had this thought that if I was a millionaire, or an entrepreneur, or you know, had any more energy or motivation, I would totally start a chain of coffee carst that followed around bedraggled parents and adults. I would park right outside daycares, elementary schools, outside the waiting rooms of dentists and doctors.

And then I realized that I have an unhealthy chemical dependence caffeine and I should probably do something about that.  Like, eventually. Sometime. Maybe.

Lena's new morning routine. She says, "I like watching birds with Antigone."

running together

I've been reading books lately that have been set in San Francisco, and they are all first person-ish narratives, and they're all mid-thirties drifter dudes, and it is really hard to keep them straight. They are, The Dead Do Not Improve by Jay Caspian Kang, A Working Theory of Love by Scott Hutchins, and Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.

so many things

I've been wanting so badly to sit down and write, but for what feels like the first time in a lot more times to come, there just isn't time. 

I'm moving tomorrow.

I saw my friend Mikey last week, and I said, I can't believe it's happening so fast. And he said, Yeah, that's what happens when you actually do what you've been talking about doing. I laughed, of course, because it's so true, but it also didn't occur to me until later (much later) that hey, I've got a lot of people rooting for me. And a lot of people who have been listening to me talk about wanting to move out and be on my own, and now that time has come. So...yeah. I'm doing it.

I did realize something. I suck at packing! I might have an anxiety disorder! Why can I get nothing done! Why can I make no decisions right now!

My mind is only thinking in lists. I walk from my car to work, from work to car, car to daycare, and my mind has this constant litany throbbing in my mind. Toys, books, kitchen. And then the need list: toilet paper, detergent, garbage bags. (Oh yeah I need to bring garbage bags from home when I move in tomorrow.)

I MOVE OUT TOMORROW. I'm not sure I even realize how big this is. It only took me five goddamn years, but I am finally moving out of my parents house. I'm moving out of my parents house!

Oh, and it's springtime, finally. Somewhere between the endless lists and the one line of Macklemore's 'Thrift Shop' that runs through my head ("I'm gonna pop some tags, only got twenty dollars in my pocket"), the old me pops through. 

Yup. Still got it. 

Happy spring y'all. 

**

Oh one last thing. I used to think that fall was my favorite season. Because fall is edgy, and summer ends, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and sweaters and layering and all that. But man, after a long winter? Anyone that doesn't love spring is probably a psychopath, that's all I'm saying.