Ricki and Sophia – A Conversation

This has been brought to my attention.

And this.

And this.

I thought Sophia was going to be too upset by all this to speak, but it turns out she’s not.

Darlings. When I first read the Chris Jones, ahem, article-

I know, right? (It’s the third link, kids.) The thing is, like, less than 500 words. I spend more time on these posts. And I don’t get paid or have a national audience.

I think, darling, that this gentleman’s efforts in this piece of writing might be indicative of his efforts elsewhere.

Snerk.

Really, what goes through a man’s head? “I admit that I am mediocre at best when it comes to pleasing women, but if my partners are uncomfortable and unenthused, it is clearly because they are bad in bed.” This is ridiculous! I would be outraged if I were not merely mystified. He calls women couch cushions and wonders why they won’t communicate with them? Couch cushions don’t talk!

Dumbass!

Darlings, perhaps I did not cover this well enough in my initial offering to you. I told you, great sex is an adventure with two participants. But perhaps I did not emphasize enough – you must make a woman feel comfortable enough with you that she’s willing to, say, rappel down the side of a mountain with you at her side, otherwise it cannot be great. You cannot just strap on the harness and then say, “Whaddaya, frigid?” when she seems nervous. Nor can you look at an obviously nervous face and say to yourself, “Well, she’s not saying ‘no’, so legally I am not obligated to do anything more before we head down the mountain.”

You think this makes us delicate flowers but it does not. You do not realize it but we are constantly doing this for you. We do not make a habit of frequent comments on penis size of other men while in bed with you.

There are probably women who do.

Then do not have sex with them; what do you want me to say about that?

Fair enough.

We do not go to the Internets, assessing the hotness or lack thereof of every male person whose picture has ever been available in a newspaper, and then acting as if we have been personally hurt or offended or slighted if we do not want to fuck said person.

That’s not all guys.

But it’s hardly any women, is it?

You’ve got a point.

We read magazine article after magazine article instructing us as to how to be more pleasing to you, both in and out of bed. As far as we can tell, your magazines mainly focus on getting us into the bed, via manipulation and trickery. They ought to focus on the one thing that would actually work consistently – show us that you are kind, decent, clean men who are very, very good at making us come. 

You know, not every girl reads Cosmo.

And not every man reads Maxim. But the attitudes embodied in those magazines are present in the wider world, are they not? Furthermore, a simple comparison of the two displays this phenomenon of which I speak. Cosmopolitan has article after article about, “Does he like that skirt on you? Really?” and “How to tell what he’s thinking by the movements of his eyebrows” and “Top Ten Sex Tricks to turn him on and get him off!” Maxim has pictures of women in tiny underwear standing next to gadgets.

And now I see the nonsense [first and second links] about how you might not even want us in bed except perhaps as distant-second proxies for your favorite pornographic movies! I admit, I was upset when I first read about this. I, Sophia, am not anti-pornography, although I do find myself wondering how they can create millions upon millions of films in which people have sex that are so devoid of true sexiness. But I am not against pornography as a concept. I think if you, or you and your partner, find the viewing of such things pleasurable, then this is wonderful for you. 

But to be satisfied with it to the point where an actual lover cannot interest you? This to me is ridiculous! What about kissing? What about touch? What about the excitement of discovering that this person with whom you want to do all manner of filthy and delicious things also wants to do them with you? What about the fun parts? But, darlings, I cannot be angry. Only very, very sad.

I have to think this all has to do with entitlement. I thought this, for instance, was an interesting read.

Pah!

You didn’t like it?

Why does he elide his evo-psych “men are just naturally built this way” ideas with his “men are conditioned by society to feel this way” ideas? Those two are exact opposites!

Granted. And, as my readership knows, I’m firmly in the “men are conditioned” camp. I think he’s so far conditioned he can’t tell the difference between his conditioning and his natural urges (which, really, we all are), and not only that, but he can’t separate enough from them to satirize them. He ends up sounding like he thinks men are justified in behaving in the ways he describes.

Another man with whom I will not have sex.

Well – that was a given.

I mean even in your imagination.

Okay. Anyway, I wonder if these things are connected. David Wong writes that men have been tricked by pop culture into thinking they are owed a woman just for being their awesome selves, and maybe they’ve also been tricked by porn into believing that those women should be willing vessels for the fulfillment of whatever fantasies they have, with no particular desires or fantasies of their own. You said before that one of the best parts of sex is knowing someone wants you the way you want them, but if it never occurred to you to give a damn what someone else wanted, if it only has ever occurred to you to concern yourself with whether or not they’ll agree to let you do what you want, then you’re not even aware you’re missing that part.

That is depressing.

Yeah. And that speaks also to the whole “rape culture” notion and the resistance to the idea of replacing “No means no” with “enthusiastic consent.”

What is this now?

You know the expression “No means no.”

Of course, darling. I have never had occasion to utter the word “no,” nor have I ever heard it uttered to me, but I am certain I understand.

Okay, good. But then there are activists who want to emphasize that it’s not enough to not hear “no,” you also have to hear an active, “Yes!” or even, “Oh, my God, yes, please, now!”

Naturally that is preferable.

I’ve written about this before. Sort of. And the resistance to the idea of “enthusiastic consent” is, on the one hand, understandable, because it’s pretty difficult to enforce legally, but on the other hand, why do so many people-

Male persons.

Uh, yeah, pretty much. Male persons. I mean, I wasn’t going to say that, because obviously, women can rape, but-

But I don’t have your nice-girl political correctness so I’ll just say it. Male persons.

Okay, thanks. So they respond with an almost absurd degree of anger at the idea that they should be responsible for making sure that the women with whom they’re having sex really, really want to be having sex with them. Which is an entitlement issue, isn’t it? To think you have a right to sex, sex being a thing you do for your own personal pleasure, as long as you can get your partner to say “yes”, that’s being super-entitled.

If you say so, darling. I think, more significantly, it is sad. It is completely pathetic that these young men – and by “these young men,” – I mean the authors of articles such as these – are so completely unable to experience the fullest and most delightful human experiences, stunted as they are. Perhaps by pornography, perhaps by this culture of entitlement of which you speak, but perhaps simply because of their own natures.

By the way, while I’m typing this, I’m seeing a commercial for Axe dandruff shampoo with the tagline, “Lose the flakes. Get the girls.” In it, girls turned off by flakes literally vaporize, because obviously women who are unwilling to have sex with you cease to exist, and then he gets rid of the flakes and even though he’s otherwise physically unremarkable, three models in bath towels fondle him. So, yeah.

I am also surprised to learn that the “blow job” is no longer in fashion.

Snerk.

Really, darlings, if you meet a man who expresses any agreement with the idea that porn is better than sex, do not have sex with him. If you meet a man who declares the blow job passé, do not give him one. It is simple.

There might be a numbers problem.

Oh?

Maybe so many guys are-

Unformed adolescents with no ability to satisfy a woman?

Yeah. That all the women will be competing over, like, seven guys.

This is not my problem. Your imagination is populated with more than enough men for me.

You’re welcome.

Then my other suggestion, for the men, is that they become one of those seven “guys.”

Bringing Up Bebe – A Book Review

I wish I could do the proper accent marks for “bebe” but I can’t. I mean, I probably could if I tried really hard, but . . . I’m not going to.

Before I begin my discussion of this is the latest parenting book/mommy memoir sweeping the world, I want to share my favorite anecdote from it. Pamela Druckerman’s daughter, Bean, who has been raised in France, is visiting her American grandmother. The American grandmother is excited to share with Bean American delicacies, such as Kraft Mac & Cheese. But Bean won’t eat it. “That’s not real cheese,” she says. Awesome.

As far as I can tell, Bebe is being received better than Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, possibly because, as Americans, we seem to have accepted that the French do everything better already – eat, dress, have sex – so adding parenting is no big thing. And also we don’t believe the French are better at anything we consider important – war, making money – so it’s not threatening to accept their parenting advice. Whereas the implication that China is beating us at parenting is . . . well, we react badly.

Of course, Amy Chua’s name-recognition still sells books. She has a blurb for Bebe And it’s interesting, because her blurb commends Druckerman for “her premise that parents of all cultures should be able to learn from one another.” I thought that was actually more true of Chua’s book, which was less a valorization of the “Chinese” way of child-rearing than it was a memoir, with a description of Chua’s parenting techniques, and the results, both good and ill. Whereas I actually think Pamela Druckerman’s Bebe is more positive on French parenting. She expresses American hesitation over some things, but mostly seems to think those American hesitations ought to be overcome in order to be a better parent.

I’m going to sound critical in this post and I don’t mean to, entirely. I got a lot out of this book. A lot of it was really, incredibly useful. A lot of it made me feel like I’ve already screwed up irrevocably, but some of the patterns and habits she described I’m definitely going to take on more in my life. Druckerman writes about The Pause when it comes to sleeping infants – starting as early as a few weeks old, you hear them cry, and then you wait to see if they actually need something or if they’re just experiencing a sleep cycle. That trains the babies to regulate their own sleep and it trains the parents to respond to the children with patience and understanding instead of rushing in with the first solution you think of. Definitely if I have another kid I will be employing The Pause.

Druckerman describes French eating habits – three meals a day, one snack, all actual food, and no constant supply of Cheerios in between. I’m going to try to move towards this.

The cadre is big in France – having a strong, strictly held framework of rules, but within those rules, more or less a free-for-all. The rules include eating and sleeping rituals, minding Mama’s “no”, and various other things depending on the family. I am terrible at being strict. I am going to try harder. As Druckerman says the French say to their children, C’est moi qui decide! (It’s me who decides.)

And I’ve already started saying that to Zoe (“C’est moi, Zoe! And I decide non!”), and I’ve started saying, “Soi sage,” and “Attend!” even though she has no clue what I’m talking about. “Attend” means “wait.” “Soi sage” means “Be wise” and is the French replacement for “Be good.” And it’s different in fairly important ways. Being “good” means being quiet and unobtrusive, doing what your parents or other adults have told you to do. Being “sage” means being in control of yourself, aware of your needs as well as the needs of others, conducting yourself in a way that speaks well of you. I’d definitely rather Zoe be sage than good.

More than any particular technique, Druckerman describes an overall attitude about children that I have tried, in part, to exercise with Zoe, sometimes with limited success. The idea is that children are people, and need to be spoken to and respected as people. They can understand the things you say to them, and they are capable of controlling their behavior rather well, if they are given the trust to do so.

She also writes of a culture where treating your children as one incredibly important and delightful part of your rich, full life, rather than your entire life and identity, is the norm. I try that, too. With limited success.

Even with all the things I like about this book, I think there are some things that Druckerman brings up without fully exploring the implications. One point she emphasizes more than once, especially in the eating and sleeping chapters, is the degree to which the French do not think of things like The Pause and the four-times-a-day eating schedule as anything special. They are hard-pressed to speak about the particulars of how they get their kids to sleep through the night so early, or eat so well. Druckerman instead investigates, discovers The Pause, and then asks a French friend, “Is this what you do?” and the French friend says, “Oh, yeah, I do that, I just never thought of it as doing anything before.” Druckerman seems to respond to this with an at-times overwrought sense that the French are just naturally magical. But there’s something more there that needs exploration. America is a country that absolutely prides itself on its individualism and its pluralism. Even in our current, bifurcated, vituperative environment, wherein the right prefers individualism and the left pluralism, we still are much more strongly committed to those ideals than most other countries are. And, in committing to those ideas, we do not take well to national consensus on much of anything, including the best ways to raise children. We are resistant to the very idea of a national character, except for one of, you know, a plurality of rugged individuals.

Most other countries are not like that. Most other countries are made up of people who, for the most part, have agreed, even fictively, to live as if they are one culture. At least, they agree more often than Americans ever agree. And France is, if not the epitome of a nation valorizing its particularity, certainly very strongly in favor of “French-ness.” (As far as I can tell.) So it’s a lot easier to have a consensus on the best way to raise children, and, when there’s a cultural consensus, then it’s just what you do, not something you have to think about. Michael Pollan has already valorized how other countries have more entrenched and culturally agreed-upon ways of eating; it’s not surprising that this homogeny would extend to areas outside the kitchen.

And not having to think about it goes a LONG way towards calm, confident parents. A LONG, LONG, LONG way. I wonder if French success is not so much attributable to doing The Pause, or the four meals, or anything else, but just the confidence of not having to say to yourself, every time your baby cries, “What should I do? Should I follow the book my mother-in-law gave me or the advice my grandmother told me or what my yoga buddy does? Is what I’m doing working? How will I know when it’s working? When should I stop trying this technique and find another in the over-saturated marketplace of parenting advice that’s available to me?” That kind of shit can drive you nuts. And it does. And it applies to everything. Many, many American mothers are walking around going, “I gave her the Cheerios, which are healthy but not local or organic, and then I made her cry it out for her nap, which is either the only way to get her to sleep or a demonically evil, psychologically scarring thing to do to your child. I didn’t let her watch TV today but then she didn’t know what her friend was talking about when he started singing a song from ‘Barney’ so do I let her watch TV or do I keep her isolated from her friends? And then she ran from me at the park and I hollered at her but was I being too harsh? Or am I obviously lax if my kid ran away from me at all?” (I may have mentioned this kind of batshit stuff before.) It must be nice to have a culture in which everybody is doing basically the same thing so you don’t have to think about it all the goddamn time. I mean, I know not every mother is a neurotic mess like me, but . . . actually, I can only think of one mother I know – and with whom I’ve discussed parenting – who doesn’t seem to be a neurotic mess like me. And maybe she just hides it better.

And I won’t even go into how much easier it is to balance work and life and family in a country that has free and/or subsidized child care for infants through school-age children, and paid-for maternity leave, and all the rest.

Which is not to say that the France she depicts is a judgement-free culture. She talks about the pressure to stay thin and chic, to be beautiful for your husband when he comes home, to have the energy to enforce the cadre and work and cook delicious, healthy meals at least twice a day and three when the kids are not in school for lunch and maintain one’s looks and be sexy for your husband and maintain a relationship with your husband such that you actually want to be sexy for him. But she sort of glides over it. She seems to think that she, as an American, is feeling the pressure in a way that the supremely confident, naturally perfect, magical French women don’t.

And I’m willing to bet that’s not true. I’m willing to believe that France is more homogenized, culturally, than America, because just about every culture is, and also because the French seem to take special pride in their French-ness. But it’s not like there are no individuals. Surely there are some French women who feel their pixie dust supply is a little low, and who wish that a child throwing a tantrum in the store or a pair of sweatpants wouldn’t be the national oddity Druckerman claims it is.

More than that, I bet there are plenty of actual French people who could pick up this book and say, “This doesn’t seem to have anything to do with my life.” But maybe I’m wrong.

The chapter on husbands is called, “I adore this baguette.” In it, she tells the story of being on vacation with another couple and all of the attendant children. The other husband made a ritual of visiting a bakery daily and bringing back the goods. When he handed his wife a baguette, she responded with a  beaming smile and said, “J’adore cette baguette!” And that is, indeed, a lovely reminder to be always enthusiastic about your partner’s efforts, etc., etc. But in the rest of the chapter she talks about how French women – most of whom do work outside the home, due to the government-subsidized child care – do a far greater share of the housework than their husbands, and a far greater share of the child care, too. We here in America complain that while women are expected to be Modern and Actualized and Do It All, men are stuck in the fifties and won’t help us with the dishes. But in France, apparently, that’s much closer to true than it is here. And yet, Druckerman writes, American wives are angry at all their husbands don’t do, whereas French wives are tickled at how incompetent men are and still happy and in love with them.

Now, I again wonder. Maybe it’s easier to be happy with your husband when your government is picking up the bill for their pre-school. Maybe it’s easier to be happier with your husband when you’re not even supposed to feel guilty about wanting a life outside your child. Maybe it’s easier to be happier with your husband in a place where it’s completely normal and acceptable for children as young as three or four to go on week-long field trips with their teachers, leaving you and your husband at home, alone, to . . . bond.

But. As a bratty American feminist, I don’t really want to laugh jovially about my husband’s incompetence around a washing machine and go about my merry way. I don’t think men are incompetent; I don’t think they’re foolish; and I don’t buy into the more American claim that they simply care less about the house being clean than women do. I think they should be held responsible for the doing 50% of the work that is maintaining a home, and that they should be held responsible for being actual partners to their wives, instead of acting the spoiled son, who, yes, sometimes makes a portion and sometimes makes all of the money. So I’m not buying Druckerman’s “The French do this better than us!” thesis on this issue.

(Because I feel it’s necessary for his honor – Jason does quite a bit of the cleaning and child care around here. And he cares WAY more about the cleanliness of our house than I do.)

If I learned anything from Alfie Kohn’s excellent Unconditional Parenting, it’s that child-rearing is not a question of, “How do I raise a child?” It’s “How do I raise an adult?” That seems to be something the French would explicitly agree with, but I wonder how serious Druckerman takes the premise. She hints at certain ways of being that are instilled in French kids early and often – polite responses to adults, philosophy in grade school, a decided lack of praise for scholarly achievement – and for the most part seems to find these positive. (She stumbles a bit when it comes to the school environment, which is apparently considered quite harsh even by many French people.) But I kept wondering about the ways France and America are different from each other for adults, and how these various emphases on one way of parenting over another might be responses to the kinds of adults we think we want, and to the kind of world those adults will have to live in. I don’t know the answers here. But I wish Druckerman’s lens had glanced up a little more often, to absorb the impact of adult culture and what parents’ goals for their children were and why those goals made sense.

I don’t mean to knock this book. As a parenting advice book, it’s really pretty good. I’m hoping to incorporate many of the suggestions and attitudes I found here to my daily routine. I just left wishing Druckerman had delved even deeper into the cultural differences. I wanted this to be less a polemic for French parenting than a description of it.

But the lesson we learned from Battle Hymn was that polemic, even when it’s not really there, sells better than description.

Ricki Cooks the Book – ‘wichcraft

This is the second installment in my new series wherein I take a cookbook I wanted desperately, bought, and then proceeded to stare at the pretty pictures of and not at all cook from for a good long time. And it’s the first one where I’m actually doing that, because the first installment involved a book I’d just purchased.

So I cooked from Tom Colicchio’s ‘wichcraft.  For the none of you that don’t know, Tom Colicchio is the head judge on “Top Chef”. I pretty much love him on “Top Chef.” I think he’s really smart about food, and I think he has a very clear point of view when he cooks, but I also think he’s very good about judging the cheftestants on their own terms. He tries to understand what their point of view is, and what they’re trying to accomplish with their food, and then judges them on how well they’ve lived up to that. So as embarrassed as I am to be using a “celebrity” cookbook, I do really like and respect Tom.

I have not, sadly, eaten at any of his restaurants. Because I don’t live near any. And we rarely have the breathing room, when I’m in NJ, to go into the city and go out someplace nice. Maybe soon.

In any event, this book comes out of his ‘wichcraft restaurants, where he basically crafts the best sandwiches he can make. In fact, the tagline for the book is “Craft a sandwich into a meal – and a meal into a sandwich.” And it’s done in conjunction with his ‘witchcraft dude, Sisha Ortuzar.

So I chose to make the Pork Sausage with Pickled Grilled Fennel, Ricotta, and Arugula. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 bulb fennel, halved and cut lengthwise into 1/4″ slices (I used two bulbs. And now, surprise surprise, I have leftovers.) (I had no idea what he meant by ‘halved’ in this context, so I just sliced them as I thought proper.)

5 tsp extra-virgin olive oil (Do I need to tell you I didn’t measure this out exactly?)

kosher salt and freshly ground pepper (Are there people who would pick up this book who don’t already know to use kosher salt and freshly ground pepper?)

2 tsp white wine vinegar (Again, did not measure exactly.)

1 lb bulk sweet Italian sausage (not in casing) (Okay, so I got “country style” sausage at my local Fresh Market. Because that’s not quite the same as Italian, I added some oregano and fennel seeds and crushed red pepper to the meat to give it some more flavor. I added too much crushed red pepper.) (Also, Tom does note – or, rather, Rhona Silverbush, who wrote the text, helps Tom note – that you can just buy links and cut the meat out of the casings. It’s not hard.)

2 cups arugula

1 tsp balsamic vinegar (Again, do I need to tell you?)

4 ciabatta rolls

8 oz ricotta cheese (And for the last time, do I need to tell you?) (Also, I bought just the regular ricotta cheese at Fresh Market. I should have held out for the homemade stuff.)

1. In a bowl, toss the fennel with some oil and salt and pepper. Then put it in a grill pan or over a grill on high heat. When it’s slightly charred (The book says one minute; it took me a lot longer than that. Then again, I was using a skillet.) remove and transfer to a bowl with the white wine vinegar. Toss and let sit for an hour or more.

2. Form sausage into four patties. Cook in skillet with a little oil, five minutes a side.

3. In a bowl, season arugula with balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.

4. Cut ciabatta rolls in half. (No, seriously, he tells you this. Man, if you don’t know “cut roll in half” is a major part of making a sandwich, I think this is not the book for you.) Place fennel on bottom. Then sausage patty. The ricotta. Then arugula. Then other half of roll. Voila! Sandwich!

So, my take? Well, for one thing, Jason, of course, needed to slather his in barbecue sauce before he liked it. For another, the ciabatta rolls I got at Fresh Market were simply too hard. I think either not ciabatta or some other bakery’s ciabatta next time. Fresh Market’s bakery has other good stuff. But not so much the ciabatta rolls.

Finally, it struck me that this was a case where this would be a better meal than a sandwich. As a sandwich, the ricotta tends to slip everywhere and maybe I didn’t cut it right, but the fennel is sort of hard to handle. If I served crumbled sausage, ricotta, pickled, grilled fennel, and arugula over pasta, that might have been tastier.

Is that just because I think everything is tastier over pasta?

Actually, you know how this would be really amazing? If I took all the ingredients, chopped them up real small, and stuffed ravioli with them.

Reframing Contraception, or, Why Men Need Contraception, Too

Here is how human reproduction DOES NOT work. A man places his penis in a woman’s vagina. She allows this because she is a slutty slutty slut who sluts. Her whorish delight in having a man place his penis inside her spontaneously creates a baby inside her womb, a sort of amoeba-like clone of her. Sometimes the wanton trollop has been contained by marriage to a just and Godly man, whose piety has been rewarded in financial security, in which case the baby is a blessing to be welcomed. But in some cases, she’s allowing men to whom she’s not married to put their penii* inside her. Then when a baby spontaneously appears in her womb, she sucks state resources away to pay for her selfish, child-having lifestyle. There are obviously no other circumstances from which a child might issue than the two we’ve just described.

Here is how human reproduction DOES work. A man places his penis in (or sometimes just near, if my mid-nineties sex ed can be trusted) and ejaculates. His ejaculate, or semen, contains spermatozoa, or sperm. One of these sperm combines with one of the woman’s ova, or eggs. That combination of sperm and egg then nestles itself in the lining of the woman’s uterus, lives there for nine months, give or take, and then exits her womb.

Let me draw your attention to the key difference here. In the first scenario, the baby is entirely the woman’s. It is created only out of her own sluttiness and its genetic material is exclusively hers. Therefore, all of the responsibility for the child falls exclusively on the woman.

But, and I know this might come as a shock to those of you who’ve been listening to certain pundits speak on the question of who should have access to contraception, that’s not actually how human reproduction works. In fact, human offspring are the product – and therefore the responsibility – of a woman AND a man!

Now, I’ll wait a minute as you digest this piece of shocking information. But then let’s apply this new knowledge to questions about contraception. In any heterosexual sex act, the couple must decide if they wish for a baby to result, or not. If they do not, they must take steps to prevent such an occurrence. One method of choice in this country is the birth control pill. If a person is in a monogamous pair, or in other ways limits his or her sexual partnerships, it may be the only method.

Now, the pill only works if the woman takes it. That’s just how it’s designed. So the woman is required to take on the chemical alterations that the pill produces. Some are good – skin clearing and periods being less of a pain in the neck are two – and some are difficult to bear – such as libido depression and weight gain and other, nastier ones occasionally. And the woman is frequently also responsible for paying for it. But the fact remains that, most of the time, both the male and female parties to a heterosexual sex act require either the wherewithal to have a child, or reliable contraception.

So let’s please stop talking about contraception as if it’s only a women’s issue, okay? I know that it affects women MORE than it affects men – but that’s only because we frequently pretend that the first scenario there is the real one. We need to stop doing that.

*ETA – My husband wants me to let you know the correct pluralization of “penis” is not “penii” but “penes”. Because he is a dorky dorky dork. Who dorks.

Obama’s First Speech After the Republican Ticket is Announced

Here’s how I hope it goes-

“My fellow Americans . . . Really? You really want me to ‘run’ against . . . him? Really, guys?”

(eyeroll)

Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to ‘run’ . . . the country. Like I do now. I’m going to keep awesoming while these fools keep . . . doing whatever the hell they’re doing, and, you know, I’ll see you in November for my victory speech.

I mean, not for nothing, but we all need the women’s vote, and he’s going to shut down contraception while I sing soulfully and self-deprecatingly. I create a NEED for contraception, bitches!

Oh, and you left-wing Democrats? All two of you? I know you’re mad at me. I didn’t close Guantanamo, I didn’t put any bankers in jail, and my AG is pretending the words ‘due process’ don’t really refer to anything specific. You know what? I don’t give a fuck. Because the guy running against me is your worst nightmare. So you’re going to back me for fear of him.

Oh, yeah, and I killed Osama. So suck on that.”

Lessons to Unlearn from “Smash”

Oy, am I going to have to do this one now?

Lesson: Threatening a woman is one way to show you you loooooove her. In last week’s episode, Michael, the guy playing Joe DiMaggio in the musical about Marilyn Monroe that serves as this show’s premise, made out with Julia, the lyricist/book writer for the Marilyn musical. They had a fling five years ago, on another show they did together. At the time, she was married with a kid and he was single. Now they are both married with kids.

So naturally in this episode, Julia basically wants to pretend that kiss – which was quite a kiss – never happened and wants Michael to leave her alone and not talk to her and not try to be alone with her and DEFINITELY not kiss her. Michael, for whatever reason, is having no qualms about cheating on his wife or endangering his child’s well-being, and wants to talk to her. He badgers her at work. He calls her at home and has a pleasant chat with her husband.  When she tells him to leave her alone, he threatens to make a scene at a rehearsal so that their affair will become known to all and sundry in her working life. He calls her at home and has a pleasant chat with her husband.

Then they fall into each other’s arms because how can you resist a love so rare and true?

The truth: Men need to respect boundaries. No, wait. All people need to respect boundaries. If a person tells you, “I do not want to see you,” then you don’t get to see them. You sure as hell don’t get to threaten their lives to make them see you. Okay, he didn’t threaten her life. Just her work and her family. Which is what she does with her life.

Look, through all this coercing and threatening, they have sex. And, if one can go by the not-at-all discrete smiles on their faces the next day, it’s awesome. So some of you might say, “See, see, the threatening and the blackmail is because he looooooves her and it’s okay.”

Right. But let’s remember this is fiction. The storytellers chose to use those behaviors to clue us in to Michael’s deep emotional thing for Julia. The storytellers chose to use positive post-sex guilty smiles to let us know that their deep emotional mutual thing is totally mutual and awesome.

And that in and of itself is the problem. Threatening someone should be the first act of a person the storytellers are going to show is dangerous. Not hotly passionate.

Darlings, some of you might see this as more goody-goody prating from my alter ego. You think that she is under the impression that dark passion and crazy emotional behavior have no place in love and lust. But darlings, the truth is, the essence of great sex is the knowledge that you can trust your lover to keep his or her counsel. If you do something deliciously dirty with your lover, something that was rollicking good fun but which would be highly embarrassing to you to have known widely, and then your lover says to you the next day, “I will tell everyone you did that thing with me unless you . . .”, you will not only feel terrible about having done that thing which was yesterday delicious and today is only dirty, you will not be inclined to do other embarrassing and dirty things with your lover, no matter how delicious a prospect those things are. 

Yeah, thanks, Sophia. And, because I can’t say it enough, we live in the stories we grow up around, sometimes it can be confusing when our lovers act like the romantic heroes of TV and movies – and fuck up our lives.

And the Zoe Hits Just Keep on Coming!

1. I feel the need to start negative. I know most of you reading this want to know all the good stuff about Zoe, because you love her and/or because you like hearing cute-kid stories. But sometimes I think mothers don’t share enough of this stuff with each other, so that when we experience it, it feels like we’re experiencing it alone. And that’s definitely how I felt one Friday when I was Shabbat Mom at her preschool.

I already feel like a kind of incompetent mother there. We started last year, and I was absolutely convinced that she would be fine in the Me Alone classes, because we’d been going to this place where the parents stay in the building but not in the room, and she had been fine from the first day I took her there. Just ran into the room and started playing without even looking over her shoulder at me. So I thought we’d be fine.

We were not fine. They had to call me to come pick her up after about forty-five minutes the first day because she just did not stop. The same thing happened the second day. I enrolled her in the Transitions class.

I should have realized that she wouldn’t be fine. The weekend before school started, Zoe was abruptly weaned when my great-aunt died and we decided my going to NJ alone for the funeral would be the end of the seemingly endless breastfeeding.

In the Transitions class, parents were supposed to stay for a number of weeks but basically be out of the classroom by the end of October, depending on their kid’s ability to withstand the loss of their parent/caretaker.

I had to stay in until January. I was the only parent not to leave on schedule. I became, in effect, an assistant teacher.

But once I was gone, she was fine. Just fine. She loved her teachers, she played okay with the other kids. It was great.

Camp was a little bit more of a struggle, and that has continued into this year.

One Wednesday, they had their Purim event, which the parents were supposed to attend. It started an hour after preschool started. The minute I came back to the classroom, Zoe started crying and reaching for me. The kids were supposed to perform some Purim songs for the parents but Zoe wouldn’t leave my lap. I decided to just go home; it was pointless trying to stay.

The next session was the Friday on which I was Shabbat Mom. We went to a Shabbat Sing, in which all the classes join together to sing Shabbat songs, and then any and all Shabbat Parents light candles with their kids in front of the group and all.

Zoe would not sit still during Shabbat Sing. She would not sit in my lap; she would not sit with the other kids. She wanted to run around the little library where this song session was being conducted. I had to take her out of the room. More than once. Then we were called back in to do the candles and things and she threw herself on the floor and refused to do it. Then her teacher had to practically carry her back to class.

I felt pretty awful about the whole thing, actually. I felt like I was failing in some fundamental way as a mother because Zoe wouldn’t do what all the other kids were doing, and because I obviously had no power to make her do anything. I felt embarrassed and angry at her for embarrassing me and then angry at myself for being embarrassed and angry with her for embarrassing me when it shouldn’t be her primary job to be a credit to me.

Anyway, on to the good stuff.

2. We were at this play structure at the mall and this little boy approached her. He said he was four. For reasons I don’t fully understand but which must have something to do with child development, Zoe took huge offense to this. “I’m not four, I’m three!” she kept insisting, belligerently. The boy tried to explain that he wasn’t saying she was four, he was saying he was four. Zoe was having none of it. I tried to intervene by, basically, repeating what the boy said about him not declaring anything about her age, and then asked if she would like to play with the little boy. “No, I don’t,” she said, with force, and then threw herself on the ground.

3. She delivers every sentence like she’s trying out for a soap opera. We went to the mall with her grandmother. At first she was holding her grandma’s hand but then she switched to my hand. “I don’t want to lose you,” she said. “You won’t lose me,” I said. “I will never lose you, never, ever!” she replied, throwing her arms around me. But really just about any time she’s speaking, she’s being dramatic.

4. She likes to announce when she’s throwing a “temper tantrum” or a “temper fit.” The latter phrase she got from Eloise.

5. Lately she’s been extremely cuddly and affectionate, even more so than is usual for her, which is a lot, and it’s awesome. She also compliments me the same way I compliment her, by telling me she loves me so much, and, lately, I’m her “best friend,” which I think she’s mostly getting from watching “My Little Pony,” and that I’m so pretty or wonderful or whatever. But my favorite is when she clearly knows that something is a nice thing to say, but she doesn’t know what it really means. So for instance, she told me I had very “clever” hair. (I assure you, even if such a term made sense in, say, high fashion journalism, I would still not have “clever hair.”) And, I’m always telling her I am the luckiest mommy in the world, so she has been grabbing my cheeks and cooing, “You are so lucky and gorgeous!”

6. She also uses “dramatic” as interchangeable with just about any other word. “That’s so dramatic!” can be claimed of just about anything – an outfit, a cookie, a smile.

7. She does know what “frustrated” means and uses that word accurately.

8. Of course, with the affection is the need to explain to her that you don’t give your mommy open-mouthed kisses. Even if you are pretending she’s your wife. Even if that is how they kiss on “Glee.”

9. Also she still puts her hands down my shirt, especially when she’s upset or tired. When I tell her to stop touching my breasts, she says, “But I need to touch your breasts to make me feel better.” If there’s a next kid, I don’t think s/he’s getting breastfed at all.

10. She has started posing for pictures.

11. Best way to tell her her outfit is a good one? Tell her it’s something Aunt Kate would like. Better yet? Tell her it’s something Aunt Kate would wear.

12. Her play has gotten more sophisticated. By herself she imagines complicated scenarios and acts them out with an invisible cast, who she sometimes chastises and sometimes lavishes with compliments. With me, she wants to take her figurines, especially her My Little Pony figurines, and have them enact story lines.

13. Oh, and somewhere, she learned Rock Paper Scissors. She loves it.

14. She loves dancing more and more. I really need to get her into classes.

15. She asks you to sit near her so you can “talk about something.” Then she issues an invitation: “What should we talk about?” Then she suggests a topic. “Let’s talk about whales.” You say, “Okay, let’s talk about whales.” She says, “What color are whales?” You say, “I don’t know, what color are whales?” She says, “There’s yellow. . . and red . . . and green . . . and blue . . . and that’s all the colors of whales.” You say, “Which is your favorite color of whale?” She says, “Yellow. Do you like yellow whales?” “Yeah, I like yellow whales,” you say. She says, “Are they your favorite?” “No, I don’t think yellow whales are my favorite.” “Which are your favorite?” “I like white whales. Like the beluga whales at the aquarium.” She doesn’t like that answer. “I don’t like white whales. I like blue whales. Do you like blue whales?” “Yeah, I like blue whales.” “Me, too. We like blue whales together!” She grins and pats your face. “What about dolphins?” And on like that.

16. She really likes to sing along to the radio with me.

17. We’ve had to get very careful about rules and choices for her. For instance, let’s say she’s looking about for food. I want her to eat something healthy, like an apple. I offer her the apple. She says she doesn’t want an apple, she wants candy. I say she can only have candy after eating something healthy, like an apple or a cheese stick. Now, if she’s in a good mood, she’ll choose one, usually the cheese stick, with happy anticipation of the candy to follow. But if she’s not in a good mood or is not really all that hungry, she’ll throw herself to the ground and cry, “Then I’m never eating anything! No, nothing! Not ever! Never ever ever!”

18. You know, this is for posterity, and I put stuff up on Facebook, but I should repeat it here. But most of you reading this also read my Facebook feed. So you can skip this item but I’m going to reprint them so that we have them forever.

She claimed she was going to China. I asked what she was going to see in China. She said, “Beautiful snow, good flowers, good-looking chicks . . .”

Zoe: Why don’t I have a penis?
Me: Because you’re a girl.
Zoe: Why am I a girl?
Me: Because you don’t have a penis.
Zoe: Why don’t I have a penis?
Me: Because you’re a girl. It’s kind of a tautology thing, know what I mean?
Zoe: (giggles) We’re being silly together!

I am Zoe’s best girlfriend because I know which one Fluttershy is and how to make her voice. Zoe is my best girlfriend because when I bring home new shoes for myself, she gets as excited as me, pull them out of the bag, and pronounces them “awesome” and “amazing.”

She got really into Clueless for a little while there. Especially the scene where Cher is internal-monologuing about high school boys and then pushing one off of her? Zoe calls it “the movie with the yellow girl who says, ‘Uch, as if!’”

Oh, yeah, she cut her hair herself. She didn’t do too bad a job. We took her to the kiddie salon to “fix” it, but I don’t think they did any better than she did.

;

I don’t know, people, I’m losing track. Especially since I’m so used to her constant performances, I forget some stuff. So if you have witnessed her being especially cute, please email me at raspberrylimericki@gmail.com and I will include your stories and comments in the next Zoe po