Nov

12

No more horse penis

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Dylan often asks for one of us to draw him a horse on the Magna-Doodle, and over time the horse drawing requirements have become more and more complex. At first it was acceptable to simply have a basic horse-like figure, then there was the need for a saddle and bridle. Eventually a cowboy became necessary, and then somewhere along the line my asshat husband started drawing a wholly unnecessary piece of genitalia to, ahem, flesh out the picture.

Pretty soon our sweet dimple-cheeked two-year-old was begging—and I know, in the context of this writing, that the word begging sounds horribly wrong, yet it remains an accurate representation of his passion behind his demands—for a horse penis with each drawing.

“Can I have a saddle?” he says, adorably. Then: “Can I have a penis?”

So the other day he’s asking for a horse and JB’s dutifully scribbling away and Dylan clarifies that he wants ALL of the horse parts if you know what he means and I think you do and out of nowhere Riley chimes in that actually, he doesn’t WANT the horse to have a penis.

After a (fantastic, should-have-been-recorded) conversation about the whole thing, eventually Riley decided he needed to give his father a ticket. Because that’s how people sometimes get an official smackdown on their actions, you know?

And that’s how my husband received the world’s most potentially upsetting note from a 5-year-old. Happily, JB paid his fine of one quarter and all has been okay since.

ticket

Nov

11

Scales

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The Halloween decorations have been packed away, and while I am not ready to festoon my house with glittery Christmas flair, the stores are certainly ready for me to do so. Every display window is suddenly jammed full of ho-ho-ho, every object less about the thing itself and more about the moment it promises to deliver. I’ve been budget-crunching for long enough that I’ve mostly stopped lusting after what I cannot have, but the holiday crush, ah, it’s something else entirely. There is so much stuff everywhere, my god, so much stuff. It’s all so tempting and well-lit and offered through a whirling cloud of nostalgia and I tell myself it’s the twinkling pretty paper on an enormous calculating machine that can break you if you’re not careful but jesus it still presses my I want buttons one after another. It seems custom-designed to make me grab for all sorts of things that are just out of reach.

Money money money money. Time time time time. Time is money or money is time or maybe the two should have nothing to do with each other but they’re standing there with locked hands nonetheless. Red Rover, Red Rover. A school course description catalogue arrived in the mail a while ago and I left it on the table for a night before folding it, unopened, into the recycling. There’s no money right now, or maybe the more important fact is that there’s no time, or maybe it doesn’t matter which there isn’t enough of.

I miss writing, not for deadlines or assignments, but for the pure joy of it. There’s not much time for that lately, either.

There are plenty of other things, though. So many good moments lately, laughter and silly rituals and conversations I wish I could capture in amber. Store them away preserved, intact, for some future day when I can draw out just a microscopic amount and be flooded all over again with this exact time in our lives.

I’m trying to keep that in mind as the decorations and ads and pitches get into full swing so I can stop myself from fretting over not having custom-printed holiday photo cards or a rented snow-dolloped cabin in Sunriver or that inexplicably satisfying weight of department store bags on my arm. We have our family, our little unit who loves each other. That’s more than enough. It’s the real happiness all that stuff is trying to sell.

The imbalances, I think, will work themselves out. Today is temporary, which is both the joy and sorrow of it all.

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