The lost week

I don't know what happened. Maggie came over last Monday, and then it was Easter Sunday and my head hurt. Maggie was all "let's go out all night!" and I was like "okay" and she said "drink this" and I muttered "if you insist." Events progressed in this manner. What specifically happened, I couldn't say. We brought Sarah and Zan along with us for much of it, and there were exotic fruits. Here's one. Yeah, we ate that thing.

That, by the way, was a cactus pear, which looked like it should taste like an overripe berry, and instead was like a mealy cucumber. I have dubbed it "the fruit of lies." Other fruits were far more palatable. Gooseberries, we discovered, taste like orange Starburst. Highly recommended.

We had purchased all kinds of crazy fruits because Maggie wants to taste 1,000 fruits. This is the great thing about Maggie Mason, that these things even occur to her. When she told me of her quest, I insisted that everyone knows there are only four fruits in the entire world—apples, bananas, grapes, and bananas—and that she is a silly goose. But oh no no no, she insisted, there are in fact quabillions of fruits. And so we went to a fancy grocery store and found all manner of nutty fruits, and we took them to a bar. And when she told the host and the waiter to give us a sharp knife and plates and also share in our exotic fruit experiments, they had no choice but to comply. This is the Power of Maggie.

And that's not all! With the greatness of our collective mind-force, we came up with the most brilliant fetish site ever. Introducing: wheresmyshoe.com. Featuring helpless, lovely women, wondering what could have become of their missing shoe. Won't someone help them?

We will make millions.

Scott pointed out that in the picture I've linked to, Maggie is in fact holding her other shoe in this picture, which makes it not so much "Where's my shoe?" and more "Confused about shoes." "Unsure as to how shoes work." "You mean the other one goes on the other foot? It can't be that easy."

Somewhere in there we spent the day with Dara Torres—which, if you're sleep-deprived and achy, can really mess with your head. When one is feeling that unfresh, one should not spend an afternoon with a dazzling, glowy creature. Nevertheless, we had a great time, and discovered that Dara Torres is (not surprisingly) gracious, especially when faced with sexually aggressive elderly women (long story). She is also (surprisingly) enthusiastic about Rock of Love. So that was nice. We were there courtesy of Hewlett Packard, which arranged for us all to get together and fed us sushi. I had a few minutes to interview Dara, but I had no idea what to interview her about because I have only a personal blog in which I talk about my dumb feelings. So we chatted about the Internet. And I learned that Dara Torres has, like the rest of us, read mean comments about herself, and she has cried. You guys, the Internet made a mermaid cry. (I wasn't supposed to tell you that part, about how she's really a mermaid, but now I'll pretend I'm just kidding.)

And now I am recovered and will drink nothing but sparkling water for the next fifteen years. Unless Maggie comes back to town, in which case I promise nothing. Nothing!

Here I am!

I went to California for the weekend to honor a boy named Hank Mason, an incandescent being composed of spun sugar and baby Jesus, who completed his first year of sharing our earthly realm. In honor of his birthday, he learned to hover inches above the ground while granting beatific smiles to his adoring followers.

He's a good kid, is what I'm saying. I also saw some other people. They were much larger, and more resistant to me holding them and kissing their necks. Nonetheless, I had fun.

So much fun that I couldn't sit up straight or talk for the first couple of days home. Also I couldn't do anything but curse the day I chose to live on the East Coast. Why don't we all live in California? It's stupid here. Yesterday it was snowing, then sleeting, then raining. Then the temperature dropped and elves emerged from the bushes to buff the ice until all the sidewalks of the Northeast were smooth and deadly. The elves are out to kill us all, so they can live in our houses, and then sell our houses and move to California. The elves know what they're doing. Yes, I'm writing about imaginary elves. You see what New Jersey does to a person?

I'm finally alive today and my son is home from school. He left for school in a cheerful enough mood (once we wrestled with the application of the BOOTS OF DEATH and the MITTENS OF AGONY) but about an hour after he left, the school called. Is there anything more nerve-wracking than seeing your child's school on one's caller ID? No. Nothing more nerve-wracking. I am not exaggerating at all. His legs felt "wobbly," according to his teacher, and because several kids in his class have come down with the flu and they've all exhibited this mysterious symptom of leg-wobbliness, they were "concerned." Basically they wanted him out of there. I couldn't blame them. I wanted to, but I couldn't.

And now he's home. Home, and bouncing around. His wobbliness has disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived! It's a Valentine's Day miracle!

Sigh.

Happy, new, year.

To herald the death of the old year and the arrival of the new, we allowed Henry to do the heretofore unthinkable: stay up until midnight. Would he manage it? He is a boy who is usually snoring peacefully by eight p.m. and stays that way for eleven or so hours. When he stays up even an hour after his bedtime, he devolves into a blithering maniac who skitters from room to room on all fours, speaking in tongues. So we had our doubts. Still, though, we were attending a get-together wherein the children would be pajama'd up and free to snooze, if they needed, so the worst that could happen is that he crashed along with some other preschoolers. Also, when had we not been sitting at home being boring, for New Year's Eve, since Henry was born? Never, is when.

By allowing Henry to stay up until midnight, we granted him his heart's desire. Every few days Henry pleads with me to let him stay up late. "But you will be insane," I tell him, but that makes no difference to him. Night time is when all the exciting stuff happens. When we don our smoking jackets and trade witty quips. And then retire to the playroom, to enjoy our Bionicles until the sun comes up.

Anyway, the party actually went well. Although the children were marinated in sugar and hopping up and down on each other's heads, there were no tears, no bloodshed, no broken bones. Henry was cheerful, if drowsy. As the clock struck midnight, he wrapped his flannel-clad body around me and whispered, "Please, can I go to bed, now? "

So all was fine and dandy, until we got home, and he went to sleep. And woke up. And woke up again. There are four reasons why he won't be up until midnight again until he's at least 30.

1. 2:00 am. I wake up to the sound of someone crashing around downstairs. There's a burglar! We're being burgled on the first day of 2008! Also, there's weeping. A highly emotional burglar is lurching around our home. I run to the stairs to restrain him and/or provide emotional succor. But of course it's Henry, who's on his way back up after wrecking the place, and is sobbing. "What's wrong?" I ask him. He lurches back to bed. "Aaaiiiiiigh," he tells me, and I ask him to repeat himself, but he's snoring.

2. 2:30 a.m. A pitiful wailing wakes me up. I make my way to Henry's bed, where he's under the covers, shrieking. "You have to ree my snore!" he screams. "What?" "You have to ream my store!" "WHAT?" "READ ME A STORY." Oh, I am so in the mood to read some Magic Schoolbus. But that must wait. Until I'm CONSCIOUS.

3. 3:00 a.m. Weeping, banging, screaming. I make Scott get up. More weeping, more screaming. Some of it is Scott. I get up. They're in the bathroom. "My eye hurts!" Henry is shrieking. There is much clutching of the eye and tossing his head back and forth, while Scott tries to get a look at what's going on in there. "If your eye is injured, my boy, you should let me look at it," Scott offers. "Quite," I murmur. (What, you don't think we can be that calm and reasonable at 3 am? You calling me a liar?) "NAAAAGH!" Henry wails, and runs back to his bed. Somehow I manage to pin him down and look at his eye. Because Henry's eyelashes are nine feet long, when there's a pain, it's usually an eyelash. In this case, his eye is fine. "There's nothing there, Henry," I tell him. He's asleep.

4. 3:30 a.m. Crying. More crying! I go there. To him. What do you want, what, WHAT? "I NEED TO PEE," he cries. I recommend that he goes to the bathroom. And stop myself from explaining loudly that I DO NOT NEED TO HELP HIM OUT WITH THIS. ALL CAPS.

And there you have it. We started the new year with a bang. And a whimper. And a poorly aimed whiz.

Here's a mall adventure for you.

So on Tuesday my friend asked me to accompany her and her children to the mall, and I thought, but I should be writing and then I thought, but if one does not experience life, how can one write about it? So I agreed to go, only to gather material. Also they have an H&M.

So off we went, and the first thing my friend Abby tells me is that she's almost completely out of gas, that in fact we would be lucky to make it to the gas station. Make it there we do, and while her car is being filled I ask, "So, how empty was it? Was the light on?" and she says, "For two days." And that right there would be the difference between me and Abby, or maybe between me and most people in the world. If the gas in the car dips below a quarter of a tank I'm twitching. If it's on empty I'm afraid to sit in it, because maybe I'll tip the gas tank a little and the gas will, I don't know, slosh over to the other side and then the car can't get to it? I'm not clear on how cars work. But there's Abby, mentally stable Abby, cheerfully toting around her children, the tank filled only with residue and memories. I'm just glad she told me this when we got to the gas station because I don't think I would have lived those few blocks.

Abby's a new friend of mine, and she's one of those people who when you meet them your insides are screaming BFF! BFF! And you're trying to act all cool and collected and blasé about when you might set up a playdate, but secretly you just want to have a date with only her and ditch the kids and run away together; is that weird? She's got a great son who is Henry's age, and the two of them are so compatible, two gentle souls who want only to build Legos and then build some more Legos. Which is such a refreshing departure from his other friends, who set fires and mug the disabled.

Tank full, we made it to the mall, with only minimal screaming on her baby's part. I tried to chat up the two-year-old, but she just glared at me, because I wasn’t there with a child, and what good was I, anyway? Abby and the girls dropped me off at H&M. I needed a fall coat, and by the way I needed MANY OTHER THINGS AS WELL. I barely heard them leave, what with the pile of clothing I had gathered on top of myself as I rolled around in the aisles. I haven't shopped without Henry in too long.

We were on a tight schedule, so I made my purchases—my delicious, delicious purchases—and a few minutes before we had to leave, I headed over to Old Navy, where Abby and children were to be found. Only I had never been to this mall and had no idea where Old Navy was. And this mall featured several tears in the fabric of space and time, so you would walk over to Section A and then suddenly you were on a fishing boat and everyone was talking in Old Norse. I began to walk faster and faster, and as I did my embarrassing walk-run-walk, walk-run-walk, my thinking went thisaway:

1. Abby's probably waiting for me, and now she's going to walk over to H&M. We'll miss each other.

2. She'll be late to pick up her son, and it will be all my fault.

3. She's going to hate me so much.

4. Good going, Alice. You just had to buy your stupid cheap clothes that will disintegrate within a month.

5. I am a terrible person. Who deserves to be abandoned in the mall.

6. I will die here.

While walk-run-walking I accosted a saleswoman to ask for directions. I attempted a casual air when I shrieked EXCUSEMEWHEREISOLDNAVY? She backed away—apparently I didn’t pull it off—and pointed down one of the many wings of the mall, the one that hadn't been visible before because it had traveled to an alternate dimension. Sure enough, there was Old Navy, and there was Abby, shopping away, oblivious to the insane little drama churning in my head. Until now, that is, because she reads my blog. Crap.