Botanical mysteries! For your enjoyment!

Friends, it is exactly one year since our move to this NEW JERSEY PLACE, and it's official: I have lost my mind. There's no other possible explanation for why I spent five hours yesterday pouring mulch all over the mulch-able portions of our front- and backyard. And why I hauled my aching body back outside today to gouge out weeds. For another five hours.

And after contemplating my almost destroyed sneakers, I considered buying THESE.

I don't... I don't know. I have nothing to say for myself. Except...I'm sorry.

I never wanted to garden, never ever, but now that I've started, I can't stop. I want to win at gardening. Or at least not turn to cinders all that I touch. Will I keep anything alive? Only time will tell.

There are many items in our yard that completely baffle me. Thus, I ask you, my beloved readers: What The Hell Is This? Visit, you, and answer. There are no prizes if you're right--only my love. And we all know how much better Love is than a pony, or bundles of cash.

Questions, questions.

How can you tell if a place just isn’t right for you?

When do you decide you’ve had enough?

At what point do you tell yourself, I’ve given this a fair shake, and I don’t like it, and at least now I know?

We don’t like it here. We just don’t. It’s not the house. We love the house. It’s everything else.

We’re terrible homeowners. The constant deterioration of one’s home and the resulting need for regular maintenance fills us with panic. We resent the weekends being used up by trips to Home Depot or the nursery.

We’re farther from both our families. Our days of getting free babysitting from the grandparents are over. Henry misses them.

I never realized how much I would hate not being able to walk to something.

There’s so much else. But in the end what it comes down to is: it’s not Brooklyn. Which I knew, moving in! Didn’t I know that? Why am I so surprised? I suppose because I lived in the suburbs growing up, and thought I knew what I was getting myself into.

We’re thinking of returning to Brooklyn and renting. Finding a place we can afford in a good school district may actually be impossible for us, but we’re looking into it.

I feel like a failure. We will undoubtedly take a loss on this place. All I can think is, why did we move? Why did we listen to everyone else telling us we had to leave the city, and not to ourselves?

Or are we being premature? Should we tough it out? When do you really know something isn’t right?

A post from the slanty room.

Have I told you about our slanty room? As this is an old house (and jam-packed with ghosts! I mean, probably), the floors are all sloped, one way or the other. But in one room—the room that is to be my office, I get my own office!—the floor dips so dramatically toward the center of the room, it’s like you’re in a funhouse. A boring funhouse. And unfortunately, both my desk and chair are on casters. So as I’m writing, the desk is rolling toward me, and I’m hanging on to the keyboard tray to keep from rolling back further, which causes the desk to roll some more. So by the end of my precious Internet time, I’m smack dab in the middle of the room.

Take the casters off the desk and chairs, I can hear you thinking. Yes, I know. I just haven’t done it yet. But I will! Right after I roll over that 401(K) from 1997.

Hey! I got a job. My former employer, a corporate behemoth that treated me kindly back in the 20th century, has called on me. I will work from home for them. And they will give me money! So this works out for both of us. This is about as much detail as you will get out of me about my new job, which really isn’t that interesting, and don’t you love it when I’m this vague? Does it make me mysterious, or just boring? Boringly mysterious?

Anyway, because I have this real job now (part-time, from home, yay), I hired a babysitter. This is a first for me. Henry always had the benefit of being looked after by a relative or close friend. I always had the benefit of not having to hire someone. And oh Internet, the whole thing makes me uncomfortable. The whole stranger-in-my-house-with-my-sweet-boy thing. It’s not even like I’m leaving them alone. I’m going to be upstairs! And probably running downstairs at regular intervals!

His new sitter is eminently qualified—frankly, more qualified than I am to be left alone with a child. I still feel odd about the whole affair. It took me many weeks to even start looking for someone, because of the oddness. Maybe she’s a lunatic! Who will take my child! And sell him to, hmm, an organization! A mismanaged one!

Also, when I'm with him, I often wish he were elsewhere, and when he’s with someone else, I mostly want him to be with me. She’ll be here every morning (only for the next few weeks, until his summer camp starts) and already I’m wistful about our, uh, special mornings together. When I would try to get him dressed, and he would yell. When he demanded ice cream, and when I refused, punched me in the thigh. Oh, sweet memories!

Aaaand I'm rolling away again. Goodbye!

Settling in but still unsettled.

Yesterday we went to a nursery. To buy babies! I made that joke to, oh, eight people yesterday. “Get it? Babies? Nursery? Ho!” No one laughed. I am surrounded by jerks.

Anyway, yeah, we bought plants and stuff. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea how not to kill plants. On the other hand, I am excellent at killing them. Here’s my method.

1. Bring a plant into my house.

2. Attempt to care for it. You’re supposed to water them, right?

3. As it begins its slow journey to the grave, alternate weeks of avoidance and denial with bursts of panicked and clumsy tending.

4. Throw it out. Vow never to buy a plant again.

I walked up to a gaggle of nursery people and asked for their help. I was looking for some lovely yet not-easily-murdered flowery plantiness I could perch on our front stoop. I was hoping one of them would get up, pick out a plant and place it in my hands.

But they kept providing me with information. I couldn’t process it. My mind wheezed.

“You could get a zerbertifora, or a ferfilligan,” they mused.

“Well, isn’t that the obvious choice?” I said.

“Really, you’re safe with any annual,” one of them said.

“What’s an annual?” I asked. They laughed.

“No, really,” I said, and they looked concerned for me.

I ran away from them and continued my disorganized, roundabout search for pretty crap to plant. I grabbed some stuff, but probably it was all the wrong kind. It was hard to concentrate, what with all the yelling at my son I had to do.

These days I like to yell at Henry at least five or twelve times an hour. I feel that this builds character. If I continually address him in a high-pitched shriek, he’s sure to be filled with love and respect for me! So: “WOULDYOUSTAYSTILLYOUCAN’TRUNINHERE.” Or! “STOP. TWIRLING. RIGHT. NOW.” Alternately, “OH MY GOD I NEED TO LOOK AT THIS. THIS PLANT THING. STOP PULLING AT MY ARM. LISTEN. ARE YOU LISTENING. YOU’RE PULLING AT ME SOME MORE. GAAAAAAACK.” When I wasn’t losing my shit, I was tsk-ing at my husband for the loss of his. “He’s just a baby,” I would murmur calmly to him. “Please, have some perspective.” It’s amazing how much more tolerant you can be when you’re merely observing the irritating behavior.

Sadly, most of the time I'm more than an observer. It seems these days that anything I want or need to do will be frustrated by Henry’s opposing desire. I am either being yanked one way when I’m trying to go another or sat upon when I need to get up or pulled off a chair when I need to sit down. He aims to thwart me. All the time. And I’m not enjoying it.

I find myself employing the horrible Clenched Teeth Hiss and the Strangled Cry of Blinding Rage. I am becoming that horrible mother who holds her kid’s hand a leetle too hard and walks a little too fast as he trips behind, yelling “You’re hurting my hand!” These episodes are usually followed by the need to weep or throw up. Or, hell, both! Every day, several times a day, I marvel that I’m not locked away somewhere.

It doesn’t help that I’m enjoying some rather breathtaking back pain (did you know that your back can hurt so much you can barely breathe, and yet you still remain conscious? I know it now! And yes, I’m getting medical attention, thank you concerned readers). And the constant pain is reducing my tolerance to, oh, about none.

It never fails to amaze me how someone I love so very much can incite in me so much anger. That I can be so angry at someone who is so goddamn adorable. When he goes to bed every night, he announces, “It’s time for me to tuck up,” and he pulls his blanket up over his head. Tuck up! Every time he says it I want to eat him. And his little candy toes.

I know we’re all under a crazy amount of stress, and I’m clinging to the hope that we’ll all begin behaving better, and soon. That’s what I’m doing right now—I’m clinging. I know this will pass.

At the end of the nursery trip, as we stuffed our car full of assorted plantery (I made a word!) Henry turned to me and said “I always love you, no matter what.” And then we sure as hell got some ice cream.