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.

Burning onions = ten years of therapy.

While Henry organized his Stormtroopers, I had some precious phone time with my friend.

“Damn, I burned my onions,” said Stacey.

“You burned your onions?” I said. “I didn’t even know you were cooking. You cook while you’re talking? You talk while you’re cooking?”

“I’m a multitasker,” she said.

Henry, meanwhile, was staring at me. “Who burned what?” he asked.

“Stacey burned her onions,” I told him.

“Let me talk to her,” he said. He grabbed the phone and confirmed the events surrounding the onions, and the burning of said onions.

Eventually I got the phone back. While I attempted to finish our conversation, Henry pulled at my leg, barraging me with questions regarding The Burning.

I began to lose my patience. I suggested that he play. Look at a book. Do something while I have the only interaction I’ve had with an adult all day except for those few minutes with the cashier at the supermarket that I continued way past an appropriate point.

His lower lip began to quiver. “But why did everything get all burned up?” he said. Then I noticed he was holding his special bear.

Finally I got it. Burning. Fire. Three-year-old listening, thinking our friend is aflame.

I explained to him as best I could about what we meant when we said the food “burned,” how it’s not on fire and etc. He was not appeased. I got off the phone and sat next to him. He leapt onto my lap and dug his head into my chest.

I explained it all again. “That was confusing, when we talked about something burning, wasn’t it? You were worried.” He nodded vigorously into my boobs.

“I didn’t understand,” he said.

“Well, why would you? When we say something’s burning, we usually mean it’s on fire, right?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t understand about the burning,” he said.

“You don’t have to be sorry about that,” I said, and held him tighter.

When I was three, a boy we called Little David began spending weekends with us. I am unclear about the reasoning behind this, but I know that he lived at an orphanage where my mother was a volunteer. It seems strange to me that the orphanage would loan children to volunteers, but there it is. Little David came for weekends, and according to my parents, I did not like this at all. He was maybe a year younger than me, and very physical and boisterous, and I was a little girl who liked everything just so and he was touching my stuff and he even slept in my room, and I wanted him out out out. So after a few weekends, my mom told the orphanage the weekend arrangement wasn’t working.

The following weekend I asked my mother where Little David was. “Don’t worry,” she said, “We know you didn’t like having him here, so Little David’s not coming back.”

The next morning I woke up and couldn’t talk.

I couldn’t talk for a while, actually. Well, can you imagine? I had wielded untold power! One complaint from me and I could disappear people! How could I say something? What would happen next? I would say I didn’t like my hamburger and then all the cows on Earth would spontaneously combust?

Eventually everyone in charge figured out what had happened; I was reassured and shortly thereafter I returned to my usual chatty self. And every time I heard the story of my temporary muteness, I would wonder at how impressionable little kids are. I knew, however, that when I was a parent I would certainly be as mindful as I could of my child’s fragile grasp on how the world works.

But the thing is, it’s haaaard. It’s like you’re raising an intelligent, perceptive, mildly psychotic Armenian. He’s got a good grasp of the language, the Armenian, but he doesn’t get the idiomatic expressions, he has frighteningly good hearing, he remembers everything, and he’s extremely sensitive. You can’t get away with anything with this Armenian. Don’t tell your husband, after a long day, that you’re pooped—because five days later the Armenian will shout to you in the supermarket “WHY WERE YOU POOPED DID YOU HAVE POOP ON YOU?” (For instance.)

A few months before the Armenian really wasn’t as interested in what you had to say. He didn’t have a real handle on the language, so if conversation went over his head he would let it pass him by. He was invincible, the Armenian—if he didn’t get something, it didn’t need to be gotten. All that mattered was what he knew. But now he’s figuring out how much he doesn’t know, and how much he needs to know, and suddenly he spends a lot more time with his bear, on your lap, needing some extra comfort.

Okay, so my metaphor has fallen apart, but you get what I’m saying.

A couple of hours later we were playing on the floor, and he asked me what the floor was made of. Was it made of sticks, like in the Three Little Pigs? He studied the floor, checking it for signs of weakness. “No, no, it’s nice, sturdy wood,” I said, and he knocked on it. There was a faint echo.

“Hey, it’s like someone knocked back from underneath there,” I said. As I said it I thought, hmm, perhaps this isn’t the image you want to give your child, and before I could even finish the thought he was back on my lap with his bear.

Hey, at least he can still talk.

Fireworks are pretty, but also loud.

I can’t take this long between posts. I’ve forgotten how to do this. It’s taken me at least an hour to figure out that punching the keyboard was wrong and only resulted in gbhj hgh fg som m m bnmbbv gh.

(Once, on a job interview, I took a typing test and I was so nervous that I didn’t look at the paper as I typed (this was back when we typed on “typewriters.” I’m old!), and when the interviewer took the paper out of the typewriter , he looked at it, then at me, then at the paper, and handed it to me and said, “I don’t know what to say about this.” Turned out I had placed my hands incorrectly on the keyboard and everything I had typed was gibberish. I responded, “What, that’s not right?” and laughed maniacally, which he apparently found more alarming than amusing. And that’s why I’m not working for the William Morris Agency today. True story!)

I’ve been at my parents’ house, eating their food and enjoying their clean and pretty home, with its lovely flowers and relative absence of mouse urine. On Friday night my mother went out dancing—did I not tell you that my mother is a ballroom dancer? And dances in competitions in which she wears spangly outfits down to there and up to here?—so it was just me and my dad. And Henry, duh. But then I put him down for the night, and my dad and I were hanging out, and we decided to watch a movie.

The movie, by the way, was “The Life of Brian,” rented by my mom, whose motives I can only guess at. I was uneasy at the prospect of watching this with my dad, as he is a holy man, the Catholic-est of Catholics, with his “Liturgy of the Hours” right there on the coffee table and his rosary beads invariably at the ready, and there we were, about to watch a movie that makes light of crucifixion. And I was pretty sure there was a blow job, somewhere in there.

The sacri-larity of it turned out to be less of a problem than the DVD’s audibility; we had to turn it waaay up in order to make sense of the dialogue, and then when the music surged we were deafened. Anyway, I was having a hard time paying attention because I kept hearing… something. A faint something or other. A high-pitched squeak somewhere off in the distance. There had been some fireworks earlier, so I figured the sounds were bottle rockets. But I couldn’t relax. Well, I thought, I’ll just check the child. I’m sure it’s nothing, but, you know, can’t hurt to check.

So I walked over to the stairs and OH MY GOD THE SCREAMING. THERE WAS SO MUCH SCREAMING. I tore ass up the stairs and there was my child, still lying down (it never occurs to him to stand up, he is so good and I am so bad), his face red and mottled, his head and the surrounding environs utterly soaked in tears. He must have been crying for a half an hour, at least. I never did figure out why he was so upset, because when I threw myself at him and scooped him up, all he could tell me was, and I quote, “I was crying so much and you didn’t come.” Wow. For the next half hour or so he snuffled into my neck while I read him stories and considered ritual disembowelment as a way to alleviate my guilt. Surely a little seppuku would convince Henry that I didn’t mean to ignore him! Surely!

The end! How dramatic that story seemed, before I wrote it. “I didn’t hear my son and so he cried.” Thank you, World Wide Webs, for showing me how silly I am. How negligent, yes, but also how silly.

I have so much more to write about but I’m so tired. Next: my near-death (or near-ankle fracture) experience on the subway and my interview on Bravo. Anticipate!