ever-fixed mark

The academic year is four weeks young, and already we have received two notes home, a call from the principal, and an invitation from the school psychologist to participate in a “social skills” group which is, I gather, a sort of finishing school for kindergartners.

But! He is awfully cute, no?

Already this one has more disciplinary actions entered into his permanent record than the rest of the family put together, and yes that includes Dog’s six-week stint in obedience school.

Luckily, the academics are going pretty well. That’s important; with years of confinement ahead of him, he should be capable of producing a literate manifesto.

Minor: My school has a secret code!

Me: Really?

Minor: It’s nine dash nineteen dash eleven.

Me: What’s the secret code for?

Minor: They changed it. It used to be nine dash sixteen dash eleven.

Me: I don’t understand. Why is there a secret code?

Husband: I think he’s talking about the date.

Aitch’s latest obsession is the size of his shoes, a topic he pursues relentlessly: How big they were last year vs. this year. How big they’ll be next year. How they compare to Eamonn’s shoe size, and Timmy’s shoe size, and the kid who is only in third grade but is already a size six, can you believe it, Mom? And, also, tragically, how we’re all conspiring to force him to wear shoes that are too small, and why he really, really needs new and bigger shoes.

Moved by his complaints about blisters, we actually did buy him a second pair of sneakers this summer before we caught on. Since then we’ve had him measured by every shoe salesman in town, and believe me, that kid is a 1, but he insists he’s a 3. We’ve told him very firmly that we won’t entertain the topic of new shoes until Christmas, at which time we’ll have him measured again to see if he’s grown.

He’s pretty sure he’ll be a 4 by then.

Anyway, this weekend, Aitch awoke early; Husband and I were still asleep, Husband in our room, I in the guest room. (We’re not on the outs, but Dog had kicked me out of bed. See here for a description of our nighttime habits.) Aitch was downstairs, amusing himself quietly, but after a half-hour or so he came back upstairs to hand Husband a piece of paper with a word written on it, and he asked what it meant. The word was “Company,” and Husband gave a short if sleepy disquisition on the various meanings of the word. Aitch thanked him and went downstairs.

A few minutes later, Aitch came upstairs with another word: “Province.”

At this point, Husband’s suspicions were aroused, and he went downstairs to find that Aitch had logged on to Reebok.com, selected a pair of shoes (size 3, natch), and started to fill out the order form when he was stumped by the unfamiliar words. I’m thankful that Husband stopped him before he got to the credit card page. We had a long conversation about ordering things on-line (short version: DON’T), and I’m watching the mail carefully for any unexpected items.

Last night, I was reading the boys a story when Aitch pulled up his shirt and, contemplating his abs, said, “I almost have a six-pack like those guys on TV.”

Shoes? Abs? This kid is one character flaw away from landing a role on “The Jersey Shore.”

I took the boys to see the Glee 3D movie. No, I’m not particularly proud. In my defense, it was a rainy Sunday; we were coming down from an activity high after a week spent at the Tyler Place; and it was the only film appropriate for all audiences that I thought I could tolerate. I’ve never seen a whole episode of Glee, but I was a theater geek in high school.

Aitch enjoyed it. I thought it was mostly inoffensive but not particularly memorable. Minor hated it.

“When is the MOVIE starting?” he asked about ten minutes in.

“This is the movie, honey.”

“No, it’s JUST SONGS!”

“It’s a concert film.”

“I don’t LIKE concerts!”

Sorry, little dude.

There was only one moment in the movie that made me sit up and take notice, and that was Gwyneth Paltrow’s performance of the song “Forget You.” (Is it just me or does Gwyneth’s dress style skew younger and younger the older she gets? I mean, she’s pushing forty, and the other young women in the cast looked positively mature next to her.) Gwyneth is an adequate singer, I guess, but it was the song itself that really grabbed my attention. So catchy! When I got home I Googled its identifiers so I could find it on iTunes and realized that every other person in the country is already aware of this Cee Lo Green song, because it’s gained notoriety in its unexpurgated form, titled “Fuck You.”

I thought long and hard (double entendre completely unintentional I assure you) about which version of the song to download. On one hand, I’m not unopposed to a bit of well-placed musical profanity. One of my favorite songs to scream along with in the car in the pre-child era was Ben Folds Five’s “Song for the Dumped,” which features a soul-satisfying, “Well, fuck you too!” Also, I’m not crazy about the practice of bleeping or otherwise obscuring offensive words in songs; I’d rather not hear it at all than have to suffer through the Bowdlerized version. (Don’t even get me started on that rendition of “Brown-Eyed Girl” that replaces the line “making love in the green grass” with “skipping and a jumping” from an earlier verse. Oh, my virgin ears.)

On the other hand, at least “Forget You” is a legitimate alternate version produced by the original artist. Also, it’s such a poppy tune that the note of anguish that “fuck you” brings to the song isn’t really necessary; “forget you” is just as appropriate, although rhythmically a bit awkward. And I want to be able to listen to the song when the kids are present.

I downloaded both versions.

Turns out there are quite a number of songs with similar titular sentiments.

A friend invited us to swim in her backyard pool yesterday. Aitch and Minor quickly became involved in a water-gun battle there with her boys, roughly the same age as my two, and some bigger kids from the neighborhood. Presently, the big kids teamed up against the smaller ones and took them “prisoner.”

“Hand over your weapons!” one of the big kids shouted to Minor.

“Why?” he asked.

“Security reasons,” was the answer.

Okay, so that was a little ripped-from-the-headlines creepy, but I didn’t intervene; I wanted to see how Minor would handle it. You could almost see the wheels turning in his brain. Clockwise: One of the big kids is talking to me! If he’s telling me to do it, it must be right! Counter-clockwise: This is a pretty cool water bazooka. It doesn’t seem fair that I would have to give it up.

He decided to fight, blasting his attacker with water to keep him at bay. The much taller kid simply reached over and disarmed him by grabbing the water gun out of his hands. I didn’t intervene, figuring that this was part of the way that boys play. “Put up your hands!” he ordered Minor, demanding his surrender. Instead, Minor put up his dukes, now ready for hand-to-hand combat.

The big kid reached out with his free hand to grab one of Minor’s fists. The next sound I heard was “Owwwwwww!” as Minor twisted that kid’s arm as hard as he could.

Then I intervened, to stop my five-year-old from injuring a boy twice his age. But first I laughed a little bit. Actually, a lot.

Photo courtesy of my friend A. who took it yesterday on the Common.

Aitch: Mommy, can I tell you something?

Me: You don’t have to ask if you can tell me something. Just tell me.

Aitch: I want to watch the Bruins tonight.

Me: Really?

Aitch: It starts at eight. I’ve got to stay up to watch it. Can I?

Me: Sure, Aitch. You can watch the whole Bruins game if you can tell me one thing.

Aitch: What?

Me: What sport do the Bruins play?

Aitch: Uh….basketball?

The things that attracted us to Port City were the excellent schools, proximity to the ocean, and the tough but fair juvenile justice system.

Mothers of daughters are always looking for child-friendly media with strong female role models to counteract all that pink Disney princess crap, but I think it’s just as important for mothers of boys to do so. If all the girls are raised to be badasses and the boys are raised to expect doormats, there’s going to be one hell of a disconnect in American heteronormative society twenty years down the line.

So whether you’re the mother of boys, girls, both, or neither, here are two princesses that are safe for public consumption:

Paper Bag Princess: In this book by Robert Munsch, a princess rescues her prince-fiance from a fierce dragon, but when the prince shows his gratitude by snarking on her less-than-perfect toilette, she says, “Ronald, your clothes are really pretty and your hair is all neat. You look like a real prince, but you are a bum.” Then she declines to marry him and lives happily ever after anyway.

“The Princess Who Saved Herself”: This song, written and recorded by Jonathan Coulton, reminds me a bit of XTC. Coulton’s princess, like Munsch’s, battles a dragon, and there are also a few hilarious transcripts of her turning down princes who call her for dates. Although it’s clearly a kids’ song, I’m downloading it not just for my boys to listen to, but also for my iPod.

Bill Cunningham New York, a documentary about the New York Times society and street-fashion photographer, was playing at our local art house this weekend, providing me with some unlikely insight into this mid-life crisis that recently led me to quit a perfectly good job without having another position lined up.

Cunningham, who is 83 (!), still bicycles around Manhattan to his various assignments, but that was not the inspiring part. Nor was I impressed by his award from the French Ministry of Culture, his friendship with Lady Astor, or the praise heaped on him by Anna Wintour. (Was I the only person in America who read The Devil Wears Prada and rooted against the beleaguered assistant? Honestly, if I were Anna Wintour, I would have kicked Lauren Weisberger’s ass to the curb the first time she pulled a mopey face about fetching coffee.)

No, it was Cunningham’s strong point of view that won me over. He did one thing, and he did it so well that he had the fashion world at his feet, without (seemingly) kowtowing, publicizing, self-marketing, or otherwise promoting himself. Not that I’m against self-promotion, but it was a good lesson that when you’re at the top of your game and immersed in your art, you don’t need to be so concerned with your rank.

And then…you’re free to be nice. Cunningham was so gosh-darned nice. It truly was the feel-good movie of the year.

(There was also some impressive fashionista footage. I don’t really, shall we say, participate in the world of fashion, but I do like to look at pretty dresses or, alternatively, at Go Fug Yourself. My favorite scene in the whole film was when a former diplomat, modeling a hideous suit printed with a GIANT acid-yellow glen plaid, deadpanned, “I’m not sure what clan it’s from.” Dude, all of Scotland is wondering the same thing.)

My problem is that I don’t have that point of view, that one discipline, that immersion. I manage a department of people who perform six different roles, and a lot of my time is spent marketing those roles to other groups in the organization, convincing people that they, essentially, should let us help. Management is a worthy discipline, and marketing is a worthy discipline, but I don’t feel either is what I was born to do.

Husband — who was beyond supportive through my decision process; it was actually his idea that I should just quit and take the summer off — was a bit alarmed to hear my insight. “You do realize,” he said, “that you’re a little…old…to start a career in the arts?” Well, I had been thinking about going back to project management, but now that you mention it, Julia Margaret Cameron didn’t even start taking photos until she was forty-eight!

Good Lord, that was an exhausting vacation. What with the dinners and the parties and CHRISTMAS! and New York during the Blizzard of the Century and ice skating and skiing and snowboarding I can’t wait to go back to work for some peace and quiet.

On a day when both children were unexpectedly at home (you’re open during the blizzard, Day Care, but not on New Year’s Eve?), I decided to take them on a little photo safari. I gave each of them a loaded Holga (wonderful thing about a plastic camera; your child can drop it in a snowbank with impunity), and we went out to the mall to see what we could shoot. I showed the boys how to advance the film, set the depth of field, and trip the shutter. (There are only two aperture settings on a Holga - “sunny day” and “cloudy day” - so they’re hardly worth changing.) I tried to give some pointers on composition, but they were having so much fun I didn’t want to restrict them too much. The kids were very excited, and it was all I could do to stop them from shooting a whole roll in the first five minutes.

When we got home, I showed them how to load the rolls into the developing tank, an admittedly unexciting demonstration given that it all takes place inside the changing bag. Then I asked them to suit up to help me develop them. Here’s Minor all suited up in his paint smock and rubber gloves:

After I had developed three rolls - two from Aitch, one from Minor - I realized that Minor hadn’t really gotten the hang of advancing the film. His style tended heavily toward the impressionistic, the result of multiple exposures:

Aitch’s style was more documentary. Here’s the coffee shop. It has a nice industrial feel:

Here’s a street scene. Aitch’s height gives him a good perspective here:

I encouraged him to try to fill the frame with an image, and he produced this shot of the courthouse:

And we got the ghost bus! Ghostly, no?

Finally, here’s a portrait of me trying to discern the number of exposures left in the film in my camera. This is one of my favorite pictures of myself, and it’s not just because my face is obscured. I think he really got something of me here.