punchdrunkmom

I give this pandemic zero stars, do not recommend

Well. How are we doing? As of right this second I am an anxious ball of existential dread listening to the helicopters hover nearby. I am actively considering stress baking, which I haven’t done once during all of quarantine. I've frantically checking social media for updates and reading takedowns and thinkpieces. I signed up for an online meditation class this morning and bailed on it because I was too wound up, which is like, the opposite of what you're supposed to do.

When it finally got to be too much, I started writing, which is always a good idea (unless you occupy the White House and are rage tweeting from the toilet). I was saving a lot of these links for Friday, but it's possible you need them now. While we (I, me, white people) may not bury our heads in the sand, one thing I've learned during all of this (meaning 2016 to present) that when the depression/anxiety loop starts to play in your head, it's a really good idea to step away from the internet and do something unrelated.

So. Here is something completely different.

1.) Aside from Tiger King, I didn’t really watch a new series during shelter-in-place. Instead I put on an old one and rewatched from the beginning. I was slow to catch on to Mad Men when it originally aired. I don’t remember why. But once I caught on and caught up, I was so hooked. Re-bingeing it now was the television equivalent of putting on pants with an elastic waist and cracking open a bottle of wine at 3 pm. In the best way. The costumes, the hair, the one liners, the matinee idol-ness of Don Draper with his hat and the comb marks in his hair. Remember when he fixed the Campbells' sink? Then, as now, I digested a lot of the show with the help of the writers at Vulture.com, who ran plucky episode recaps that eventually evolved into a dense meditations on themes of death, identity and change.

It’s been five years since the series ended, which is hard to believe because it feels way longer than that. Then again, remember a few weeks ago when you might feel inclined to hug a stranger? EONS AGO. But show completely holds up. It’s still gorgeous. AND! My friends at Vulture tied all the relevant reading into a neat little box-set-style package with all the episode recaps and included some extra credit reading. (I believe that it's disappearing from Netflix soon, but this being 2020, you can probably buy a box set for Prime delivery some time in August.)

Also, I need to replace my Sterling Cooper Price mug, which is completely faded from going in the dishwasher and which I’ve used every day for five years. Not bad for ten bucks.

Also:

 

2.) I’m not, like a “royal watcher,” except that they keep turning up in my Facebook feed like bad pennies. So I sort of have opinions about them. I find Will and Kate to be incredibly boring and deeply stodgy. Harry and Meghan are much more exciting, but I also find their choices perplexing. L.A.? Really? However, I did get suckered into clicking this link to pictures of the jewelry that Kate and Meghan inherited from Princess Diana. May we all have an aquamarine divorce celebration ring and a go-to tiara.

Somehow in all of this I landed on the Town & Country website (?) and managed to find this loving tribute to caftans and how to wear them in our current circumstances. I don’t know why this hasn’t occurred to us before.

3.)

No one:

Not one person:

Etsy: Here’s a kit to DIY a tattoo at home!

Do not do this. It will not work out. Just go get a tattoo by someone who gives tattoos for a living that is not also a carnie (I speak these words from experience, though they were probably more carnie-adjacent than actual carnies, it's not a great tattoo. At least there are no typos.). 

4.) This guy found some mice in his back yard and built them a village that looks like Hobbiton. I’m 100% sure that he is a serial killer, but the mice seem to be enjoying themselves. At least until be builds them a murder dungeon.

5.) Okay, you guys. I'm going to say a thing and you are going to freak out, but hear me out: paranormal women's romance fiction. OMG! My tastes in books are weirdly specific. In the summer I like non-fiction. Last summer I did a deep dive into Bonnie and Clyde and the Dust Bowl. In the winter, I like to read heavier material with complicated protagonists and dark outcomes. But back when the pandemic started, I would start to read a book and my eyes would lose focus and I'd find myself rereading the same paragraph over and over. So I did what I did after my Dad died, and that was to reread all my Nancy Drew books. In the current climate I need to point out that Nancy, or should I say Carolyn Keene, is incredibly problematic. So I'm not really recommending those books so much as letting you know my current level of sophistication. Which brings me to....paranormal romance.

A couple of years ago, a friend gave me a book from a series she'd been enjoying about the adventures of a paranormal private investigator. I ate it all up. The protagonist is funny and supportive of other women, and her boyfriend is...well, not for the faint of heart. In case you're not clear, this book is full of paranormal sex. And solving crimes and Mexican food, but, well. You know. The series falls apart slightly under the weight of its own mythology, but creating a fictional world is hard. Just ask CS Lewis. Everyone's a critic.

Last week, I texted my friend that I was interested to see what she was reading. "I only read stories about like, hot fairy sex, so maybe you don't want my recommendation." But I was like, hello that's why you're my go-to right now.

My sister also recommended the Shadow and Bone series when I told her about my convo with my friend. Seems like the right idea.

Anyway, my friend gave me a list of ideas. I'm starting here. And if you're interested in more, lmk. 

All right you guys. Thank you to the marchers, supporters, sweepers, to those who lifted their voices, to those who donated, to those who are actively trying to change. Keep going. Now is not the time to be silently not racist. Now is the time to be LOUDLY ANTI-RACIST.  And it's okay to walk away from the computer or phone. You need to regroup so you still have strength to fight.

Also: 

XOXO
-PDM

In which we create a punchdrunk memorial for a departed friend

Sometimes I think that the worst part about our dog dying this past spring was the moment I told Kai, when I opened up my mouth and spoke the words that broke his heart.

Kai cried the next day in school, he cried a few times after that. We haven’t really talked about it much since, though.

For me, there are definitely times I miss the dog. There are obvious ones, like when I walk past Milk Bones at the grocery store. Elliott looked like the dog on the box of the medium-sized ones. Or when I drive past the vet and I am reminded of that last day. But worse are the unexpected moments, like the first time we had steak for dinner after, and we realized with tears in our eyes that there was no one waiting under the table to eat the fat scraps.

Kai has told me over the last couple of months that he misses Elliott.

“I do, too,” I always say.

He follows that up with a request for a hamster.

:::

About a month ago, I ordered “When a Pet Dies” by Mr. Rogers after reading some blog post or other about a dead pet. When it arrived, I meant to read it to Kai, but somehow I never got around to it. We’ve been too busy doing whatever it is we do, I guess, and the book sat on my counter next to my computer. It felt like maybe I shouldn’t just put that in the bookshelf, where it could be requested of unsuspecting babysitters like the book about the difference between boys and girls has been.

And then Sunday night, out of the clear blue, Kai came downstairs after we’d put him to bed. He was crying hysterically.

“I just miss Elliott so much!” he wailed in between heaving sobs.

Scott and I looked at each other like omgwtf. Because omgwtf? What sparked it I still have no idea, but I do know that grief is funny that way, a rogue wave that knocks you down when you least expect it. Like when you’re eating a steak, say. Or, apparently, watching your iPad in your room.

“Kai,” I said, “would you like to read a book about it?”

I pulled the Mr. Rogers book out of the stack of papers next to my computer, aware that Scott was watching me, that I had actually pulled a rabbit out of my hat, if by “rabbit” you mean book about pet death, and by “hat” you mean the pile of crap next to my computer. Still, though, it felt like kind of an advanced move, like, oh, you’re sad? Well here’s all the ways in which I anticipated this and have handy the solution, as though pet death books are always at my fingertips.

We sat down and read the book, which was full of the word “sometimes.” Kai was still howling, fat tears streaking down his cheeks. I may have shed a tear, too.

When it was over, Kai sat on my lap, sniffling, his breath coming in ragged bursts.

“I just miss him so much,” he said, the tears once again welling and spilling over.

There are families out there who would turn to religion in a case like this, that Elliott is in a better place, that he’s probably eating God’s fat scraps right this very second. But God didn’t occur to me at that moment—Courtney Love did. I’d heard her give advice in an interview once. It was about heart-break, that if you’re having a hard time emotionally, you should turn it into art. “It’s like that ‘Joe Lies’ song in Say Anything,” she’d said. “Write that song. Write 65 of them.”

“Kai,” I said, “why don’t you draw a picture of a good memory you have of Elliott?”

He stopped crying. “What?”

“Let’s draw you and Elliott having fun together.”

“Like the time I was holding his leash and I fell down the stairs because Elliott pulled me?” he asked.

I gave him a sad smile then, because that really was Kai’s happy memory of Elliott. Elliott didn’t really like Kai. Or Ryan. He didn’t lick them or present his belly for rubbing or bring them a ball to throw to him. When I brought Kai home from the hospital, Elliott correctly assessed where he, Elliott, now fell on the totem pole and never forgave Kai for that.

“I don’t know how to draw Elliott,” Kai said.

I showed him how to make a border collie out of a series of shapes—rectangle body, crescent tail, triangle ears.

“What’s that a picture of?” I asked Kai a few minutes later, pointing to a drawing of Elliott with a series of arrows moving hither and yon.

“That’s when I throw the ball and Elliott doesn’t chase it,” he said, laughing.

Falling down the stairs

I laughed with Kai, even though that’s a woefully pathetic memory.

But I was tempted then, to grab the crayon and draw one of my own memories of Elliott from when he was about 8 months old. I was a single girl then, working at an ad agency, and I clicked my high-heeled shoes up the stairs to my apartment one night to find Elliott standing in his crate, wagging his tail furiously.

I was horror-struck by what I saw, pleading with him to sit back down, but he just continued to wag that tail, his head cocked to the side, his tongue falling sideways out of his mouth.

He’d had diarrhea in his crate, gotten it all over his tail, and each wag sent a spray of liquid dog poop all over my apartment like some kind of nightmare Jackson Pollack painting from hell.

:::

When Kai was finally done drawing, and heaved one last shuddering sigh, I asked if he was okay.

“I just want another pet,” he said.

“Maybe we can think about a new puppy next spring,” I offered.

“Or a hamster,” he said.

“We’re not getting a hamster,” I said.

“How about a snake?” he asked.

“You’re making a good case for dog,” I replied.

“But when?” he asked.

“Maybe spring,” I repeated.

“Oh,” he said sadly. Tears welled in his eyes again and he rubbed them away with the heels of his hands, but they fell faster than he could swipe at them, and so, drained and out of parenting ideas, I finally just suggested we watch funny videos on Youtube until he was ready to go to bed.

 

The Elliott Memorial

Once upon a time, in a Montessori far, far away...

Kai’s teacher suggested months ago that I ask Kai to put on a play at home of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I’d like to say that I did exactly that, but it would be a lie. Usually, at the end of the day, whatever energy I have left is used up by dinner/bath/bed *crosses self, shudders* , and Goldilocks plays are the last thing on my mind.

But the kids have been reading different versions of the story, from Mo Willems’ Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs, to the tale of a grown-up Goldilocks encountering a bear in her Manattan apartment, Goldilocks and Just One Bear. Kai is, apparently, something of an expert on the subject.

And then word came that his kindergarten was going to put on a play, and that Kai would be cast as none other than Goldilocks herself.

One of the directors asked if we would have a problem with that.

And of course we don't, because:

 

Check out the dainty way he holds his dress as he runs away from me.

But part of me had some reservations. Scott articulated it best.

“Of course we don’t care,” he said. “But, you know, why Goldilocks?”

The answer became clear soon enough.

A script was handed to me last Friday with Kai’s part. He would share the Goldilocks role with several other kindergartners, kids with names like Ella and Mia and Megan. Kai’s was the bit about the temperature of the porridge

I was supposed to work with him over the long weekend on his lines. I plum forgot about this until Monday night, and so, on Tuesday morning, I chivvied him out of bed and sat him at the table, where I’d place three bowls of varying sizes.

“Kai,” I said, “we have to work on your lines for the play.”

Kai didn’t need any other direction.

He picked up the big wooden spoon I’d stuck in the largest bowl, and took a pretend bite.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, waving his hand in front of his mouth. “Hot! Too hot!”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

He took a pretend bite from the second bowl.

“Brrr!” he said, crossing his arms, and giving a little shiver. “Too cold! Too cold!”

Right.

He told me that he needed a smaller spoon for the last bowl. I assume that this was so he could stay in character, and I was reminded that Sean Penn insisted on being called Spiccoli by his friends and family while he was filming Fast Times at Ridgemont Hight.

“Aaaah,” he said, pretend-eating Baby Bear's porridge. “That’s better.”

It was total adlib, filled with an artist’s interpretation and no small amount of flair.

Goldilocks. It was a role he was born to play.

:::

The night before the play premiered at school, I was advised that he needed a costume. 

I had been thinking that we might want to reimagine the Goldilocks role. Who says she’s a girl? All that’s required is some blond hair, and he already has that. I thought we could do a sort of Grimm’s forest thing. I Googled “lederhosen.”

“Kai,” I said. “Come look.”

I showed him pictures of the green-short-suspsender-jaunty-cap look of a classic Oktoberfest.

Kai looked confused.

“Goldilocks wears a dress,” he said.

Indeed.

For this, we needed an array of sartorial choices suitable for dramatic performance.

So, of course, we raided Ryan’s closet.

I offered up all manner of princess dresses, gold lame tutus, wands, necklaces, white satin gloves.

Kai chose a lavender velveteen cloak.

Then he designed a t-shirt to wear under it. He specified that there should be three purple circles in small, medium and large.

To this I added some yellow yarn braids and a brooch for his cloak with a “G” on it, for Goldilocks.

“Why does it have a Packer’s logo on it?” Scott asked me when it was all said and done.

And of course the answer is because the Packer’s logo is the perfect shape for a brooch for Goldilocks’ cape. Packers fans, make what you want of that.

:::

On the day of the performance, parents, siblings, classmates and teachers filed into the room, squishing on benches, finding space on floors, negotiating baby carriers and bulky winter coats. It was approximately 156 degrees.

I wondered if Kai would freak out at the sheer number of faces, if he would refuse to perform because he’d already performed the day before, if he would poop in his pants, if he would do any number of things that he might do, and do in front of every single other parent that I would have to see again and again until our children are 14.

There were murmurs about him as the players filed in. I heard the word "boy" a couple of times from the kids in the audience.

“Goldilocks can be a boy,” I head a nearby mom say, in response to her daughter’s protest.

And, as it happens, she can.

If Kai was phased by the crowd, by the noise, by the heat, by the pressure, you would never know it. He delivered his lines just like he had at my kitchen table, pausing thoughtfully to contemplate each pretend taste of porridge.

And, when he was done, after scooping up every pretend drop of Bay Bear’s porridge, he rubbed his belly. “I’m ready for dessert,” he said.

The other kids on stage with him laughed and laughed.

But they weren’t laughing at him, never at him.

They laughed with him. They seemed to anticipate and relish his affectations.

After the play was over and before the actors filed out of the room, his eyes searched the crowd and found mine.

Never have I tried so hard to convey so much with just a smile. Pride. Encouragement. Amazement. Joy. Love. Pride again.

He smiled back at me, not just any grin, but the impish one he gives when he teases me, like when I say “Kai, don’t touch that burner,” and Kai sticks his finger toward the burner and says, “You mean like this?”

:::

When the play was over, we found Kai in the lunchroom, and took the following picture, which does little to capture what we were feeling:

And so I'll tell you what we were feeling. My son with autism was in a play. He pretended. He hammed it up with his friends. He did all of this without his paraprofessional or his teacher or special help of any kind.

Afterwards, we went out to dinner as a family.

And, you guys, my porridge was juuuuuuust right.

In which I teach you two new words, and possibly put you off soup for a while

Recently, I took Kai to be re-evaluated by the neuropsychologist who diagnosed his autism. I filled out approximately six million surveys, answering questions ranging from when Kai first began to talk to whether Kai likes canned peaches or fresh.

I've seen most of the questions before, and there was a question that stood out to me last time: “Does your child create new names or phrases for things, such as calling steam ‘hot rain?’”

#6 above.

A year and a half ago, the answer was no. Plus, the question was confusing to me, which is the reason I remembered it among the host of questions I answered about every aspect of my kid. Hot rain? What?

But now, all these months later, I’m all, Hot rain! Shit, yeah, Kai does that all the time!

Air conditioning: cold wind.

Thermometer: head checker

Quesadilla: circangle pizza

This type of linguistic idiosyncrasy is common in autism and, according to the Internet, is called “neologism,” which means “a new word, usage or expression.” It apparently also means “meaningless words made up by psychotic people.”

Gee. And he looks like such a sweet kid.

I mention this to you because a.) I’ve been meaning to actually write a whole post about it and b.) I had the opportunity to actually watch the wheels of his brain whir and click while he invented an entirely new phrase.

A beautiful, terrible new phrase.

:::

Kai crawled into bed with me on Wednesday morning. I put my arm around him and noticed that his heart was racing.

“What’s going on, pal?” I asked him.

And he opened his mouth and vomited spectacularly all over me.

Hours later, he sat on a pile of pillows and watched as I made up the bed, spreading freshly washed sheets and stuffing the comforter into the duvet.

 “This is my fault,” Kai said, pointing to an ancient stain on the dust ruffle, a splash of brown from a wayward Diet Coke.

“That? Oh, no, that’s not your fault. Mommy spilled a soda.”

Kai shook his head.

“No,” he said. “It’s my fault. From my, um…”

He seemed to be searching for words, and I realized he thought the stain was from him puking in the bed that morning. I was ready to supply a word for him—puke, throw up, barf, hurl, ralph, when he came up with one on his own.

“From my...poop...soup,” he said haltingly, his mouth careful in forming the words.

I stopped shaking out the comforter and giggled.

“Did you just say, ‘poop soup?’”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Poop soup is stinky. And hot, too.”

Having been covered in said poop soup, I can honestly say that that’s no lie.

“I think you mean ‘vomit,’ honey. You vomited this morning.”

“Poop soup tastes bad in my mouth.”

I finished spreading out the comforter.

“I think that’s something we can probably all agree on,” I said.

Poop soup, you guys. And can’t you just see the logic? What is vomit but a sort of horrible, reverse diarrhea? And what is diarrhea but a soupy sort of…

Oh, God, never mind.

We’re having soup for dinner.

Or, at least, we were.