Six Years in Suburbia
One of the things Rebecca and I like best about our home is the location. A fifteen minute walk in any direction will bring you to all that is great about America – chain department stores; Home Depot, chain restaurants; Chinese take-out; and clear-cut, 20x20 fenced yards with one piece of plastic playground equipment. We are also a short walk from Metro – the easy-to-understand, color-coordinated public transportation system that serves Washington D.C.
We all know the many wonderful things that “The City,” as folks who grew up around here call it, has to offer. And I’m not even talking about the young co-eds and drugs. But while it may rank as the top one or two power cities of the world, I recently saw that Teen Beat did not rank it in the top fifty as a destination for night-life. This may be why Metro closes at midnight on most nights.
But, seriously, the fact that we can, if we choose, go days without having to get in our car to drive somewhere to partake of one of life’s necessities – the 99-cent Taco Bell menu, seeing Archie Bunker’s chair, a Starbucks mocha latte - has been an essential element in why Rebecca and I haven’t upgraded to a place that would make us house poor like so many of our friends.
Now, Rebecca and I realize that we are giving up something by living in the yuppie suburbia that we do. A move to the country would grant us access to air that contained fewer toxins, provide us the ability to see cows and smell manure whenever we wanted, and maybe even have a P.O. box as our mailing address. It would also probably increase our chances of being grandparents while Maya and Jonah are still in their teens.
Which, finally, brings me to the point of this blog post. Yesterday, December 14, we celebrated Maya’s 6th birthday. 
Because we’ve gone ice-skating a few times recently and she’s gotten pretty good at it, Maya wanted to have an ice-skating party. Here she is carving it up yesterday.
Because none of the local ponds were frozen over, and anyway, I can’t think of any local ponds, we had to go to the local skating rink. In keeping with the theme developed above of how great our location is, how many of you reading this live near an ice-skating rink that is accessible by public transportation?
Having the party at the ice rink rather than a local pond was fine by me since it set my mind at ease that none of our guests would fall through the ice and get trapped. What a head-ache that would have been for us!
After deliberating over who to invite for two or three days, Maya settled on ten of her friends, including Jonah, her cousins Gabriel and Bella, five of her classmates, and Celeste, her friend from our street. Rebecca sent out the E-vite and we were all set.
The way it went was this, we rented a “party room” at the ice-rink that consisted of four cinder block walls, three folding tables and enough folding chairs. My mother-in-law made a tray of baked ziti, Rebecca made some cupcakes,
I poured the drinks, and my father-in-law provided the entertainment.
Thus fortified, the skaters strapped on their skates and headed to the "sheet" to flop around on the ice for a couple of hours. Of the young ones, only Jonah had skated before. But, I’m happy to say that no one hurt themselves except for Bella (no stitches were involved). There were also a few of us old folks that were lacing up skates for the first time in years (my sister Cathy)
or, in some cases, ever (my cousin Mike).
Neither of them admit to any bumps or bruises.
After skating, we came back to our house and gathered around the Christmas tree while Maya opened her few birthday presents. We had asked folks not to bring presents, but no matter how many times you tell that to grandparents, they don’t get the message. And anyway, Maya has been to a few parties recently where the parents did not tell folks not to bring presents, so she was excited to have some presents to open.
Maya was really excited to get a jewelry box from my parents and a camera from me and Rebecca. When Rebecca was tucking Maya into her bed last night, they debated keeping the night light in the room on or off. Maya wanted to keep it on in case she woke up and wanted to take some pictures.
After Maya opened her presents, she, Jonah and Celeste ran around the house crashing into things. This prompted my Dad to remark that someone was going to end up in the emergency room. That would have been no problem, from our house we can catch the 9A bus and be at the hospital in 24 minutes.
Esta haciendo los recuerdos con los Rolling Stones (segunda parte)
Rebecca and I purchased a lot of DVDs in
The catch is that they are all bootlegged. Imagine walking into a store that is selling nothing but bootlegged DVDs. Imagine that this could be your job, bootlegging DVDs and selling them for $2 each.
Even though we checked out each DVD we purchased on the store DVD player to make sure it was more than just an empty DVD, once we got them home onto our machine, some of them didn't work. Here's where this blog post would get real technical if I were a technical guy. But I'm not. If there is an opposite to a techno-geek, (something like a techneophyte), I'm it. Light switches are as complicated as I dare to get. I let Rebecca handle everything else. Whenever my guy friends get into discussions about digital versus HDTV, or how many channels they get, or pistons versus spark plugs or some such idiocy, I do my best to stay out of the conversation so as not to be emasculated.
But, to put our DVD issue in layman's terms, the problem seems to be that certain DVDs are made for certain places in the world and they won't play in other places. Don't ask me how they know where they are. I can't remember if it's the formatting of the DVD itself, the wiring of the DVD player, or what, but a bunch of the DVDs that we purchased in Ecuador are useless to us here except as coasters.
I brought two music DVDs in
Since it's nearly pointless to watch a concert video without sound, I started pushing buttons and somehow got myself to a screen that had "Audio" as an option. That sounded like just the fix that I needed so I selected it and lo and behold, I found myself on a screen with an option to select a different type of TV. Not a different model, but some different frequency or something. The techno-geek in me remembered something from a past conversation about T.V.'s being the root of the problem, so I selected the other T.V. from the one that was already selected and all hell broke loose.
The screen started rolling from top to bottom at great speed. Static lines started moving diagonally across the screen. The only sound you could hear was the war cry of the Bohemian Wahoo. This sudden change into techno-anarchy made it impossible to read the words to undo whatever the hell it was I had just done. Crap, I thought. More indiscriminate button pushing didn't help. Fuck, I thought. Something that started out with so much promise ended up completely fucked up.
In a last ditch effort to salvage some shred of manhood, I took the Stones DVD out and put in a DVD that I know works in our player - something Made in China but sold in the USA - held my breath and encountered the same problem. The screen rolled from top to bottom at great speed. Static lines started moving diagonally across the screen. The Bohemian wahoo cried it's war cry.
So basically, when you put a DVD in our DVD player, it's impossible to see what the hell is going on. It's impossible to read any of the words or see any of the pictures. Our DVD player is kaput. I am so discouraged that I can't even remember if the sound was working so we could at least listen to a movie.
Making Memories with the Rolling Stones
The other night I called my friend who lives on the street to see if he wanted to stop by. Since it was a week night, and it was already pretty late by the time I thought to call him, I expected to have to work a little bit to convince him. When I got him on his cell phone, I said to him all in a rush, “I just listened to Sticky Fingers and I’m listening to Beggar’s Banquet now and I’m probably going to listen to Exile on Main Street next. Why don’t you come over?”
“That sounds cool.” He said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
So much for the hard sell, right?
About five minutes later he came walking down the street with a drink in his hand and we proceeded to tear it up in my kitchen listening to the Rolling Stones, talking, dancing and just having a good ole time. Though, because we are both responsible grown-ups and had to go to work the next day, one of our four eyes always strayed to the clock.
I haven’t yet figured out how many hours of sleep I need to function properly the day after I’ve had a few drinks, but I think it is in the 4-6 range. It also helps (a lot) if I don’t have my last drink minutes before my head hits the pillow. On this night, after my friend left and before I went to sleep, I made myself some spaghetti, drank a bunch of water, swallowed a few aspirins, and still felt pretty lousy the next morning. But it was the day before Thanksgiving and work was pretty slow so it didn’t matter much.
If you haven’t listened to Sticky Fingers recently, you should. We’ve all heard a lot of those songs on the radio before – Brown Sugar, Wild Horses, Bitch, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking – and probably are sick of them. I’m sure I’ve turned at least one of those songs off while it played on the radio recently.
But hearing them in context with the rest of that record - Sway, Dead Flowers, Moonlight Mile – reminded me how musically outstanding the Stones were during the late 1960’s early 1970’s. I had forgotten how much I liked the Sticky Fingers record. It’s a classic example of taking something profound (music, relationships, Hostess Ding Dongs) for granted just because it is there for you whenever you want it.
It also reminded me of something that happened to me many years ago when I was in college. I went through this period where I was bumming around about this girl that I liked who was spreading herself around for other guys. So, to make myself feel worse, one night I decided to sit alone in my dorm room in the dark listening to “I Got the Blues” from Sticky Fingers. I Got the Blues is a real slow, melancholy song that among other suicide greeting card ready lines, contains the lyric “feelin’ low down, I'm blue".
At some point my buddy stops by and this really depressing song is playing and I’m depressed over this girl that this guy had actually put some moves on. I let him in without turning the light on and he comes in and when I think about it now, I think “what a loser I am!” There I am in college, the greatest time of my life to that point, and I’m passing the hours sweating it out over some silly little thing like unrequited love!
Anyway, after trying to cheer me up some and get me to go out with him with zero success, my buddy asked me what I was listening to. I told him and all of a sudden it was alright with him that I wanted to sit in my room by myself in the dark. He left. Somehow the fact that I was listening to the Stones didn’t make me so pathetic. Maybe I was cool, even, to be feeling low down and blue over a girl and just letting the Stones wash over me.
I wonder now if my buddy remembers that night and what he thought about my situation. I don’t talk to him anymore so I can’t ask him. I probably wouldn’t ask him anyway, I think I’d just rather he forget about it. If I ever run into him again we’ve got lots of times to reminisce about when we were both happy, so there is no need to remember a time when we were not.
And anyway, my new memory of Sticky Fingers is dancing in my kitchen with a drink in my hand while my friend from up the block takes a break to pour himself another.
Rock and Roll Fantasy
The
There are innumerable bars that have live music during the week. There are small venues like the 9:30 club, The Black Cat, and The Birchmere that hold only a couple of hundred people. There are mid-size places like the
Then there are the artsy places like Strathmore and Millennium Stage at The Kennedy Center which roll all kinds of symphonies and jazz bands through but once in a while have something more pop/popular (i.e., The Beach Boys, Dec. 8 @ Strathmore).
A few weeks ago, on a Friday evening, Rebecca and I took Maya and Jonah for a picnic in the
Jazz isn’t really my thing but I appreciate good musicians and the band was great. Though, I think in this case the best moment was when the band started the Bill Withers’ song “Use Me” then encouraged folks to grab their instruments from their cars for a free-for-all winding jam that never lost the bass groove that makes you want to get up and dance in the first place. It was one of those moments where you couldn’t find a face that wasn’t smiling a big, broad, happy grin. Plus, the kids were transfixed by the musicians. They really enjoyed watching the performance.
Looking through the upcoming concert listings is enough to make one’s mouth water – Ray Davies (Dec. 8 @ 9:30 club); Oasis/Ryan Adams (Dec. 20 @
On the one hand, I feel like I am missing an opportunity by not seeing these bands now while I can still see and hear and dance. It reminds me of the David Budbill poem “While We’ve Still Got Feet.” On the other hand, some might question my priorities if I saw every band that stoked my interest.
Fortunately for me, I have a really great wife who indulges me (maybe?) more than she should and I’ve been able to see some really great live music in the last month, with some more on tap in December.
It started with three Black Crowes shows at the 9:30 Club in October. The Black Crowes are a band that I’ve liked since their first record came out in 1989 or 1990. I saw them play The Ritz in New York City around that time (a story in itself – we ended up in the emergency room) and most of my friends from that time always tell me that they think of me whenever they hear a Black Crowes song on the radio. I’m like their number one fan.
So, when I saw that The Black Crowes were performing for three nights in D.C, it was hard for me to pick just one show. I had to go to all three.
The Black Crowes are the type of band that you can see on consecutive nights because they change the set list all the time. They are kind of like the Grateful Dead in that regard – you never know what songs they’ll play at any show. Over the course of the three shows I saw, they only repeated three songs. But they also didn’t play a couple of songs that I wanted to hear so I’m going to have to see them the next time they come through town.
I say that the Crowes are the type of band that you can see on consecutive nights, but in practice, some folks doubted that my body could handle it. These are the folks that know how I can get at times.
But, truly, I never had any doubt that I would be okay. On opening night, Thursday, I went by myself so it was no problem, I was home and in bed by 1 a.m. On Friday night (the second show) I went with my friend Ty and we stayed up pretty late after the show. I only slept until 9 a.m. on Saturday so my ass was dragging on that afternoon. I think I actually took a nap on Saturday which is something I very, very rarely do. But by the time I got to the show on Saturday night around 9 p.m., I was ready. I ended up having to take a cab home that night because the Metro only runs until 3 a.m. on weekends.
I did have a revelation that I recall while watching the Crowes – Luther Dickinson will be to guitar players what Babe Ruth is to baseball players – a household name. Mark my words. He’s that good.
Last night (Wednesday) Rebecca and I went to see Michael Franti and Spearhead, a rock/hip-hop/reggae/funk band with poetic lyrics that trend politic and a really, really good-looking front man (the aforementioned Michael Franti). Well, I don’t think he’s that good-looking, but I do like his music and lyrics.
Rebecca really thinks he’s sexy and has Mr. Franti on the ubiquitous list that we all keep of the five people we’d most like to be stranded with on a deserted island. So, she was extra excited that as we walked up to the venue, Michael Franti was in the street kicking around a soccer ball with a bunch of folks. We had to stand there in the freezing cold and watch him finish the game so that I could take this picture.
After the picture Rebecca and Michael disappeared into the bus for a while, but Rebecca made it out in time to see the show from more or less the front row (the 9:30 Club is general admission so as far as you can elbow your way forward is where you stand for the show).
Overall, I thought the show was pretty good. There was a lot of jumping and sweating. I’d never seen Spearhead before (Rebecca has been two other times) so I was happy to finally be able to do that. We listen to them a lot at home because Maya and Jonah really like them too. Before we left for the show Maya asked Rebecca to take a picture of Michael Franti for her (mission accomplished!). Jonah is a fan too. We have a great video of him dancing to the song “Hey World” that I am going to upload to YouTube. Check it out.
The show that I am looking forward to now is Ray Davies. Ray Davies is the main guy in The Kinks. If you’ve read any of my previous blogs, I probably mentioned that I like The Kinks. To give you some idea of how much, I offer this quote that I made to Rebecca some time ago. “Rebecca, if you ever leave me, at least I’ll still have The Kinks.”
Since I’m probably never going to get to see The Kinks play together (the other band members, including Dave Davies, don’t get along with Ray) I consider Ray Davies as my substitute. This is okay seeing as he wrote most of their stuff. I’m just not sure how much of it he’s going to play since he does have solo records out in the last few years that he might like to play more, now. Thinking about it, I regret that he’s not playing two consecutive nights – more chances for him to play all the songs that I want to hear.
The Rise and Fall of the Family Bed
When Maya was born, Rebecca and I invested in a king size bed rather than a crib so that Maya could sleep with us. Rebecca and I had read many articles about the benefits of co-sleeping – how it promotes bonding, the fact that it is safer than crib/cot sleeping, and, of course, the all important potential for more sleep.
Because Maya was breastfeeding, and I would never be able to deliver on her midnight cries for feeding, co-sleeping is a more convenient arrangement for mommy. Whenever Maya stirred, Rebecca could boob her so that none of us ever really left Z-town, and we all satisfied our FDA required sleep quotient.
For the first few nights of her life, Maya slept between us in this specially designed box made of hard edges to prevent me or Rebecca from rolling onto her in our sleep. Of course, the idea that we would roll onto her in our sleep was completely ridiculous as all Rebecca and I wanted to do during sleeping hours was look over the edge of the box at our golden child. Eventually, though, Rebecca and I decided we did need to sleep rather than gawk over the edges of the box. So, we got rid of the box and Maya continued blissfully between us to no ill effect. And in fact, I loved having Maya next to us all night – would not have done it any other way.
In anticipation of adding Jonah to the mix, we purchased Maya a bed, set up a room for her, and talked about how much fun it is for big girls to sleep in their own beds in their own rooms. Maya didn’t really go for that idea, especially when she saw Jonah enjoying the co-sleeping arrangement that had been solely hers for so long. So, rather than fighting about it (and really, we liked having her close to us) we built a raised bed frame next to our bed and put a crib mattress on it to create something even bigger than the California King. We called this part of the bed “the nest” and for the most part, that’s where Maya slept. Jonah of course, continued to sleep between me and Rebecca, but mostly nuzzled next to Rebecca.
And that’s how sleeping life went on in our home until, sometime before May 14, 2008, Rebecca and I got sick of only being able to snuggle with our feet because one or other of our kids was between us. Since we knew that our apartment rental in
I am sure this jinxed everything. I’ve previously detailed the painful reality of our
After the abject failure of our
But finally, both Maya and Jonah got used to the idea. And now, with slightly devious parental tricks (“help you stay in bed” vitamins for Jonah, and promises to Maya that we will come back in “five minutes”) and only three or four trips to the bathroom between them, both Maya and Jonah are tucked into their own beds and fall asleep there.
Rebecca and I are still required to remain on the same floor while Maya and Jonah fall asleep. But this is a vast improvement on the status quo. We stay in our bedroom and can actually read a book, talk, surf the internet or otherwise ignore each other, or (gasp!) snuggle; whatever our hearts desire.
The arrangement has been working out so well, this reclamation of our room and of our bed, that Rebecca and I have basically been shutting off the downstairs when the kids go to bed and spending the rest of the night in our room. It has really been making the liquor on our bar last a lot longer than is usual. And lest we forget how nice it was to have the kids in our bed to snuggle with during the co-sleeping years, not a night goes by without Maya or Jonah (or both) waking up, walking the long hallway to the big bedroom and finding their old spot between Rebecca and me.
