Displaced

Not the #$*(! bird. This is a normal chickadee. Note how quiet he is.

I am a city girl. Even when I haven’t lived in a city, I’ve been a city girl.

Don’t get me wrong: I can enjoy a beautiful sunset with the best of them, but please don’t ask me to do it from the doorway of a damp tent or while wearing a piece of clothing labeled “packable.” Or “quick-dry.” Or “bear tolerant.” I like my nature urban, preferably efficient and definitely law-abiding. And by “efficient,” I mean, “with paths,” and by “law-abiding,” I mean, “not violating noise ordinances.”

Case in point, the (*&$#! bird two doors down. Clearly unaware that the laws that apply to that ice cream truck that used to park in front of my place in Brooklyn apply to him too. Namely: you don’t get to park in front of my place in Brooklyn for an hour at a time playing the same fucking music over and over again.

I read a study a while ago where these noisologists  – I know that’s not what they’re called, but for the purposes of this conversation, let’s just go with it because I can’t find that article right now – were trying to find a place to record nothing. I don’t know why. They could have gotten one of those white noise machines if they felt like things were getting a little noisy, but I guess they must’ve had their reasons. They ended up going deep into some national park to see if they could record the sound of silence on tape. They couldn’t. They said it was the airlines or something, but that doesn’t sound like the whole story. I think it was one of these *&$#! birds.

He starts his yelling  birdsong as soon as the sun is up and, when I think to check, he’s still at it mid-afternoon. He must be trying to score. And he’s not that attractive, so I’m thinking he’s doing that thing where he hits on 1000 women so he can score once. Or maybe he scored once already and he’s just talking about it all the time now. Either way, super annoying.

(I assume the *&$#! bird is a him, although I haven’t personally confirmed it. I know some loud women, but it’s only guys – usually cyclists or snow sport fanatics – who a.) get up at some ungodly hour to go about their business, and b.) talk about what they’re about to do, what they’re doing, and what they just did  before, during and after. Most over-talking girls I know at least wait until brunch to get started.)

He’s selected the high ground for his exploits – the top of a tree on the top of a hill – which was a good call generally, but isn’t going to get the job done, if you know what I mean. This is a residential neighborhood. Not the kind of place you’re going to meet lots of available singles. Unless he’s looking to hook up with a baby or a plumber. There are a lot of both on our block. Which is weird. About the plumbers, I mean. Maybe they’re especially into having a view, what with the staring into pipes and what not all day. Anyway.

You’d think someone looking for a mate (or a one night stand – whichever – I’m not judging) would pick a higher traffic location, one with lots of people and maybe some liquor, but the closest bar isn’t for blocks and blocks. And it’s not a nice one either. It’s a kind of dive-y, well-drink-only place. Mostly guys who show up to start drinking at noon or stop in for the game. Unless the bird is gay and completely without standards, he’s going to be disappointed by those prospects even if he did head over there.

Not to say that he couldn’t be gay. And it’s fine if he is. But my impression of gay men is that they’re even choosier than women and those guys leaning on the doorframe at 2PM aren’t a lean, making-an-effort-at-Gold‘s breed, so if he is gay, he’s even farther off his mark than I already think he is.

There’s a coffee shop over by the bar. That’s a better target. Trendy. Crumb-dropping. That’s where he should be. Hitting on crabby, starved-looking hipster birds in skinny pants, languidly pretending they’re not interested in anything and listening to – let’s be honest – music that sounds like a slow-speed car crash of an untrained guitarist and an un-oiled baggage carousel.

But no, he’s over here, diving pointlessly up and down from the topmost branch of that tree, singing. And by “singing,” I mean, “repeating the same set of five-note variations 1000 times in a row.” It’s “singing” like a two year old’s tinkling the Fisher Price ivories is “piano playing.” And, unlike a two year old, he can’t be distracted from his efforts by cookies or jellybeans. I assume. Our snack shelf looks like Ronald Reagan and a Girl Scout had an illegitimate diabetic child that they left it in charge of our grocery shopping, but that bird sticks to his tree no matter how many treats get dropped on the way to the car or out in the yard.

I guess if I really wanted to see if he could be lured to decamp by snack food (or anything else – I’m open to suggestions), I could get a T-shirt cannon and fire a pack of Fig Netwons over to the tree.

Come to think of it, I could just get a T-shirt cannon and fire T-shirts over to the tree. A bird is no match for an all-cotton sphere with three decal wolves on it traveling at, I don’t know, 60 mph, right? (Is that how fast they go? Probably not, I guess, or concerts and morning shows would be a lot more like paintball. Which would be cool. I don’t know: 20mph?)

Judging by his current shenanigans though, he’s quick.

Also, while I’m urban, I’m not heartless: I don’t want him dead. Just gone.

Which sounds like the kind of thing you say over that prison phone thing that lets you talk to your hit man through the glass. “I’m not sayin’ I want him dead. God forbid, right? I’m not an animal… I’m just saying – hypothetically – if he did meet with an, um, unfortunate accident, I’m saying I wouldn’t be upset. God rest his soul. Not that I’m suggesting anything.”

It’s hard not to admire his tenacity though. I mean, he’s sticking with his obviously flawed plan every day for, like, eight hours. You have to admire that kind of ignorance of repeated failure, right? It takes a special kind of optimist to get up at the crack of dawn and make that kind of racket. He’s not showing up for his fail work bleary-eyed and sullen, keeping his head down and skipping meetings. No realistic assessments of his personal choices are going on over there. He’s all up on it, like one of those people who thinks every day is a great day when you know full well that statistically that can’t be true every day and you’re kind of braced for the day when they realize that and all those bad days come out in a torrent of tardiness and inappropriately pessimistic comments about this quarter’s planning, so you just kind of nod and keep your mouth shut about that bird that’s been driving you around the bend and, even though it’s nice to be right about things (even statistical ones), you  secretly hope you won’t be around when that one bad day comes. And that they’ll be all right in the end, of course, too. You know, with some therapy about getting in touch with their negative feelings and wearing more black or whatever. I don’t really know how that whole thing goes. I already wear a lot of black and no one mistakes me for an un-self-critical, meeting-attending optimist. (Even though I am. Really.) (OK, yes, I’m usually late for the meetings. And this bird thing is making me kind of nuts. But still: optimist. Underneath.)

Do you think they have bird therapists?

He’s not going to quiet down without that or a girl. More likely the girl, right? I don’t think I’ve ever been pulling more for the loud guy to hook up and head home already. I’ve always felt too bad for the woman who might end up being involved to really get behind his efforts. But there are girls who like that kind of thing though, so who am I to say it shouldn’t happen? Everyone needs their someone, right? So, *&$#! bird, here’s to you finding your someone. As soon as possible. Like yesterday. And don’t screw it up by mentioning your ex-girlfriend or how you’re an early riser. Girls just want you to be quiet for a minute and listen. Please.

BlogHer picked up one of my posts today – thanks, BlogHer! – and I’m excited if you’ve come over from there to see what I’m doing over here. Welcome to Displaced!

In an unfortunate coincidence, WordPress just allowed the guys who make my newly redesigned site’s theme to push out an “update” that has scrambled the archives. If you scroll down past the first ten or so posts and everything looks a little off, I apologize: we’re doing our best to fix it/get them to fix it. Thanks for your patience!

In the meantime, if you want to read around through the archives, the easiest way is probably to pick a category from the Categories list at the bottom of the right-hand column and have at it. Thanks for reading!

Here is who falls down flights of stairs:

1. Clowns
2. Jason Bourne
3. Me

(Just so we’re clear, I use “falls” in a general way to cover, “intentionally falling down a short flight of circus stairs in order to get laughs from children,” “being thrown down dark stairways by assassins like yourself,” and, “slipping on too-long pajama bottoms with a.) no premeditated intent to fall, or b.) anyone threatening pursuing you from the bedroom behind you…and why would there be because it’s 11AM on a Tuesday and you live on a residential street?”)

As with previous sports I’ve played, I assumed my best bet on my first try falling down a flight of stairs would be to copy the style of people who were already pros,  and, since I tend to be good at things that require more force and less finesse, stair falling would seem like a natural fit. With my plan in place and confidence on my side, I slipped on the top step of our stairs.

My form, I feel, left something to be desired.

It must have been a lack of focus.

I tried to fix Jason Bourne’s bounce-back elasticity in my mind, but I think – and I’m just speculating here – that I went down less like a graceful cat (a well-muscled, dirty-blonde cat with lightning reflexes, amnesia, and a tenacious thirst for the truth) and more like, um…a bag of hammers.

To be more clear, hammers with no thirst for truth, attractive martial arts skills or the ability to kill someone with a hardback book. Just hammers. In a bag.

And not a nice bag designed for hammers, like with tool loops. More like a burlap hammer sack.

This was disappointing, to say the least.

(To be fair to the hammers, if they could get themselves together post-fall, they might not need a book to kill someone, being hammers and all. But still.)

I was not even able to bring an amusing prat fall quality to the proceedings, which was additionally unsatisfying.

Nor did I stand up and make it clear to the crowd (not present) and judges (ditto) that I was done with my effort and proud of it by raising both arms above my head like a tiny gymnast who has never tasted an almond croissant or seen the outside of a gym. No. I lay at the bottom of the stairs for a moment and said something interview-worthy like, “Aaaahhh,” before starting to go into shock.

This is not what you want in a competitive athlete or your star assassin. It’s probable that I am out of the running for Cirque du Soleil as well.

It did occur to me later that I ought to have jumped up and kept going, staunching the flow of blood with vodka and sports socks stolen from the convenience store I dodged into to avoid my attacker. But the closest convenience store is up a very steep hill from our house which is just excessively tiring. I mean, really. And the guy who works there is super nice, so I just can’t see stealing their liquor. Maybe if I were in Russia, where crime and vodka are more plentiful. Maybe then.

Also, I have a hard time classifying my pajama pants as an “attacker” per se, despite their catalytic role in the whole incident. They’re from the Gap.

Oh – did I mention I was covered in coffee? My coffee. Not some cool, assassin trick coffee. Keurig coffee. From a yellow plastic Crate & Barrel mug circa 1974. I think that mug really took the last bit of edge off the venture. I’m cutting that from future attempts.

So all in all, not a great experience, my first complete stair fall. It resulted in some non-life-threatening injuries, some irritating x-rays and no death-by-book for anyone else. I can’t say I’m proud of my performance, which is what we’re all really looking for in our sports, win or lose, right?

On the up side, it sets the bar very low for my next trip down. The addition of any flair (or killing of assassins) whatsoever would be improving on my current personal best. From here on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, there is, literally, nowhere to go but up. So there’s that.

I feel a little bit better

I hate my local drugstore. And by “local drugstore,” I don’t mean a place with wooden floors, bins of penny candy and a bespectacled proprietor in his eighties. I mean Walgreens.

There’s a lot to dislike about all Walgreens. Every store pretty much stocks the same thing, including no Lifesavers. Which is weird. And possibly un-American. Except for that one Walgreens in the Financial District. Which is even weirder, given that kids don’t make up a big segment of the financial services industry. (Unless they do and I just don’t know about it. Which would certainly explain this whole recession thing.) They also apparently believe that little girls’ bangs are on their own because they don’t stock child-size barrettes. Or any good greeting cards. Or the caramels and chews only assortment from Russell Stover.

I digress.

I’ve boiled my Walgreens’ failure down to this: their only selling point is that they are open. All the time. Which is an awfully narrow business proposition, but there it is. The doors are unlocked and staff is present. That’s all they’re going for.

It’s like a restaurant whose sign just says, “Food.” If you are hungry enough, you will go there. If you would like an interesting menu, a polite staff, timely service, or warm food, you may well be out of luck. They told you right up front: they serve food. It might be burned toast. It could be overcooked peas. But they’re not wrong: it is food. And they promised nothing more.

Here’s how you can tell you’re at MY Walgreens:

• Do they lock up a random assortment of all their products, requiring you to press a broken-looking button next to your deodorant, which, when it does work, summons an employee to come and unlock your Secret from plastic prison?
• Is the entrance surrounded by people talking to themselves and teenagers who look like they would rob you of your recently paroled shampoo without batting an eyelash?
• Does the pharmacy have no record of your prescription when you show up to collect it even when your doctor @$(*&! confirmed that it was received? Yes.
• Is there always a wait to collect that bad news even when there is only one person ahead of you because the only people who frequent my Walgreens do not understand their insurance (including if they have any) or their doctor or plain English or all of the above, and the pharmacy assistant is willing – God bless her misguided soul – to try to address these much-bigger-than-a-five-minute-conversation problems at the checkout window instead of referring them to the clearly labeled Patient Consultation window to the left?
• Is all of this adding up to a tornado of soul-blasting inefficiency? Yes. Yes, it is.

But they are open. So I guess that makes up for the nerve-numbingly frustrating experience of going there.

It took me a while to realize that all of these things, while clearly – CLEARLY – super valuable, were not the true essence of the 24th Street Walgreens. Now that I finally get their, “Look, we’re open, OK?” thing, I have high hopes that I will be able to adjust my expectations and all future visits will feel like a success when the doors part in front of me. I aim to stop attaching my satisfaction to whether I am able to walk out with my prescription or whether it took 20 minutes of waiting behind an obese young woman with spiral pigtails discussing the finer points of probiotics with a checkout clerk to find out that I will not be walking out with it, and just rest in the happy knowledge that they were, in fact, open.

Or maybe I’ll just start going to that other Walgreens in my old neighborhood again. At least they’re closed sometimes.

In case you haven’t come across any of the reviews or comments or coverage in the press about Bringing Up Bébé over the last month since it was released, here’s the basic outline:

American journalist Pamela Druckerman moved to Paris to live with her British husband. They had kids. She noticed that French children behaved differently than American children, was curious about the apparent differences in parenting that led to that, and she wrote a book – Bringing Up Bébé  – about her semi-formal investigation into the question. American parenting being what it is – always on the lookout for the next thing and let’s charitably call it, “not very laid back” – there has been a defensive uproar to the charge (not made by Druckerman) that French parents are better.

I happen to like the French – and their country, their cheese, their fully-funded daycare system, and, er, their cheese – and have never really understood the American love (Paris!)/hate (The French!) relationship with them. Maybe that’s why I remained engaged and un-offended while reading the book.

Or perhaps it’s not the French thing. Perhaps, as so often happens, the loudest yelling got the most press and the subject at hand, namely what was actually in the book, was lost in the fray.

Here’s the thing: I liked the book. I think you could too. So let’s clear up some of the basic arguments that have been leveled against it so you can get on with enjoying it.

First and foremost, nowhere does Druckerman state that French parents are better nor does she stage an attack on American parents. The defensiveness and anger of journalists, reviewers and commenters about what a great nation America is, how much better than France, and what amazing parents we all are feels irrelevant to me: no one said we weren’t. (It probably hasn’t helped that the book was introduced by The Wall Street Journal in an excerpt inaccurately titled – by them, not the author – “Why French Parents Are Superior.”)

Druckerman is no more “tell[ing] American parents that we’re doing it all wrong” than any other pregnancy or parenting book on the market, most of which highlight what you might do instead of what you are doing. If anything, Druckerman is less hard on American parents and more ambivalent about which path is best than many American books. Have you flipped through the page after page of rigid, judgmental suggestions in What To Expect When You’re Expecting or Super Baby Food lately?

The frustrations Druckerman expresses – out of control children in public spaces, the incompatibility of toddlers with restaurants – are ones we stateside parents express all the time. So why are so many mothers taking issue with her looking for a way to address some of those issues? Perhaps because we are instinctively defensive when we feel an outsider is taking issue with us. That is, it’s OK is we dish about our own relatives (or gender or race) but we bristle when others do. If that’s the case, let’s keep in mind that, although her thoughts are about the French, Druckerman is an American too. She is not taking sides against us.

Or perhaps it’s critics’ basic dislike of the French model she observes. To them, I would say, “It’s OK that it’s not your cup of café au lait. Move on. But mischaracterizing the book or the author as having done something reprehensible in even suggesting that we might consider a foreign alternative is like picking a fight with your boyfriend to justify moving out. Just go. It’s all right that you don’t want to take any of this advice. God knows there’s plenty more out there.”

Second, Ms. Druckerman having written a piece several years ago for Marie Claire on sorting out a menage a trois for her husband’s 40th birthday seems irrelevant to me.* On the contrary, that piece too displayed a clarity and candor (and a refreshingly domestic tone, unlike most American journalism on the subject of sex) that I found appealing. Having a sex life and being willing to write about it doesn’t, to my mind, disqualify a writer from also writing about parenting.

The furor over Druckerman having asked Marie Claire to remove the most prominent links to that piece only validates her apparent concern that readers would be so distracted by her having a racy (but not very) sexual past that we would be unable to judge her book on parenting on its merits alone. It’s just not that big a deal.

Third, the charge that Ms. Druckerman is focusing on the upper middle class of Parisians and that the book is therefore not a comprehensive representation of all parents in France is silly. I would encourage critics to produce any book on parenting that surveys and speaks to an entire nation’s population.

You can get back to me. I’ll wait.

Nothing? Yeah. I figured.

Let’s keep in mind that the audience for Bringing Up Bébé is of the same class in America: parenting philosophies self-select to the upper classes on both sides of the Atlantic. If you have the time and resources to develop a philosophy of anything (let alone write extensive comments or a book on them), you are in the middle and upper classes. Working two jobs and barely getting by do not allow for a lot of time with Dr. Sears or Ms. Druckerman.

Fourth, Forbes, among others, published a “rebuttal” calling into question the wisdom of French parenting based on America’s higher incidence of entrepreneurialism and billionaires. (I use quotes because a rebuttal implies that there was an initial attack, which I don’t believe that there was.) Again, this seems like a red herring to me. Within this kind of casually anecdotal logic, you might suggest that, given the US’s infant mortality rate – a stunning and embarassing 34th, behind Cuba and Japan – we should reconsider communism or acquiring an emporer to correct our childbirth problem. (France placed 9th, by the way.)

Yes, French schools are notoriously rigid. Yes, it is possible that that rigidity does not lend itself to the inventive, realize-your-dream thinking that is foundational to America’s national character. Yes, French parents’ early childhood focus on a “cadre” (or “frame”) may feel too impersonal or strict for many American parents. On the other hand, that same school system provides well-regulated, affordable childcare and preschool, something shamefully absent in the United States, and that cadre appears to produce better-behaved small children

The ongoing argument between Europe’s educational model (best typified in the semi-socialist Scandinavian countries where taxes are exorbitant but everyone is educated and no one carries student debt) and the American model (where education is uneven at best, providing amazing opportunities for self-realization for some and no meaningful opportunities or funding for many) will continue. It’s a difficult problem and a complex comparison. But it is not the subject of this book. Druckerman’s observations are limited to pregnancy and early childhood: the playground, home life with small children, day care and preschool.

(The mischaracterizations in these pieces of what Druckerman actually says does not aid their case.**)

Finally, and importantly, Bringing Up Bébé does not pretend to be a comprehensive socio-psychological survey of French and American parenting. Much of the criticism suggests that many readers believe it is – or ought to be – before they’re willing to consider any of the author’s input.

Bringing Up Bébé is part autobiography, part anecdote and part ad hoc research. Druckerman interviews doctors, caregivers, researchers and parenting experts (such as they are), in addition to parents themselves, but the book does not pretend to be more than an informal survey. She falls somewhere on the spectrum between Malcolm Gladwell (aggregating, filtering and commenting on other people’s research, see: Outliers, The Tipping Point, and Blink) and Adam Gopnik (Paris to the Moon’s essays on life with children in Paris).

As a mother and journalist, Druckerman does, I think, an admirable job of teasing out the unspoken but accepted cultural principles of child-rearing in France. That her book is not the footnoted final word on all matters of difference between the two countries’ systems of child-rearing – and which is definitively better – does not make it a bad book, an offensive one or disqualify it from my bookshelf.

Likewise, I did not reject Tina Fey’s autobiography for not providing me with a concrete, research-based roadmap to success in television comedy, nor am I offended that Gladwell draws his own conclusions about the research he relates. Yes, these are lighter weight approaches than primary research might present (which would have its own slant on things and, I venture, also draw critical bile from disagreeing parents). Yes, sometimes I disagree with their conclusions, but I didn’t go into reading these books with an expectation that their observations would be comprehensive, fully backed up and agreed to by experts or line up exactly with what I have observed or would have done myself. On the contrary, it’s the differences and subjectivity in their observations – their humanity – that makes them readable, interesting and potentially useful.

Bottom line, all this publicity is great for the book, so it probably needs no defense: people are talking about it, and buying it, and, as writer myself, I’m glad of that, and I’m sure Druckerman will brook the mischaracterizations just fine and laugh all the way to the bank (such as it is these days in publishing).

For those of you who have not read the book but are considering it, please do. Despite the many vocal and offended critics, there is nothing irresponsible in it, nor does it  prescribe a whole-hearted embrace of all things French, from formula feeding to fromage. I don’t believe, nor does Ms. Druckerman, as evident from her own choices, that raising children entirely in the French model is the correct choice. Primarily, Bringing Up Bébé is a bright, interesting read and and there’s quite a lot of insight in it that I’ve been glad to have. Especially the part about a cheese course every day at lunch. We’re definitely starting that tomorrow. There are some things that, as a responsible parent, you just have to do for the good of your child.

____________________________________________________________________________

Footnotes and References

*Slate’s Rachael Larimore on Marie Claire and her follow-up.

**A piece in The New York Times: “The French leave their babies crying on their own if they’re not sleeping through the night by the time they’re 4 months old.” On the contrary, Druckerman notes that this wait is brief – very brief: a “pause” she calls it – and nothing like the “cry it out” solutions that many American parents publicly eschew but privately take on in desperation after a year or more of interrupted sleep. 

Erika Brown Ekiel’s article at Forbes.com deliberately – and provocatively – mischaracterizes an entire segment of the book with, “Most of the parents Druckerman profiles discourage their children from standing out, speaking up or getting in the way of their parents’ good time. The advice they dole out is focused on keeping one’s child in his place, rather than enabling him to imagine and construct one of his own.” Again, on the contrary, Druckerman’s subject parents provide a structure within which children are free to stand out and imagine, albeit without the constant, hovering assistance of their parents. And the “good time” she references escapes me: Druckerman writes about French mothers’ efforts to transcend guilt about being a bad mother for, say, having a job, or time to eat an adult meal. 

An actual interview with Druckerman at the Huffington Post – unlike much of the coverage. 

A more balanced write-up at NPR.com.

Last week, I talked to a staff member of my former employer‘s and discovered that yes, they are still mired in the past. This was a tiny relief. It was like a gratifying/slightly depressing run-in with an ex-boyfriend – he’s super-pumped to go to Burning Man! he’s still got four roommates! – that validated my decision to leave those particular frustrations behind.

Short story short, in order to return an item I bought last month, I had to ring them up and “schedule” a UPS pick-up for the box. I use quotation marks because the schedule in question was “tomorrow.” Any time tomorrow. All times tomorrow. Between the hours of 7AM and 8PM. This was in lieu of my dropping off the package at my extremely local UPS depot. No, that would not do. No drop-off. Only pick-up.

How does this company survive out here?

Fortunately, we now live above street level with an outdoor landing below our front door. I took A. to the park, left the package out of view on the landing and a Post-It on our front door. I left another Post-It on the box itself (“UPS!!”), so our guy would know it wasn’t just recycling I’d thrown out there as if I have no standards.

When I came home, our driver had left me a note too:

I just upgraded to the Lion operating system on my Air.

You’re either a.) snoring, or b.) all excited because you think I might join you later in a rousing game of D&D because I know what an operating system is.

Stop it, both of you. It’s just a thing. I upgraded. No big deal. We all do it.

I’d say the birds and the bees do it, but they don’t because they’re smart enough not to mess with a good thing and not force themselves to re-learn all their keystrokes because they want to get on iCloud already so they can see all their photos online as soon as you take them on their phones. (Which you can’t, by the way, on iCloud. #)(*#$!)

Back on track: the big deal here – and I’m preaching to a subset of a subset of, like, six people from the snoring and D&D categories but please don’t fall asleep until you’re sure you’re not one of them – is that the new calendar program is going to put me in a mental institution.

Not because it doesn’t work (which it mostly does), but because some retro-minded numbskull in Cupertino designed its header to look like one of those old desk-size paper calendars executives used in 1941 when they had one appointment a week and a bombshell of a secretary they were underpaying and schtupping between high balls. Or so Mad Men would have me believe.

The border is the electronic version of Corinthian leather, apparently. Brown definitely. Tacky? Yes, mostly. And here’s what’s making me nuts: you know those little tiny tabs of torn paper that get left behind when you tear off sheets of paper at the perforation? It #$)(*#$IY@# @#U@IY$#$IY has those. On my screen. Those little bits that I used to tug at obsessively until I could get back to a pristine edge when I worked in old-school publishing and one of those desk calendars came with my office? Yeah. Those bits are there. On my screen. All the time. And there is not one goddam thing I can do about it.

I thought Apple was my OCD buddy, my anal design friend, my snickering behind our snarky hands at the imperfect UI crowd pal. No. They’re not. Now they’re  killing me and I need a drink. And I’ll be having it alone up at the bar without my Apple buddy, so if you see me, just take a seat and let’s just not talk about this further, because it hurts me on the inside.

I just got an email from our financial planner with the heading, “Support for the Difficulty of Divorce.”

It’s not only the capital “D”s that have me worried, although they do. I think if someone is going to use capital letters, we should all sit up straight and listen. Ditto lots of exclamation points. No one would use those without cause, don’t you agree? Especially not in today’s online world, where one’s reach is so wide. Misusing a loud voice to so many would be downright IRRESPONSIBLE!!!

Sarcasm aside, what I’m really worried about here is that R., my heretofore beloved, attended our last scheduled meeting with our advisor alone. I thought they were discussing one thing. Perhaps they were discussing another. Perhaps this is their way of letting me know what our next meeting will be about. At our last collective session, I did suggest that we start sending out agenda notes beforehand so we could be more focused during our time together. I was thinking more along the lines of, “Retirement savings: how to move Emma’s investments from her previous employer’s accounts,” but perhaps they were thinking more along the lines of, “1.) Do you know where your suitcase is, and b.) do you have a good lawyer?”

Or perhaps my very suggestion that we stay a bit more tightly on-subject precipitated this. Perhaps it rubbed the other two the wrong way. Really the wrong way. Like I was just trying to stop brushing our hair against the cowlick and they got tired of the whole cowlick thing as a whole and tracked down the flamethrower to keep it down once and for all.

Like that.

Hmmm.

This is really making me think twice about asking for agendas.

Also about our financial planner’s abilities in the tact department.

Oh – and about my relationship. That too.

But mostly about the agenda thing. I’m a really organized person. If I have to let that go, I’m not going to lie: it’s gonna sting, and not just a little bit either.

Hi there. Welcome to the new Displaced. We love it here and hope you do too.

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Pegu Club’s Goddam Glass

I’m bad at searching for very specific things on the internet. I know this because, after spending two hours making nice with Google and no headway in tracking down that quote from the movie we saw that one night when it was raining in 2004, I lose it, R. offers to help, and he finds what I was looking for in about 30 seconds. Which is infuriating. But he has really nice hair and I have what I was looking for, so I get over it.

I accept that I suck in this regard. What I don’t accept are actual physical stores and restaurants and whatever not knowing where they bought the actual physical stuff that is sitting right in front of me. They already found it and bought it for God’s sake. It’s not like I’m asking them to go track it down for me. They have a receipt for it somewhere. This is a totally different class of ineptitude than mine.

Here’s what I’m talking about: cocktail glasses. The goddam cocktail glasses I’ve been hunting down for five years now ever since I drank out of one of them at Pegu Club on Houston Street.

Honestly, I think if the Pegu Club hadn’t been so repeatedly clueless or obstructive or whatever it was, I might’ve forgotten about them by now. But no. After way too many, “I don’t know”s, from the staff, management sent me on TWO wild goose chases, one of them on a bitterly cold February afternoon down the Bowery, which was just mean. How can they not know where they bought their own stuff? I know where I bought my stuff. Especially stuff that I have a thousand of in racks behind my bar.

OK, you’re right: I don’t have a bar. And I don’t have 1000 of anything. But you take my point: I know where my goddam glasses came from.

I had to resort to stealing one of the goddam glasses.

Me. Crime. That’s what it came to.

I frame my crime like this: for a restaurant, stealing goddam glasses is the equivalent of office workers taking home Post Its. It’s wrong but, despite all the reports on white collar crime classifying lifting pens from the supply closet as out and out theft, I just can’t think of it in the same category as wheeling the Xerox machine out the back or selling stock tips.

I did it when I worked in an office. Taking Post Its, that is. A few. Not like crates of them out the loading bay or anything. I couldn’t manage that. I’m a terrible liar and I tend to run into things when I’m trying to be sneaky so I would make a super inept criminal. Which is sad because I like to be good at things.

But that’s not my point.

Beretta’s Almost the Goddam Glass

My point is, getting that goddam glass out of that bar took my whole evening – I was sweating like I was making off with the Mona Lisa – but I only feel a little bit bad about it: given the amount of time I’ve put in on this goddam glass hunt, I figured I kind of count as an employee and, as such, thievery of small breakable goods that clumsy patrons do in every night is within bounds. (I think. Maybe.)

Now that I have one of the goddam glasses at home, when I build my own glassblowing studio to make my own goddam glasses I will have a prototype on hand. Maybe I’ll get so good at it that Pegu Club will ask me to be their supplier. Which would be super ironic and totally pay for my new glassblowing studio. And by, “totally,” I mean, “not at all.” When the Pegu Club purchasing manager shows up, I’ll laugh maniacally and say, “No way, suckers! Don’t you remember that frigid February afternoon I spent walking up and down Bowery looking for that unnamed restaurant supply place you sent me to in 2007? You don’t? You’re new? Huh. Well, congratulations on the new job, I guess. This is awkward. You can still appreciate that payback’s a bitch, right? You can’t? Well, you’re young. And well-adjusted? All right. Do you want a glass of water? No? OK, well, I’m going to be over here by my Revenge Kiln, you let yourself out and we’ll both pretend this never happened, OK?”

I still don’t have those glasses. I can’t find them anywhere, including (but not surprisingly) on the internet. The closest I’ve come are some coupes from a company with the unfortunate but somehow appropriate considering my fruitless search name, Schott Zwiesel, which rhymes with “shot weasel” if you hadn’t already worked that out.

It’s very frustrating and I try not to think about it.

But that’s hard because now it’s happening again, only this time, it’s a pillow.

It started when I was pregnant. I had (more) money and (a lot more) time and a giant, giant pillow to share it with. Not one of those pregnancy body pillows that look like you killed someone who had scoliosis and showed poor judgment by disposing of the body in a pillowcase in your bedroom either.

My pillow wasn’t really a pillow at all. It was six feet of perfectly round foam encased in tasteful linen. Or flannel. Or one of those fabrics that tear and pill when I own them for more than ten minutes but always look great at spas. Which, in not much of a coincidence, is where I met my pillow.

And by “my” I mean “the spa’s.”

I should have learned from my goddam glass experience and just stolen it right away, but getting six feet of pillow out of the single exit right next to the front desk was more than my terrible, terrible crime skills could manage. I’ve been subconsciously missing that pillow for two years. (I have a permanently dislocated first rib and a two year old, so let’s just say that things don’t always stay where they belong. Like attached to my sternum.) When my physical therapist pulled out a shorter version of The Pillow two weeks ago, that shit was on. I unzipped the cover and the tag said, “Ikea.”

There was no chicken counting though. I could feel that chilly wind blowing in from the Bowery.

Man, was I right. So. Many. Fucking. Chickens. Ikea doesn’t make The Pillow anymore. And the internet is teeming with fake chickens asking to be counted, none of them the right one. Too short. Too narrow. Too fluffy. Too flat. It’s the goddam glass experience all over again.

After fruitlessly searching every massage supply, yoga and Pilates product web site in the world, I emailed Foam n’ More, a direct-to-the-trade foam supply company asking if their 36″ foam pillows were a.) hard like yoga rollers (concrete) or b.) soft like upholstery foam (your couch, my couch). This is what I got back:

Not my Goddam Pillows

“We have 2 different types of 36″ foam bolster. What dia are you looking for?”

No answer to my question, plus no description of the mysterious “2 different types.”

It took me half an hour to figure out that “dia” meant “diameter,” and less than a second to figure out that this was going to be a long, goddam-glass-like road lined with people working in manufacturing plants in Troy, Michigan, who wish we could kick off a nice long email chat to pass the time.

I’ll tell you who’s foamin’ more now: it’s me.

I drove back across town to my physical therapy studio, strode in among the limber clients, measured the pillow myself, and asked the owner where she thought I could look next since Ikea was a no go. She said, without equivocation, that she got it at this place on Folsom. Which she didn’t. She got it at Ikea. I know this because the goddam tag says so.

Instead of saying this, I waited politely while she Google’d the place on Folsom, clicked on the wrong link and started an online chat with a girl named Harmony about the length of a completely different pillow she had pulled up on a page which clearly stated the pillow’s length. Harmony didn’t seem to mind and took forever to collect the information. Another few minutes of back and forth about their physical store location (which they don’t have), and the owner realized her mistake and pulled up the address of the place on Folsom. Which, after I sped over there, turned out to be a seedy corner storefront with mostly blacked out windows on which you had to knock to be let in, at which point the “supply” part of their name was revealed to be a short hallway stacked with about nine products.

Split secondary realization: the Troy, Michiganians on the road ahead would be joined by zen’d out but unhelpful yoga supply company staff with names like Harmony and Chives.

I called the spa where I first met The Pillow. Harmony II took my name and number to give to their purchasing manager who would definitely call me back on Monday. She didn’t call back. Like the hardboiled PI who can hear the faint whistle of the blackjack before it hits him from behind, I saw that coming.

Several days and another phone call later, the spa assured me they got The Pillow from MassageWarehouse.com. “Massage Warehouse” sounds like a cover for a human trafficking operation working out of a hanger in Hoboken, but I check it out anyway. Naturally, Massage Warehouse has no such product. (Also, no young girls from south Asia toiling in the back, so that’s slightly better news.)

After a few nights spent fruitlessly bonding with Google over The Pillow, I reached my goddam glass limit. I drove to Ikea and bought an inferior Half the Pillow for $15.

I don’t know how we’re going to fit a foam manufacturing plant in the backyard what with the Revenge Kiln and the azaleas, but I’ll tell you what: this is happening. I can only take so much.