Overheard

"Where's my horn? I need to make some music."

"Pig's in time-out because he hit Clifford."

"No, Dora, don't hit Pig. We don't hit. You need a time-out, okay?"

"Pig, Dora's sorry. Give Pig a hug, okay?"

"Pee-pee in the potty. Not on the ground, okay?"

"Just one more time. I promise. Just one more."

"I looking for a recipe."

"I need to cook now."

"I can't find my keys. Keys! Where are you, keys?"

"Bye y'all. I going to the office."

"I FORGOT! I NEED TO PAINT MY FINGERNAILS! FINGERNAILS!"

What Is Wrong With Me?

I make this really good chicken, marinated in various things for while. Asian things like mirin and ginger and sesame oil and rice wine vinegar and fish sauce (which is such a bad name it will make you question anything anyone makes with it — they should just call it Top Secret Asian Delicious). After the chicken has been hanging out in this good stuff for a while ("a while" being until you remember that you have raw chicken in stuff in the fridge), then you grill it.

Well, at our house, you throw it on the grill pan, because you musn't go through the elaborate religious ceremony of the charcoal grill for something as pedestrian as the chicken I make all the time. Anyway, I put this chicken on the grill pan — the chicken Lu can eat almost a pound of herself all in one sitting, which is a very satisfying, if star-less, experience for a chef. And I cook it. And all the sugar in the mirin and the soy and who knows what the fish sauce has in it...makes this mysterious, determined crust on the pan.

Which then has to be cooked out of the pan. I cook the crust out of the pan with dish soap and water. And it is more satisfying to me than coooking the chicken itself.

They Weren't Kidding About Terrible

Describing this phase as "The Terrible Twos" is not a cliche — it's an understatement. Here is her rap sheet over the past few days:
• Frequent hitting, mostly of the mother
• Kicking, screaming, violent opposition to getting dresed
• Refusal to get into carseat
• Refusal to have diaper changed
• Refusal to sit in chair and eat
• Constant, yelled demands for food, different food, cold water, dropped items and generally "NO, NOT THAT!"

I know you're thinking, she's two, how can she win? We are bigger, we drive and unlock doors, WE ARE THE PARENTS. But we are losing. Yesterday something very bad happened, something I swore Jason to secrecy about and am deeply ashamed of, yet I cannot help but write about.

I spanked her.

Jason and I were trying to wrestle some clothes on her, and inexplicably, she was flailing and screaming. Maybe it is not inexplicable, maybe it was the fact that we were running late (we now have to add an extra 30 minutes to any departure process because multiple time-outs must be accounted for) and when we are running late, which we are a lot, Lu and I get into this stress spiral where she senses that I really want her to do something and she, naturally, does NOT want to do it. N-O-T not. She was thrashing her limbs, and I smacked her on the butt. And we all gasped. And I ran into the other room to give myself a time-out.

It was a truly horrible feeling, not because spanking is the very worst thing in the world, but because in that angry moment, spanking could have been...beating. I am sick over hitting her, because even that fairly benign smack flies in the face of all the things we are currently trying to teach her. Like, you know, don't hit people.

I went back into her room, where she was letting Jason dress her (a dismaying discovery: spanking works). I said, "Lucy, I'm sorry I hit you. I should not have done that." I gave her a hug and a kiss, and she seemed not to even know what I was talking about. Two-year-olds are more forgiving than their parents, it seems.

33 Years of Independence

Thirty three years ago today, my mom and dad were debating whether it was a good idea to go to the First Annual Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic. It was too hot, they decided, and my mom had a backache and was nine months pregnant. So they decided to skip the picnic and go to Brackenridge hospital and have a baby instead.

And I was born. Delivered by Dr. Bud Dryden, who was the mayor at the moment. Really he was the mayor pro-tem, but the mayor was out of town, so if you're not into specifics, I was delivered in the Capital of Texas on the Fourth of July by the mayor. Dr. Dryden was a medical school friend of my grandfather and uncles, a one-time mayoral candidate, long-time city council member and even longer-time community doctor. The emergency room at Brack is named for him, and the only thing he was more famous for than caring for Austin's poor was his gruff manner.

My parents had a bad car wreck and while my mom lay in a coma, Dr. Dryden noticed that the very tip of my mom's ear had been sheared off. "Dammit, Jim," he said to my dad, "I could have sewed that back on if you'd brought it in." My mom was fairly newly pregnant with me at the time of the wreck, and though she recovered and everything appeared to be okay, she still had a subdural hemotoma that Dr. Dryden was worried labor would disturb: they'd planned a C-section. So when my mom arrived at the hospital in pretty advanced labor, his response was, "Well, goddammit, Diane!"

I don't know the specifics of how they got me out (and neither does my mom, thanks to whatever good drugs they gave you in 1973 — and I don't mean the kind at the picnic), but the hematoma stayed where it was and I had all my fingers and toes. I am certainly getting some of the details of my birth wrong, and I am sure my mother will correct me in the comments section of this entry, but that's the basic outline as I know it.

Jason just distracted me from this post with a question about gestalt. I am not sure I understand what gestalt is in general or mine is in particular, but Willie Nelson is surely part of it. Willie Nelson and Bud Dryden, inextricable pieces of the pattern of elements started 33 years ago today.